A luxurious album associated with the Baburids has been found in the Berlin State Library. On its pages, ghazals are featured on one side, and miniatures on the other.
This unique album, consisting of 120 pages, is considered a muraqqa (an illustrated album) of Amir Timur’s eldest son, Jahangir Mirza. It was created in India in the 1650s and later taken to Europe. The uniqueness of this discovery lies in the fact that the album contains ghazals by Alisher Navoi and Husayn Bayqaro, written in the Turkic language.
"If the Baburids considered themselves Mongols, the album would have been written in Mongolian. This, in turn, highlights the need to reconsider the classification of the Baburids as Mongols by global historians," noted Aysima Mirsultan, a researcher in the Central Asia Department of the Berlin State Library.
The Baburid dynasty has a history of over three centuries of rule. While Persian, Hindi, or other languages might have been spoken at the court, the most important and critical matters were addressed in the Turkic language, and many Turkic manuscripts were transcribed. It is reported that 25 copies of this album are preserved in the Berlin State Library in Germany, while approximately 100 others are located in the United Kingdom, the United States, the Czech Republic, and Iran.