The Gurkani or the Timurid Dynasty

Timur’s sack of Delhi

(Painting dated 1595–1600)

The title “Mughal Dynasty” was popularized in the twentieth century by Islamist and leftist historians who wanted India’s Hindu population to believe that the Mughals were natives of the Indian subcontinent. Babur and his descendants did not call themselves Mughals. In their texts, the title by which they have referred to their own dynasty is Gurkani (also spelled Gūrkāniyān). 

Gurkani is the Persian form of the Mongol word "Kuragan" which means sons-in-law. Babur was the descendent of the Turkish warlord Timur or Timurlane, who had married Saray Mulk Khanum, a direct descendant of Genghis Khan. It is estimated that Timur’s wars caused the slaughter of more than 17 million people, about 5 percent of the world’s population in his time. Since Timur was Genghis Khan’s son-in-law, those of his descendants who used Persian language called themselves Gurkani. 

Timur was the great-great-great-grandfather of Babur. Timurids and Gurkani are the correct names for the so-called Mughals, who were invaders and imperialistic rulers in India. Their rule of about 180 years (between the sixteenth and early eighteenth centuries) left North India so divided and economically and militarily shattered that in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the British could capture much of North India without encountering any significant opposition.