the mughuls were central Asian in origin correct me if i am wrong!! there language was Persian correct me if i am wrong. teh poor neighbhourhood you speak off is or were most of the pakistani imigrants you spatt!!srirangan said:
Pakistani are immigrants did you sleep through your history classes, the mass exit of Muslims from India in 1947!! My family were landlord we exited too. to pakistan!!
abit of history for the ignorant here!!
Events at the beginning of the twenty-first century underline the historic importance of the ties between the Middle East and Central Asia on the one hand and South Asia on the other. A study of the history of the Silk Road illuminates those ties. One need merely consider the events leading to the spread of Greco-Bactrian culture (the legacy of Alexander the Great in Central Asia) into northern India in the time of the Kushan Empire (ca. 100 CE), which straddled routes from today's Uzbekistan through Afghanistan and into Northern Pakistan and India. At a later period, Islamic dynasties in Persia or Afghanistan would extend their territories eastward into Northern India, providing the basis for the Islamization of the region beginning in the late twelfth century. The last of the Muslim sultans of Delhi was brought down by a new invasion from the northwest, that of Tamerlane in 1398. Even though Tamerlane then turned elsewhere, that event served as one of the bases for the legitimacy of his heirs, the Mughals, to rule India.
The Mughals' consciousness of their Central Asian roots and the prominence of Persian and Central Asian culture at their courts are an important chapter in the history of the Silk Road. The founder of the Mughal dynasty, Babur, was a descendant of both the Mongol Chingisids and the Timurids. Babur had grown up in the Ferghana Valley (the eastern part of today's Uzbekistan), briefly held Samarkand, but then been driven out by the invading Uzbeks. He went to Kabul, where eventually he would be buried, and toward the end of his life in 1526 finally gained a foothold in India.
The firm establishment of Mughal rule in India was really the work of his grandson, Akbar (1556-1605), arguably the greatest of the Mughal emperors. Under Akbar the empire became one of the wealthiest states of Eurasia. While many of its important trade routes were oceanic, the overland routes to Safavid Persia, Central Asia and even China continued to function much as they had in the early centuries of the Silk Road. As the Dutch and British India companies began to develop networks in the East, their representatives sometimes traveled the overland routes from Persia through Afghanistan. The rise of the European traders did not mean the demise of native Asian merchant corporations, as is sometimes assumed.
Akbar was eclectic in his religious and cultural views, employing at his court many Naqshbandi Sufis from Central Asia but also allowing the Jesuits to establish themselves. One of the fascinating documents of the overland travel to China is an account of Benedict Goës, a Jesuit who left Akbar's court in Agra, traveled northwest through Afghanistan and then northeast along the old route of the northern Silk Road around the Takla Makan. Akbar's eclectic tastes can be seen in the art of the capital he built and soon abandoned at Fatehpur Sikri, not far from Delhi. The architecture is largely Indian, but the decorative motifs draw heavily upon both Persian and Chinese models.
All of the Mughals, beginning with Babur, had a particular fascination with Tamerlane and their Central Asian roots. Histories of Tamerlane's conquests were read and copied, poetry and painting invoked Tamerlane as the direct ancestor of the Mughal emperors, various commemorative inscriptions were erected. Akbar's son and successor Jahangir (1605-1627) entertained writers from Central Asia, and in conversations with one of them in 1627 inquired specifically about the Gur-i Mir, Tamerlane's tomb in Samarkand, and offered to pay for its upkeep. Jahangir's son, Shah Jahan (1628-1657) actually came close to reconquering Central Asia--for a time the Mughals found themselves in control of Herat, which had succeeded Samarkand as the Timurid capital in the fifteenth century.
Apart from literature and poetry, the Central Asian and Persian influences in the arts of the Mughal court can be seen in monumental architecture, most notably that of tombs. The great domed mausoleums of the Mughal rulers were based on the models from the territories of the former Timurid Empire. We can see this both in the first of these major Mughal tombs, that of Babur's son, Humayun, in Delhi and in the most famous of all the Mughal buildings, the Taj Mahal, built by Shah Jahan to commemorate his wife. The road to the Taj Mahal leads through Samarkand.
--Daniel C. Waugh
Bibliography:
Richard C. Foltz, Mughal India and Central Asia (Karachi, etc.: Oxford University Pr., 1998).
Sheila S. Blair, Jonathan M. Bloom. The Art and Architecture of Islam 1250-1800 (Yale UP, 1994).
http://depts.washington.edu/uwch/silkroad/exhibit/mughals/essay.html
