BABER, 
179 
“ From the time of the blessed Prophet,” says 
Baber in his Memoirs,* “ on whom and on his family 
be peace and salvation ! down to the present time, 
three foreign kings had subdued the country, and ac- 
quired the sovereignty of Hindostan. One of these was 
Sultan Mahmood of Ghizny, whose family long con- 
tinued to fill the throne of that country. The second 
was Sultan Mohammed Ghoory, and for many years 
his slaves and dependants swayed the sceptre of these 
realms. I am the third ; but my achievement is not 
to be placed upon the same level with theirs; for 
Sultan Mahmood, at the time he conquered Hin- 
dostan, occupied the throne of Khorassan, and had 
absolute dominion over the Sultans of Khuarazm 
and the surrounding chiefs. The King of Samer- 
kund, too, was subject to him. If his army did not 
amount to two hundred thousand men, yet grant it 
was only one hundred thousand, and it is plain that 
all comparison between the two conquests must cease. 
Moreover, his enemies were rajahs. All Hindostan 
was not at that period subject to a single emperor ; 
every rajah set up for a monarch on his own account, 
in his own petty territories. Again, although Sultan 
Mohammed Ghoory did not himself enjoy the sove- 
reignty of Khorassan, yet his elder brother Gheias- 
ood-Deen Ghoory held it. In the Tabakat-e-Nasirit 
it is said, that on one occasion he marched into Hin- 
dostan with one hundred and twenty thousand cata- 
* Pages 309, 310. 
t “ An excellent history of the Mussulmaun world, down to the 
time of Sultan Nasir of Delhi, a. d. 1252/’ — Note to the Me- 
moirs. 
