Police officer-turned-scholar Kishore Kunal believes that the appellation "Mir Baqi" was constructed in 1813–1814 in a forged inscription on Babri Masjid for the benefit of the British surveyor Francis Buchanan, and there was in fact no prince called "Mir Baqi" in Babur's regime.
In 932 AH (January or February 1526 AD), Baqi, described as "Shaghawal", was given Dibalpur in Punjab as a fief (near Lahore), and sent to help quell a rebellion in Balkh.
After his return, Baqi appears to have been assigned as a commander in a force of six or seven thousand troops headed by Chin-Timur Sultan.
[3] In March 1528, the same force headed by Chin-Timur Sultan was sent in pursuit of Afghan nobles Bāyazīd and Biban (formerly in the employ of Ibrahim Lodi) near Awadh.
[3] Francis Buchanan (also called Buchanan-Hamilton) did a survey of the Gorakhpur Division in 1813–14 on behalf of the British East India Company.
Buchanan's report, never published but available in the British Library archives, states that the Hindus generally attributed destruction of temples "to the furious zeal of Aurangzabe [Aurangzeb]", but the large mosque at Ayodhya (now known as Babri Masjid) was ascertained to have been built by Babur by "an inscription on its walls".
In 1611, an English traveller William Finch visited Ayodhya and recorded the "ruins of the Ranichand [Ramachand] castle and houses".
[9] However, by 1672, the appearance of a mosque at the site can be inferred because Lal Das's Awadh-Vilasa describes the location of birthplace without mentioning a temple.
[10] In 1717, the Moghul Rajput noble Jai Singh II purchased the land surrounding the site and his documents show a mosque.
[12] In a petition filed by Syed Mohammad Asghar, the Mutawalli (guardian) of the Babri Masjid, with the Commissioner of Faizabad in 1877, it was stated that the word "Allah" above the door was the only inscription.