Page:History of India Vol 3.djvu/249

THE BEGINNING OF BABAR'S CAREER 203 It was among these embers of the great fire that Babar, in 1494, at the age of eleven, found himself sud- denly king of the province of Farghaiia beside the Jaxartes, by right of inheritance in the sixth generation from Timur. No boy had ever to face such perilous paths as those which led the young King of Farghana to the heights of his soaring ambition. He would reign where Timur reigned at Samarkand, and there hold sway over the empire of his ancestor: nothing less would content him. But the road to empire lay through jealous, kinsmen, treacherous chiefs, mutinous retainers, and the ever-growing power of the hostile Uzbeg tribes. Twice did Babar seat himself upon Timur 's throne, and twice was he expelled to wander a homeless exile among the hills, dwelling in the shepherds' huts, or suffering the ungracious protection of his mother's Mongol rela- tions in the northern steppes. Ten years of ceaseless effort, brief triumph, sore defeat, and grinding misery, all borne with that courage and sanguine hope that were among his finest qualities, ended in his retreat to Kabul, where he took the little throne which had been held by Timur 's lineage ever since his raid into India. Here Babar made himself a kingdom, small compared with the dominion of the present amir of Afghanistan, but not easy to hold, with its turbulent and jealous tribes and rocky barriers. But a mountain chiefship was no fit ambition for a king who had twice ruled Samarkand. Babar 's dreams still reverted to the land of his forefathers, and only the disastrous failure of his third attempt to