Alex Rutherford in the Footsteps of the Moghuls

BROTHERS AT WAR

As this book – the second of the quintet - relates though Babur founded an Empire it was a fragile legacy. His eldest son Humayun, a mystic warrior who believed the stars governed his destiny, had hoped to expand the empire yet further but then his brothers rebelled against him … Their murderous family feuds left the door open to a powerful enemy, Sher Shah, who ejected the Moghuls from Hindustan. Humayun dedicated his life to regaining what had been lost but was never free from the treachery of those closest to him.

I followed Humayun's foorsteps into Persia – modern-day Iran – where he fled to seek the Shah's help but it's in modern India that I found poignant reminders of Humayun's epic struggles and tragic life – the Sher Mandal on the banks of the Jumna in Delhi on which he built his rooftop observatory and from which he had his fatal fall and of course his fabulous red sandstone and marble tomb in Delhi that hints at the Taj Mahal his great-grandson Shah Jahan - one of the greatest of the Moghul emperors whose story is told later in the quintet – would one day build.

Humayun may be the least known of the Moghul emperors but the revenge tragedy that dominated his life was a warning of the internal jealousies and rivalries that would one day doom the Moghuls for all their magnificence.