Babur the Tiger

by Harold Lamb

Book by Lamb, Harold

Genres: History, Biography, Nonfiction, Middle East, Historical, India

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1961

About the author

Harold Albert Lamb was an American historian, screenwriter, short story writer, and novelist.

Born in Alpine, New Jersey, he attended Columbia University, where his interest in the peoples and history of Asia began. Lamb built a career with his writing from an early age. He got his start in the pulp magazines, quickly moving to the prestigious Adventure magazine, his primary fiction outlet for nineteen years. In 1927 he wrote a biography of Genghis Khan, and following on its success turned more and more to the writing of non-fiction, penning numerous biographies and popular history books until his death in 1962. The success of Lamb's two volume history of the Crusades led to his discovery by Cecil B. DeMille, who employed Lamb as a technical advisor on a related movie, The Crusades, and used him as a screenwriter on many other DeMille movies thereafter. Lamb spoke French, Latin, Persian, and Arabic, and, by his own account, a smattering of Manchu-Tartar.

From Wikipedia

Reviews

[Dariel Quiogue · Rating 5 out of 5]

Harold Lamb's Babur was the first Lamb I ever read, and very aptly I found my copy in a used bookstall in Old Delhi. Not even a shop or a booth, just a pile of books on some used sacking spread over the pavement. Still one of the best finds ever.

Lamb was greatly fascinated by the Mongols and Central Asian history, and since I've always been a history nut with a taste for the lesser-known stuff, and having seen some magnificent Mughal forts, palaces, and artifacts while living in India I've been fascinated with them too. (I also OD on Mughal food whenever I can.) Lamb was one of the greatest influences on my idol Robert E. Howard, and is one of my great inspirations for my own fiction.

This book is based on Babur's autobiography, the Babur-nama, and is written in a clear, unobtrusive and engaging style. Babur is a really interesting character. He was part Marco Polo with a great curiosity about nature and geography, a survivor of many travails and blunders, and toward the end of his career, a formidable general worthy of his ancestors Tamerlane and Genghis Khan. Unlike Genghis who seems to have been a military genius from the start, Babur had to learn by making mistakes, and he made some really bad ones. His candor in admitting them in the Babur-nama is part of what makes the character so sympathetic and interesting, and Lamb goes into these in nice detail here.

If you're interested in Babur and the Mughals, this is a really good start, and is much better reading than Alex Rutherford's novels. I wish Lamb had lived long enough to also do books on Humayun and Akbar.

[Rindis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Harold Lamb wrote a bunch of very readable and enjoyable historical biographies from the 1920s to '60s, but is sadly not very well known today. He was an exemplar of a narrative style of popular history writing that seems to have fallen largely by the wayside, but does a great job of bringing people and places to life.

Babur the Tiger: First of the Great Moguls was the last book he wrote; somewhat ironically he considered it as part of a series with Genghis Khan and Tamerlane, which were the first two biographies he wrote. Babur actually wrote his own memoirs, and Lamb quotes from them extensively, making this volume unlike most of his other books, though no less filled with personalities and perhaps more high adventure than most.

Like any of his other books, this isn't a detailed study, but it is a very good read, and well worth the time.

[Mohammad Sumon]

বাবর দ্য টাইগার (হার্ডকভার)
by হ্যারল্ড ল্যাম্ব , যায়নুদ্দিন সানী (অনুবাদক)

বইটাতে মোঘল শাসনের প্রতিষ্ঠাতা ‘বাবর’ এর জীবন কাহিনী বলা হয়েছে। ঐতিহাসিক উপন্যাস এটা- আমার সবচেয়ে পছন্দের। বাবর নামা সহ আরো কিছু সোর্স থেকে লেখা হইছে বইটা, হ্যারল্ড ল্যাম্ব এর লেখা ঐতিহাসিক উপন্যাস সুখপাঠ্য।

[Redsteve · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is another one of Lamb’s historical biographies and an example of well-written popular history. His style is narrative (although less so in this than in his Theodora and the Emperor) and very readable. At the same time, Lamb doesn’t wander into the realms of rampant speculation – Babur the Tiger is drawn extensively from Babur’s memoirs (and those of one of his daughters). The first Mogul Emperor is an interesting character: he doesn’t start out in any way unique – his is merely one of Timur’s descendants, destined to rule one of many small petty kingdoms in central Asia; and he spends the first half of his life not being especially good at that (losing battles, choosing the wrong allies, getting distracted by the landscape and trusting relatives who obviously do not have his best interests at heart). During the first twenty years of his life Babur was constantly invading and being invaded, gaining and kingdom and losing it in record time, winning a battle and then having his allies take the spoils. The one thing that he was good at, however, was surviving (as you would expect from someone who slept in a mail shirt for more than half of his life). By the time he was older and more experienced (in the early 16th Century), most of his relatives were dead and he had learned from his mistakes (after making about every one a ruler could make – often more than once). This school of hard knocks served him in good stead when he invaded India, crushing several armies more powerful than his own and founding the Mogul Empire.

[Walt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lamb has an interesting writing style that turns a historical study into a novel. He adds dialogue; but the reader cannot tell where Babur's memoirs end and the author's interpretation begins. Certainly a fascinating look at how a nomadic group of Mongols decides to move from the steppes and settle down in a hostile agrarian land.

[Muhammad Ali · Rating 4 out of 5]

No doubt as Lamb has called him tiger, He was tiger in body and soul,who never fall to disadvantage or defeat. But struggled till his death days to secure an empire for his family. Yet, a home sick who began to love his second home town more than native town, Andjan.
A real hero who dedicated and sacrificed his life for his family. In fact it looked like a minor king who laid foundations of mogul kingdom in india, but in fact he was greatest of all emperors of India.

[Irfan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great!!! just great!!

[Bijo Philip · Rating 3 out of 5]

I knew Babur the founder of Moghul empire is a central Asian from Fergana valley and is a descendant of Chengis Khan and Timur. Beaten and out from his own country, I had wondered, how would he come down from those treacherous mountains, subdue the fiercely independent Afghan tribes, rally their support and lead a series campaigns against myriad forces of the subcontinent, set up groundwork for a mammoth and durable empire that would last for more than 200 hundred years!

He is also a man of letters. His chronicles, though intermittent, are written personally and are the best records of the perilous times of post Timurid central and south Asia.

'Babur the Tiger' is not Baburnama. It is written by Mr. Harold Lamb, a vainglorious American historian who believe that the terrible dawn of western world dominance five hundred years back is the dawn of a glorious civilization.

Albeit, it is a readable book, a digest of times that throws light in to the mosaic that is India.