First Battle of Panipat

The First Battle of Panipat established the Mughal Empire in the Indian subcontinent. Babur, a prince of Timurid-Chagatai descent who had lost his ancestral homeland of Fergana and Samarkand, had carved out a base in Kabul and made multiple raids into India. His decisive opportunity came when the Afghan nobles of the Delhi Sultanate, dissatisfied with the despotic Ibrahim Lodi, invited Babur to challenge him. Babur's force of approximately 12,000 faced Ibrahim Lodi's army of around 100,000 including war elephants. Babur's masterstroke was deploying firearms — matchlock muskets and artillery — against an army that had never encountered them in battle formation. He also employed the tulughma manoeuvre: fixed flanking wings that curved around the enemy. Ibrahim Lodi died fighting. The battle lasted only a few hours. Babur's victory inaugurated the Mughal Empire, which at its height under Aurangzeb ruled over the largest economy in the world and presided over the largest Muslim population of any polity in history.