Babur

babur.jpg

Zahir-ud-din Mohammad Babur was born in the Fahrgana region of Uzbekistan in 1483 and would be the founder of the Mughal Empire in India, a dynasty that would last for three hundred and thirty-one years.  Babur was a descendant of Genghis Khan on his mother's side and Tamerlane on his father's side, so you can rest assured that he was a total A-grade assbeater.  According to most sources he was the epitome of the Muslim scholar-warrior-ruler-facekicker and a total badass.

First off, Babur's name (according to some sources) was a Turkish derivation of the Indo-European word for "beaver".  Honestly, you know a guy's going to be a raging unstoppable badass when his nickname is something innocuous like "Beaver", sort of like how those seven-foot tall three hundred pound bald sunglass-wearing Mafia hitmen go by "Tiny".  You just can't trust the nicknames like -=1337MurderKillazApocalypseOfBlood666=- because you know that "Apocalypse of Blood 666" is really some fifteen year-old ninety-pound computer nerd desperately trying to act hard but who in actuality probably sprained his ankle last week running away from the neighbor's pet Shih Tzu.  When you're truly hard, you don't have to make up a shitty nickname to prove it.  You can go by "Beaver" and pretty much DARE people to say shit about it.

It's a little-known fact that Babur was also the progenitor of Xtreme Sports.  Way before Tony Hawk and the X Games Babur was doing all kinds of crazy Xtreme shit throughout India and Afghanistan.  For starters, one of his favorite pump-up activities was sprinting up and down the battlements of his fortress carrying a person under each arm.  So he would walk up to some random chump and instead of reciting the typical jock bitch insult of, "I could bench you", he would just grab him under his arm and start running.  Once he got the the top of the battlements, he would then probably railslide the Great Wall of China and then somersault over the Moon.

Also, Babur swam across every river on the Indian subcontinent just for the hell of it.  Some people make it their life goal to climb a mountain or ride a motorcycle across the United States; this guy wanted to swim every river in India so he just woke up one day and fucking did it.  That's pretty rad.  I can't imagine very many people have ever accomplished that feat.

Babur was also a kickass swordsman and tactician, and was noted by historians and having near-limitless energy (I would hope so because the guy had ten freaking wives in his harem).  When he was fourteen, he was overthrown and exiled from Uzbekistan by a group of rebellious nobles, but instead of just giving up and posting crappy emo lyrics on his LiveJournal he put together a new army, crossed the snow-covered Hindu Kush mountains into Afghanistan and captured the heavily fortified city of Kabul.  From there, he continually battled to regain his native Uzbek territories while also beating the crap out of the much-hated Dehli Sultan Ibrahim Lodi and conquering most of India.  When all was said and done he had won numerous battles despite being outnumbered most of the time, achieving victory because of his uncanny ability to size up and predict his opponents' next moves.

Babur was more than just an unstoppable warlord who carried people up hills though.  He was very well-educated and cultured as well.  His personal memoirs, the Baburnamah, are still studied in textbooks throughout Asia and the Middle East and are noted as being filled with not only beautiful language but also interesting insight into the geography and culture of his civilization, right down to a comprehensive listing of the flora and fauna native to his region.  By all accounts, it is truly an excellent insight into the life of Babur and the world in which he lived.

Babur's final act came in 1530 when his first-born son Humayun became deathly ill and was given little chance of survival.  Babur wasn't about to let his son die before him, so he prayed to Allah to transfer his son's illness to him.  Since Babur was such a badass, Allah listened.  Humayun's condition dramatically improved while Babur fell ill, ultimately dying at the age of 47.

Humayun would go on to consolidate Babur's Empire and build the foundation of a Mughal Empire that would last three centuries in India.  Babur was not only an accomplished leader and warrior, but he was a scholar and a totally extreme master of disaster.  He was a total badass.