Both an official chronicle and the lively and highly personal memoir of the emperor Babur (1483-1530), The Baburnama presents an extraordinarily vivid portrait of life in Central Asia and South India during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Babur, a descendant of the Turco-Mongol conqueror Timur (Tamurlane) on his father's side and of Genghis Khan on his mother's side, ascended the throne of Fergana, in what is now Uzbekistan, when he was twelve years old. He went on to conquer Samarkand and Kabul before invading India and founding the Mughal dynasty, which would rule for three centuries. Babur's intimate chronicle is the first autobiography in Islamic literature and a work of enduring appeal. It reveals its author as not only a military genius, but a ruler unusually magnanimous for his time, cultured, witty, and possessing a talent for poetry, an adventurous spirit, and an acute eye for natural beauty.