An old associate of our princess accompanied her in the person of Gul-nār āghācha, who had been of Bābar's house­hold and was, I think, one of the two Circassians sent as a present to him by Shāh aḥmāsp in 1526. She was now well on her way through life and considerably older than Gul-badan Begam. Another of the party had also been of Bābar's household, Bībī Sarū-qad, or Sarū-i-sahī (Straight Cypress). She had been, too, in Humāyūn's service and later had married, with full nisbat, Mu'nim Khān-i-khānān. She was a widow, had been a singer and reciter, and was a ‘reliable woman.’ Like her in accomplishments were Bībī Safīya and Shāham āghā, both formerly of Humāyūn's household. Of the first and of Bībī Sarū-qad we have the happy little record that they sang in the moonlight on the road to Laghmān in 1549.

Fatḥpūr-sīkrī seems to have been the rallying-point of the caravan and October 15th, 1575, the day of departure from it. It started earlier than was usual, perhaps because the ladies could not travel fast. Caravans generally left Āgra in the tenth month—this left in the seventh—of the Muḥammadan year. Akbar's second boy, Murād, was told off to escort the ladies to the coast. Sālim met them one stage out to give last greetings. At Gul-badan's request, Murād was excused from his long task of escort to Sūrat, and he went back to Āgra. One smiles to find that the princes were five and four years old. The real charge of the caravan was with several amīrs, one being Muḥammad Bāqī Khān kūka, and another Rūmī Khān of Aleppo, who may have been Bābar's artillery officer.

It is a real loss that there is no record of the journey from our begam's pen. It was to be adventurous; even perilous; and it was of great interest whether as sight­seeing travel or pious duty. Sūrat was the port of embarka­tion, but there are no details of the road taken to reach it. Father Rudolf Acquaviva passed between the same two terminal points in 1580, but the military movements of the interval may well have allowed him to travel where the ladies could not go. When they were first in Sūrat, it had been a royal possession for two years only, and even when the Father took the fairly direct route from it to Fatḥpūr­sīkrī, the Rājpūt peasantry was in arms against their new lord. The ladies were probably handed on from one garrisoned place to another as the immediate circumstances of conquest dictated. The main body of their ḥaj joined them by a tedious and weary route, first escorted through Goganda by the army which was on active service, and then passing on to Aḥmadābād, and, perhaps by water, to Sūrat.

The governor of the port, who was to have a good deal of trouble with this caravan, was Qulij Khān Andijānī, a sobriquet of pleasant sound in our begam's ears. He had inherited Tīmūrid service from many generations, and his father had been a grandee of Sulān Ḥusain Bāyqrā.

‘There was peace with the isles of the Franks,’ but it took the ladies a year to get to sea. The Akbar-nāma attributes some part of the delay to a foolish panic about the Firingīs which, after the ladies had embarked in their hired Turkish transport, the Salīmī, seized the other pilgrims who were to sail in the royal ship, the Ilāhī. The real ground appears to have been want of a pass. The Portuguese were then masters of the Indian waters, and no ship might dare to put to sea without toll paid and pass obtained. Alarm about the Portuguese was natural, for there were stories that the very pass was sometimes a letter of Bellerophon enjoining capture and death. Abū'l-faẓl says that, although the ladies embarked, they were unwilling to put out and desert their fellow-pilgrims. This may be mere broidery, or the one ship may have had a pass and the other not. Perhaps, too, as theirs was a hired transport, it was also one privileged to sail free. However this may be, Badāyunī makes the difficulty clear by saying that Khwāja Sulān's ships lay idle from want of the pass. He also, it may be added, quotes a legal opinion that at this time it was not lawful to make the ḥaj from India because, of the two practicable routes, one lay through the Shiah country of 'Irāq, and the other obliged a pass which bore the idolatrous stamp of the heads of the Virgin Mary and of Jesus Christ (‘on whom be peace’).

The mīr ḥaj sent word to the Emperor of his plight, who at once despatched orders to Qulij Khān, in Īdar, to go to Sūrat and arrange the difficulty. Qulij took with him a Cambayan, who was presumably a man versed in seafaring business,—hurried to Sūrat and overcame the difficulty.

It took the ladies a year to get to sea; they sailed on October 17th, 1576. Their port of debarkation is not men­tioned; some pilgrims sailed by the Arabian, some by the Persian Gulf. They spent three and a half years in Arabia, and were able to make the ḥaj four times.

Some day perhaps a pious and enlightened Musalmān will set down the inner meaning he attaches to the rites of the pilgrimage. How interesting it would have been if our princess had told us what it was in her heart that carried her through the laborious duties of piety she accomplished during her long stay in her holy land! She might have given us an essential principle by which to interpret the religious meaning which devout women attach to the rites commanded on the pilgrimage.

The visitation duties are set down in Hughes' ‘Dic­tionary of Islām,’ where even their brief recital is attractive and adds to the wish of gauging the sentiment of believers in their efficacy. The acts prescribed are exhausting, not only to the body but also, one thinks, to the mind, because the very conception of the pilgrimage as a Divine ordinance keeps brain and heart tense, as all obedience does which sets the human will parallel to the Divine.

The mere recapitulation of the prescribed ceremonies is impressive: The halt six miles from the city to put on the seamless wrapper (iḥrām); the chanting of the pilgrim song; the prayer of intention and of supplication for grace to make the visitation duly; the contemplation, touch, and salutation of the mystic black stone; the sevenfold en­compassment of the ka'ba, towards which from distant homes has been directed the prayer of the bygone years; the ascent of the Mount of Purity (Ṣafā), and prayer and confession of faith upon it; the race seven times repeated from its summit to that of the Mount of Marwa; the common worship in the Great Mosque, and the sermon preached to the assemblage of common believers; the various pilgrimages and prayers of the eighth and ninth days; and on the tenth the extraordinary pelting of devils, which is symbolized by the patriarchal rite of the stoning of the pillars of Mina. Later in the same day occurs the final act of the ḥaj, an animal sacrifice. Whether the ladies could pay a substitute to perform this is not said.

During these ten busy days the seamless wrapper is worn; after the sacrifice it is laid aside, and attention may be paid to the neglected toilette. The pilgrim stays three days longer in Makka—days of the ‘drying of the blood of sacrifice,’ ‘three well-earned days of rest after the peri­patetic performance of the last four.’ Still, all is not finished; there should be more circuits of the ka'ba, another stoning at Mina, and a draught drunk from the sacred well. Our princess would certainly do everything which was due, and probably would go to Medina, and she would also make visitation to the tombs of many pious persons buried in the desirable soil of Arabia.

In 1579 Khwāja Yaḥyā was mīr ḥaj, a friend of Badāyunī, and the charitable man to whom Ḥusain the Patcher (tukriya) was indebted for decent burial. He was com­missioned to escort the ladies home, and also to bring back curiosities and Arab servants,* who may perhaps have been wanted for the Arab saraī, established near the mausoleum of Humāyūn, outside Dihlī.

The return journey was both adventurous and perilous. They were shipwrecked off Aden, and had to stay, some say seven, others twelve, months in that desolate spot, far less habitable then than now, with condensed water, a tide from the Suez Canal, occasional rain, and the British rāj. The governor did not behave well, and quitted the path of good manners, misconduct for which he was punished by his master, Sulān Murād of Turkey. One pleasant incident broke the gloom of the long delay. On a day of April, 1580, the rock-bound travellers saw a ship coming up from the south with the wind, and, wishing to know whose it was, sent a boat out to make inquiry. By a pleasant chance Bāyazīd* bīyāt with his wife and children were on board, and he shortened sail, though the wind was favourable, and gave and took news. Bāyazīd says that the persons who sent out the boat to him were Gul-badan Begam, Gul-'iẕār Begam, and Khwāja Yaḥyā. Perhaps he was instrumental in getting them ships for return to India.