Filibuster

[TRANSCRIPT: UNITED STATES SENATE — FLOOR DEBATE]

Senator Robert L. Merriweather (I-ND): Speaking continuously under filibuster rules, June 20, 1991

Mr. President, I rise today not in haste, but in solemn duty. I rise today to speak for as long as I am able—indeed, for as long as my voice can carry—on a matter which, while cloaked in the mundane fabric of budgetary allocation, represents something far more significant: the question of whether this body will continue to indulge in reflexive international largesse without rigorous scrutiny. I speak, of course, about Title IV, Section 17, Subclause B of the Supplemental Foreign Assistance Resolution of 1991, which allocates an additional $32 million to the Fulbright Program, ostensibly for 'strategic academic outreach in Central and South Asia.'

Now, let me be clear. I have nothing personally against Fulbright scholars. I have, in fact, met several—bright-eyed young Americans fluent in ten languages, who can tell you the GDP of Nepal and recite the Mahabharata in the original Sanskrit. And yet, I ask: how precisely does a graduate student conducting fieldwork on medieval irrigation practices in the Ferghana Valley serve the interests of the American taxpayer in Fargo, North Dakota?

Why, just last month, I read about a cohort of Fulbright recipients in Uzbekistan. They were—what was it—studying the evolution of Turkic poetic forms, hosting workshops on 'post-nomadic identity,' and organizing interpretive dance performances in Samarkand. Again, I do not deny the cultural value. But I question whether such endeavors demand a line-item appropriation in our federal budget, especially at a time when we struggle to fund rural clinics and fix potholes in our own heartland.

Now, Mr. President, speaking of Samarkand—ah, Samarkand!—that jewel of Central Asia, that crossroads of empire! If we must continue to finance excursions to that hallowed city, let us at least ensure our scholars understand its legacy. For too few today recall the mighty figure who once ruled there. I speak of Timur—known in the West as Tamerlane—sword of the steppe, patron of the arts, scourge of empires, and founder of a dynasty that, for a time, stitched together the heart of Eurasia with fire and genius.

Let us turn, then, to the Timurid Empire.

Born in 1336 near Kesh—modern-day Shahrisabz in Uzbekistan—Timur was not a Mongol by blood, but a Barlas Turk. The Barlas were a Mongolized Turkic tribe, remnants of Genghis Khan’s fractured ulus, who had settled in the Chagatai Khanate. Timur himself claimed descent from Genghis Khan’s in-laws, a tenuous link he bolstered through marriages and proclamations. Though lame in his right leg from a youthful wound—hence the name 'Timur-i Lang' or 'Tamerlane'—he proved unmatched in cunning, charisma, and military genius.

By the 1370s, Timur had established dominion over Transoxiana, using the city of Samarkand as both capital and symbol. His campaigns over the next three decades were among the most brutal and ambitious in history. He swept westward into Persia, toppling the Muzaffarids and sacking Isfahan so ruthlessly that—according to chroniclers—pyramids of 70,000 skulls were erected outside the city. He marched south into India in 1398, capturing Delhi after defeating the armies of the Tughlaq dynasty. The city was plundered, its treasures carted back to Central Asia.

To the north, he humbled the Golden Horde. At the Battle of the Terek River in 1395, he annihilated Tokhtamysh Khan’s forces, burning down the khanate's great cities of Astrakhan, Sarai, and Azov, thus ending Mongol dominance in the Russian steppe. And in the west, he marched on the Mamluks of Egypt and the nascent Ottomans. The crowning glory—or horror—was his crushing victory over Sultan Bayezid I at the Battle of Ankara in 1402, which led to Bayezid’s capture and the temporary collapse of Ottoman unity.

But Timur was not merely a conqueror. He envisioned himself as a new Alexander, a successor to Genghis, and a patron of Islamic art and architecture. Samarkand flourished as a cultural capital under his rule. Architects and artisans were forcibly relocated from conquered cities—craftsmen from Damascus, calligraphers from Shiraz, tile-makers from Isfahan—all brought to ornament his vision of imperial grandeur. The Registan, Bibi-Khanym Mosque, and the Shah-i-Zinda necropolis were erected not just as places of worship, but as statements of cosmic order and political power.

His court was multilingual, multicultural, and intellectually vibrant. The famed historian Sharaf ad-Din Ali Yazdi chronicled Timur’s campaigns in the Zafarnama, while the astronomer Ulugh Beg—Timur’s grandson—would go on to build one of the greatest observatories of the medieval world.

And yet, for all his glories, Timur’s empire was built on ephemeral sands. After his death in 1405, while attempting to launch a campaign into Ming China, the Timurid state fractured. Successor states emerged—most notably in Herat under Shah Rukh and later Babur, who would carry the Timurid legacy into India as the founder of the Mughal Empire.

Still, the shadow of Timur loomed large. Even centuries later, his name could summon fear and admiration in equal measure. His tomb in Gur-e-Amir, resplendent in blue tiles and Kufic inscriptions, would be opened by Soviet archaeologists in 1941—just days before Operation Barbarossa. A coincidence? Perhaps. Or perhaps Timur, from beyond the grave, still had something to say about empires built on hubris.

Now, if we are to fund scholars to walk the marble courtyards of Samarkand, let them at least know upon whose bones they tread. Let them speak not only of cultural exchange, but of the relentless churn of empire, conquest, and ambition that defines the region.

And as I continue, Mr. President, I should like to elaborate further on the administrative policies of the Timurid state, especially as they pertain to the diwan system and the precarious balance between nomadic authority and Persian bureaucratic legacy. But before I do, I must take a moment to refresh myself with the notes I had prepared, beginning with the reforms initiated during the reign of Shah Rukh...

Yes, Mr. President, Shah Rukh. A figure often overshadowed by the sheer force of his father’s legacy, yet in many ways more consequential for the actual consolidation and administration of the Timurid state. When Timur died in 1405 en route to China, he left behind a power vacuum. His empire, stitched together by charisma and conquest rather than durable governance, fractured quickly. Among the claimants to his legacy was his son, Shah Rukh Mirza, who emerged as ruler of the eastern half of the empire by 1409, establishing Herat in Khurasan as his capital.

Now, Mr. President, unlike his father, Shah Rukh was not a conqueror but a consolidator. He abandoned the wild campaigns for new territory and instead turned inward to govern a realm scarred by decades of warfare. It is here that the Timurid administration began to assume a distinctive form—blending Mongol military traditions with Persian bureaucratic refinement.

The diwan system—originally a Persian institution—was fully embraced and expanded under Shah Rukh. He retained Mongol-style military patronage but leaned heavily on Persian scribes, jurists, and scholars to govern the urban centers. His administration operated in Persian, the language of culture and court, and his reign saw the flourishing of Persian historiography, poetry, and jurisprudence. Key posts, such as the vizier, sadr, and mustawfi, were filled by figures drawn from established bureaucratic families in Khurasan and Transoxiana.

Shah Rukh also placed a strong emphasis on Islamic orthodoxy, promoting the Hanafi school of jurisprudence and patronizing Sufi institutions. His rule coincided with the rise of Naqshbandi Sufism in Central Asia, a movement that emphasized sober mysticism, social engagement, and political loyalty—a useful tool, no doubt, for imperial stability. Indeed, Shah Rukh’s wife, Gawhar Shad, founded a madrasa in Herat that became a center of learning and spirituality, attracting scholars from as far as Anatolia and Delhi.

Now, Mr. President, if you’ll indulge me—and I trust you have little choice in the matter at present—I would like to direct your attention to the remarkable cultural renaissance that occurred under the aegis of the Timurid court in Herat during this period. The patronage of miniature painting, calligraphy, and manuscript production reached new heights. The Herat School, as it came to be known, gave rise to such luminaries as Bihzad, whose delicate brushwork and compositional mastery would influence Persianate art for centuries.

But art was not merely ornament; it was politics rendered in ink and pigment. The illustrated manuscripts produced under Shah Rukh were as much statements of legitimacy as they were works of beauty. They depicted Timur's campaigns—retrospectively sanitized—and evoked mythic connections between the Timurid house and the great rulers of Iran’s past, from Darius to Khosrow.

Now, as I leaf through this stack of notes—printed double-sided in the interest of conservation, unlike this bloated aid package before us—I come to the reign of Ulugh Beg, Shah Rukh’s son, who ruled nominally over Transoxiana from Samarkand. And Mr. President, this is where things become truly celestial—literally.

Ulugh Beg, though a prince and governor, is remembered less for his political acumen and more for his astronomical genius. In an age when European thinkers were still shackled to geocentric dogma, Ulugh Beg and his circle were charting the heavens with remarkable precision. His observatory in Samarkand, constructed around 1420, housed the Fakhri sextant, an instrument spanning 40 meters in radius, which allowed him to calculate the length of the sidereal year with an error margin of just 58 seconds—an achievement that would not be surpassed until the 16th century.

Under his direction, the Zij-i Sultani—an astronomical catalog of unprecedented accuracy—was compiled. It included data on over a thousand stars and served as a benchmark for later Islamic and European astronomers alike. Yet Ulugh Beg’s intellectual pursuits did not endear him to all. His relatively lax enforcement of religious orthodoxy alienated more conservative elements, and his obsession with science may have made him blind to the shifting political tides.

In 1449, he was assassinated—betrayed by his own son, Abdul Latif, and decapitated on the road to Mecca. Thus ended one of the most brilliant minds of the medieval Islamic world—not with a blaze of glory, but with the quiet rustle of power changing hands in the ancient way.

Now, Mr. President, one might ask: what became of the Timurid legacy after Ulugh Beg? Did it dissipate like desert wind? No. It meandered. It shifted eastward. It took root in Kabul, and then, more consequentially, in northern India. For in 1526, a great-great-great-grandson of Timur, a man born in the Fergana Valley and exiled from Samarkand, would cross the Khyber Pass and change the course of South Asian history.

But before we get to Babur and the founding of the Mughal Empire, I feel it is important—nay, imperative—that we pause to examine the fractious decades that followed Shah Rukh’s death in 1447. A period marked by civil war, fratricide, and shifting alliances, in which various Timurid princes vied for control over Herat, Balkh, Samarkand, and beyond. A period that provides lessons—yes, lessons—for our modern world about the dangers of decentralization, about the fragility of imperial inheritance, and about the inevitable collapse of patronage systems when stretched beyond their capacity.

And so, Mr. President, if the chamber will bear with me—perhaps as they dig into their boxed lunches or glance at their inboxes—I shall next take us through the tumultuous reigns of Abu Sa'id Mirza, Sultan Husayn Bayqara, and the twilight of Timurid rule in Khurasan. For only in understanding the slow, deliberate unraveling of this cultural and political colossus can we truly appreciate the irony of subsidizing student residencies in its modern vestiges without first grappling with the civilization that once stood astride that land, sword in one hand, astrolabe in the other.

…And so, Mr. President, as the sun set on the reign of Shah Rukh in 1447, it did not set peacefully. It flickered into a grim and scattered dusk, one not unlike the twilight of this very chamber when we pass legislation not with clarity, but with confusion and haste.

You see, upon Shah Rukh’s death, the Timurid realm—already fragile in its cohesion—splintered into warring principalities. The old unifying figure had died, and the sons, grandsons, and great-nephews of Timur descended upon the empire like vultures on a blood-soaked plain. No single heir had been groomed for supremacy. Instead, each prince held a shard of the empire and ambition to make it whole.

Among these ambitious contenders was Abu Sa’id Mirza, a great-grandson of Timur through his son Miran Shah. Now, Abu Sa’id’s early years were spent not in palatial courts but on the run—dodging stronger rivals like Ulugh Beg and enduring humiliations that would have broken lesser men. He was once captured and imprisoned by his own relatives, only to escape and bide his time in the borderlands of Transoxiana.

But Abu Sa’id was nothing if not persistent. He slowly consolidated control over Samarkand and Bukhara, and in 1451, in one of the more decisive turns of fortune in Timurid history, he defeated and executed ‘Abd al-Latif, the very son who had murdered Ulugh Beg. With this, Abu Sa’id claimed the heart of the empire, and though his claim was disputed, he ruled with the legitimacy of strength.

Now, Mr. President, it would be a mistake to portray Abu Sa’id as a mere strongman. He did much to stabilize the battered empire. He curbed the excesses of rival princes, revived agricultural infrastructure, and—crucially—sought the support of the religious class. In fact, his reliance on the ulama to shore up his legitimacy represents a key moment in the Islamization of Timurid politics. Whereas Timur had posed as the wrath of God but largely tolerated heterodoxy, Abu Sa’id adopted a far more pious posture, even launching punitive campaigns against groups he deemed heretical, including certain Shi‘a and Sufi sects.

And yet, even this semi-restoration was haunted by the fate of his forebears. The same fissures persisted. Loyalty among the Timurid nobility remained conditional and fragile. His efforts to reassert control over Khurasan brought him into conflict with Jahan Shah of the Qara Qoyunlu—the Black Sheep Turkmen—who ruled in Tabriz and sought to dominate Persia in the vacuum left by Timur’s heirs.

The clash came to a head in 1469. Abu Sa’id, pushing too far west in pursuit of lost Timurid glory, overextended his forces and fell into the hands of Uzun Hasan, leader of the rival Aq Qoyunlu—the White Sheep Turkmen. He was captured, humiliated, and executed—a pattern that was by now beginning to resemble a dynastic curse.

Following Abu Sa’id’s death, the empire again fractured into competing zones. In Herat, however, a figure emerged who, though not a conqueror, would preside over perhaps the last truly luminous period of Timurid civilization: Sultan Husayn Bayqara.

Bayqara, a great-grandson of Timur’s son ‘Umar Shaykh, was no stranger to the cycles of exile and resurgence. He was forced out of Herat multiple times before finally seizing control in 1469, shortly after the death of Abu Sa’id. Once secure, he reigned for over three decades—an astonishing feat in an era where most princes barely lasted five years on the throne without being poisoned, blinded, or trampled by horses.

Under Husayn Bayqara, Herat became the epicenter of a cultural efflorescence unmatched in the Islamic East. His court attracted not just warriors and bureaucrats, but poets, painters, mystics, and mathematicians. It was during his reign that the great poet Jami flourished. Jami—Sufi, theologian, and master of Persian verse—was revered not only for his masnavis and ghazals, but for his philosophical treatises and Quranic exegesis. He stood at the crossroads of faith and beauty, embodying the synthesis that Timur’s descendants had long aspired to but so rarely achieved.

And then there was Bihzad—yes, Kamal al-Din Bihzad—the master of miniature painting, whose art transcended mere decoration. His compositions were dense with allegory, architecture, and psychological depth. Whether illustrating Nizami’s Khamsa or depicting courtly scenes, Bihzad’s work mirrored the ambitions of the Timurid project: to bring order to chaos, to impose aesthetic harmony on political fracture.

But the harmony, Mr. President, was short-lived. Though Husayn Bayqara ruled with wisdom, he failed—as so many have—to secure a smooth succession. His sons quarreled before he was even cold in the grave. The dynasty had grown too ornate, too dependent on patronage, too removed from the raw military vigor that had birthed it.

And in the north, another force was stirring.

Babur. Descended from Timur on his father's side, and from Genghis Khan on his mother's, Zahir al-Din Muhammad Babur inherited both the burden of greatness and the sting of exile. Expelled from Samarkand, cast adrift in the power vacuum left by the disintegration of the Timurid house, he wandered. He wrote—his Baburnama, Mr. President, remains a rare jewel of autobiography in Islamic literature—and he waited.

In 1504, he seized Kabul. In 1526, he marched into India. And with that, the Timurid dream was reborn—not in the deserts of Transoxiana, but in the fertile plains of Hindustan.

But I see I am getting ahead of myself.

Before Babur could plant the black standard of Timur on the Yamuna River, the final embers of the Timurid state in Herat would flicker, and be extinguished—swept away by the advancing tide of the Uzbeks under Muhammad Shaybani. Herat fell in 1507. The dream was over.

Or so it seemed.

And so, Mr. President, before I continue to the rise of Babur and the founding of the Mughal Empire—a chapter I assure you will contain gardens, gunpowder, and global consequences—I propose we take a moment to reflect. Not on budgets and line items. But on legacy.

For what is the Fulbright Program, if not an echo—however pale—of that same imperial logic? Send our young abroad, they say, to learn, to translate, to understand. And yet we do so heedlessly, without a whisper of the historical tectonics beneath their feet.

Now then… I turn next to the remarkable figure of Babur, his attempts to reclaim Samarkand, his embrace of Persianate culture even amid Turkic roots, and how a Central Asian warrior founded a South Asian dynasty that would rival Rome in grandeur. But first, a sip of water.

Mr. President, when last I spoke—and I trust the stenographers are still with me—I closed on the sacking of Herat in 1507 by the Uzbek conqueror Muhammad Shaybani, signaling the effective end of the Timurid polity in its ancestral homeland. But as the walls of Herat fell, and as the old cities of Balkh and Samarkand slipped into the hands of nomadic khans, a displaced prince in a mountain fastness was beginning to chart an unexpected course.

Let us now turn our attention to Zahir al-Din Muhammad Babur.

Born in 1483 in Andijan, in the Ferghana Valley—modern-day Uzbekistan—Babur was a descendant of Timur through his father and of Genghis Khan through his mother. The blood of empire flowed through his veins, but so too did the poison of inheritance. His father, ‘Umar Shaykh Mirza, died suddenly when Babur was only 11, leaving him ruler of a fractious, mountainous backwater. From that moment on, Babur’s life would be an unending cycle of ambition, loss, retreat, and return.

At age 15, he captured Samarkand for the first time—a glittering prize, the seat of his great ancestor Timur. But he held it for only 100 days. Rebellions broke out behind him in Ferghana, and before he could secure his legacy, he lost everything. He would try again. And again. At one point, he even traded away Ferghana for a second shot at Samarkand. He nearly died in the snow while fleeing the city. He was, in his own words, 'a homeless wanderer.'

Now, Mr. President, allow me to read briefly from Babur’s own memoirs, the Baburnama, which he composed in Chagatai Turkish, his native tongue—a rare example of Turkic court literature in a sea of Persianate history:

'During these times I was greatly troubled in heart; I had no country, no realm, no army, no wealth, no stronghold… I wandered from place to place with a few companions and no hope.'

There is something stark and deeply human in those words. A prince in exile, writing not with imperial pomp, but with bitter honesty.

By 1504, Babur had given up on reclaiming Samarkand. Instead, he turned south. Through the treacherous passes of the Hindu Kush, he descended upon Kabul—then a faded provincial capital in the remnants of what had once been Ghaznavid and Ghurid realms. He took it, almost incidentally. And it was from this new base that Babur began to reconsolidate his strength—not by inheriting the past, but by reimagining his future.

Kabul became Babur’s new court, a place of relative safety and cultural experiment. From here, he rebuilt an entourage, recruited Persian scholars, and commissioned gardens in the Timurid style—those geometrical, water-filled enclosures that evoked paradise on earth. Here, the seeds were sown for a new empire, not in the lands of his forefathers, but in the world to the south.

Now, Mr. President, we must consider the strategic opportunity Babur saw in India. For decades, the Delhi Sultanate—once mighty—had fractured into contending principalities: the Lodi dynasty in Delhi, the Rajputs in Rajasthan, and a patchwork of Afghan warlords and petty kings throughout the Gangetic plain. The subcontinent was rich, populous, and disunited—an irresistible target for a prince with ambition, cavalry, and cannons.

Yes—cannons. For by this point, Babur had acquired firearms and Ottoman artillerymen, a tactical innovation that would prove decisive. It was with a force of perhaps twelve thousand that he crossed the Indus in 1525, marching east toward fate.

At Panipat, in 1526, Babur met the army of Ibrahim Lodi—over 100,000 men and hundreds of elephants. But numbers did not matter. Babur deployed his troops with Ottoman-style flanking maneuvers and chained wagons—a la the Janissaries—and made devastating use of cannon fire. The Lodi army, though brave, broke before this unfamiliar storm.

It was not just a battle. It was the end of one world and the beginning of another.

With the death of Ibrahim Lodi, Babur seized Delhi and Agra, establishing himself not merely as a conqueror, but as a legitimate sovereign. He declared himself Padshah, not Sultan, drawing a clear line between his rule and that of the earlier Delhi dynasties. And he made it clear, in his writings and his architecture, that this was a continuation—not a break—with Timurid heritage.

Indeed, the very idea of the Mughal Empire—as we call it today—was predicated on being Timurid in exile. Babur imported the aesthetic, literary, and administrative norms of Central Asia into the subcontinent. Persian became the language of state. Timurid-style gardens were planted in Indian soil. Artisans from Herat, calligraphers from Samarkand, and administrators from Khurasan found new patronage under Babur’s watchful eye.

Yet Babur never loved India. In his memoirs, he complained of the climate, the mangoes, and the people. He longed for the hills of Ferghana and the blue domes of Samarkand. India, for him, was a prize, not a homeland. But for his descendants, it would become both.

When Babur died in 1530, he was buried first in Agra. But, as he had requested, his remains were later moved to Kabul—to a hillside garden he had planted himself, overlooking the valley. A Timurid to the last.

And thus, Mr. President, we arrive at the foundation of one of the great empires of the early modern world: the Mughal Empire—a state that would rule over a quarter of humanity, that would produce Akbar, Jahangir, and Shah Jahan, and that would build the Taj Mahal as casually as their ancestors built minarets in Samarkand.

But before I speak to Akbar—ah, Akbar!—we must pause to examine the consolidation under Babur’s son, Humayun, a ruler as tragic as he was poetic, whose own exile would one day ensure the empire's Persian character. A man whose fall and restoration echo—if I may be so bold—the cycles of decline and return that this very nation would do well to study.

So, Mr. President, if I may be permitted the time—and I believe I am well within my parliamentary rights—I shall next recount the reign of Humayun, his dramatic defeats, his refuge at the court of the Safavids, and his return to India in Persian robes, carrying with him a cultural synthesis that would define the next century of Mughal rule.

Mr. President, I now return to the matter at hand—by which I mean, not the questionably worded line items of this foreign aid bill, but the matter of Humayun. Or, to use his full regal title: Nasir al-Din Muhammad Humayun Padshah Ghazi, son of Babur, heir to Timur, and the most woefully underestimated figure in the entire Timurid-Mughal story.

When Babur died in 1530, he left to his 22-year-old son not an empire, but a proposition. India, for the Timurids, was still an unstable frontier. The Afghan aristocracy—formerly loyal to the Lodi dynasty—remained resentful. The Rajput clans were defiant. The treasury was thin, the administration embryonic, and the capital’s legitimacy unproven. In such a moment, what was needed was a ruthless strategist. What Babur gave the world, instead, was Humayun.

Now, Mr. President, let us not be unfair. Humayun was not weak. He was, by all accounts, intelligent, courteous, and even visionary. But he was also indecisive, indulgent, and—if I may say so—more inclined toward star charts than military charts.

Indeed, one of Humayun’s earliest acts as ruler was to divide the empire among his brothers. A noble gesture perhaps—fraternal harmony and all that—but in the cutthroat logic of Timurid succession, this was madness. His brother Kamran retained Kabul and Lahore. Askari was given Samarkand—or rather, the dream of it. Hindal, the youngest, brooded in the wings. Thus, rather than consolidating power, Humayun ensured future civil war.

And while the family squabbled, a new threat emerged—Sher Shah Suri.

Now here, Mr. President, is a name worth remembering: Sher Shah, born Farid Khan, an ethnic Afghan and a former administrator in Bihar, who would rise to build an empire in just five years that nearly erased the Mughal presence from the subcontinent. He was everything Humayun was not: pragmatic, ruthless, and organizationally brilliant.

The decisive blow came in 1540 at the Battle of Kannauj, also known as the Battle of Bilgram. Humayun’s army, plagued by internal betrayal and poor logistics, crumbled before Sher Shah’s seasoned forces. The emperor fled—first to Lahore, then to Sindh, and finally, after years of wandering and desperate alliances, to the court of the Safavid Shah Tahmasp in Persia.

Mr. President, let us pause here—not because I’m running out of things to say, but because this moment deserves our full attention.

For it was in Persia, not India, that Humayun was politically reborn.

At the Safavid court, he was received with pomp but also with conditions. Shah Tahmasp, keen to spread Shi‘ism and expand his influence into the east, offered Humayun refuge, troops, and a royal welcome—but in exchange, he pressed the exiled Mughal to formally convert to Twelver Shi‘ism, at least publicly. Humayun, a Sunni by upbringing, complied—whether out of conviction, convenience, or desperation remains a subject of scholarly debate.

But this alliance would shape the Mughals forever.

From Persia, Humayun did not just receive soldiers. He absorbed styles. Aesthetics. Intellectual frameworks. The very blueprint of Safavid governance and court culture made a deep imprint on the Mughal model-to-be. Persian became not just a language of administration but the language of identity. From this moment forward, the Mughals would embrace a Persianate imperial vision—replete with turbaned viziers, domed gardens, lyrical poetry, and intricate bureaucracy.

With Safavid support, Humayun reentered Kabul in 1545, retaking the city from his brother Kamran, who had—unsurprisingly—betrayed him. He spent the next decade reasserting control over the northwest frontier, slowly regaining strength. And when Sher Shah Suri died in 1545, followed by his less capable son Islam Shah in 1554, the time came for Humayun to strike.

In 1555, he marched on Delhi.

The Battle of Sirhind that year ended in Mughal victory. Humayun reoccupied his father’s old capital. The empire was restored. But—cruelly—just six months later, Humayun fell down a flight of library steps in his observatory, reportedly tripping on the hem of his own robe while descending after hearing the adhan, the call to prayer.

He died from the injuries. A sudden, inglorious end for a man who had spent a decade clawing his way back to the throne.

Mr. President, there is something Shakespearean in this arc—a king cast out, reborn in exile, who reclaims his legacy only to be struck down by a moment’s clumsiness. But Humayun’s greatest legacy was not his reign—it was his son.

For in 1542, during those long years of exile, Humayun’s wife Hamida Banu Begum had given birth to a child in Umarkot, in Sindh. That child was named Jalal al-Din Muhammad. History would know him as Akbar—the Great.

It is no exaggeration to say that Humayun’s real contribution to history was producing Akbar and shaping the conditions of his rise. The cultural fusion Humayun brought back from Persia would become the foundation of Akbar’s syncretic vision: a court where Hindus and Muslims, Rajputs and Uzbeks, Sufis and Sunnis all had a place.

So if we are to speak of Fulbright scholars interpreting Indo-Persian manuscripts at Lahore, or holding digital humanities workshops on early Mughal miniature painting, then they must understand this: there would be no Mughal cultural synthesis without Humayun’s exile. No Taj Mahal without Safavid-trained architects. No Ain-i-Akbari without the administrative groundwork laid in these tumultuous decades.

Now then, Mr. President, the hour is late, and yet history marches on.

It is time, I believe, to speak of Akbar—Timurid by blood, Indian by choice, and perhaps the greatest exemplar of pluralistic governance before the Enlightenment. A boy-king raised in the shadow of disaster who would go on to build an empire of marble and tolerance.

So I ask your indulgence, and your patience, as I now move into the longest and most consequential reign in Mughal history—a tale of conquest, innovation, and a new imperial vision from the Peacock Throne.

Mr. President, and any remaining members of this chamber who have not quietly retreated to their offices to read polling data or request another memo on farm subsidies, I commend your stamina. For we are about to enter the imperial heart of the Timurid-Mughal world—the reign of Jalal al-Din Muhammad Akbar, known to history as Akbar the Great.

Born in 1542 in the desert town of Umarkot while his father Humayun fled through Sindh, Akbar came into this world under the sign of displacement. He was raised in exile, tutored on horseback, and tempered in the crucible of uncertainty. And yet by the time of his death in 1605, Akbar had forged one of the most enduring and culturally vibrant empires in human history.

Let us begin, as ever, at the beginning.

Akbar was crowned Padshah in 1556 at the age of thirteen, just weeks after Humayun’s fatal tumble down the library steps. His early reign was dominated by his regent, the brilliant and often forgotten Bairam Khan, a loyal Turkic general and one of the few men who had stayed with Humayun through the bitter years of exile. Bairam Khan acted swiftly and decisively. At the Second Battle of Panipat, that same fateful plain where Babur had triumphed thirty years earlier, Bairam Khan defeated the army of Hemu, a Hindu general and administrator who had nearly seized Delhi. The victory ensured that Akbar’s reign would begin not with retreat but with triumph.

But Mr. President, the true greatness of Akbar lies not in inherited victory, but in what he chose to do with that empire.

Unlike Timur, unlike Babur, even unlike his father, Akbar did not see India as a conquered realm to be governed from afar or treated as a jewel to be extracted. No—Akbar sought to become Indian, in culture, language, and political philosophy. His genius lay not merely in warfare or patronage, but in assimilation.

Let us examine, in detail, the five pillars of Akbar’s rule: military consolidation, administrative reform, religious policy, cultural patronage, and imperial ideology.

Akbar spent the first two decades of his reign in near-constant military campaigning. The Mughals, remember, controlled little beyond the Indo-Gangetic plain when he took power. To the west lay the Afghan chieftains of Malwa and Gujarat; to the east, the independent Sultanate of Bengal; and to the south and center, the powerful Rajput kingdoms, proud warrior clans descended from ancient Hindu lineages who had never accepted foreign rule lightly.

Akbar’s military campaigns were swift, brutal when necessary, but often tempered with clemency. Malwa was annexed in 1561, Gujarat in 1573. Bengal fell in 1576 after a grueling campaign against the Afghan remnants. But it was his approach to the Rajputs that marked him as a new kind of emperor. Rather than crushing them, Akbar sought their loyalty.

He married into Rajput dynasties, elevated Rajput generals to high office, and allowed them to maintain autonomy in their homelands if they pledged fealty. The Kachwaha Rajputs of Amber—modern-day Jaipur—became some of his most trusted lieutenants. And yet, when confronted by defiance, such as in Mewar, he could be unrelenting: the siege of Chittorgarh in 1568 led to mass slaughter. Mercy, yes—but always on imperial terms.

By the end of his reign, Akbar controlled territory from Kabul to the Deccan, from Kandahar to the Bay of Bengal. But unlike other conquerors, he left a deeper legacy: he built the machinery to govern this vast realm.

Now, Mr. President, allow me to present the second pillar: administration—not as glamorous as conquest, perhaps, but far more consequential.

Akbar reformed the mansabdari system, a bureaucratic hierarchy derived from Persian and Mongol precedents. Every official—civil or military—was assigned a rank (mansab) and expected to maintain a fixed number of cavalry and retainers, according to their rank. This created a standardized, loyal bureaucracy not based on ethnicity or birth, but service and merit. Mughal mansabdars included not only Central Asians and Persians, but Indian Muslims, Rajputs, and later even Marathas.

Revenue, too, was systematized. Akbar’s chief revenue minister, Raja Todar Mal, designed a land taxation system known as the zabt, based on detailed surveys and categorized by yield, soil quality, and crop type. This was no mere tax grab—it was a carefully calculated statecraft. Land taxes were collected not in kind, but in cash—a radical shift that monetized the rural economy and anchored the state in statistical rationality.

And all of this, Mr. President, was done without modern computers, satellites, or spreadsheets. I daresay the IRS could learn a thing or two from the Department of Revenue under Akbar.

Now we come to the most extraordinary—and, yes, the most controversial—element of Akbar’s reign: his religious policy.

Akbar, though raised Sunni Muslim, grew increasingly skeptical of sectarian rigidity. In a land where Hindus outnumbered Muslims ten to one, where Jain monks, Shi‘a theologians, Sufi mystics, and Zoroastrians all coexisted uneasily, Akbar sought not tolerance—but universal concord. His policy, Sulh-i Kul, or ‘universal peace,’ proclaimed that the state would not privilege one religion over another.

He abolished the jizya tax on non-Muslims in 1564. He prohibited forced conversions and ensured legal protections for Hindus. He attended Diwan-i-Khas debates at Fatehpur Sikri, where Jesuit priests from Goa, Brahmin scholars, Muslim clerics, and Jain ascetics debated metaphysics before the emperor himself.

And then, in a move that still confounds orthodox historians, he declared the formation of a new syncretic doctrine in 1582: the Din-i Ilahi—‘Religion of God’—a spiritual-philosophical code drawing from Islam, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, and even Christianity. It had no scripture, no clergy, and no obligation. It was not intended for mass conversion, but as a moral compass for the elite.

Though Din-i Ilahi faded after his death, the idea endured: that a ruler could govern not by sect, but by principle. In a world increasingly fractious, Mr. President, this is not a lesson to be taken lightly.

Akbar was illiterate—but not unlearned. He surrounded himself with scholars, poets, historians, and artists. The Navaratnas—his Nine Jewels—included the poet Tulsidas, the musician Tansen, the wit Birbal, and the historian Abul Fazl, whose massive Akbarnama and Ain-i-Akbari remain vital records of the empire’s operation and ideology.

He established translation projects: the Mahabharata and Ramayana were translated into Persian. Sufi treatises were rendered in Sanskrit. This was not multiculturalism for its own sake—it was imperial integration, a deliberate stitching together of India’s cultural patchwork into a shared imperial narrative.

His architecture reflected this synthesis: the red sandstone palaces of Fatehpur Sikri, the grand gateways of Buland Darwaza, and the tomb of Humayun, which laid the groundwork for the Taj Mahal. These were not just buildings—they were metaphysical statements in stone.

Finally, Mr. President, we come to Akbar’s vision of kingship.

He called himself Shadow of God on Earth—Zill-i Ilahi—a concept drawn from Persianate Islam but expanded through Indian political philosophy. He was not merely a sultan or shah; he was the Chakravartin, the cosmic sovereign. His rule was not just legitimate—it was necessary, a reflection of cosmic harmony.

This ideological framing allowed Akbar to transcend identity. Was he a Muslim ruler of a Hindu land? A foreign conqueror or native sovereign? Neither, and both. He became India’s ruler, not through lineage alone, but by crafting an inclusive, functional, and culturally resonant empire.

And yet, for all this magnificence, Akbar was not without flaws. His later years saw increasing autocracy. Dissent was stifled. The Din-i Ilahi, though noble in conception, was seen by many as hubristic. But compared to his contemporaries—Elizabeth in England, Ivan the Terrible in Russia, Philip II in Spain—Akbar appears less like an autocrat and more like an Enlightenment monarch avant la lettre.

When he died in 1605, India wept—not just the court, not just the Muslims, but across caste and creed.

Mr. President, if we are to subsidize students traveling to Agra to take selfies near the Taj Mahal, or to Lahore to study Mughal calligraphy, let us make sure they understand this: that monument was not conjured from dust. It was the culmination of an imperial vision that began with a boy in exile, was resurrected by a prince in Kabul, and was perfected by a sovereign who saw no contradiction between power and pluralism.

But we are not yet done. For after Akbar comes Jahangir, the aesthete. Then Shah Jahan, who built in marble and ruled with fire. And finally, Aurangzeb, the last great Mughal—a man whose zealotry would undo much of what Akbar had built.

So I urge the chair to get comfortable, for we are merely approaching the intermission of this grand imperial opera. Next, I shall turn to Jahangir—his court, his marriage to Nur Jahan, his love of painting, and the first British envoys to arrive in a land more powerful than their own island kingdom could then imagine.