The History of Humāyūn (Gulbadan Begam) 3.2
The History of Humāyūn (A. S. Beveridge) 3.2
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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.