In Bābar's history the man holds the interest and lifts the eyes over his shortcomings to his excellence. No character demanding admiration attracts interest to Humāyūn, but yet his story is one which it needs a master-hand to unfold. A Tolstoi could depict his faults and merits; his qualities and defects rolled a tide of retribution over him and those bound to him as surely and visibly as it does over Anna Karēnine and her associates. From the historic standpoint, Mr. Erskine has told the tale in a way to hold his readers, and it befits this humble introduction to build up only such framework as will support details, some of which concern the ladies of the time, and others of which may interest readers who are not Orientalists.

In order to realize how fully the fate of the ladies was involved in that of the Emperor, it must be remembered that his occupation of Hindūstān was unrooted, military and the sport of war. When we in Britain have to lament a reverse of arms, we do it in safe homes and we brace ourselves to what will come next, in the familiar surround­ings of the daily tradesman, the usual postman, and the trivial comforts of the hearth. Even Colonials had a refuge under the flag at measurable distance from their outraged homes in 1899-1900. But when the Tīmūrids were defeated in 1539-40, and driven from Āgra and Dihlī and Lāhōr, there was no refuge open to all. Their head, Humāyūn, had none; a brother took his last. Like the Israelites, he and his followers then wandered in deserts and hungered and thirsted; dwelt in strange lands, pursued and attacked, exiled and humiliated. The course of events was less historic than biographical, was individual and not national. There were no nations behind Bābar and Humāyūn; there were only ruling families who came and went as they could or could not get the upper hand of other houses; and there was the dumb mass whom the earth nourished, and labour of whom fed, in luxury of life and strength of alien arms, whatever dynasty had just struck hardest.

An enumeration of the chief events of the downfall of Humāyūn and of his years of exile will give our required framework. He became Emperor in December, 1530. In the next year Kāmrān took possession of Lāhōr and the Panjāb, in addition to his grant of Kābul, and he was allowed to remain in possession of these wide and potential lands. In 1533 there were rebellions of the ‘mīrzās.’ By 1535 Gujrāt had been overrun, and in 1537 was lost. Years of indifference fostered the growth of Shīr Shāh Afghān's power, and there were campaigns against him in Bengal, which began well and ended ill. There was growing indignation against Humāyūn's character and private life, and this culminated in the attempt to set him aside for Hindāl in 1539. Through months of indolence and folly, he dropped oil on his own descending wheels, and prac­tically abdicated the throne; finally, there were the crushing reverses of Chausa on June 27th, 1539, and of Kanauj on May 17th, 1540. Then came the flight of the Tīmūrids to Lāhōr, and their exodus from the lands that had been theirs east of the Indus.

Māham was spared the worst of these misfortunes; she died before Hindāl's marriage, which Jauhar places in 1537. Her son had certainly addicted himself to drugs before her death, but his worst lapses into sloth followed it, and it was after 1537 that the pace of his descent became rapid. Much can be learned from our princess of the reaction of outside events on the inner circle, and she gives details which could only be gathered in that circle. This is particularly so as to Hindāl's rebellion and the home conference about it, and about the murder in his name, but not by his act, of Humāyūn's favourite, Shaikh Bahlūl. Gul-badan, like the good sister she was, makes excuses for her brother, and those who have not her bias of affection, can add others and stronger. Hindāl was nineteen, a good and successful young general; he was supported by men of rank and age, some of whom had come from Gaur, and had seen Humāyūn's army perishing in that sink of fever and corruption, and Humāyūn buried within its walls. There was no ruler in Hindūstān; Shīr Shāh was between Humāyūn and the capital. The ‘mīrzās’ were lifting up their heads again, and a chief was needed. Hindāl was perhaps always the best of Bābar's sons in character, and certainly so when Humāyūn had become the changeling of opium. He had the Friday prayer (khuba) read in his own name; and on his behalf, Nūru-d-dīn Muḥammad, a son-in-law of Bābar and grandson of Sulān Ḥusain Bāyqrā, murdered Shaikh Bahlūl. The motive of the crime appears to have been desire to place the death as an impassable barrier between the royal brothers.

The news of Hindāl's rebellion stirred Humāyūn to move from Gaur. His march to Āgra was broken off tragically by the rout at Chausa, where he lost 8,000 of his best Tūrkī troops by sword or river. Here Ma'sūma was widowed, and here a terrible blank was made in the royal household by the loss of several women. Bega's (Ḥājī Begam) capture is known to all the histories, and so, too, is her return to Humāyūn. Shīr Shāh promised safety to all women found in the camp, and there is no reason to doubt that he did his best for them. But there had been fighting round their tents before his guards arrived, and some of Humāyūn's amīrs had perished in trying to defend them. It came about that there were losses of women and of children as to whose fate no word was ever heard again. Amongst them was 'Āyisha Bāyqrā, the wife of Qāsim Ḥusain Sulān Mīrzā. The next name in our begam's list takes us far back. It is that of Bachaka, a head-woman servant (khalīfa), and one such and so named had escaped from Samarqand with Bābar's mother in 1501. The one lost at Chausa had been a servant in Bābar's household, and may have been she of the memor­able siege. Next are named two children, a foster-child and Bega's 'Aqīqa of six years old. Two of Humāyūn's wives of low degree also disappeared.

When Humāyūn had been rescued from the river by a lowly water-carrier, he made way to Āgra, and there had a conversation with Gul-badan about the loss of 'Aqīqa. The princess was then seventeen years old, and a comment of his, which she sets down, lets it be known that she is now a married woman. Humāyūn told her he did not recognise her at first, because when he went away with the army (1537) she wore the tāq, and now wears the lachak. The tāq is a cap, and the lachak,—a wife's coiffure—is a kerchief folded crossways, tied under the chin by two corners, and capable of much more elaboration and orna­ment than this simple description would lead one to suppose. This is Gul-badan's nearest approach to in­forming her readers of her marriage, and she never mentions her husband as such. He was her second cousin, Khiẓr Khwāja Khān, Chaghatāi Mughal, and of the line of the Great Khāns. His father was Aiman Khwāja, and his mother a cousin of Ḥaidar Mīrzā Dughlāt. One ancestor was that Yūnas whose fate as a chief of nomads was in such entertaining contrast to his taste as a lover of cities and books. Khiẓr had many other noteworthy kinsfolk, but to tell of them would lead too far afield. It is useful, however, to say that Gul-rang and Gul-chihra had married two of his uncles, and that his brother Yasīn (Ḥasan or Aīs)-daulat, the Fair Sulān, became the hus­band of Kāmrān's Ḥabība. He had two other brothers in India, namely, Mahdī and Mas'ūd. Their father and one at least of them came from Kāshghar to Āgra just after the death of Bābar.

Shortly after this interview Humāyūn took the field against Shīr Shāh, and Kāmrān, deserting his post, left Āgra and led off his 12,000 troopers towards Lāhōr. Under his escort went an immense convoy of women and helpless people, and he wished to take Gul-badan also. She was extremely unwilling to go and only partially resigned her­self when she saw that it was Humāyūn's will. She bewailed herself as parting from those with whom she had grown up, and no uninitiated reader could guess that she was going with her father's son. She was a clever and attractive girl whose society was welcome to all her brothers, but in Kāmrān's wish to take her now there is something more. It is possible that he who liked her, thought of her safety; it is probable that, as he had attached two of her husband's brothers, Yasīn-daulat and Mahdī, and perhaps the third, Mas'ūd, he desired to have Khiẓr too. Gul-badan's departure from the home circle was perhaps her first adventure into the foreign world as a married woman. By going when she did and under the escort of Kāmrān's strong force, she was spared a terrible journey which her mother and the rest of the royal party made under care of Hindāl, with foes in front and behind, and at great peril.