I do not know when the ladies succeeded in leaving Ạden, nor when they landed in Sūrat. Here they again waited long, and this delay is attributed partly to the rains and partly to the royal absence in Kābul. It was March, 1582, when they reached Fatḥpūr-sīkrī.

On the northward journey they visited the shrines of the Chishtī saints in Ajmīr, and there met Prince Sālim. Day after day there came an amīr with greetings from the Emperor, until he met the caravan at Khānwa. The night of reunion was kept awake by ‘questions and entrancing stories; gifts were shown, and happiness brimmed over.’ One item of home news would cloud the meeting: Bega Begam had died just too soon to welcome her old friends.

Arrived in Fatḥpūr-sīkrī, Gul-badan Begam would find much to ruffle her orthodoxy; for Father Rodolf Acquaviva was installed there and was giving Prince Murād lessons in the Christian faith. She would hear of the reverence shown by her nephew for the sacred things of an alien faith, and of his liking for the society of the pious and learned guest. Ḥamīda-bānū is named by the Father as protesting, with other ladies of the ḥaram, against the royal countenance of Christianity, and assuredly Gul-badan would swell the chorus of complaint, in which, too, Hindū wives would join the Moslim lamentation.* When the Father was leaving Fatḥpūr-sīkrī, he accepted only so much money as would pay his expenses back to Goa, but he asked a favour from Ḥamīda-bānū Begam. She had amongst her household slaves a Russian of Moscow and his Polish wife, with their two children. These four the Father begged to take with him to Goa. ‘The begam, who was no friend to the Firingīs, was most unwilling to give up the slaves; but the Emperor would refuse nothing to the Father,’ and the family was carried off to freedom.

The next thing known of our princess is that she wrote her Humāyūn-nāma. The book is its sole witness, for no one speaks of it. It is not literature, but a simple setting down of what she knew or had heard, for the help of the Akbar-nāma . This was not her only composition, for she followed the fashion of her day and wrote verses. Mīr Mahdī Shīrāzī has preserved in his Taẕkiratu-l-khwātīn two lines of hers, in which her thought seems to be, ‘No love, no fruit of life.’

“Har parī ki au bā 'ashaq khud yār nīst,
Tū yaqīn mīdān ki hech az 'umr bar-khur-dār nīst.”

Nine copies were made of Bāyazīd's Humāyūn-nāma, which was written in obedience to the royal command obeyed by Gul-badan Begam and also by Jauhar the Ewer-bearer. Of these two went to the Emperor's library; three to the princes Sālim, Murād, and Danyal; one to our begam; two to Abū'l-faẓl; and one perhaps was kept by the author. This allotment brings out the little point that Gul-badan collected books. Badāyunī has a curious passage about himself which also discloses something ‘bookish’ of Salīma: ‘On account of the book Khirad-afza, which had disappeared from the library, and concerning Salīma Sulān Begam's study of which the Emperor reminded me, an order was issued that my allowance should be stopped, and that they should demand the book of me.’ He adds that Abū'l-faẓl did not lay his refutation before the Emperor, and he does not clear up the awkward doubt as to what he had done with Salīma's desired book.

The remaining records of Gul-badan Begam's life are few and scanty. When she was seventy, her name is mentioned with that of Muḥammad-yār, a son of her daughter, who left the court in disgrace; again, she and Salīma join in in­tercession to Akbar for Prince Sālim; again, with Ḥamīda, she receives royal gifts of money and jewels. Her charities were large, and it is said of her that she added day unto day in the endeavour to please God, and this by succouring the poor and needy. When she was eighty years old, and in February, 1603, her departure was heralded by a few days of fever. Ḥamīda was with her to the end, and it may be that Ruqaiya, Hindāl's daughter, would also watch her last hours. As she lay with closed eyes, Ḥamīda-bānū spoke to her by the long-used name of affection, ‘Jiu!’ (elder sister). There was no response. Then, ‘Gul-badan!’ The dying woman unclosed her eyes, quoted the verse, ‘I die,—may you live!’ and passed away.

Akbar helped to carry her bier some distance, and for her soul's repose made lavish gifts and did good works. He will have joined in the silent prayer for her soul before committal of her body to the earth, and if no son were there, he, as a near kinsman, may have answered the Imām's injunction to resignation: ‘It is the will of God.’

So ends the long life of a good and clever woman, affec­tionate and dutiful in her home life, and brought so near us by her sincerity of speech and by her truth of feeling that she becomes a friend even across the bars of time and creed and death.