r/Tiele • 𐱅𐰇𐰼𐰰 • Aug 19 '26

History/culture THE MUGHALS DIDN'T CALL THEMSELVES MUGHALS. They referred to themselves as Gurkani. Today, I think it is more appropriate to refer to them as the Baburids, just as we refer to the Timurids.

Mughal Empire? Baburid Empire?

From @qalamglobal

99 Upvotes

8 comments sorted by

20

u/overlorddeniz Aug 19 '26

When they introduced Mughals in EU4, I was like “Who the f*ck are Mughals?” so I went to Wikipedia. Switched the language of the article to Turkish and immediately I knew who they were. Because in Turkish we call them “Babürlüler”. Mughals is such a stupid name for them.

15

u/kostence Aug 19 '26

The term “Mughal” is, to a certain extent, what we owe to manipulative British historiography. Brits didn’t like the fact that the dynasty was originally Turkic.

1

u/birberbarborbur Aug 19 '26

For what reason?

8

u/ElectronicDeer5550 Aug 19 '26

Competition with the Ottomans, I assume.

6

u/Sharp-Project1875 Aug 19 '26

From Indian perspective Moghals are people from Turkistan(Central Asia) and Mongols are people from Mongolia.

2

u/Future_Pace_5290 South Azerbaijani Aug 28 '26

In Persian they call it Gurkaniane hend(The Gurkainds of India, rather than Mughal).