In Afghanistan and northern India, Temür did leave an important imperial legacy, through his descendant Babur, who founded the Mughal Empire at Kabul in the early sixteenth century. However, though the Mughals were destined to be a mighty power in the east in the early modern age, they were only dimly recognizable as inheritors of the Mongols. Like Genghis, Temür’s greatest talent was for conquest and expansion. Building a stable, unified superstate that could outlive him by generations was not his forte. But nor, to be fair, was it his chief goal.
