Podcast

The Garden and the Sword is our podcast of Mughal history — the emperors, the wars, the gardens, and the three centuries that made modern South Asia. Narrative history drawn from the primary sources: the Baburnama, the Akbarnama, and the memoirs the emperors wrote themselves.

New episodes regularly. Listen free wherever you get your podcasts.

Listen on Spotify Watch on YouTube Apple Podcasts — coming soon

Episode Two — Babur: The Man Who Wrote Everything Down

62 minutes

The full life of the first Mughal emperor. He inherited a small kingdom at eleven and one of the most frightening names in Asia. What he wanted his entire life was a single city — Samarkand. He took it three times and lost it three times. India was the consolation prize, and he complained about it in writing until the day he died.

Episode One — The Boy Who Lost Samarkand

18 minutes

A throne at eleven. A kingdom lost before he was twenty. Two years of wandering with nothing. And one morning at Panipat in 1526 when twelve thousand men beat an army several times their size.