The Garden of the Eight Paradises: Babur and the Culture of Empire in Central Asia, Afghanistan and India (1483-1530).

• Author: Quinn, Sholeh
• Position: Book review

The Garden of the Eight Paradises: Babur and the Culture of Empire in Central Asia, Afghanistan and India (1483--1530). By STEPHEN F. DALE. Brill's Inner Asian Library, 10. Leiden: Brill, 2004. Pp. xiii + 520. $124.

Stephen Dale's study of Zahir al-Din Muhammad Babur (1483--1530), founder of the Mughal dynasty, constitutes a highly welcome addition to Mughal and Central Asian studies. Indeed, this volume is a model for any future scholarship in the field, and sets a new standard for biographical writing. The book consists of an introduction, eight chapters, an epilogue, bibliography, glossary, numerous color photos, and an index.

The 1995 publication of Eiji Mano's critical edition of the Baburnama, Babur's memoirs, made it possible for Dale to write this first critical biography of Babur. The Garden of the Eight Paradises is, in Dale's own words, a "commentary on Babur's autobiography and poetry" (p. 4). But Dale has accomplished much more than this. Using a highly effective framework of interspersing chapters on the autobiography with thematic/chronological chapters on the larger context of that autobiography, Dale provides both an analysis of the Baburnama and a substantial biography of Babur.

Babur not only founded a dynasty, but he also authored one of the most important autobiographies of the early modern period. Dale's first three chapters, therefore, introduce Babur and his memoirs, placing Babur in the context of the highly complex late Timurid political landscape and the memoirs in the context of Islamicate autobiographical writing. That the Baburnama is a unique text is obvious to anyone who has had the opportunity to read it. Much of what we know of Babur does, in fact, derive from the autobiography, so a proper understanding of it is essential. Unlike contemporary formal chronicles of the time, such as Khvandamir's Habib al-siyar, Babur expresses himself in a way that can easily captivate the reader into taking him at his word. Dale reads Babur, however, with a critical and insightful eye. Drawing on a broad range of writings from earlier Islamicate autobiographical accounts, such as those of Ibn Buluggin and Usama ibn Munqidh, Dale suggests that the Baburnama can "be read as a carefully conceived, legitimizing self-presentation of a Turco-Mongol aristocrat ... " (p. 41). With this in mind, Dale explains Babur's "cultural personality," as embedded in a "Turco-Mongol military aristocracy" as well as a "sedentarized, Persianized...