The Timurid Empire had been fracturing for decades. When Abu Sa'id Mirza died, his already diminished realm splintered among four sons: Sultan Ahmed Mirza took Samarkand and Bukhara, Umar Shaikh Mirza II held Ferghana, Sultan Mahmud Mirza governed Balkh, and Ulugh Beg Mirza II received Kabul and Ghazni. Babur's father, Umar Shaikh, died in 1494 when the young prince was only eleven, and from that moment Babur's life became a relentless contest for survival. He captured Samarkand twice and lost it twice. By 1504, Shaybani Khan controlled most of Central Asia, and Babur found himself wandering through hostile territory with a ragged band of followers, searching for a kingdom he could actually keep.

Kabul had descended into chaos. Ulugh Beg Mirza II, Babur's uncle and the rightful Timurid ruler of the city, had died in 1501, leaving his young son Abdal-Razzak Mirza nominally in charge. A minister named Shirim Zikr seized real power, only to be murdered in a conspiracy led by Muhammad Qasim Beg and Yunis Ali. Into this vacuum stepped Mukim Beg Arghun, who marched up from the Garmsir without authorization and presented himself at the city gates. Kabul opened to him without a fight. His father, Dhul-Nun Beg Arghun, who held nearly independent power across Kandahar, Helmand, and Sistan, quietly sanctioned the takeover. Young Abdal-Razzak retreated into the surrounding hills, mounting futile attempts to reclaim his capital. The city needed a stronger hand, and that hand was approaching from the north.

As Babur moved through the territories of Khusroe Shah, something unexpected happened: the Moghul soldiers in Khusroe's service began deserting their commander and rallying to Babur's banner. His brother joined him. With this swelling army, Babur turned toward Kabul and laid siege. He positioned his forces with care around the city. Jahangir Mirza II commanded the right wing at the site of the Charbagh. Nasir Mirza held the left near the meadows by the tomb of Qutlugh Qadam Khan. Babur himself anchored the center between Haider Taki's garden and the tomb of Kul Bayezid, directing operations from among the orchards and burial grounds that ringed the city walls.

Mukim Beg attempted to stall. He opened negotiations but dragged them out, waiting for reinforcements from his father and brother that never came. Babur tightened the cordon, and the siege intensified, though it remained notably restrained by the standards of the era. There were few major engagements. When it became clear that no relief force would arrive, Mukim Beg negotiated a surrender. Babur let him leave with his family, a gesture of calculated mercy that would become a hallmark of his early rule. Kabul and Ghazni fell without the kind of bloodshed that typically accompanied such transfers of power in Central Asia. Babur himself recorded these events in the Baburnama, his remarkable autobiography that remains one of the great literary works of the Timurid world.

What Babur won at Kabul was more than a city. He gained a strategic position at the junction of trade routes linking Persia, Central Asia, and India, a base from which he could rebuild. For the next two decades, Kabul served as his capital and launching point. He fortified it, cultivated its famous gardens, and used its revenues to fund the campaigns that would eventually carry him across the Khyber Pass. In 1526, he defeated Sultan Ibrahim Lodi at the Battle of Panipat and founded the Mughal Empire, a dynasty that would rule much of South Asia for three centuries. None of it would have been possible without the mountain kingdom he took as a desperate young exile in 1504. The siege of Kabul was not a famous battle. It was something more consequential: the quiet beginning of one of history's great empires.