The Book of Akbar 98.2

98.2

The extraordinary story of her Majesty is a case in point. She was the happy-starred daughter (dukhtar-i-qudsī-akhtar) of Jūbna Bahādur of the Qiyāt tribe and Barlās family. Her physical and mental beauty went on increasing from her earliest years, until by loftiness of thought and sublimity of genius, she became the Unique of the Age, and by acknowledgment of friends and foes, relatives and strangers, was magnanimous, pious, and a lover of wisdom. The lights of theosophy shone from her countenance, the Divine secrets were manifested on her forehead. She sat secluded behind the screen of chastity and abode in the privy chamber of meditation on the Unity, was a theatre of holy epiphanies and an alighting-stage of Divine emanations. When she arrived at maturity, she was, according to the custom of princes and the practice of great ones of Church and State, given in marriage to Ziibun Biyan, king of Mughūlistan and her own cousin and (thus) they joined that unique pearl of purity with a temporal ruler. As he was not her match, he hastened to annihilation and her Majesty Alanquwa who was the repose (āsāyish) of the spiritual world, became likewise the ornament (ārāyish) of the temporal world and, applying herself of necessity to outward acts, she became the sovereign of her tribe (ūlūs).