The History of Humāyūn (Gulbadan Begam) 150: CLXX Salima-sultan Begam Choganiani
The History of Humāyūn (A. S. Beveridge) 150
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CLXX Salima-sultan Begam Choganiani
150.1
Daughter of Mirza Nuru-d-din Muhammad Chaqaniani and of a daughter of Babar, as to whose name the sources ring changes upon the rose. She appears as Gul-rang (B. and H. sh.), Gul-barg, Gul-rukh. As her mother was a full Turkoman or Turk by descent, it has occurred to me that she may have borne a Turk name, and that the various forms it assumes in the Persian may have their origin in this. As to her maternal parentage there are difficulties. From the Ma'asiru-l-umara, under 1024H., the following information is obtained: Pasha Begam Baharlu Turkoman married (873H., 1469) as her second husband, Sultan Mahmud Mirza Miran-shahi. By him she had three daughters and one son Baysanghar (b. 882H., 1477). One daughter whose name was Saliha-sultan Begam, married Babar and bore him a daughter, Gul-rukh (sic). Gul-rukh married Nuru-d-din Muhammad Chaqaniani, and their daughter was Salima-sultan Begam who married first, Bairam Khan-i-khanan, and secondly, the Emperor Akbar. Abu'l-fazl (Bib. Ind. ed., II. 65) adds the particular that Firdaus-makani gave his daughter Gul-barg (sic), to Nuru-d-din because a daughter of Mahmud and Pasha had been given to Nuru-d-din's grandfather Khwaja Hasan, known as Khwaja-zada Chaqaniani. He also states that Salima-sultan Begam was the issue of Gul-barg's marriage.
150.2
In the Memoirs, as we have them, there is no mention of Saliha-sultan nor of Nuru-d-din's marriage with a daughter of Babar. Yet Abu'l-fazl states that Firdaus-makani arranged Gul-barg's marriage. The first omission is the more remarkable because Babar (Mems., 30) states that Pasha had three daughters. He does not give their names, and specifies the marriage of the eldest son. On the same page he tells of his marriage with Saliha's half-sister Zainab and of her death. The omission is remarkable and appears to have no good ground; he chronicles his other Timurid marriages. Of Yadgar's daughters it may be noted here that one married Malik Muhammad Qarlyq, another Khwaja Hasan Naqshbandi, and the third Babar. It appears to me tolerably clear that Babar's marriage with Saliha-sultan took place at a date which falls in a gap of the Memoirs, i.e. from 1511 to 1519. This is the period which contains the exile from Kabul after the Mughal rebellion. Not only does Babar omit Saliha-sultan's name and his marriage with her, but Gul-badan is also silent as to name, marriage and child of Saliha-sultan. This silence is in every way remarkable. She enumerates her father's children and gives their mothers' names, and she enumerates some of his wives in more places than one. From her lists a Timurid wife cannot have escaped, and especially one whose child became the mother of Gul-badan's associate Salima-sultan.
150.3
An explanation of Gul-badan's silence and also of a part of Babar's has suggested itself to me; it is conjectural merely and hypothetical. The absence of mention of Saliha-sultan and of her child suggests that she appears under another name in Gul-badan's list of her father's children and their mothers. She may be Gul-badan's own mother, Dildar Begam, without undue wresting of known circumstantial witness. The principal difficulty in the way of this identification is Abu'l-fazl's statement that Nuru-d-din's marriage was made by Firdaus-makani, whereas Gul-badan states that her father arranged two Chaghatai marriages for her sisters. If we might read Jannat-ashyani (Humayun) for Firdaus-makani, much would fall into place; the marriage with Nūru-d dīn could be a re-marriage of Gul-chihra was widowed in 1533, and of whose remarriage nothing is recorded until her brief political alliance with 'Abbās Uzbeg in 1540. It is probable that she remarried in the interval. To pass on to recorded incidents of Salīma-sultān's life. There is an entry in Hindāl's guest-list which may indicate her presence.
150.4
She accompanied Hamīda bānū and Gul-badan to Hindūstān in 964H. (1557), and she was married at Jālandhar shortly after Safar 15th, 965H. (middle of December, 1557) to Bairām Khān-i-khānān. It is said that the marriage excited great interest at Court. It united two streams of descent from 'Alī shukr Beg Bahārlū Turkman. Salīma-sultān was a Timurid through Bābar, one of her grandfathers, and through Mahmūd, one of her great-grandfathers. A few words must be said about her age at the time of her marriage, because the question has been raised through Jahāngīr's statement that she died at the age of sixty in 1021H., and commented upon by the Darbār-i-akbarī. If Jahāngīr gives her age correctly she must have been born in 961H., and this would make her a child of five when she married Bairām, and needs her betrothal by her father to Bairām to date from babyhood.
150.5
The Darbār-i-akbarī says that it is clear from Jahāngīr’s statement of her age at death that she was married to Bairām aetat 5, and that her memory is thus cleared from the reproach of two marriages. Whatever is concealed in Jahāngīr's nothing is said to indicate that he desired to bring Salīma-sultān into the circle of Hindū propriety. He may have had the wish, he was a Hindū mother's son. The comment of the modern author of the Darbār-iakhail witnesses to the Hinduizing action to which Moslim custom and thought have submitted. Adult remarriage was no reproach to Islam in Salima’s day. It does not, however, seem correct to accept Jahangir’s statement that Salīma-sultan was sixty only at death. To have betrothed her as a baby and to have married her to a man of, at least, middle-age at five, is not in harmony with the Muhammadan custom of Humāyūn’s day. Moreover, Jahāngīr himself speaks of her as married (kad-khudā) to Bairām. She is said by Abū’l-fazl to have been betrothed (nām-zād) by Humāyūn, and married (sipūrdan) by Akbar to Bairām Khān. Badāyūnī’s words indicate adult and not child marriage, sābiqā dar habāla-i-Bairām Khān Khān-i-Khānān būd, ba‘d azān dākhil-i-haram-i-pādshāhī shud. After the murder of Bairām in 968H. Salīma-sultan was married by Akbar. She was probably a few years his senior. In 983H. she made her pilgrimage with Gul-badan. Particulars of the expedition are given in the Introduction to this volume.
150.6
Her name appears in the histories as a reader, a poet who wrote under the pseudonym of makhfī, and as pleading with Akbar for Salīm’s forgiveness. Her death is chronicled by Jahāngīr who heard of it on Zū’l-qa‘da 2nd, 1021H. (December 15th, 1612). He gives particulars of her birth and descent, and of her marriages, and he states that she was sixty at the time of her death. By his orders her body was laid in a garden which she herself had made. Jahāngīr praises her both for her natural qualities and her acquirements. She creates an impression of herself as a charming and cultivated woman. The genealogical table on the next page illustrates Salima-sultan’s descent, and the following dates bear also upon the topic: Pasha married Mahmud 878H. — 1469 Baisanghar born 882H. — 1477 Mahmud died 900H. — Jan. 1495 Babar married Zainab, d. of Mahmud 910H. — 1504 Zainab died 913H.-914H. — 1507-8 Saliha’s child, the wife of Nuru’d-din, was not born in 917H. — 1511, because she is not in the list of children who left Kabul with Babar in that year (Gul-badan, 12).