The History of Humāyūn (Gulbadan Begam) 4.2.5

4.2.5

During the lustrum in which she did not see Humayun, his adventures were too many and too remarkable for abbreviation in these pages. Mr. Erskine has told them with evident enjoyment, and Gul-badan supplements his narrative with some material he did not use; it may be interjected here that he had no knowledge of her book. For most of the period of the exile in Sind and Persia, Hamida was a good authority, and more than once Gul-badan has prefaced a statement with ‘Hamida-banu Begam says.’ She was one in the cruel desert march to Umarkot; it will have been from her that the princess heard that Akbar’s birthplace was a beautiful spot where food was very cheap, she was one of the little band which fled from Quetta, she shared the qualified hospitality of the Persian king, and, it should be said, reproduced only a sense of good treatment by him, and she came back to Qandahar with his auxiliary army. In Kabul Gul-badan did not want for old friends and kinswomen. She had her own home occupations and her children to look after, of these, though she names one only, Sa'adat-yar, she may have had several, but there is no definite statement as to which of Khizr’s children were also hers. She was not unkindly treated by Kamran, as were the other royal ladies whom he turned out of their usual homes and exploited in purse. Indeed, he wished to regard her as one of his own family and to distinguish between her and her mother, but of this she would not hear.