The Timurid victory at Ab Darrah Pass allowed Babur to reclaim Transoxiana and temporarily reunite the Timurid ancestral empire.
Key Facts
- Year of battle
- 1511
- Uzbek force at Merv (prior battle)
- 28,000 troops
- Qizilbash ambush force at Merv
- 17,000 troops
- Outcome
- Decisive Timurid victory
- Not recorded in
- Baburnama (gap 1508–1519)
By the Numbers
Location
Cause → Event → Consequence
Muhammad Shaybani of the Uzbeks had seized Samarkand, Herat, and Bukhara from the Timurids. His subsequent confrontation with Safavid Shah Ismail I ended in his defeat and death at Merv in 1510, where 17,000 Qizilbash ambushed his 28,000-strong army, leaving the Uzbek hold on Central Asia severely weakened.
Seizing on the Uzbek collapse, Babur marched from Kabul to contest control of Transoxiana. At the Ab Darrah Pass (present-day Panjshir, Afghanistan), his Timurid forces met the Uzbeks and won a decisive victory, also known as the Battle of Pul-i Sangin, ending Uzbek dominance in the region.
The victory enabled Babur to recover Transoxiana and briefly reunite the ancestral Timurid domains. The battle, however, went unrecorded in Babur's own memoirs, the Baburnama, which contains a gap between 1508 and the start of 1519, leaving it absent from the primary Timurid source for the period.
Belligerents & Mobilization Analysis
Side A
1 belligerent
Babur.
Side B
1 belligerent