(b). The Tārīkh-i-sind states that her father was Shaikh 'Alī-akbar Jāmī who was one of the pillars of Mīrzā Hindāl. Niāmu-d-dīn Aḥmad says that 'Alī-akbar was father of Mu'aam.

If the statements of paragraphs (a) and (b) stood alone, ‘Bābā Dost’ and ‘'Alī-akbar’ might be identified as the petit-nom and the name of one man.

There is a good deal to support this view, and there is something against it.

In favour of the identification of Bābā Dost with 'Alī-akbar are the following points:

(1). ‘Bābā Dost’ seems to be not a personal name, but a sobriquet of affection and domestic intimacy.

(2). Jauhar calls Ḥamīda the daughter of Hindāl's akhund, and Mr. Erskine (perhaps, however, inferentially) calls 'Alī-akbar Hindāl's preceptor.

(3). Mīr Bābā Dost was alive in 947H. (1540-41), the year preceding Ḥamīda's marriage, and was then with Hindāl. (Akbar-nāma, H. Beveridge, I. 360.)

(4). Niamu-d-dīn Aḥmad and Badāyunī contribute negative support to the identification by using the indefinite khal, maternal uncle, to describe the relation of Akbar and Mu'aam.

(5). The Ma'āsiru-l-umarā' confirms the identification by use of the words barādar-i-a'yānī, full-brother. Its authority may not be of the best, but the choice of these words has some weight.

(6). 'Alī-akbar was of the lineage of Aḥmad Jāmī. Humāyun had a dream which allowed him to know that the son prophesied in it by Aḥmad would be of the latter's lineage. There is, I think, nothing said on this point of Mīr Bābā Dost, but saintly descent was claimed for Ḥamīda's father.

(7). Gul-badan gives one the impression (it is little more) that Mu'aam was younger than Ḥamīda. He calls his sister Māh-chīchām, which may be read as ‘Moon of my mother,’ but also as ‘Elder Moon-sister.’ (Cf. 18b n.) If he were Ḥamīda's junior, and as Mīr Bābā Dost was alive in 1540-41, he could not have been an independent agent in 1543-44.

In opposition to the identification, there are two considerations:

(i.) A minor matter; two names are given by the sources: Mīr Bābā Dost and 'Alī-akbar.

(ii.) The important fact that Abū'l-faẓl calls Mu'aam Ḥamīda's ukhuwwat-i-akhyāfī,* which, according to Lane, must be rendered ‘uterine brother.’

Was, then, the name Bābā Dost a sobriquet of Shaikh 'Alī-akbar?

Were Ḥamīda and Mu'aam full brother and sister? Were they the children of one father and two mothers, or were they uterine brother and sister?

Shaikh 'Alī-akbar's name I have not found in any passage except the one dealing with Ḥamīda's parentage. Mīr Bābā Dost may be the man so named by Bābar (Mems., 262), and who was then with Humāyūn in the year of the birth of Hindāl (1519). He may also have gone with Humāyūn, Ḥamīda (? his own daughter) and Mu'aam (? his son) to Persia, the bakhshī in the little party of exiles. He is mentioned by Abū'l-faẓl not only where already noted, but, we believe, also amongst Hindāl's servants who were transferred to Akbar in 1551 (958H.).

Two men with the name 'Alī-akbar are mentioned under Akbar, but neither appears to be a Jāmī, or to warrant identification with Ḥamīda's reputed father. (Cf. Āīn-i-akbarī, Blochmann, s.n. 'Alī-akbar.)

Whether there was any relationship more close than that derived from common descent from Aḥmad Jāmī between Māham Begam and Ḥamīda I am not able to say.

Ḥamīda was related to Bānū (Bābū) āghā who was the wife of Shihābu-d-dīn Aḥmad Nishāpūrī and a relation of Māham anaga. Bega (Ḥajī) Begam also had claim to descent from Aḥmad Jāmī, so that the saint's posterity was numerous in Akbar's court, and included the Emperor himself.

To Gul-badan's account of the discussion which preceded Ḥamīda's marriage, there may be added the following passage from the Taẕkiratu-l-wāqi'āt of Jauhar. (I.O. MS. No. 221 and B.M. MS. Add. No. 16,711, f. 82.) After Humāyūn has asked whose daughter Ḥamīda is, he is told, perhaps by Dil-dār, that she is of the line of his Reverence the Terrible Elephant, Aḥmad Jāmī, and that her father, by way of blessing and benediction, has taught Mīrzā Hindāl, and that for this reason Ḥamīda is with the mīrzā's household.

The Persian (taken from the I.O. MS.) is as follows: Pidar-i-īshān do sih kalma ba jihat-i-tabarruk wa tayammun ba Mīrzā Hindāl sabq farmudand. Az ān jihat ba mā hamrā and.

Erskine (II. 220) and Stewart (Jauhar, 31 n.) both say that Ḥamīda was married at fourteen years of age. The incidents of her wedded life are set down in Gul-badan Begam's book and in the Akbar-nāma and other sources; but having regard to her interesting personality, they may be enumerated here also.

She was married at Pāt early in 948H. (summer, 1541), and remained in Sind until she made with Humāyūn the terrible desert journey to 'Umrkut where Akbar was born (October 15th, 1542). About the beginning of the following December she and her baby went into camp at Jūn, after travelling for ten or twelve days. In 1543 she made the perilous journey from Sind which had Qandahār for its goal, but in course of which Humāyūn had to take hasty flight from Shāl-mastān, ‘through a desert and waterless waste.’ She went with him, leaving her little son behind. She accompanied her husband to Persia, and it is recorded that on the way and at Sistān, its governor brought his mother and his wives to entertain her. With Humāyūn she made, amongst other pious visitations, one to Jām where was their ancestor Aḥmad's shrine. She was kindly treated by Shāh ahmāsp and by his sister, and Gul-badan's details of the Persian episode can hardly have been learned from anyone but Ḥamīda. In 1544, in camp at Sabz-āwār, a daughter was born. She returned from Persia with the army given to Humāyūn by ahmāsp, and at Qandahār would meet Dil-dār and Hindāl, her former protectors.

It was not until November 15th, 1545 (Raman 10th, 952H.) that she again saw her son, who recognised her. She had shortly after this to accept Māh-chūchak as a co-wife. In June, 1548, she and Akbar accompanied Humāyūn on his way to Tāliqān as far as Gul-bihār, and thence returned to Kābul. This may be the expedition made by the ladies and chronicled by Gul-badan, to see the rīwāj. When Humāyūn, in November, 1554, set out for Hindūstān, she remained in Kābul.

Bāyazīd bīyāt mentions that at this time he fell under her displeasure, and was reproved because he had not cleared out a house for one of her servants. He pleaded the commands of Mu'nim Khān, and was forgiven. Early in the reign of Akbar, Khwāja Mīrak, Niāmu-d-dīn's grandfather and who was her diwān, was hanged by Mu'nim Khān because he had sided with Mīrzā Sulaimān.

She rejoined her son in the second year of his reign (964H., 1557), together with Gul-badan and other royal ladies. She is mentioned as in Dihlī in the fifth year, and she had a part in the plot for deposing Bairām Khān. She was closely associated with Gul-badan in Akbar's court and affection; together they interceded for Salīm with his father; together they received gifts from the Emperor; and their tents were side by side in his encampments. Ḥamīda was with Gul-badan in the latter's last hours.

Abū'l-faẓl says that when long fasts came to an end, the first dishes of dressed meat used to go to Akbar from his mother's house.

Ḥamīda died in the autumn of 1604 (19th Shah-riyār 1013H.), sixty-three years after her wedding, and after almost fifty years of widowhood, passed as the proud mother of a great son. If she was fourteen in 1541, she must have been born in 1527 (circa), the year of Bābar's victory at Khānwa, and have been some seventy-seven years old at the time of death.