Abstract

Zahir-ud-din Mohammad was known as Babur, the Turkish word for “Tiger”. Born in 1483. Babur was a descendant of the famed Turkish warrior Timur through his grandfather and his mother descended from Mongolian leader Genghis Khan. Babur’s father was king of Fergana a district of modern Uzbekistan. After his death Babur, though only twelve years of age, succeeded to the throne. In 1487 and in 1511, Babur attacked and gained possession of Samarkand to obtain possession of his ancestral Timurid territories, but defeated by the Uzbeks. Then his attention increasingly turned to India. In 1526 he entered territories of the Delhi Sultanate. When he died in 1530 he had conquered all of India and controlled an empire that extended from India to Turkestan. The remaining years of Babur’s life he spent in arranging the affairs and revenues of his new empire and in improving his capital, Agra. Babur wrote his memoirs, the Baburnama or “Memories of Babur”, in the Turkish lingua franca Chaghatai. Babur’s memoirs are the first and the only true autobiography in the history of Islamic literature. The memoirs offer a highly educated Central Asian Muslim’s observations of the world in which he moved. There is much on the political and military struggles of his time but also extensive descriptive sections on the physical and human geography, the flora and fauna, nomads in their pastures and urban environments enriched by the architecture, music and Turkic and Persian literature. In this article some medical topics appeared in Baburnama is presented. Some passages on fever, malaria, dehydration, care of the wounds, pyodermia, lower respiratory infections, rhomatoid arthritis, maternal death during delivery, poisoning and a dog experiment to prove it, epidemics among horses are important records reflecting medical knowledge in Central Asia in the sixteen century.

How to Cite

1.
Yurdakök M. Medical records in the “Memoirs of Babur” or Baburnama written by Babur Khan (1483-1530). Çocuk Sağlığı ve Hastalıkları Dergisi 2007; 50: 73-7. Available from: https://cshd.org.tr/article/view/407