The History of Humāyūn (Gulbadan Begam) 3: Section I — Under Babar
The History of Humāyūn (A. S. Beveridge) 3
- Language
- English
Contents
Section I — Under Babar
3.1.1
Gul-badan Begam (Princess Rose-body) was a daughter of Zahiru-d-din Muhammad Babar, in whom were united the lines of highest Central Asian aristocracy—namely, that of Timur the Turk, through his son Miran-shah, and that of Chingiz the Mughal, through his son Chaghatai. He was born on February 14th, 1483, and succeeded to his father’s principality of Farghana when under twelve. He spent ten years of early youth in trying to save his small domain from the clutch of kinsmen, but, being forced to abandon the task, went southwards in 1504 to Afghanistan, where he captured Kabul from its Arghun usurpers. Princess Gul-badan was born somewhere about 1523 and when her father had been lord in Kabul for nineteen years; he was master also in Kunduz and Badakhshan; had held Bajaur and Swat since 1519, and Qandahar for a year. During ten of those nineteen years he had been styled padshah, in token of headship of the house of Timur and of his independent sovereignty. To translate padshah, however, as is often done, by the word emperor would give a wrong impression of Babar’s status amongst rulers at this height of his rising fortunes. Nevertheless, Gul-badan was born the child of a strong and stable chief, and of one who was better followed in war than his nominal domains would allow, because his army was drawn for the most part from tribes not under his government, and was not territorial and of Kabul but personal and inherited.
3.1.2
Babar says that he cherished the desire to conquer beyond the Indus for nineteen years. At the date of Gul-badan’s birth he was engaged in the attempt, and succeeded when she was about two and a half years old. He then became the first Turki sovereign in Hindustan, and the founder of its miscalled Mughal dynasty. If the princess had first seen light in London instead of in Kabul, she would have had Henry VIII for king, and the slumbers of her birth-year might have been troubled as men marched forth at Wolsey’s will to fight and lose in France. Her personal vicissitudes were the greater that she was a Timurid and Turk. She spent her childhood under her father’s rule in Kabul and Hindustan; her girlhood and young wifehood shared the fall and exile of Humayun; and her maturity and failing years slipped past under the protection of Akbar.
3.1.3
Her mother was Dil-dar Begam—the Heart-holding Princess—of whose descent, it is noticeable to observe, neither her husband nor her daughter gives any information. This peculiarity of omission she shares with Maham, the wife of Babar’s affection and the mother of his heir; and with Gul-rukh, the mother of Kamran and 'Askari. All three ladies are spoken of by our begam with the style befitting the wives of a king; all were mothers of children, and for this reason, if for no other, it seems natural that something should be said of their birth. Babar frequently mentions Maham, and calls her by this name tout court. Dil-dar’s name occurs in the Turki version of the Memoirs, but not in the Persian, and she is there styled aghacha— bīchī, a lady, but not a begam, by birth. Gul-rukh is, I believe, never named by Bābar. This silence does not necessarily imply birth. It may be an omission of the contemporarily obvious; and also it may indicate that no one of the three women was of royal birth, although all seem to have been of good family.
3.1.4
Three Timurids had been Bābar’s wives in childhood and youth. These were 'Ā'īsha, who left him before 1504 and who was betrothed to him when he was five; Zainab, who died in 1506 or 1507; and Ma'sūma, whom he married in 1507 and who died at the birth of her first child. Māham was married in Khurāsān, and therefore in 1506; Dil-dār and Gul-rukh probably considerably later, and after the three royal ladies had passed away from the household. The next recorded marriage of Bābar is one of 1519, when a Yūsufzāī chief brought him his daughter, Bībī Mubārika, as the seal of submission. She had no children, and was an altogether charming person in the eyes of those who have written of her. To return now to Dil-dār. She bore five children, three girls and two boys. The eldest was born in an absence of Bābar from Kābul and in Khost. This fixes her birth as occurring somewhere between 1511 and 1515. She was Gul-rang (Rose-hued), named like her sisters from the rose; then came Gul-chihra (Rose-cheeked); and then Abū’n-nāṣir Muḥammad, the Hindāl of history, who was born in 1519; next was Gul-badan (Rose-body); and last a boy, whom his sister calls Alwar, a word which looks like a sobriquet drawn from the Indian town. He died after the migration of the household to Āgra, and in 1529.
3.1.5
Princess Gul-badan was born some two years before Bābar set out on his last expedition across the Indus, so her baby eyes may have seen his troops leave Kābul in November, 1525, for the rallying-place at Jacob’s Village (Dih-i-yā'qūb). It is not mere word-painting to picture her as looking down from the citadel at what went on below, for she tells of later watching from this view-point which would give the farewell glimpse of the departing army, and, as weeks and years rolled on, the first sight of many a speck on the eastern road which took form as loin-girt runner or mounted courier. We who live upon the wire, need a kindred imagination to realise what it was to those left behind, to have their men-folk go to India. With us, fancy is checked by maps and books, and has not often to dwell on the unknown and inconceivable. To them, what was not a blank was probably a fear. Distance could have no terrors for them, because they were mostly, by tribe and breeding, ingrain nomads; many of them had come from the far north and thought the great mountains or the desert sands the desirable setting for life. Such experience, however, would not help to understand the place of the Hindus, with its heats, its rains, strange beasts, and hated and dreaded pagans.
3.1.6
It is not easy to say wherein lies the pleasure of animating the silhouettes which are all that names, without detail of character, bring down from the past. Perhaps its roots run too deep and close to what is dear and hidden in the heart, for them to make way readily to the surface in speech. But it is an undoubted pleasure, and it is what makes it agreeable to linger with these women in Kabul in those hours when our common human nature allows their thoughts and feelings to be clear to us. Sometimes their surroundings are too unfamiliar for us to understand what sentiments they would awaken; but this is not so when there is news of marches, fighting, defeat, or victory. Then the silhouettes round, and breathe, and weep or smile. Bābar left few fighting men in Kābul, but there remained a great company of women and children, all under the nominal command and charge of Prince Kāmrān, who was himself a child. His exact age I am not able to set down, for Bābar does not chronicle his birth, an omission which appears due to its falling in one of the gaps of the Memoirs. Bābar left the city on November 17th, and was joined on December 3rd by Humāyūn at the Garden of Fidelity. He had to wait for the boy, and was much displeased, and reprimanded him severely.
3.1.7
Humāyūn was then seventeen years old, and since 1520 had been governor of Badakhshān. He had now brought over his army to reinforce his father, and it may well be that Māhum had something to do with his delayed march from Kābul. She could have seen him only at long intervals since she had accompanied Bābar, in 1520, to console and settle her child of twelve in his distant and undesired post of authority. Shortly after the army had gone eastwards, disquieting news must have reached Kābul, for three times before the middle of December, 1525, Bābar was alarmingly ill. What he records of drinking and drug-eating may explain this; he thought his illness a chastisement, and set himself to repent of sins which were bred of good fellowship and by forgetfulness in gay company; but his conflict with them was without victory. He referred his punishment to another cause than these grosser acts, and came to regard the composition of satirical verses as a grave fault. His reflections on the point place him near higher moralists, for he says it was sad a tongue which could repeat sublime words, should occupy itself with meaner and despicable fancies: 'Oh, my Creator! I have tyrannized over my soul, and if Thou art not bountiful to me, of a truth I shall be numbered amongst the accursed.' These are some of the thoughts of Bābar which lift our eyes above what is antipathetic in him, and explain why he wins the respect and affection of all who take trouble to know him.
3.2.1
Not long after January 8th, 1526, a messenger would reach Kābul who took more than news, for Bābar had found manuscripts in the captured fort of Milwat, and now sent some for Kāmrān, while he gave others to Humāyūn. They were valuable, but not so much so as he had hoped, and many were theological. This and other records about books remind one that they were few and precious in those days. How many that we now rank amongst the best of the sixteenth century had not yet been written! There was the Tarikh-i-Rashidi, and the very stuff of the Tuzuk was in the living and making.
3.2.2
On February 26th Humayun created news which would be as welcome to Maham as it was to Babar, for he was successful in his first expedition on active service. This occurred at Hisar-firoza, and the town and district were given to him with a sum of money. News of the victory was despatched to Kabul from Shahabad, and immediately after Babar’s record of this in the Memoirs, there occurs a passage of varied interest, although it seems to European ears a somewhat strange commemoration of a detail of toilette: "At this same station and this same day the razor or scissors were first applied to Humayun’s beard." Babar made an entry in June, 1504, of the same act accomplished for himself. It was one which Turks celebrated by festivity. The entry quoted above is made as though by Babar, but it is followed by an explanation that it is inserted by Humayun in pious imitation of his father’s own. Humayun did this in 1553-4, shortly before he set out to recover his father’s lost domains in Hindustan. The date is fixed by his statement that he made the interpolation when he was forty-six. Humayun's little victory would be dwarfed by the next news of the royal army, for April 12th, 1526, brought the battle of Panipat and the overthrow of Ibrahim Lodi Afghan, the Emperor of Hindustan. The swiftest of runners would carry these tidings to Kabul in something under a month.
3.2.3
On May 11th Babar distributed the treasures of five kings, and left himself so little that he was jestingly dubbed beggar (qalandar). He forgot no one, but sent gifts far and wide to kinsmen and friends, and to shrines both in Arabia and 'Iraq. Kabul was specially remembered and a small coin sent for every soul within it. Gul-badan tells what was given to the ladies, beginning with the great begams, the amirs of frequent mention. It was certainly a wonderful day when the curiosities and splendid things of Hind were unpacked for their inspections, and very welcome, too, would be the amir who escorted the precious caravan. He was Babar's friend, Khwaja Kilan, who had extorted a most unwilling leave from India on the ground that his constitution was not suited to the climate of that country, a delicate assumption of blame to his own defects which it is to be hoped he conveyed to the ladies as a reassurance. After the gay social fashion of the time, no doubt he helped the ladies to run day into night in the tale-telling they loved. It appears probable that there was no such complete seclusion of Turki women from the outside world as came to be the rule in Hindustan. The ladies may have veiled themselves, but I think they received visitors more freely, and more in accordance with the active life of much-travelling peoples, than is the case in Hindu or Muslim houses in India at the present day.
3.2.4
The little Gul-badan will have had her present with the rest, and probably, like some others, it was chosen by her father specially for her. He sent a list with the gifts so that each person might receive what he had settled upon. This he is said to have done both in allotting the jewels and the dancing-girls, the latter of whom are mentioned as sent to the great begams. Their novel style of dancing ranks them amongst the curiosities of Hind; but nothing is said about their views of presentation to foreign ladies in Kabul. Certainly Gul-badan will have seen them dance, and she will also have enjoyed the joke played off by Babar from Agra on an old dependent called 'Asas (night-guard). This and all the begam's stories are left for her to tell, as she does later in this volume.
3.2.5
There came with the gifts an injunction which calls out the remark that at all crises Babar gave expression to religious feeling and performed due devotional ceremonies. He had desired Khwaja Kilan to arrange for the ladies to go out of the city to the Garden of the Audience-hall, so that they might there make the prostration of thanks for the success of his arms. They were to go in state, and to remain some days. He must have sighed as he planned an excursion so much to his liking and in which he could not share. The act of thanksgiving would be done under a summer heaven, in an enchanting June garden, of which the snowy hills were the distant girdle. Our princess will have gone out with the rest, and with them her small figure, bravely attired, will have bowed forehead to the earth in thanks to the Giver of Victory. Tender thoughts will have travelled to the absent, and especially to him who loved his Kabul as Babar did.
3.2.6
It is remarkable in him that, longing to return home as he did, he should have had endurance to remain and fight on in Hindustan. His constitution was assuredly not suited to its climate. His men hated it; his closest friend had left it; Humayun and other intimates were soon to follow the khwaja on leave; but he resisted all influences, even when he had become so homesick that he wept at sight of fruit from Kabul. Only love of action, desire to be great, and capacity for greatness, could have held and upheld him at his self-chosen post. It cannot be called a small matter on which the history of hundreds of years turns, and yet it was but the innate quality of one man, and that man very human. Babar stood fast, and India had Akbar and his splendid followers and all the galaxy of their creations in sandstone and marble.
3.2.7
When Gul-badan was about two years old, and therefore shortly before her father left Kabul, she was adopted by Maham Begam to rear and educate. Maham was the chief lady of the royal household and mother of Babar's eldest son, she was supreme, and had well defined rights over other inmates. Perhaps this position justified her in taking from Dildar two of her children, Hindal and Gul-badan, as she did in 1519 and 1521. Before 1519 Maham had lost four children younger than Humayun; they were three girls and a boy, and all died in infancy. So it may have been heart-hunger that led to the adoptions she made, or they might be the outcome of affection for Babar (it is said she was to him what 'A'isha was to Muhammad), which determined her, if she could not rear her children for him, at least to give him his children with the stamp of her love upon them. In some cases which are mentioned by Babar, adoptions were made by a childless wife of high degree from a slave or servant, but no such reason seems behind those from Dildar. She is spoken of in terms which preclude the supposition that (as Haidar puts it in another place) she was outside the circle of distinction.
3.2.8
The story of Hindal's adoption is briefly this: In 1519 Babar was away from Kabul on the expedition which gave him Bajaur and Swat, and which brought into the royal household Bibi Mubarika Yusufzai. On January 25th he received a letter from Maham, who was in Kabul, about a topic which had been discussed earlier between them—namely, the adoption by her of a child of which Dildar expected the birth. Now she repeated her wishes and, moreover, asked Babar to take the fates and declare whether it would be a boy or girl. Whether he performed the divination rite himself, or had it done by some of the women who were in camp with the army, (he speaks of it as believed in women,) it was done, and the result was announced to Maham as promising a boy. The rite is simple: Two pieces of paper are inscribed, one with a boy's name and one with a girl's, and are enwrapped in clay and set in water. The name first disclosed, as the clay opens out in the moisture, reveals the secret. On the 26th Babar wrote, giving over the child to Maham and communicating the prophecy. On March 4th a boy was born, to whom was given the name of Abu'n-nasir with the sobriquet of Hindal by which he is known in history and which is perhaps to be read as meaning 'of the dynasty of Hind.' Three days after birth he was taken, whether she would or no, from Dil-dar to be made over to Maham.
3.3.1
It is clear that Dil-dar objected, and although the separation could not have been so complete where the real and adoptive mothers are part of one household as it is under monogamous custom, it was certainly hard to lose her firstborn son in this way. She had still her two elder girls. Gul-badan was born four years later and removed from her care at the age of two, by which date, it may be, she had her son Alwar. In after-years Dil-dar, as a widow, lived with Hindal, and she had back Gul-badan while the latter was still a young and unmarried girl. Babar was separated from his family for over three years after he left Kabul in 1525. The tedium of waiting for news or for his return was broken for the ladies by several interesting home events, and by several items of Indian news which must have stirred the whole community in Kabul. On August 2nd, 1526, Maham gave birth to a son who was named Faruq, but he too died in babyhood and his father never saw him. In December, 1526, there occurred to Babar what must have roused anger and dread in all Kabul, for he was poisoned by the mother of Ibrahim.
3.3.2
How Babur conveyed the news of this to his people at home can be seen, because he has inserted the letter he wrote to allay anxiety, as soon as recovered strength permitted. Gul-badan has given the main points of the crime. She observes that Babur had called the ill-fated woman ‘mother,’ and had shown her kindness, a section leaves out the Afghan mourner, this Q. Begam, whose son had been defeated and killed, dynasty overthrown, and herself pitied by the man on whom she tried to avenge herself. Her fate is worth commemorating. She was first put under contribution—i.e. made over for the exploitation of her fortune to two of Babur's officers—and then placed in the custody of a trusty man for conveyance to Kabul. Perhaps she dreaded her reception there, for she contrived to elude her guards in crossing the Indus, threw herself into the water, and was drowned.
3.3.3
The letter above-mentioned is full of what one likes in Babur. He quotes, ‘Whoever comes to the gates of death knows the value of life,’ and adds with thanks to Heaven, that he did not know before how sweet a thing life is. Here, too, he shows that he felt the tie which bound him to the Power in whose hands are the issues of life and death. He, his daughter, and his cousin and literary compeer, Haidar Mirza, frequently express religious sentiment, and here Babur exhibits the human graces of kind thought and solicitude to lessen the anxieties of his distant household and people. He forced himself to live again, in words, the horrible experiences of which he wrote while still in retirement, and four days only after their occurrence.
3.3.4
Three months later Kabul had news of an uplifting victory, inasmuch as it had been won from men of alien faith, whose overthrow was a plenary religious duty to the Muslim. It was fought on March 13th, 1527, against Hindu Rajputs under Rana Sanga, and at Khanwa, on the skirts of the yet uncrowned hill of Sikri. It was preluded by dread amongst the Musalmans, and by solemn acts which should make them more worthy to be the tools of Heaven and to enforce the stern belief that in battle with the pagan there was vengeance of the cause of God. Men declared repentance for sin and took oaths of abstinence; gold and silver drinking-vessels, probably of Persian handicraft and artistic beauty, were broken up and given to the poor; wine was poured out upon the ground, and some was salted into vinegar. Where the libation of penitence was offered, the earth was dedicated to the uses of an almshouse with chambered well. So strengthened, the Musalmans went into the fight and made great slaughter of valiant foes.
3.3.5
The victory was followed by change in the personnel of Babar's army, which had long been wearying for home and murmuring against Hindustan. This was especially so amongst Humayun's Badakhshis, who were accustomed to short service of one or two months, and it was now almost sixteen since they had left even Kabul. Only promise of immediate leave to follow had induced some men to stay for this one fight, and they had been told that when it was over, all who desired it should have freedom to go. Many amirs had given 'stupid and unformed opinions' against remaining in Hindustan at all, and down to the humblest followers these views had found acceptance. As has been said, nothing would persuade Babar's closest friend to stay with him, although before his final decision was acted on, his master had called a council, and had expressed himself with directness and vigour:
3.3.6
‘I told them that empire and conquest could not exist without the material and means of war, that royalty and nobility could not exist without subjects and dependent provinces; that by the labour of many years, after undergoing great hardships, measuring many a toilsome journey, and raising various armies—after exposing myself and my troops to circumstances of great danger, to battle and bloodshed, by the Divine favour I had routed my formidable enemy (Ibrahim), and achieved the conquest of numerous provinces and kingdoms which we at present held. And now, what force compels, what hardship obliges us, without visible cause, after having worn out our life in accomplishing the desired achievement, to abandon and fly from our conquests, and to retreat to Kabul with every symptom of disappointment and discomfiture? Let anyone who calls himself my friend never henceforward make such a proposal; but if there is any among you who cannot bring himself to stay, or to give up his purpose of return, let him depart. Having made this fair and reasonable proposal, the discontented were of necessity compelled, however unwillingly, to renounce their seditious purpose.’ After the Rajput defeat the time came for the promised leave, but there is no mention in the Memoirs of a general exodus. Humayun went with his Badakhshis, and also, as he seemed ‘uncomfortable,’ Mahdi Khwaja, Khanzada’s husband.
3.3.7
He, but not only he, had been through one hot season in the plains and another was approaching,—a discomposing fact, and one to wing the fancy and the feet to Kabul. He, however, left his son Ja'far in his government of Etawa, and returned to India himself in 1528. Humayun said farewell on April 16th, 1527, and betook himself to Dihli, where he broke open the treasury and stole its contents. If he had needed money to pay his men, his act might have taken different colour and have been leniently described, but he had had lavish gifts in money and kind from Babar, and had been allowed to keep the great diamond which the Rājā of Gwāliār had given him as the price of family honour and which, there is good ground to believe, is the Koh-i-nūr. Treated as he had been, his act was a crime, and base and mean. Perhaps it may be set to the credit of the older Humāyūn that the record of his theft has survived 1553-4 and his then perusal and annotation of his father’s Memoirs. By that time he had suffered many painful consequences of his own acts, and may have concurred with his father’s judgment on his younger self. Babar was extremely hurt by his unexpected conduct and reproached him severely. There was enough now known of Humāyūn’s character to awaken doubt of his fitness to rule, and to need all his father’s great affection to veil and forgive. From Dihlī he returned to Badakhshān, and is next heard of in the autumn of 1528, when he announced the birth of his first-born son, Al-amān.
3.3.8
Al-amān was the child of that Bega (Hājī) Begam of whom the histories all speak, when in 1539 she is captured by Shīr Shāh at Chausa. Together with the news of Al-amān’s birth came that of a marriage of Kāmrān with a daughter of Sultān ‘Alī Begchīk. Babar sent congratulatory gifts to both sons in response; and he has included his covering letter to Humāyūn in his text. It is frank, fault-finding, and affectionate. It objects to the name given to the child; it urges action: ‘The world is his who exerts himself’; it objects to Humāyūn’s complaints of the remoteness of Badakhshān, and tells him that no bondage is like the bondage of kings, and that it ill becomes him to complain. It attacks Humāyūn’s spelling and composition, and ends this topic with words good to quote: ‘You certainly do not excel in letter-writing; and you fail chiefly because you have too great a desire to show off your acquirements. For the future, write unaffectedly, clearly, and in plain words fighting king at twelve Boy chiefs were common when fathers were so apt to die by violent means, so were baby figure-heads of armies such as that few-monthed Persian baby who (like an angel's semblance on an ancient battle-ship) led his father's army for Humayun's help in 1544
3.4.1
On December 12th other signs of dignity were bestowed on the boy 'Askari not only a jewelled dagger, a belt, and royal dress of honour, but the insignia of high command, the standard, horse-tail, and kettle drums, excellent horses, ten elephants, mules and camels, the equipage of a royal camp, and leave to hold a princely court and sit at the head of a hall of state The small boy's mind is clear to us about the horses, for where is the child of twelve whom they would not delight ? But what was in it about the elephants ? and how did he look when he inspected their bulky line ? He bade farewell to his father on the 21st, — the Emperor being in his bath, a statement which exhales the East, — and after this, though there are many details of his campaigning, nothing of living interest is set down in the Memoirs about him In the future he was Kamran's shadow, and displayed a loyalty to mother-blood which was natural under the difficulty of being loyal to Humayun, but which made him a Timurid foe to his house, who initiated nothing and walked always in the bad path marked out for him by the ‘worthy and correct' Kamran
3.4.2
Coming back from this excursion into the future, to the simple topic of Babar's presents to his children, there can be mentioned a set which is quite delightful in its careful choice and appropriateness It was sent to Kabul in 1528 for Hindal, and consisted of a jewelled inkstand, a stool inlaid with mother-of-pearl, a short robe of Babar's own, and an alphabet What could be better for the royal schoolboy of ten ?
3.4.3
an order was issued which brought about an event of extreme importance to the ladies in Kabul, — namely, that they should migrate to Hindustan There delay in the execution of the royal command, and having regard to the number of ladies, the difference of opinion as to the advisability of going at all, discussion as to the details of the journey, and also remembering that (as the facts about the migration come out in the Memoirs,) there would be many who thought their family interest might be better served by remaining in Kabul, it is not remarkable that there was delay in starting the cavalcade. The migration was amply dictated to many of the party by Babar’s wish to see his own people again, but it is clear that the enforced levée en masse of the ... considerations of policy and peace. The city was full of women who, by birth or marriage, were attached to various branches of the Timurids, and there was conflict of aim and palpable friction. It may well be that Kamran’s government provoked unrest, because he was the son of a mother of less birth than were very many of the resident begams of Kabul.
3.4.4
The Emperor was put in full possession of the state of affairs by a letter from Khwaja Kilan which reached him in camp on February 6th, 1528, and which was brought by a servant who, in addition to the written words, gave him all the news of Kabul by word of mouth. Babar replied to the khwaja on February 11th by that letter which those who know the time and writer rank amongst the truly interesting epistles of the world. The tenor of the khwaja’s own is clear from it, and in part reply the Emperor writes: "You take notice of the unsettled state of Kabul. I have considered the matter very attentively and with the best of my judgment, and have made up my mind that in a country where there are seven or eight chiefs, nothing regular or settled is to be looked for. I have therefore sent for my sisters and the ladies of my family into Hindustan, and, having resolved on making Kabul and all the neighbouring countries and districts part of the imperial domain, I have written fully on the subject to Humayun and Kamran. Immediately on receiving this letter you will, without loss of time, attend my sisters and the ladies of my family as far as the Nil-ab (Indus), so that, whatever impediments there may be to their leaving Kabul, they must, at all events, start out within a week after this arrives; for as a detachment has left Hindustan and is waiting for them, any delay will expose it to difficulty, and the country, too, will suffer.’
3.4.5
Who were these seven or eight chiefs in Kabul? Not men. The fighting chiefs were almost all in India, even Mahdi had rejoined the army before the date of this letter. Babar's word 'sisters' is a guiding light; and it does not altogether exclude the influence of the men who, though in Hindustan, were in touch with Kabul and its friction and intrigues. First of sisters was Khanzada, who had certainly a holding for her support, and who had influence of birth and personal, as having sacrificed herself in her earlier marriage to secure Babar's safety. She was now the wife of a man, Mahdi Khwaja, who, if the story told of him by the author of the Tabaqat is true even in gist, was such as to suggest him as a possible successor of Babar to the powerful and sensible Khalifa. There was, since her husband was with Babar and all great ladies had been left in Kabul, Shahr-banu, Khanzada’s half-sister, wife of Khalifa's brother, Junaid Barlas, and mother of a son. There was also, it is probable, another of 'Umar Shaikh's daughters, Yadgar.
3.4.6
Besides Babar's sisters de facto, there were others of courtesy. Such was Sulaiman's mother, whose anxieties for his future were, however, about to find happy end by his reinstatement in 1530 in his hereditary government of Badakhshan. There were the families of three men of Timurid birth, grandsons of Sultan Husain Mirza Baiqra, all of whom were in India, and all of whom were men of high pretension. These were, — Muhammad Sultan Mirza, the arch-rebel of the future, Qasim Husain Sultan Mirza, son of an Ilchi father, and Muhammad Zaman Mirza, son of Husain’s son, Badi-uz-zaman. There were in Kabul the people of Badi-uz-zaman, also Babar’s half-nephew. These instances will suffice to show the reality of the elements of unrest which conflicting family interests and jealousies might and did foment in Kabul: they do not include the many others furnished by Babar’s personal circle and by his numerous and influential aunts.
3.4.7
Two Timurid ladies, Fakhr-jahan and Khadija, both paternal aunts of the Emperor, had gone to Hindustan so early as November, 1527. With whom they went or why they went is not recorded. The first was the wife of a Tirmizi Sayyid, member of a religious family with which royal alliance was frequent, and she would find relations of her husband in the army. The second, Khadija, has no man mentioned as her husband, an omission by Babar and Gulbadan which surprises, and which the chance word of another writer may easily fill up. Perhaps these aunts joined their nephew in response to his invitation of April, 1526, that kinsfolk and friends would come and see prosperity with him. They brought their children, and were met outside the city by Babar on November 23rd, and by him conducted in a lucky hour to their assigned palaces in Agra. Fakhr-jahan and Khadija stayed eleven months and were bidden good-bye before their return journey to Kabul on September 26th, 1528. After all, Khadija did not go, having affairs of her own to detain her, and this delay allowed the Emperor to pay her another of the Friday calls which he habitually made, during the time of his occupation of Hindustan, on his elder kinswomen. On the 17th three sisters of Fakhr-jahan and Khadija arrived in the suburbs and were welcomed. From all these Babar could hear the news and gossip of Kabul, and thus add to the impressions which led to his order for the begams to join him in India.
3.4.8
Apropos of the aunts of frequent mention, it may be said that both Babar and Haidar convey the opinion that deference to elder women was a permanent trait of their age and set. Comings and goings of aunts are set down, houses and incomes provided, advice is sought, troubles are carried to them for sympathy; they are ambassadors of peace; their nephews vie with one another as to who shall entertain them; in short, both the Tuzuk and the Tarikh indicate distinct deference to women of an elder generation. A good deal about the exodus of the ladies can be gleaned from Babar and from our princess, who now comes on the scene in her small person of five or six. The order for it was given at latest in 1528; this is clear from the royal letter to the khwaja and from the fact that Maham started in January, 1529. Babar heard on March 22nd that all had really left Kabul, which news, taken with the arrival of the main cavalcade three months after her, suggests that Maham started first and travelled quickly, as being of a small company, and that the rest set off in detachments, as they and their transport were ready. The whole party would get off between January 21st and the end of February; this can be surmised, because the letter of March 22nd would be about a month in reaching Babar.
3.5.1
Most of the journey would be made by horse-litter, and some perhaps by palki with bearers. Men frequently dropped down the Kabul River on rafts, being thus able to do in twelve hours what ten marches covered; but one cannot suppose the ladies would make this adventurous journey, which was attended by risk even when people did not fall off the raft after potations, as some of Babar’s companions had done. Probably the road taken was that by But-khak (Dust of Idols) and Jagdalik, and by Jalalabad and the Khaibar, but there is no certainty, because there is no information. Gul-badan travelled with Maham in advance of her sisters, and thus had experiences all her own and a reception by her father unalloyed by numbers. Her liveliness would while away the tedium of the five months’ travel, and help to distract Maham’s sad thoughts from the loss of Faruq, her youngest born. Unfortunately, she sets down nothing about the journey until near its end. Letters between the Emperor and the travellers were frequent. One of the couriers, named Shirak (Little Lion), who was despatched by him on March 5th, carried not only letters to Maham, but was entrusted with a copy of the Memoirs which had been made to send to Samarqand.
3.5.2
On April 1st, and at Ghazipur, Babar heard that the ladies had been met at the Indus on February 19th by their military escort under his master-of-horse, and by this amir convoyed to the Chanab. This might fitly be told of Maham’s party, for there are other records of covering the distance to the Indus in about a month. On the 22nd a servant of Maham brought letters to Arrah from her whom he had left at the Garden of Purity (Bagh-i-safa), near Pind-dadan Khan, and this is the last such entry. Maham reached Agra on June 27th, and Babar met her outside the city at midnight.
3.5.3
Gul-badan gives amusing particulars of her own arrival, all of which she shall be left to tell. She followed Maham into Agra on the 28th, not having been allowed to travel with her through the previous night. Then she saw her father. Of him she can have kept only a dim memory, and it is likely enough she would stand in some awe of him and his deeds, but no word he has written suggests that a child needed to fear him, and she soon experienced 'happiness such that greater could not be imagined.' Happy child! and happy father, too! who recovered such a clever and attractive little daughter. It is not only her book that lets us know she had a lively mind, but the fact of its composition at an age when wits are apt to be rusted by domestic peace. Only a light that was strong in childhood would have burned so long to guide her unaccustomed pen after half a century of life, and only a youth of happy thoughts and quick perceptions have buoyed her, still gay and vivacious, across the worries and troubles of Humayun's time.
3.5.4
There were pleasant days after the coming to Agra, when Babar took Maham, and the child also, to see his works at Dholpur and Sikri. He had always been a builder and a lover of a view, a maker of gardens and planter of trees. Much of the scenery of his new location displeased him; he thought the neighbourhood of Agra 'ugly and detestable' and 'repulsive and disgusting,' words which do not now link well with that Agra which he and his line have made the goal of the pilgrim of beauty. It is difficult to go back in fancy to the city without a Taj, with no Sikandra near and with Sikri uncrowned.
3.5.5
Dholpur and Sikri had much to show of work done by the orders of the Emperor, — 'my royal father,' as Gulbadan generally calls him, using the home word baba invariably. At Sikri, amongst other buildings, was that in which she says he used to sit and write his book, i.e., the Tuzuk. There, too, the great battle which had been fought in 1527 will not have been ignored to ears so sympathetic as Maham's. Perhaps here the little girl first learnt dimly what it was to be a Ghazi, and to fight on the side of Heaven. She says that when these excursions had been made, and three months after her own arrival had sped by, the begams, with Khanzada as their chief, came within meeting distance of the capital, and that the Emperor went out to welcome them. There is nothing of this in the Memoirs, which are silent after the arrival of Maham as to the doings of the royal ladies. The reunion was soon to be clouded by anxieties and loss. A brief return in the story of Humayun must be made here. In the summer of 1529 he heard in Badakhshan of his father’s failing health, and, without asking leave, set off for India. He passed through Kabul, and there, to Kamran’s surprise, met him, who had just come up from Ghazni. The two conferred, and persuaded the ten-years-old Hindal, who was under orders for Agra, to take up the government of Badakhshan. Humayun then continued his march, and arrived in Agra without announcement to his father.
3.5.6
He came to the presence just when, by a coincidence which Maham may have helped to bring about, his parents were talking of him. It would be natural for the mother, who cannot have been ignorant of her son’s coming, to stir gentle thoughts of him and to warm his father’s heart towards him before they met, and by this to break the shock of the unpermitted absence from duty.
3.5.7
Babar was greatly angered by the desertion, which in truth placed Badakhshan in difficulty by withdrawing both troops and control. Its consequences were important, and caused him profound regret. To stand fast across the mountains and to push out the royal holdings beyond the Oxus from the vantage-ground of Badakhshan was a cherished dream, and one which he had taken steps through both Humayun and Kamran to realize. He wished Humayun to return to his post, but the latter, while saying he must go if ordered, was not willing to leave his people again. Babar then asked Khalifa to go, but this request was evaded, and there is much to arouse surmise that Khalifa saw in it the act of someone who wished him absent from the scene of crisis now foreseen as near. In his objection to leave Agra, affection for his old master would be a natural factor; another was his own supreme influence, the sequel of his character and of Babar’s recent failure in health, and springing from his power was, perhaps the dominant factor of his objection to leave,—a disposition to supplant Humayun in the succession by a ruler of less doubtful character.
3.5.8
The fate of Badakhshan was decided by its bestowal on its hereditary chief, Sulaiman Mirza, Miran-shahi, now a boy of sixteen, while Humayun's youthful locum tenens was ordered to come to India. Humayun betook himself to the idle enjoyments of his jagir of Sambhal, and was there, in a few months, attacked by illness which threatened life and which led to the remarkable episode of Babar’s self-sacrifice to save him. The narrative of this stands in all the histories and need not be repeated, but for the sake of making our princess’ details clear, it is as well to state what was the rite performed by Babar. There was and is in the East belief that if offering be made of the thing most precious to the suppliant, and if the offering be accepted, Heaven will give the life of a sick man in exchange. The rite observed is simple: first prayer of intercession is made, then the suppliant walks three times round the sick man’s bed. Of Babar’s sincerity there is no doubt; in mind and heart he gave himself; he felt conviction that, after the circuits, he had borne away the illness. Humayun was restored and Babar died,—a return from the gate of death and an entry there which might have occurred without Babar’s rite, but none the less was the self-sacrifice complete because he believed in its efficacy and was willing to die.
3.5.9
His health worsened rapidly after this and he made ready to go. Marriages were arranged for Gul-rang and Gul-chihra; the amirs were addressed; Humayun was counselled and named to the succession. Babar died on December 26th, 1530. 'Black fell the day,’ says his daughter; 'we passed that ill-fated day each in a hidden corner.’ The question of Khalifa’s wish to supersede Humayun is of great interest. It is written of by Nizamu-d-din Ahmad, in the Tabaqat, who had the story he retails from his father, Muqim, an old retainer of the Court. Abu’l-fazl repeats the main statement, which is that Khalifa had had thoughts of superseding Humayun by Muhammad Mahdi Khwaja, the husband of Khanzada Begam.
3.6.1
A few of the many points involved in Nizamu-d-din's story find fitting entry here. Babar must have been long conscious of the fact that he was not so strong as before he faced the Indian climate; he did not send for Humayun; he wished him to leave when he came unasked; he had 'Askari in the full dignity of a commander near him; as he lay dying, he was fretfully anxious for Hindal's coming; he and Khalifa were friends of many years' testing; both knew the faults of Humayun; if Khalifa had planned to set the latter aside, it is likely that the thought was not altogether absent from the mind of Babar; it is not credible that Khalifa should have regarded a supersession as practicable, if he had no acquaintance with the Emperor's doubts as to Humayun, and without knowing that these were shared by others than his master and himself, for the nomination would be made by Babar and to his chiefs.
3.6.2
Muhammad Mahdi Khwaja is one of those men about whose birth and descent particulars are looked for with the sure hope of success in the search. Yet nothing is said on the topic by Babar or Gul-badan. When he first appears on the scene (in the Persian version, and presumably also in the Elphinstone text), he is not introduced, as it is customary for Babar to introduce, with some few words indicating family. This omission may be a result of forgetfulness bred of familiarity, or it may be, and most probably is, that he himself first met Muhammad Mahdi at a date which falls in one of the gaps of his book. Nizamu'd-din's statements must have some corn of truth, and they imply that by birth, as well as by marriage and military rank, Mahdi was a man who, without outrage, might be raised still higher. There are hints which make it seem probable that he was a Tirmizi sayyid and the son of a Timurid mother. The suggestion of Tirmizi parentage is supported by the burial of Abu’l-ma'ali Tirmizi in the place of interment of Mahdi and Khanzada.
3.6.3
It has suggested itself to me as possible that Khalifa’s plan of superseding Humayun was meant to apply only to Hindustan, or at least to a part of Babur’s dominions. Abu-sa'id had partitioned his lands amongst his sons; provinces so varied as Babur’s seem to demand division even more than his grandfather’s had done. We look back to Babur across Akbar’s Indian Empire, and may not give sufficient weight to the fact that Dihli and Agra were not the centre or the desired heart of Babur’s. He wanted Farghana and Samarqand and much more beyond the Oxus, and he had taken decisive steps towards securing his object through both his elder sons, and had given them charge and work of extension in those countries. Kabul was the true centre of his desired empire, and to force the Uzbegs back in widening circle was his persistent wish. If Mahdi or any other competent man had ruled in Dihli, by whatever tenure, this would not necessarily have ruined Humayun, or have taken from him the lands most coveted by Babar. All Babar’s plans and orders were such as to keep Humayun beyond the Hindu-kush, and to take him across the Oxus. The dislike of the royal army to Hindustan was a large factor in the question of centralizing government there, and so too would be the temptations to indolence afforded by its climate and customs, to which it was easy to foresee from Humayun’s life in Sambhal that he would readily succumb.
3.6.4
Kabul was made an imperial domain by Babar’s written command to both elder sons, and his own words leave one in doubt as to his further intentions about it. To whom Hindustan would have been given if Humayun had obeyed orders and had held fast in Badakhshan, there is nothing to show, but weight is due to the gist of the story of the supersession. Kamran declared that Kabul was given to his mother Gul-rukh, and Humayun gave it in fief to Kamran at his accession. There is mist over the scene from which only the accomplished facts emerge. Humayun came to India; he was Maham’s son; she was there; Khalifa let Mahdi fall; Humayun’s personal charm reasserted itself over Babar’s anger; and he became Emperor of Hindustan and all the imperial domains. Child though Gul-badan was at her father’s death, she must have been impressed by the events that preceded it: Alwar’s death; her own accident at Sikri; her father’s premonitions and dervish-moods; Humayun’s sudden arrival and the anger it caused; his illness and the dread for his life; her father’s awe-inspiring rite and its bewildering success; her sisters’ marriages, which could not be joyful; the haunting suspicion of poison; the end and the blank, — all too much for so short a time in strange scenes and in a disabling climate.
3.6.5
Following the death came the forty days of mourning, and of good works and gifts at the tomb in the Garden of Rest at Agra. Sikri furnished a part of the endowment for its readers and reciters, and Maham sent them food twice daily from her own estate. The tomb was put under the guardianship of a man whom our begam calls Khwaja Muhammad 'Ali 'asas (night-guard), and who may be he that 'never killed a sparrow,' and may be Maham's brother. If so, he will be heard of again under other and widely different circumstances in 1547. As is well known, Babar's body was conveyed to Kabul, and there laid to rest in the spot chosen by himself.