Babur and His Army Emerge from the Khwaja Didar Fort

Painted around 1590 under Akbar, Babur and His Army Emerge from the Khwaja Didar Fort follows the usual division of labour in the imperial workshop: Basáwan laid out the composition, and Dharm Dás carried it out in paint. The subject comes from Babur's own memoirs, from the years of his struggle against Shaybani Khan and the Uzbeks. Babur rides out of the fort at Khwaja Didar with his cavalry, and the painter puts him almost dead centre, on a fully armoured horse with a parasol held over his head. Behind him a drummer on a camel keeps the column moving. In the foreground lie a few broken arrows. It is a small detail, but it tells us the fighting has already begun. The fort is more than a backdrop. Its red-brick walls, battlements, vaulted tomb and pavilions fix the episode at a specific place, and they also press in around the riders as they stream out. Nothing here follows European linear perspective. Instead, the artist stacks the scene: figures overlap, buildings rise in tiers, and the army spreads across the surface of the page rather than shrinking into the distance. The page is crowded and busy, yet the eye still goes to Babur first. The folio was also never meant to be read alone. It is the left half of a double-page composition, and the facing page shows Shaybani Khan and the Uzbeks being driven back toward Samarkand. Together the two pages give one continuous account of the encounter, from advance to retreat. That is why the painting works as more than a record of a battle. It places Babur's movement, authority and campaign within the longer story the Mughals wanted to tell about their own dynasty.y of the Mughal dynasty.