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 Bābar'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. Humāyūn was restored and Bābar died,—a return from the gate of death and an entry there which might have occurred without Bābar's rite, but none the less was the self-sacrifice complete because he believed in its efficacy and was willing to die.
His health worsened rapidly after this and he made ready to go. Marriages were arranged for Gul-rang and Gul-chihra; the amīrs were addressed; Humāyūn was counselled and named to the succession. Bābar 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 Khalīfa's wish to supersede Humāyūn is of great interest. It is written of by Niāmu-d-dīn Aḥmad, in the abaqāt, who had the story he retails from his father, Muqīm, an old retainer of the Court. Abū'l-faẓl repeats the main statement, which is that Khalīfa had had thoughts of superseding Humāyūn by Muḥammad Mahdī Khwāja, the husband of Khānzāda Begam.*
A few of the many points involved in Niāmu-d-dīn's story find fitting entry here. Bābar 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 Humāyūn; he wished him to leave when he came unasked; he had 'Askarī in the full dignity of a commander near him; as he lay dying, he was fretfully anxious for Hindāl's coming; he and Khalīfa were friends of many years' testing; both knew the faults of Humāyūn; if Khalīfa had planned to set the latter aside, it is likely that the thought was not altogether absent from the mind of Bābar; it is not credible that Khalīfa should have regarded a supersession as practicable, if he had no acquaintance with the Emperor's doubts as to Humāyūn, and without knowing that these were shared by others than his master and himself, for the nomination would be made by Bābar and to his chiefs.
Muḥammad Mahdī Khwāja 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 Bābar or by 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 Bābar 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 Muḥammad Mahdī at a date which falls in one of the gaps of his book.*
Niāmu-d-dīn's statements must have some corn of truth, and they imply that by birth, as well as by marriage and military rank, Mahdī was a man who, without outrage, might be raised still higher. There are hints which make it seem probable that he was a Tīrmīzī sayyid and the son of a Tīmūrid mother. The suggestion of Tīrmīzī parentage is supported by the burial of Abū'l-ma'ālī Tīrmīzī in the place of interment of Mahdī and Khānzāda.*
It has suggested itself to me as possible that Khalīfa's plan of superseding Humāyūn was meant to apply only to Hindūstān, or at least to a part of Bābar's dominions. Abū-sa'īd had partitioned his lands amongst his sons; provinces so varied as Bābar's seem to demand division even more than his grandfather's had done. We look back to Bābar across Akbar's Indian Empire, and may not give sufficient weight to the fact that Dihlī and Āgra were not the centre or the desired heart of Bābar's. He wanted Farghāna 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. Kābul was the true centre of his desired empire, and to force the Uzbegs back in widening circle was his persistent wish.
If Mahdī or any other competent man had ruled in Dihlī, by whatever tenure, this would not necessarily have ruined Humāyūn, or have taken from him the lands most coveted by Bābar. All Bābar's plans and orders were such as to keep Humāyūn beyond the Hindū-kush, and to take him across the Oxus. The dislike of the royal army to Hindūstān 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 Humāyūn's life in Sambhal that he would readily succumb.
Kābul was made an imperial domain by Bābar's written command to both elder sons, and his own words leave one in doubt as to his further intentions about it. To whom Hindūstān would have been given if Humāyūn had obeyed orders and had held fast in Badakhshān, there is nothing to show, but weight is due to the gist of the story of the supersession. Kāmrān declared that Kābul was given to his mother Gul-rukh, and Humāyūn gave it in fief to Kāmrān at his accession. There is mist over the scene from which only the accomplished facts emerge. Humāyūn came to India; he was Māham's son; she was there; Khalīfa let Mahdī fall; Humāyūn's personal charm reasserted itself over Bābar's anger, and he became Emperor of Hindūstān 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 Sīkrī; her father's premonitions and dervish-moods; Humāyūn'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.
Following the death came the forty days of mourning, and of good works and gifts at the tomb in the Garden of Rest at Āgra. Sīkrī furnished a part of the endowment for its readers and reciters, and Māham sent them food twice daily from her own estate. The tomb was put under the guardianship of a man whom our begam calls Khwāja Muḥammad 'Alī 'asas (night-guard), and who may be he that ‘never killed a sparrow,’ and may be Māham's brother. If so, he will be heard of again under other and widely different circumstances in 1547. As is well known, Bābar's body was conveyed to Kābul, and there laid to rest in the spot chosen by himself.