First Battle of Panipat (1526): Babur Founds Mughal Rule

The First Battle of Panipat was fought on 21 April 1526 at Panipat, about 90 kilometres north of Delhi, between Babur, the Timurid ruler of Kabul, and Ibrahim Lodi, sultan of Delhi. Babur’s smaller army, combining field guns, matchlock infantry and mobile cavalry, destroyed the Lodi army in a few hours and killed the sultan. The victory founded Mughal rule in India, which would last in some form until 1857.

Background

In the early 16th century the Delhi Sultanate was ruled by the Lodi dynasty, Afghans who had held power since 1451. Sultan Ibrahim Lodi succeeded his father Sikandar in 1517. His attempts to strengthen royal authority alienated many of the great Afghan nobles, who were used to treating the sultan as a first among equals, and several rose in revolt.

To the north-west, in Kabul, ruled Zahir al-Din Muhammad Babur. A descendant of Timur on his father’s side and of Genghis Khan on his mother’s, Babur had lost his homeland of Fergana and failed repeatedly to hold Samarkand against the Uzbeks. From Kabul, which he had held since 1504, he looked to India, which his ancestor Timur had raided in the sack of Delhi in 1398.

Between 1519 and 1524 Babur led several expeditions into the Punjab. He was encouraged by discontented Lodi nobles, notably Daulat Khan Lodi, governor of the Punjab, and Ibrahim’s uncle Alam Khan, each of whom hoped to use him for his own ends. When these alliances collapsed, Babur decided to seek the throne of Delhi himself.

The march to Panipat

Babur set out on his final campaign in November 1525 and crossed the Indus in December. After forcing Daulat Khan’s submission in the Punjab, he advanced towards Delhi. In February 1526 his son Humayun, then about 17, won his first victory over a Lodi detachment at Hisar-Firoza.

Ibrahim Lodi marched north from Delhi to meet him. The two armies came face to face near the town of Panipat, on the plain that controls the approach to Delhi from the north-west. For about a week they faced each other without a full battle while Babur prepared his position.

The armies

Babur’s force was small. He himself wrote that his army, including servants and followers, came to some 12,000 people; modern estimates of his fighting strength range from about 8,000 to 15,000. It included Turkic and Mongol cavalry, a body of matchlock-armed infantry and a small artillery train.

Ibrahim’s army was far larger. Babur put it at 100,000 men and 1,000 elephants, figures historians treat as exaggerated. Modern estimates usually suggest 30,000–50,000 troops with perhaps 100–1,000 war elephants. It was a traditional north Indian army built around heavy cavalry and elephants, with little or no gunpowder artillery.

Babur’s battle plan

Babur used a defensive formation that he himself called the “Rumi” (Ottoman) method, probably learned through contacts with the Ottoman and Safavid worlds. He anchored his right flank on the houses and suburbs of Panipat and protected his left with a ditch and felled trees.

Across his front he placed about 700 carts lashed together with ropes of rawhide, with movable wooden screens between them. Gaps were left at intervals so that cavalry could charge out. Behind the carts stood his guns under the master gunner Ustad Ali Quli, and matchlock men directed by Mustafa Rumi.

On the wings he kept detachments of horse archers for the tulughma, a classic Central Asian manoeuvre. When the enemy committed itself to a frontal attack, these units would ride around its flanks and strike from the sides and rear.

The battle

After a failed night raid by part of Babur’s army, Ibrahim’s forces advanced at dawn on 21 April. Their front narrowed as they approached the fortified line, and the units behind pressed forward into those in front, so that the army became crowded and disordered.

Babur’s flanking parties swept round the Lodi wings and began to shoot arrows into the mass from the sides and rear. At the same time the guns and matchlocks fired from the cart line, and Babur’s centre and wings attacked. The noise and fire of the guns frightened the war elephants, which added to the confusion.

The fighting lasted from early morning until around midday. Ibrahim Lodi was killed with thousands of his soldiers. Babur estimated that 15,000–16,000 men lay dead in one part of the field alone, and later Indian accounts give higher figures. Ibrahim was the only sultan of Delhi to die on the battlefield.

Why Ibrahim lost

Several factors explain the result. Ibrahim’s army was large but loosely organised, made up of contingents of nobles whose loyalty to the sultan was uncertain after years of quarrels and revolts. It had little experience of facing gunpowder weapons, and its commanders did not attempt to outflank Babur’s prepared position.

Babur, by contrast, had spent two decades fighting Uzbeks, Mongols and rival Timurids. His troops were veterans who trusted their leader, and he had chosen and fortified the ground in advance. He also made sure that each unit knew its role, as he describes in detail in his memoirs.

Key people

• Babur (1483–1530): ruler of Kabul and founder of the Mughal dynasty, who described the battle in detail in his memoirs, the Baburnama.
• Ibrahim Lodi (died 1526): sultan of Delhi from 1517, the last ruler of the Lodi dynasty.
• Humayun (1508–1556): Babur’s eldest son, who commanded the right wing and later succeeded him.
• Ustad Ali Quli: Babur’s master of artillery.
• Mustafa Rumi: an officer, possibly of Ottoman background, who directed the guns and matchlocks on the left of the centre.

Consequences

Babur moved quickly. Humayun was sent to occupy Agra and its treasury, while Babur entered Delhi, where the Friday prayer (khutba) was read in his name on 27 April 1526. He distributed much of the captured treasure to his soldiers and to relatives in Kabul and Central Asia.

Panipat did not yet give Babur all of north India. Many of his men wanted to return to Kabul in the summer heat, and Babur persuaded them to stay. His greatest challenge came from the Rajput confederacy under Rana Sanga of Mewar, whom he defeated at Khanwa on 17 March 1527, again using guns and a fortified line. In 1529 he defeated the Afghans of the east at the Ghaghra River.

Babur died in December 1530. His son Humayun lost the empire to the Afghan ruler Sher Shah Suri in 1540 and recovered it only in 1555. The dynasty was finally secured by Akbar after the Second Battle of Panipat in 1556.

Myths and facts

Myth: Panipat was the first time gunpowder was used in India. Firearms and cannon had already reached parts of India, including the Deccan sultanates and Gujarat, sometimes through Ottoman and Portuguese contacts. What was new in north India was Babur’s combination of field guns, matchlocks and a fortified cart line with mobile cavalry.

Myth: The guns alone won the battle. Babur had only a few guns, and they were slow to reload. Historians stress the importance of his defensive position, his discipline and above all the tulughma flanking attack of his horse archers.

Myth: The Koh-i-Noor diamond was won at Panipat. After the battle Humayun received a famous large diamond from the family of the late Raja of Gwalior at Agra. It is often identified with the Koh-i-Noor, but the link is uncertain and disputed.

By the numbers

Timeline

• 1504, October: Babur captures Kabul.
• 1517: Ibrahim Lodi becomes sultan of Delhi.
• 1519: Babur’s first expedition into the Indus region.
• 1525, November–December: Babur sets out from Kabul and crosses the Indus.
• 1526, February: Humayun defeats a Lodi force at Hisar-Firoza.
• 1526, 21 April: First Battle of Panipat; Ibrahim Lodi is killed.
• 1526, 27 April: The khutba is read in Babur’s name in Delhi.
• 1527, 17 March: Babur defeats Rana Sanga at Khanwa.
• 1529, May: Babur defeats the eastern Afghans at the Ghaghra.

Legacy

Panipat became one of the most famous battlefields of India. Two later battles were fought on almost the same ground, in 1556 and in the Third Battle of Panipat in 1761, because the plain lies on the main route into the Gangetic heartland from the north-west.

The battle is also unusual for being described by its winner. Babur’s memoir, written in Chagatai Turkic, gives a vivid account of his preparations, the fighting and his feelings about victory, making it one of the best-documented battles of its age.

Later Mughal emperors treated the victory as the founding moment of their dynasty. Under Akbar, illustrated copies of the Baburnama were produced in the imperial workshops, and their battle scenes, including Panipat, helped fix the event in Mughal memory as the work of a divinely favoured founder.

Why it matters

The First Battle of Panipat ended the Delhi Sultanate and founded the Mughal dynasty, which shaped Indian politics, art and architecture for more than three centuries. It also showed how gunpowder weapons, combined with older steppe tactics, were changing warfare across Asia, as they were at the same time in the Ottoman and Safavid empires. The life of the victor is told in the article on Babur.