Persian translation of the Mahabharata, an illiterate Mughal emperor's curiosity

At the time when the Sultanate Hyenas, particularly the Tughlaqs in Turko-Afghan factional India advertised their sordid saga of assassinations, usurpations and rebellions, the political scene of India changed dramatically.

- DR SHADAB AHMED

The cause of this change was the invasion of India by Tamerlane and his Tartar-Mongol-Turkish hordes from Transoxiana in Central Asia, Turkish in language and identity, Persianised in culture and Islamised in religion.

Henceforth, the Delhi Sultanate ruled subservient to the Timurid Empire of Central Asia.

The death rattle to the Sultanate came under the Lodis, when they invited the Timurid Tornado Babur to invade and liberate India.

The best of the Sultanate clashed with the fiercest of Mongols, only to be slain and snuffed out from history.

Babur thus became the founder of an empire in India, the Mughal Empire.

The Mughals may have historically been nomadic plunderers and marauders, but in India, all notable Mughal Emperors, both Jahanpanahs and Shahinshahs, nurtured and stimulated creative art - poetry, painting, architecture, music and historiography.

The third Mughal Emperor Jalal-ud-Din Muhammad Akbar, though a ruthless medieval warlord driven by earth hunger and blood thirst, was aesthetically and intellectually refined in taste.