Perhaps the point of deepest social degradation in this
story is that Rūp-matī was, by men's decree, born to sin
without blame, and yet she died because she loved one
man. Her heart was single, and yet she was only the
most charming, clever and beautiful of a crowd of dancing-
Adham Khān took much booty from Bāz Bahādur, and he disregarded the rule which required the choicest part to be sent to the Emperor; he also comported himself more like an independent ruler than a king's lieutenant. This angered Akbar, and he hurried off to Sārangpūr, outdistanced a messenger of Māham anaga whom she had sent with warnings, and took Adham by surprise. She herself came in next day and counselled surrender of the spoil. This and other matters having been adjusted, the Emperor started for his capital. No sooner was he gone than Adham, with his mother's connivance, regained possession of two of the most coveted of the captive women. News of this went after Akbar, who ordered them to be returned to the royal camp. When they came again within her power, the anaga had them murdered, so that they might not tell the tale of their abduction.
Having spent so many years under the influence of Māham anaga, it is to the credit of Akbar's humanity and mental force that there are not more than the recorded blots on his scutcheon; at nineteen he rebelled against his nurse, when she had set his feet on the primrose path to ruin of person and empire. He did not punish the murder of the captive girls, but he soon manifested his intention to depose his nurse and her son from power. Instead of appointing their friend Mu'nim prime minister, he summoned his foster-father, Shamsu-d-dīn Aḥmad Ghaznavī and gave him the post. Shamsu-d-dīn was an unlettered man, but he was staunch and had sons who were true to Jī-Jī anaga's nursling.
The next episode in which Māham anaga and her son appear, was one to shake the home fabric to its foundations, for Adham murdered Shamsu-d-dīn, bursting in upon him as he sat in business audience and unsuspicious. It was done on the night of May 16th, 1562. The incident is well known, how the murderer rushed to the ḥaram door and on the appearance of Akbar began to palliate his crime, but was struck down by a blow of the royal fist and then killed by royal order.*
It was the Emperor who told Māham anaga of her son's death: ‘Māmā! we have killed Adham,’ are the words put into his mouth by Bāyazīd. She fell ill from anger and grief; this blow shattered her heart's idol and her ambition for him and herself. Badāyunī says that she died after having presented the food of the fortieth day of mourning, and this points to her belief that the souls of the dead take final departure from earth on that day and after partaking of the food of their choice which the care of relations sets for them. Mother and son were buried in one spot, and Akbar placed his shoulder under his nurse's bier in sign of his sentiment to her.
Quite stirring news for discussion through some years,
amongst the elder ladies of the royal family, would be the
conduct of Māh-chūchak Begam in Kābul. She was the
last recorded wife of Humāyūn, and was married in 1546,
after the coming of Ḥamīda from Qandahār to Kābul. She
was not a woman of birth,—one gathers a general impression
that few royal wives married late in life were so,—and
her title of begam was probably owed to her having borne a
son, Muḥammad Hakīm. In 1554 Humāyūn had left her
three-years-old boy as nominal governor of Kābul under
charge of Mu'nim Khān, and in 1556 Akbar had confirmed
the appointment. When Mu'nim went to court in 1561,
his son Ghanī became his locum tenens, but Ghanī had
neither ‘suavity nor sense,’ and the begam shut him
out of Kābul, one morning when he had gone to walk
in the melon gardens. He went to India, and she took
up the guidance of her boy's affairs. She chose three men
to help her; two soon came by their deaths at her dictation,
and the third became supreme. Akbar, and no doubt
the ladies also, heard of these doings, and despatched
Mu'nim Khān with men to put things straight. Māh-
We cannot enter here into the previous history of Abū'l-
A little story of Ḥaram may be inserted here, somewhat after date. She had not been always on perfect terms with Sulaimān. Not only, a little earlier, had there been the discussion between them of his wish to take Muhtarīma to wife, which Ḥaram had frustrated by marrying the khanām to Sulaimān's son instead of to himself, but she had been angered extremely by the murder of one of her brothers by her husband and her son. She took the resolution of deserting Sulaimān and went over to Kābul, where then Mu'nim Khān was governor, and she had meant to carry on her complaints to Akbar. Mu'nim, however, who had been begged to mediate by Sulaimān, gave her good advice and pacified her, so that at last she consented to return to Badakhshān. He rode out to bid her farewell; she bade her camel kneel and dismounted; he got off his horse, and there was exchange of friendly greeting. She told him she regarded him as a brother and that for his sake she would never bring the army of Badakhshān against Kābul. It came several times later and with her approval, but Ḥaram could swear and break even ‘awful oaths.’ Bāyazīd bīyāt accompanied her to the Ghurband and was charmed by her suavity and agreeableness.
On the death of Abū'l-ma'ālī, Sulaimān sent home for a daughter and married her to Muḥammad Hakīm, partitioned out some of the lands of Kābul to his own people, and went home to Qila'-i-afar. Irritation against the interlopers led to their expulsion by the Kābulīs, and this brought the Badakhshī forces again to Kābul, in 1564. Muḥammad Hakīm hurried to the Indus and complained to his big brother and Sulaimān was made to retreat.
In 1566 he and Ḥaram and their girls were again
before the coveted Kābul, and on this occasion Ḥaram
tried to supplement their failing military action by
treachery. She got Sulaimān to lay an ambush for Mu-
This is not the place to follow Sulaimān's interesting fortunes to their close, under Akbar's protection, by death in Lāhōr in 1589. For our purpose, it is enough to say that he held Badakhshān so long as Ḥaram's watchful eye was on him, and lost it at her death. It was Muhtarīma's son, Shāh-rukh, his own grandson, who turned him out of his beloved Badakhshān, and in this, too, there may be Ḥaram's hand. Muhtarīma would not be likely to teach her boy dutiful conduct to Ḥaram or to Ḥaram's husband, for the two women were foes, and Ḥaram had tried to separate Muhtarīma from her son, and to expel her from Badakhshān to her parental home in Kāshghar. If Ḥaram had lived, her pride would have found content in two alliances of her grandson with daughters of the royal blood, —one a child of Muḥammad Hakīm, and the other of Akbar himself.