Talk:Babur/Archive 1

GA (Failure)
The below comments were made on the original nomination, and were used to improve the article for another nomination. It later was promoted good article status! Congratulations and keep up the great editting! Highway 20:57, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Babur was recently nominated to be promoted to good article status, but has unfortunately failed. Reasons for failing GA:
 * Extremely inadequate and clumsy intro.
 * Agreed, hopefully it is now fine. - Irishpunktom\talk
 * "'Babur' is a nickname, derived from the.." The opening paragraph should be strong and go with either the birth, importance or role, not the reasoning behind the nickname!
 * I've knocked that to the bottom of the background section, I think it's too brief for its own Etymology section, so i hope its fine. - Irishpunktom\talk
 * Single links are not a replacement for parenthesis - "[his given name]" should be "(his given name)"
 * Done. - Irishpunktom\talk
 * Prose parenthesised information into the paragraph
 * Done, for the most part. There are places, such as quotations, where the Parenthised text is there to add something implied or not explained - I think its proper to keep them there then? - Irishpunktom\talk
 * "p173" What the..? Either you've crossed a book report with this article or someone has been copying information from other sources into this article, which is copyright violation (I now see the note and the bottom, but putting page numbers in articles is ridiculous. Inline citations were created for a reason
 * They were removed and added to the references section - Irishpunktom\talk
 * The man section (which is a bit of a brick) should be condensed and summarised into smaller chunks
 * As much as I could see was possible, this was done - Irishpunktom\talk
 * Considerably beef up External Links and References, not nearly enough, articles should have more than one source.
 * Personally, I was not using much online sources, just four books on my desk, and only where they back themselves up, so the online section remains sparse. I really want to get two or more additional images, but don't know how. - Irishpunktom\talk

Most of the text is good, but the points I've mentioned make this a fail. If you remedy them, please re-nom and it'll easily get through. Please don't take my comments personally Highway 12:24, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
 * hehe, don't worry constructive criticism is very much appreciated! --Irishpunktom\talk 15:27, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Biography
The biography here is seriously flawed. Babur is considered a descendent of Genghis Khan and Timurlane, both of whom are Mongol. The term turkic that most historians use represent dialect and not ethnicity as there is a wide swath of peoples who speak a Turkic tongue (either by adoption, through assimilation, or through force) but are ethnically divergent.Steelhead 01:17, 23 July 2005 (UTC)


 * The claim of descendancy from Genghis Khan is considered doubtful by most historians. Timur claimed Mongol heritage, but it is more accurate to describe his people as "Turco-Mongols" -- Turkic-speaking people who adopted the nomadic warrior lifestyle of the Mongols. It is doubtful that they are genetically related to Genghis Khan's Mongols. Acsenray 12:58, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

please read encylopedias
please read the first paragraph of the encyclopedia brittanica and columbia encyclopedia; it is free onlineKennethtennyson 02:32, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

Acsenray
where are you getting your information? Nobody ever speaks of a Turkco-Mongol empire. Babur is considered in most sources to be Mongolian and his empire is called a Moghul empire (mongolian). All the books that are written about him and the encyclopedias that cite him speak of him as a Mongolian conquerer. Get your facts straight.

Babur as a 'Mongol'

 * Babur himself considered the term 'Mongol' (مغل) to be somewhat derogatory, and it was in fact a misnomer applied by sixteenth century Europeans to the rulers of India, possibly because of memories of the earlier Mongol invasions. Thackston writes:

"History has conspired to rob Babur not only of his fame as a Central Asian sovereign over the kingdom of Kabul for much longer than he was in the subcontinent, but also of his primary identity as a Timurid [ie. a Turco-Mongol dynast from the settled regions of Turkestan ] by labelling him and his successors as 'Mughals' - that is, Moghuls, or Mongols - an appellation that would not have pleased him in the least. In India the dynasty always called itself Gurkani, after Temür's title Gurkân, the Persianised form of the Mongolian kürügän, 'son-in-law', a title he assumed after his marriage to a Genghisid princess. Nonetheless, Europeans, recognising that there was some connection between Babur's house and the Mongols but ignorant of the precise relationship, dubbed the dynasty with some variant of the misnomer Moghul (Mogol, Mogul, Maghol etc.) and made the name synonymous with greatness." Wheeler M. Thackston The Babur-nama (New York) 2002 pxivi

Thackston uses the term 'Turco-Mongolian' throughout to describe Babur's ethnicity, insofar as that is relevant. He certainly spoke and wrote in Turkish. The term 'Moghul' properly refers to the ruling dynasty of Moghulistan or Jatah (roughly speaking northern Chinese Turkestan, or Dzungaria), which was ruled by descendants of Genghis Khan's son Chagatai and is hence sometimes known as the Chagatai Khanate. Its history is somewhat obscure, but the principal source is Mirza Muhammad Haidar Dughlat's Ta'rikh-e Rashidi. The author of this work was Babur's cousin, and on pxliii of Thackston's introduction to the Babur-nama he quotes from p97 of the Elias & Denison-Ross translation, which illuminates at once the unity of culture amongst the Turco-Persian Timurid elite, and the meaning given by contemporaries to the name 'Moghul'

"I heard that Yunus Khan [one of the sons of the lord of Moghulistan] was a Moghul, and I concluded that he was a beardless man, with the ways and manners of any other Turk of the desert. But when I saw him, I found he was a person of elegant deportment, with a full beard and a Tajik face, and such a refined speech and manner, is seldom to be found even in a Tajik."

A distinction thus has to be made between notional ethnicity, (turco-mongol) and culture & language (turco-persian). Sikandarji 11:01, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Shiladitya, the rajput general
What James Tod says in connection with the rajput general Shiladitya's betrayal is that Babur was able to bribe him over with offers of lands and wealth. The remaining stuff about a pilot group of 1500 cavalry being butchered etc is not found here. The "sleepless nights" stuff is not encyclopaedic. This fairy-tale seems to be taken from from the comic-book "Amar Chitra Katha", and as it is not correct history, the fiction may be copyright!!! I will revert in a day unless verifiable references are cited. ImpuMozhi 01:00, 20 December 2005 (UTC)


 * You need to brush up your history. Research why babur took steps he did (breaking goblets) and the vows of jihad he took from each one of his army before the war. If you get a chance read how this war is described in baburnama and then corelate these passages with appropriate passages from kuran (hint they are identical).  Annhiliation of his advance guard,  if this is beyond your historical horizon then I have no idea what to tell you.


 * You will not revert anything on this page. BTW if you have not already heard, Rani Durgavati and Gayatri Devi are rajputs. Feeling good about one's posts is one thing but spreading lies on WP is not acceptable. Shivraj Singh 06:01, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

The text seems to have a biased tone and I think this particular section does need some work. I need to brush up on Babur's life; I'll be back. Would it be acceptable to post a POV sign on this page till we can work out a mutually acceptable version? 220.227.249.162 11:16, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

Love life
I noticed that an anon has categorized this under Category:Gay, lesbian or bisexual people but I think that should be supported by some discussion in the body of the article. Haiduc 02:14, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Name
"Babur's name was derived from the Persian "Babr" meaning "leopard"." Actually, Thackston writes "Babur's name has also appeared as Baber and Babar. There is not the slightest doubt, however, that the name is Babur (BAH-boor), which is ultimately derived from the Indo-European word for beaver. Although it has often been suggested that Babur means tiger, it has, in fact, nothing to do with the Persian word babr 'tiger' " Wheeler M. Thackston The Babur-nama (New York) 2002 note 1, pxvii

No Comments
Apologies for the lack of Comment on my edits - they were there when i tried it first, but the submission failed. It was my third attempt at submission when the edit actually succeeded, and by then I was not adding the proper comments - Apologies. --Irishpunktom\talk 17:15, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

not Iranian
Someone added that he was aided by iranians. i hope you can appreciate why i removed this, and also, the aid from the Persian Shah is mentioned later. --Irishpunktom\talk 23:29, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Assessment comment
Substituted at 20:05, 2 May 2016 (UTC)