The ill-behaviour of Ḥamīda-bānū's brother, Khwāja Mu'aam, must have been a frequent annoyance to the inner circle of the elder ladies at court. From boyhood he had been fantastic and mischievous, and perhaps carried always the germ of the madness which overtook his last years. Bairām, the sensible, had exiled him, then had given him some countenance; on Bairām's fall he had received a fief, and, so far, had been favoured. But Akbar did not like him, and the murders he had committed were sufficient to warrant dislike. He was a true parvenu, assertive and relying on his sister to excuse his faults. Ḥamīda had been conscious before her marriage that her lowly birth was a point against her wedding with Humāyūn. The disparity in her case, as in other misalliances of the time, had raised unworthy people to power. Now, in 1564, Bībī Fāima lamented to Akbar that Khwāja Mu'aam had threatened to kill his wife Zuhra, who was her daughter. The Emperor consequently sent the khwāja word that he was coming to his house, and followed the message closely. As he entered, the khwāja stabbed Zuhra and then flung his knife, like a challenge, amongst the royal followers. Abū'l-faẓl says that for punishment the murderer was flung into the river, but ‘would not drown.’ The more sensible Niāmu-d-dīn Aḥmad says he was beaten and then soused in the river. He died insane, in prison, at Guālīār. All the shortcomings and crimes of the man notwithstanding, Ḥamīda must have cherished some warmth of feeling for the tricksy boy who had lifted suspicion from her in the matter of the stolen rubies of the Persian episode.
In 1571 another old acquaintance comes to the front in
the person of Nāhīd Begam, in whom our princess must
have maintained interest for the sake of her father Qāsim,
Bābar's foster-brother. Nāhīd, as has been said earlier, was
the daughter of Qāsim and of Māh-chūchak Arghūn, who
must not be confounded with Kāmrān's wife of the same
name, one common amongst the Arghūn women of the
time. She had married Muḥibb-'alī, son of Niāmu-d-dīn
'Alī Khalīfa Barlās, and who had risen to high military
rank but now lived remote from soldiering and in reposeful
retirement. Nāhīd's mother was now in her (third) widowhood
for 'Īsā Tarkhān Arghūn, and she was not well
regarded by her last husband's son, Muḥammad Bāqī
Tarkhān Arghūn, the ruler of Tatta. Nāhīd, in 1571, went
to see her mother, and perhaps conveyed to Bāqī the
impression that her visit was something more than filial.
He put Māh-chūchak in prison, and so behaved to Nāhīd
that she hurried off to court and made bitter complaint of
her own wrongs and of the rudeness shown to the royal
attendants who had been with her in Sind. She told Akbar,
too, that she had talked with Sulan Maḥmud Bhakkarī,
that old retainer of Shāh Ḥusain who had kept the island-
Muḥibb-'alī was disturbed from his repose, and put at the head of the force. With him went Nāhīd and also a wife named Sāmīa and her son, Mujāhīd. For Nāhīd's ends the long war that followed was infructuous. An amusing episode of it was that Sāmīa, when things did not go as she wished, went into rebellion against Akbar, and actually held an entrenchment against the royal amīrs a day and a night. In the end, Muḥibb-'alī obtained a comfortable town appointment and nothing more is heard of the ladies. Probably they too accommodated themselves to the tolerant and forgiving atmosphere of Akbar's court.
Niāmu-d-dīn Aḥmad is somewhat more sober of diction than his fellow-penmen and so, when he says that the Gujrāt campaign of 1572 caused the royal ladies joy enough to last their lives, whole-hearted delight is pictured. This was the campaign which made beautiful Sīkrī the City of Victory (Fatḥ-pūr). Round one incident of the war womanly interest,—and surely compassion also,—will have centred. The veil of historic silence lifts for a brief moment, and shows Gul-rukh, Kāmrān's daughter, in flight with her son.
Gul-badan's long span of unchronicled life was probably spent in the peaceful occupation of a wife and mother, with variety from books, verse-making, festivities, and outside news. She must have found much to exercise her lively mind in Hindūstān. That she went about with the royal camp is shown by the record of the place assigned to her tent in the encampments. It was pitched next to Ḥamīda's, well within the great enclosure, and not far from the Emperor's own. Since she was a woman, she must have found food for observation in the doings and position of her sex under the conditions of their life in Hindūstān. How did satī look to her? What did she think of the jūhar? Both these Hindū customs were far different from those of her traditions in similar crises. She came of a tribe which boasts of the fidelity of its wives to the marriage tie. All the women of her house must have heard of the defiant act of Aīs-daulat, Bābar's grandmother, who had ordered her maids to stab a man to whom her captor had given her, and who then, for sole excuse, had observed that she was the wife of Yūnas Khān. Gul-badan had also in her own family history plenty of examples of the fate of captured girls, for many of her kinswomen had married foes of their tribe; and many too had become contented wives, well treated, and remaining in their foreign homes apparently without constraint.*
What Tīmūrid women saw amongst the Hindūs reveals another type of virtue and another standard of wedded life. Our princess must have heard something on the topic through her father's experience when she was a child. Wifehood and motherhood now gave her better insight into the problems which underlie social relations. She would hear that Rājpūtnīs died joyfully rather than be captured; that outmatched Rājpūts killed wives and children and went to certain death themselves,—a holocaust to honour. The early years of Akbar furnished plenty of such records.
How, one would like to know, did the Musalmānī regard the willing death by fire of the Hindū widow, in that exaltation which lifts thought above pain and terror and is admirable, whether in the martyr for faith or for wifely duty? Unfortunately, the barriers of language and habit must have kept Akbar's Rājpūt wives from charming the Musalmānī ladies by recital of the legends of their race. These Hindūs can never have been welcome inmates of the palace to any of the Moslims; but, pagan as they were thought, their conduct as wives must have insinuated the thin edge of conviction that to no one form of faith is committed the nurture of the sense of duty.
One common thought Gul-badan and the rest could have
shared with the Hindū ladies,—that of the duty of pilgrimage
and of respect for holy places. When next history
concerns itself with our begam, it is to tell of her setting
out, in 1575, for Makka. The Emperor had been unwilling
to part with her, and it may be, even, had delayed with
the thought of accompanying her. His heart was now
much set upon making the ḥaj, but he did no more than
walk a short distance with a caravan from Āgra, dressed in
the seamless wrapper of the Arabian ceremonies. Though
debarred from leaving Hindūstān himself, he helped many
others to fulfil this primary duty of their faith, and opened
wide his purse for their expenses. Each year he named a
leader of the caravan, and provided him with gifts and
ample funds. Sulān Khwāja, Gul-badan's cicerone, took,
amongst other presents, 12,000 dresses of honour. He did
not bring her home again; this duty fell to Khwāja Yaḥyā
(John). What circumstance extorted royal consent to Gul-
Abū'l-faẓl has preserved the names of the chief ladies of the pilgrim party, but many others went with Gul-badan Begam, and for all the royal purse bore the cost. She was the lady of highest birth, and was probably a widow; next came Salīma Sulān Begam, widow of Bairām and wife of Akbar. It was not usual for a wife to make the pilgrimage, but Muḥammadan law stipulates that permission shall be granted to such wives as strongly desire to do so, and Salīma's seems a case in point. Next comes a woman whose presence reveals pleasant things. She was Sulānam, widow of Akbar's uncle, 'Askarī, and of her it is recorded in Akbar's babyhood that she cared for him when captured, with tender affection. It is probable that she had spent many years under the care and at the cost of the Emperor. Then come two step-nieces of Gul-badan, daughters of Kāmrān,—Ḥājī and Gul-'iẕār Begams. I do not know which child of his is veiled under the title of Ḥājī. She seems to be making her second ḥaj, and may well have gone on her first when her father was in Arabia. To these two the pilgrimage would have humanly pious significance, as a visitation to their father's tomb and to that of Māh-chūchak Arghūn, whom all his children must have held in reverence. Next comes a grand-daughter of Gul-badan herself, named Um-kūlum (Mother of Plumpness), presumably after the daughter of her Prophet. Whether she was the child of Sa'ādat-yār is not said, nor whether the last name on the list, Salīma Khānam, is that of a child of Gul-badan, as well as of Khiẓr Khwāja Khān. Here some of the inconveniences of polygamy show themselves to the seeker after family facts.