Mems., 22.

Tār. Rash., E. & R., 114, 116.

CLXIII. Rajab-sulān Mīrān-shāhī.

Ar. rajab, fearing, worshipping. Sulān may here be a title.

Daughter of Sulān Maḥmūd Mīrzā and a concu­bine (ghūncha-chī).

Mems., 30.

CLXIV. Ruqaiya Begam Mīrān-shāhī.

Ruqaiya was the name of a daughter of Muḥammad, and conveys the notion of bewitching or of being armed against spells.

Daughter of Hindāl; first wife of Akbar; she died Jumāda I. 7th, 1035H. (January 19th, 1626), at the age of eighty-four. She had no children of her own, and she brought up Shāh-jahān. Mihru-n-nisā' (Nūr-jahān) lived ‘unnoticed and rejected’ with her after the death of Shīr-afkan.

Āīn-i-akbarī, Blochmann, 309, 509.

CLXV. Ruqaiya-sulān Begam Mīrān-shāhī.

Daughter of 'Umar Shaikh Mīrān-shāhī and Makh-dūma-sulān Begam (Qarā-gūz). She was a posthumous child. She fell into the hands of Jānī Beg Uzbeg, cir. 908-9H. (1502-4), and bore him ‘two or three’ sons who died young. ‘I have just received information that she has gone to the mercy of God.’ The date of this entry in the Memoirs is about 935H. (1528-9).

Mems, 10.

CLXVI. Sa'ādat-bakht (Begam Sulān) Bāyqrā.

Of happy fortune; Ar. sa'ādat, happy, and Pers. bakht, fortune.

Daughter of Sulān Ḥusain Mīrzā Bāyqrā and Papa (Bābā) āghācha. She was married to Sulān Ma'sūd after the loss of his eyesight.

Mems., 182.

Ḥabību-s-siyār, 327 et seq.

CLXVII. Ṣāḥib-daulat Begam Dughlāt.

The princess of good fortune; Ar. ṣāḥib, enjoying, and daulat, fortune.

Sister of Mīr Jabār Bardī Dughlāt; wife of Sulān Aḥmad Khān Chaghatāī; mother of Manṣūr, Bābājāk, Shāh Shaikh Muḥammad and Māham.

Tār. Rash., E. & R., 125, 344.

CLXVIII. Sakīna-bānū Begam Mīrān-shāhī.

The princess guardian of tranquillity; Ar. sakīna, tranquillity of mind, and Pers. bānū, keeper.

Daughter of Humāyūn and Māh-chūchak; wife of Shāh Ghāzī Khān, son of Naqīb Khān Qazwīnī, a personal friend of Akbar.

Gul-badan, 71a.

Blochmann, 435, 449.

CLXIX. Sālḥa-sulān Begam Mīrān-shāhī.

Cf. Salīma-sulān Chaqānīānī.

CLXX. Salīma-sulān Begam Chaqānīānī.

Daughter of Mīrzā Nūru-d-dīn Muḥammad Chaqā-nīānī and of a daughter of Bābar, as to whose name the sources ring changes upon the rose. She appears as Gul-rang (B. and H. s.n.), Gul-barg, Gul-rukh. As her mother was a full Turkomān or Turk by descent, it has occurred to me that she may have borne a Turkī name, and that the various forms it assumes in the Persian may have their origin in this.

As to her maternal parentage there are difficulties. From the Ma'āsir-i-raḥīmī, under 1024H., the follow­ing information is obtained. Pāshā Begam Bahārlū Turkomān married (873H., 1469) as her second husband, Sulān Maḥmūd Mīrzā Mīrān-shāhī. By him she had three daughters and one son: Bayasanghar (b. 882H., 1477). One daughter whose name was Sālḥa-sulān Begam, married Bābar and bore him a daughter, Gul-rukh (sic). Gul-rukh married Nūru-d-dīn Muḥam-mad Chaqānīānī, and their daughter was Salīma-sulān Begam who married first, Bairām Khān-i-khānān, and secondly, the Emperor Akbar.

Abū'l-faẓl (Bib. Ind. ed., II. 65) adds the particular that Firdaus-makānī gave his daughter Gul-barg (sic), to Nūru-d-dīn because a daughter of Maḥmūd and Pāshā had been given to Nūru-d-dīn's grandfather Khwāja Ḥasan, known as Khwāja-zāda Chaqānīānī. He also states that Salīma-sulān Begam was the issue of Gul-barg's marriage.

In the Memoirs, as we have them, there is no mention of Sālḥa-sulān nor of Nūru-d-dīn's marriage with a daughter of Bābar. Yet Abū'l-faẓl states that Firdaus-makānī arranged Gul-barg's marriage. The first omission is the more remarkable because Bābar (Mems., 30) states that Pāshā had three daughters. He does not give their names, and specifies the marriage of the eldest only. On the same page he tells of his marriage with Sālḥa's half-sister Zainab and of her death. The omission is remarkable and appears to have no good ground, since he chronicles his other Tīmūrid marriages. Of Pāshā's daughters it may be noted here that one married Malik Muḥam-mad Mīrān-shāhī, another Khwāja Ḥasan Chaqānīānī, and the third, Bābar.

It appears to me tolerably clear that Bābar's marriage with Sālḥa-sulān took place at a date which falls in a gap of the Memoirs, i.e., from 1511 to 1519. This is the period which contains the exile from Kābul after the Mughal rebellion.

Not only does Bābar omit Sālḥa-sulān's name and his marriage with her (Mems., 30), but Gul-badan is also silent as to name, marriage and child of Sālḥa-sulān. This silence is in every way remarkable. She enumerates her father's children and gives their mothers' names, and she enumerates some of his wives in more places than one. From her lists a Tīmūrid wife cannot have escaped, and especially one whose child became the mother of Gul-badan's associate Salīma-sulān.

An explanation of Gul-badan's silence and also of a part of Bābar's has suggested itself to me; it is con­jectural merely and hypothetical. The absence of mention of Sālḥa-sulān and of her child suggests that she appears under another name in Gul-badan's list of her father's children and their mothers. She may be Gul-badan's own mother, Dil-dār Begam without undue wresting of known circumstantial witness.

The principal difficulty in the way of this identifi­cation is Abū'l-faẓl's statement that Nūru-d-dīn's marriage was made by Firdaus-makānī, whereas Gul-badan states that her father arranged two Chaghatāī marriages for her sisters.

If we might read Jannat-āshyānī (Humāyūn) for Firdaus-makānī much would fall into place; the marriage with Nūru-d-dīn could be a re-marriage of Gul-chihra who was widowed in 1533, and of whose remarriage nothing is recorded until her brief political alliance with 'Abbas Uzbeg in 1549. It is probable that she remarried in the interval.

To pass on to recorded incidents of Salīma-sulān's life:

There is an entry in Hindāl's guest-list which may indicate her presence.

She accompanied Ḥamīda-bānū and Gul-badan to Hindūstan in 964H. (1557), and she was married at Jalindhar shortly after Ṣafar 15th, 965H. (middle of December, 1557) to Bairām Khān-i-khānān. It is said that the marriage excited great interest at Court. It united two streams of descent from 'Alī-shukr Beg Bahārlū Turkomān. Salīma-sulān was a Tīmūrid through Bābar, one of her grandfathers, and through Maḥmūd, one of her great-grandfathers.