BĀBAR, GUL-BADAN, AND ḤAIDAR.203
I. Āfāq (Āpāq) Begam.
Princess of the Universe; Ar. āfāq, four quarters, universe, etc..
She is mentioned, without clue to her parentage, by Bābar, as a wife of Sulṭān Ḥusain Mīrzā Bāyqrā. He mentions her again, with others of the mīrzā's widows, as seen in Harāt in 912H. (1506-7), and here his wording, both in the Turkī and the Persian texts, allows the inference that she is a daughter of Sulṭān Abū-sa'īd Mīrān-shāhī. Mr. Erskine translates the passage thus: ‘Pāyanda Sulṭān Begam, my father's sister, Khadīja Begam and the other (Turkī, yena; Pers., dīgar) daughters of Sulṭān Abū-sa'īd Mīrzā.’
When greeting the ladies, Bābar gave Āfāq precedence over Khadīja, and notes the fact. Khadīja was not a woman of birth.
Ḥusain Bāyqrā married three daughters of Abū-sa'īd, Shahr-bānū, Pāyanda, and Āfāq. The last bore him no child, but she reared and educated nine children of his by her own foster-sister, Bābā āghācha.
Early in 932H. (1525) she went from Harāt to Kābul and was received by Bābar (before his departure for India in November, 1525) with all possible respect and kindness. He gives the impression that she was an affectionate and devoted woman, and says that her tender care of her husband in illness surpassed that of all the other ladies of the ḥaram.
News of her death reached Bābar when he was besieging Chandīrī in 934H. (January, 1528).
Mems., 182, 183, 204.
II. Āfāq Begam. (No. 26.)204
She was a daughter of Sulṭān-bakht Begam; her father's name has not yet come to my knowledge; she was a grand-daughter of Sulṭān Abū-sa'īd Mīrzā.
Bābar mentions the arrival of a daughter of Sulṭān-bakht Begam in Āgra in 935H. (October, 1528), and Gul-badan supplies the name Āfāq by naming an Āfāq of this parentage as at the Mystic Feast in 938H. (1531).
Gul-badan. Persian text, 25b.
Mems., 387.
(Afghānī āghācha, the Afghān lady. See Mubārika Bībī.)
III. Afroz-bānū Begam. (No. 33.)
Pers. afroz, dazzling, illuminating, and bānū, (?) a form of bān (vān), which in composition means holding, possessing. Also a prince or chief.
Nothing is said to identify her. She was at the Mystic Feast (1531).
Gul-badan, 25b.
IV. Āghā Begam. (No. 34.)
Turkī, āghā, a title of honour, and Ar. sulṭān, sway, pre-eminence. Steingass classes the word āghā as Persian. It may be āka, lady. The dictionaries do not apply it to women.
Mentioned as at the Mystic Feast in 1531. She may be Bāyqrā (infra).
Gul-badan, 25b.
V. Āghā Begam Bāyqrā.
She was a daughter of Sulṭān Ḥusain Mīrzā Bāyqrā and of Pāyanda Sulṭān Begam Mīrān-shāhī. Her descent being so high through both parents, her name Āghā rises above its frequent application to wives of less degree. Here it may have the meaning of chief or great. She married her cousin Murād who was a son of Rābi'a-sulṭān Begam (Bedka). The Ḥabību-s-siyār, 327 et seq. (lith. ed.), states that she died before she reached maturity, but this does not agree with Bābar's statements. The Ḥabīb places her death earlier than 912H. (1506).
Mems., 181.
Ḥabību-s-siyār, lith. ed., 327 et seq..
VI. Aghā kūka. (No. 78.)
Wife of Mun'im Khān; at Hindal's Feast (1537).
Gul-badan, 26a.
VII. Āghā-sulṭān āghācha. (No. 37.)
(?) The lady of chief honour.
She was a wife of 'Umar Shaikh Mīrzā (died 1494), and mother of Yādgār Sulṭān Begam (Bābar's half-sister). She was present at Hindāl's marriage feast (1537), and probably at the Mystic Feast, in 1531. She is classed amongst ‘our begams.’
Gul-badan, 25b.
Mems., 10, 14.
VIII. Āghā-sulṭān Sulṭanam Dughlāt.
She was a daughter of Muḥammad Ḥaidar Mīrzā Dughlāt, and therefore aunt of the author of the Tārīkh-i-rashīdī. She married 'Abdu-l-qadūs Beg Dughlāt in Kāshghar, after 877H. (1472-73). Her husband was alive in 900H. (1494-95), and was governor of Khost for Sulṭān Maḥmūd Mīrzā Mīrān-shāhī.
Mems., 27.
Tār. Rash., E. and R., 95, 103.
IX. Āī Begam Mīrān-shāhī.
Turkī, āī, moon. Her name is not mentioned in the Memoirs, but is so by Ilminsky (Mems., 30; Ilminsky, 34, line 7 from foot).
She was the fourth daughter of Sulṭān Maḥmūd Mīrzā Mīrānshāhī and Khānzāda Termiẕī II.; and wife of Jahāngīr Mīrzā, half-brother of Bābar. She was betrothed in 901H. (1495-96), married in 910H. (1504-5), bore one daughter, and was widowed not later than 914H. (1508-9).
Mems., 30, 128.
Pavet de Courteille, I. 57, 262.
X. Āka Begam Bāyqrā.
Āka is clearly a title; her personal name I have not found. Her sister who is styled Bedka, appears to be named Rābi'a-sulṭān.
Daughter of Manṣūr Mīrzā Bāyqrā and Fīroza Begam Mīrān-shāhī, full and elder sister of Sulṭān Ḥusain Mīrzā. Bābar states (Mems., 176, 177) that she married (his uncle) Sulṭān Aḥmad Mīrza, and had a son, Kīchak Mīrzā (the young or small prince). But he does not mention her, either as Āka or otherwise, amongst Aḥmad's wives (Mems., 22), and he says that Aḥmad had two sons who died young. Kīchak, however, lived to change his military occupations for literature.
It is singular that a marriage of the oldest Mīrān-shāhī of his generation with the oldest Bāyqrā girl should not have been entered in Aḥmad's biographical notice.
Mems., 22, 23, 176, 177.
(Ālūsh—Anūsh—Begam, Ūlūs, q.v..)
XI. Amīna Begam Mīrān-shāhī.
Ara., amīn, faithful.
Daughter of Humāyūn and Māh-chūchak.
Gul-badan, 71a.
XII. Āq Begam Bāyqrā.
Turkī, āq, fair. The word is frequently a sobriquet and the bearer's personal name is occasionally known; e.g., Yasīn-daulat, Āq Sulṭān; Salīqa Begam, Āq Begam. But frequently the personal name is not traceable.
Daughter of Sulṭān Ḥusain Mīrzā Bāyqrā and Pāyanda Sulṭān Begam Mīrān-shāhī; first cousin of Bābar; wife of Muḥammad Qāsim Arlāt.207 She had one daughter, known as the Black-eyed (qarā-gūz) Begam.
Mems., 181.
XIII. Āq Begam Mīrān-shāhī. (No. 3.)
Āq Begam was a daughter of Abū-sa'īd Mīrān-shāhī and Khadīja. She was one of the several paternal aunts of Bābar who went to India at his invitation. She reached Āgra in October, 1528 (Ṣafar, 935H.), and was met by her nephew. She was present at the double wedding of Gul-rang and Gul-chihra in 1530 (937H.), and was probably at Bābar's death-bed. She was at the Mystic Feast on December 19th, 1531 (Jumāda I. 9th, 938H.).
Gul-badan, 11a, 18b, 20a, 24b.
Mems., 179, 182, 387.
XIV. Aq Begam Mīrān-shāhī.
Third daughter of Sulṭān Maḥmūd Mīrzā Mīrān-shāhī and Khānzāda Begam Termiẕī; and first cousin of Bābar. The Memoirs do not mention her marriage or (as usual alternative) early death. She was full sister of a wife of Bābar, Zainab.
Mems., 30.
(Aq Begam, Salīqa, q.v..)
XV. 'Aqīqa ('Afīfa) Begam Mīrān-shāhī. (No. 47.)
Her name may be 'Aqīqa, a cornelian, etc., or 'Afīfa, a chaste, modest woman. Our begam's MS. allows both readings. I have used the first but the second seems the more appropriate in sense.
She was a daughter of Humāyūn and Bega and second child of both parents. She was born in Āgra in 1531. It is only from her aunt Gul-badan that anything is known of her. She went to Guālīār with her mother in (?) 1534; she was at Hindāl's feast in 1537, and she was lost at Chausa on June 27th, 1539.
Gul-badan, 22a, 23b, 25, 33b, 34b.
XVI. Ātūn māmā. (No. 38.)
An ātūn is a teacher of reading, writing, and embroidery, etc. Māmā seems to be the title of old women-servants.
Bābar mentions an ātūn in 1501. He met her at Pashāghar whither she had come on foot from Samar-qand and where she again joined her old mistress, Bābar's mother, Qutluq-nigār Khānam. She had been left behind in the city after Shaibānī's capture of it because there was no horse for her to ride.
Gul-badan mentions an ātūn māmā as at Hindāl's wedding feast, and as māmā seems to be used for old servants, it is possible that she is the woman mentioned by Bābar.
Gul-badan, 26a.
Mems., 99.
XVII. 'Āyisha-sulṭān Begam Bāyqrā. (No. 9.)
Ar. 'aish, joy, and sulṭān, sway, pre-eminence. Cf. App. s.n. Daulat.
Daughter of Sulṭān Ḥusain Mīrzā Bāyqrā and Zobaida āghācha of the Shaibān sulṭāns. 'Āyisha married, (1) Qāsim Sulṭān Uzbeg, a Shaibān sulṭān, and by him became the mother of Qāsim Ḥusain Sulṭan Uzbeg, an amīr of Bābar and Humāyūn; (2) by yanga-lik (cf. App. s.n. Jāmal), Būran Sulṭān, a kinsman of Qāsim Sulṭān, and by whom she had 'Abdu-l-lāh Sulṭān Uzbeg who entered Bābar's service.
'Āyisha was at the Mystic Feast in 1531, and she was lost at Chausa in 1539 (946H.).
Khwānd-amīr gives 929H. (1522-23) as a date at which 'Āyisha was in Qāsim Sulṭān's ḥaram, but this does not agree with Bābar's narrative. His entry that 'Abdu-l-lāh was in his service and although young, acquitting himself respectably, cannot at latest have been made after 1530. From 1522 to 1530 is all too short for widowhood, remarriage, birth of 'Abdu-l-lāh, and his growth to respectable military service.
Gul-badan, 24b, 33b.
Mems., 182.
Ḥabību-s-siyār, lith. ed., 327 et seq..
XVIII. 'Āyisha-sulṭān Begam Mīrān-shāhī. (? No. 11.)
Third daughter of Sulṭān Aḥmad Mīrzā Mīrān-shāhī and Qūtūq (Katak) Begam. She was a first cousin of Bābar, and his first wife. They were betrothed in Samarqand when he was five years old, 894H.(1488-89), and married in Sha'bān, 905H. (March, 1500), at Khojand during the ‘troubles’ i.e., conflict with Khusrau Shāh and Aḥmad Tambol. Bābar says that at first he had no small affection for 'Āyisha and that it declined. She was the mother of his first child, Fakhru-n-nisā' (born 907H., 1501). She left Bābar before the overthrow (wirānī) of Tāsh-kand by Shaibānī in 909H. (1503), being influenced by the ‘machinations’ of her elder sister, probably Salīqa, who was married to one of those many kinsmen who tried to overthrow the boy-king of Farghāna.
Gul-badan mentions an 'Āyisha Sulṭān Begam (No. 11) as being at the Mystic Feast, without describing her. The following entry (No. 12) is that of Sulṭānī, a daughter of Sulṭān Aḥmad Mīrzā, and described as being such. It seems likely that Gul-badan meant this note as to parentage to apply to both begams (Nos. 11 and 12). (Cf. App. s.n. Sulṭānan.)
Gul-badan, 6b, 24b.
Mems., 22, 78, 90.
XIX. Āyisha-sulṭān Begam Mīrān-shāhī.
Daughter of Kāmrān Mīrzā.
Firishta (lith. ed., 241) and Khāfī Khān (I. 122) say that Kāmrān left one son and three daughters.
The son is called Ibrāhīm by Gul-badan, and in the early part of the Akbar-nāma. (Bib. Ind., ed., I. 226.) Later the A. N. and other sources call him Abū'l-qāsim, which may be a hyonymic (kunyat).
As to the three girls, Firishta, without naming them, gives the information that:
No. 1 married (a) Ibrāhīm Ḥusain Mīrzā (Bāyqrā).
No. 2 married (b) Mīrzā 'Abdu-r-raḥman Mughal.
No. 3 married (c) Fakhru-d-dīn Mashhadī who died in 986H. or 987H. (No. 88 of Blochmann's list. Āīn-i-akbarī , p. 406).
Khāfī Khān's information coincides with Firishta's verbally as to No. 3, and actually as to No. 1 and No. 2. For Ibrāhīm can be described as a son of a ‘paternal uncle,’ if these words are used in the wide sense given to them by contemporary writers. So, too, can 'Abdu-r-raḥman, if he be No. 183 of Blochmann's list—a Dughlāt Mughal and cousin of Mīrzā Ḥaidar.
If we take the girls' names from other sources we can (conjecturally in part) fill up the table.
1. Gul-rukh is known in history as the wife of Ibrāhīm Ḥusain Mīrzā Bāyqrā.
2. Kāmrān's eldest daughter, Ḥābība, was forcibly parted from her husband, Āq Sulṭan, in about 1551-52, and this would allow re-marriage to (b) or (c). Āq Sulṭān went to Makka from Sind 1551-52 (cir.), and his name disappears thenceforth.
3. 'Āyisha may also have married (b) or (c).
In the list of the pilgrims of 983H. (A. N. Bib. Ind. ed., III. 145) are included ‘Ḥājī and Gul-'iẕār, farzand-ān of Mīrzā Kāmrān.’211 We have already the three names required by Firishta and Khāfī Khān, i.e., Gul-rukh, Ḥabība and 'Āyisha. Gul-'iẕār is ‘superfluous.’ Perhaps farzandān may be read ‘offspring,’ and she may be a granddaughter. Or Ḥabība or 'Āyisha may have predeceased Kāmrān, and for this reason three girls only be specified by historians who wrote of the time of his death.
Which one of the daughters was the Ḥājī Begam of 983H. is not clear.211a It would seem that this was her second pilgrimage, since she is enrolled as Ḥājī before starting. Kāmrān's daughters may have gone—one or all—to Makka after his blinding and during the four years of his life there. Of the three, Gul-rukh is the only one of whom it is on record that she was widowed in 983H., and therefore quite free to make the Ḥaj. Ibrāhīm Ḥusain died in 981H. (1573).
Ḥājī Begam was visited by Akbar and she died in 991H. (1583).
Gul-badan, 77a, 78a.
Akbar-nāma, III. 145, 373, 375.
XX. 'Āyisha-sulṭān Khānam and Khātīm, Mughal Khānam, Chaghatāī Mughal.
Daughter of Sulṭān Maḥmūd Khān. In 909H. (1503) she, together with other ladies of her father's household, was captured by Shaibānī and was married by him. She bore him a son, Muḥammād-raḥīm Sulṭān. She wrote Turkī verses, and her name appears in the biography of poetesses by Fakhrī amīrī. Mīrzā Ḥaidar says that some of her children and of two other Mughal khānams (Daulat and Qūt-līq) who were forcibly married at the same time, were living and reigning in Transoxiana at the time of his writing the Tārīkh-i-rashīdī. She is, I think, the 'Āyisha named by Gul-badan on 76b.
Tār. Rash., 160, 192, 193.
Gul-badan, 76b.
Jawāhiru-l-'ajāib. Fakhrī amīrī (Bodleian MS.).
XXI. Bābū āghā (Māmā āghā).
Professor Blochmann writes the name Bābū; but Bābā, darling, or Bānū, lady, would seem more appropriate for a Persian woman.
She was the wife of Shihābu-d-dīn Aḥmad Khān Nishāpūrī, and was related to Ḥamīda-bānū Begam Jāmī, Akbar's mother. Abū'l-faẓl calls her Māmā āghā. He says that she was a good woman, and that on her death Akbar went to her house and offered condolence because of her relationship to his mother.
Shihābu-d-dīn was damād of Māham anaga, and as damād is presumably used here in its more common sense of ‘son-in-law,’ Bābū āghā would seem to be a daughter of Māham anaga.
Akbar-nāma, Bib. Ind. ed., III. 716.
Aīn-i-akbarī, Blochmann, 333.
XXII. Bachaka Khalīfa.
Gul-badan, Bachaka; Mems., Bachaka; Ilminsky, Bīchkā. Vambéry (Chaghatāische Sprachstudien) has an appropriate word, bechek, Chok. (? Kokand), zierrath; ornament. The name is presumably Chaghatāī Turkī, as the bearer of it was an old family servant of a Farghāna household.
Bachaka was a head woman-servant (khalīfa) of Bābar's household, and was one of two women who escaped with his mother and him from Samarqand in 1501. There was a Bachaka whom Gul-badan calls a ‘khalīfa of my royal father,’ lost at Chausa in 1539, and the two references may well be to the same woman.
Mems., 98.
Gul-badan, 33b.
Ilminsky, 116.
XXIII. Badī'u-l-jamāl Khānam Chaghatāī Mughal.
The khānam of rare beauty; Ar. badī', astonishing, rare; jamāl, beauty.
Daughter of Sa'īd Khān Chaghatāī Mughal, ruler of Kāshghar; and first cousin, once removed, of Bābar. She married Bāush Sulṭān of the Uzbeg Kazāks. On her father's death, her brother Rashīd insisted upon her divorce, and then gave her in marriage to Muḥam-madī Barlās whom Ḥaidar Mīrzā styles ‘a peasant.’
Tār. Rash., E. & R., 453.
XXIV. Badī'u-l-jamāl Begam Mīrān-shāhī. (No. 2.)
She was a daughter of Sulṭān Abū-sa'īd Mīrzā Mīrān-shāhī. She went to India during Bābar's life; was at the double wedding of his daughters, and at the Mystic Feast in 1531.
Mems., 387.
Gul-badan, 11a, 18b, 24b.
XXV. Bairām (Maryam) Sulṭān.
Ilminsky calls her Bairam; Khwānd-amīr, Maryam. The Mems. give her no name.
She was the elder daughter of Sulṭān Ḥusain Mīrzā Bāyqrā and Mīnglī-bī āghācha Uzbeg. She married Sayyid 'Abdu-l-lāh Mīrzā of Andikhūd (a Tīmūrid through his mother). She bore a son, Savvid Birka, who served Bābar.
Ilminsky, 209.
Mems., 181.
Ḥabību-s-siyār, 327 et seq..
XXVI. Bakhshī-bānū Begam.
Princess Good-fortune. Pers. bakhsh, fortune, and bānū (vān), possessing.
She was a daughter of Humāyūn and of Gūnwar Bībī, and was born in Jumāda I., 947H. (September, 1540), the year of the Tīmūrid exodus from India. She fell into the hands of her uncle 'Askarī with her father's camp and the baby Akbar in 1543. In 1545 she was sent with Akbar in the depth of winter from Qandahār to Kābul. In 957H. (1550), and when ten years old, she was betrothed by her father to Ibrāhīm, son of Sulaimān and Ḥaram. Ibrāhīm (b. 1534) was six years older than Bakhshī-bānū, and he was killed in 1560, leaving her a widow of twenty. In the same year she was given in marriage by Akbar to Mīrzā Sharafu-d-dīn Ḥusain Aḥrārī.
Gul-badan, 39b.
Akbar-nāma, s.n..
XXVII. Bakhtu-n-nisa' Begam.
Felicity of womanhood; Pers. bakht, felicity, fortune, and nisā', woman.
She was a daughter of Humāyūn and Māh-chūchak, and was born in 957H. (1550). Gul-badan says that she received her name in accordance with Humāyūn's interpretation of a dream. There is, however, ground for thinking that she and Fakhru-n-nisā', both mentioned in the histories as daughters of Māh-chūchak, are one and the same person. Gul-badan enumerates three daughters of Māh-chūchak, and says that there were four. It is her habit to state, in such matters, one more than she names. She mentions Bakht, but not Fakhr.
Of Bakhtu-n-nisā' it is recorded in the histories that she came from Kābul to India with her son Diwālī, after the death of Mīrzā Muḥammad Hakīm, her brother (993H.—1584-85), and that she was concerned in a reconciliation effected by Salīma-sulṭān Begam between Akbar and Salīm.
Of Fakhru-n-nisā it is recorded that she married Shāh Abū'l-ma'ālī Termiẕī and Khwāja Ḥasan Naqsh-bandī .
Gul-badan, 71a.
Khāfī Khān (Bib. Ind. ed.), I. 226.
Badāyunī, Lowe, 72.
Akbar-nāma, s.n..
Aīn-i-akbarī, Blochmann, 322.
XXVIII. Bakht-sulṭān Begam Mīrān-shāhī. (No. 4.)
Daughter of Sulṭān Abū-sa'īd Mīrzā Mīrān-shāhī and mother of Āfāq (No. 26). She went to India shortly after its conquest by Bābar, and was at the Mystic Feast.
Mems., 387.
Gul-badan, 11a, 24b, 25b.
XXIX. Barlās Begam. (No. 36.)
There is no clue given by which to identify this lady. Others who were, like herself, at the Mystic Feast might, by tribal descent, be styled Barlās.
Gul-badan, 25b.
(Bedka, Rabī'a, q.v..)
XXX. Bega āghā.
Bega is perhaps not a personal name. It appears to be a feminine of beg, but its application is not always to the daughters of begs, as may be seen by the instances here given. For a confusion of bega and yanga cf. App. s.n. Zainab.
A messenger of Mīrzā Kāmrān to Ḥaram Begam.
Gul-badan, 75b.
XXXI. Bega Begam Bāyqrā.
Daughter of Sulṭān Ḥusain Mīrzā Bāyqrā and Pāyanda-sulṭān Begam Mīrān-shāhī; full sister of Ḥaidar Bāyqrā; first cousin of Bābar; wife of Bābar Mīrzā of Ḥājī Tarkhān who was her first cousin and the son of Rabī'a-sulṭān (Bedka) Bāyqrā.
Khwānd-amīr says that she married ‘Khwāja Māu-lānā.’ This may be a second marriage or a confusion with Kīchak, her sister.
Mems., 177, 181.
Ḥabību-s-siyār, 327 et seq..
XXXII. Bega Begam and Bībī.
The Emperor Jahāngīr, when in his Memoirs enumerating the gardens of Kābul, mentions one which belonged to Bega Begam, a widow of his father's grandfather, i.e., Bābar. Which of Bābar's wives is indicated by this title cannot be said with certainty.
Jauhar has a story of Kāmrān's want of consideration for ‘Bega Begam,’ in which the points useful here are that on the day in 1545 when Humāyūn took Kābul from Kāmrān, he asked for food from Bega Begam, and he said of her that she was the very person who had brought Bābar's bones and laid them in Kābul.
These two references of Jahāngīr and Jauhar are probably to the same lady. Of Bābar's wives, Bībī Mubārika (Afghānī āghācha) appears to me the most suitable to the time and task.
Bābar's body was still in its Āgra tomb in 1539. (Gul-badan, 34b.) Māham was then dead; Dil-dār's movements exclude her from consideration; Gul-rukh, if living, will have left Āgra with her son Kāmrān before the Tīmūrid exodus was enforced by defeat at Kanauj; Bībī Mubārika remains, the probable and appropriate agent for fulfilling Bābar's wish as to the final disposition of his body. She lived into Akbar's reign, and her character and respected position in the household add to the sum of probability that she would discharge this duty.
Bābar's body was not removed till after the fiṭrat, i.e., the Tīmūrid downfall and exodus. Bega Begam, or, as we may call her with Jauhar for the sake of clearness, the Bībī, must therefore have remained behind the rest of the royal family. This may have occurred in one of two natural ways. She might have stayed in Āgra under the protection of one of the religious families and safeguarded by pious duty to Bābar's tomb, until Shīr Khān gave permission to remove the body and a safe escort for her journey to his frontier; or she may even have been in Bengal and at Chausa with Humāyūn, and, like Bega (Ḥājī) Begam, have been made captive. It would harmonize with Shīr Khān's known actions if he had allowed Bābar's widow to remove his bones, and if he had aided her pious task.
Tūzūk-i-jahāngīrī, lith. ed., 51.
Humāyūn-nāma, Jauhar, Pers. text, s.a. 951H. (November,
1545).
B. & H., II. 325 n..
XXXIII. Bega Begam Mīrān-shāhī. (No. 15.)
This Bega was a daughter of Mīrzā Ulugh Beg Mīrān-shāhī who was king of Kābul and known as Kābulī. She was Bābar's first cousin, and may be that daughter of her father who married Muḥammād Ma'ṣūm Mīrzā Bāyqrā. Gul-badan styles her 'ama, paternal aunt, of Humāyūn; anglice, she and he were first cousins, once removed. She was at the Mystic Feast in December, 1531.
Gul-badan, 24b.
Mems., 180.
XXXIV. Bega Begam Mīrān-shāhī. (? No. 22. Bega Kilān Begam.)
Daughter of Sulṭān Maḥmūd Mīrzā and Khān-zāda II. Termiẕī; wife of Ḥaidar Mīrzā Bāyqrā and mother of Shād Begam (No. 28).
In 901H. (1496) Sulṭān Ḥusain Bāyqrā was besieging Ḥiṣār which was held for Bega's brother Mas'ūd, and in which she was. Ḥusain became apprehensive about the spring rains and patched up a peace, the seal of which was Bega's marriage with his son Ḥaidar, her first cousin through his mother, Pāyanda-sulṭān. The betrothal took place outside the fort, with assistance of such music as could be procured, and later when the bride was taken to Harāt, the marriage was celebrated with the splendour loved by Ḥusain and befitting a Tīmūrid alliance. Ḥaidar was a full Tīmūrid; Bega was one on her father's side, and probably as a Termiẕī sayyida's daughter, drew through her also a strain of the same blood.
Ḥaidar died before his father; i.e., before 912H. (April, 1506).
Mems., 30, 38, 180.
Gul-badan, (?) 24b, No. 22.
XXXV. Bega (Ḥājī) Begam (?) Begchik Mughal. (? No. 50.)
She was a daughter of Uncle (ṭaghāī) Yādgār Beg who was, I think, a brother of Sulṭān 'Alī Mīrzā, father of Kāmran's wife, Gul-rukh. Abū'l-faẓl calls Bega Begam dukhtar-i-ṭaghāī-wālida-i-Jannat-āshyānī. Yādgār and 'Alī Begchik are both styled Mīrzā, but this elevation is due, it seems, to their alliances with the royal house. Ḥaidar calls their brothers mīrs.
Bega married Humāyūn, her first cousin, and she was the wife of his youth. It is out of harmony with the custom of his house that his chief wife should be of less than royal descent. So far as I have been able to trace the matter, he never made an equal marriage. Gul-barg Barlās, ‘Khalīfa's’ daughter, whose second husband he was, had best claim to high birth.
The first son, perhaps first child, of Bega and Humāyūn was Al-amān, born 934H. or 935H. (1528) when his father was about twenty-one and was in Badakhshān. Bābar has commemorated his birth both by mentioning it and by preserving his own congratulatory letter to the young father. Al-amān died in infancy.
Bega came to India after Bābar's death (December, 1530), and her second and last-mentioned child, 'Afīfa ('Aqīqa) was born in 1531.
In 1534 (circa) Gul-badan's story (29b, 30b) shows Bega as resenting neglect by Humāyūn who accepts invitations to his sisters' quarters in camp in preference to hers and Gul-barg's. Some impressions of this story make one question whether the Bega it tells of is Humāyūn's wife or another. But the circumstances that she is associated with a wife, Gul-barg; that Gul-badan does not speak of her as being other than the ‘Bega Begam’ of the home circle; Humāyūn's allusions to the elder kinswomen; and the absence of the deference customary to an elder woman, seem sufficient justification for identifying the complaining Bega with the wife. (Gul-badan, it may be observed, mentions one other Bega Begam—i.e., Mīrān-shāhī, daughter of Ulugh Beg Kābulī.)
Bega was with Humāyūn during the idleness of his decadence in Bengal, and with her was her sister, the wife of Zahīd Beg. Zahīd offended Humāyūn, and Bega tried in vain to obtain his forgiveness.
She was captured at Chausa by Shīr Khān, and here she lost her little girl, 'Aqīqa. The historians all call her Ḥājī Begam in recording her capture; it is only Gul-badan who calls her Bega Begam. She was returned in safety to Humāyūn under the escort of Shīr Khān's best general, Khawāṣ Khān. How soon she was returned I am not able to say. Support is to be found for the view that she was sent to Āgra directly after Humāyūn's arrival there, and also for the view that she was not returned to him until after a considerable time had elapsed. I do not know whether she went to Sind with the exiles or was sent later direct to Kābul. She was in Kābul with the royal family after 1545. She remained there with the other ladies when Humāyūn made his expedition to recover Hindūstān, and she came with Ḥamīda, Gul-badan, and the rest to join Akbar in 964H. (1557). After this she built her husband's tomb near Dihlī, and became its faithful attendant.
Akbar is said to have been much attached to her, and she was to him like a second mother. She went to Makka in 972H. (1564-65), and returned three years later. One thing raises the question whether this was her first pilgrimage, viz., the fact that all the sources, except Gul-badan's, call her Ḥājī Begam. Why is she singled out to bear this title? It had been earned by many royal ladies before any one of the trio of great writers under Akbar had put pen to paper. The same unexplained distinction is conferred by the histories on a daughter of Kāmrān. In both these cases a renewed pilgrimage might serve as the explanation of the distinction.
Bega Begam died in 989H. (1581), shortly before Gul-badan's return from Makka. She had almost certainly passed her seventieth year, and was perhaps still older. Abū'l-faẓl says that her affairs were settled by one Qāsim 'Alī Khān. He also records a visit of Akbar to her in her last illness, as well as an earlier visit of hers to him made from Dihlī in 981H..
Gul-badan, 22a, 23b, 29b, 30b, 78b, 83a.
Mems., 388, 390.
Akbar-nāma, Bib. Ind. ed., index, s.n..
Āīn-i-akbarī, Blochmann, 465. (Confusion has been made
here with Kāmrān's daughter.)
Badāyunī, Lowe, 308 n..
History of the Afghāns, Dorn, I. 103.
XXXVI. Bega Kilān Begam. (No. 22.)
She was at the Mystic Feast. No clue is given to her identification. The ‘kilān’ of her title indicates a pre-eminence which would suit Bega Mīrān-shāhī, daughter of Sulṭān Maḥmūd Mīrzā. (Cf. supra.)
Gul-badan, 24b.
XXXVII. Bega Sulṭān Begam Marvī.
Daughter of Sanjar Mīrzā of Marv; first wife of Sulṭān Ḥusain Mīrzā Bāyqrā; mother of Badī'u-z-zamān Mīrzā. ‘She was extremely cross-tempered, and fretted the mīrzā beyond endurance, till, driven to extremities by her insufferable humour, he divorced her. What could he do? He was in the right:
A bad wife in a good man's house,
Even in this world, makes a hell on earth.
May the Almighty remove such a visitation from every good Moslim; and God grant that such a thing as an ill-tempered, cross-grained wife be not left in the world.’
There is no later record of her.
Mems., 181, 182.
XXXVIII. Bega Sulṭān Begam Mīrān-shāhī. (No. 13.)
Daughter of Sulṭān Khalīl Mīrzā Mīrān-shāhī; grand-daughter of Sulṭān Abū-sa'īd; first cousin of Bābar.
Gul-badan, 24b.
XXXIX. Begam Sulṭān.
Daughter of Shaikh Kamāl. Died 945H. (1538).
Beale's ‘Oriental Biography,’ s.n..
(Begam Sulṭān, Sa'ādat-bakht, q.v..)
XL. Begī Sulṭān āghācha.
Inferior wife (chāhar-shambihī) of Sulṭān Ḥusain Mīrzā Bāyqrā.
Mems., 183.
XLI. Buwā Begam.
Mother of Sulṭān Ibrāhīm Lōdī Afghān. She attempted to poison Bābar in December, 1526 (933H.) in the manner which is told in most of the histories. The Iqbāl-nāma adds the interesting detail that she was deported from India, and that on her enforced journey to Kābul she drowned herself in the Indus.
Mems., 347.
Gul-badan, 19a.
XLII. Chūlī Begam Azāk.
The Desert Princess; Pers. chūl, desert. The Memoirs have Jūlī, but the meaning of chūlī (which looks like a sobriquet) suits the descent of the begam better than anything which can be extracted from jūl. Ihninsky writes Jūlī, but for this the Mems. are his possible warrant. B.M. Pers. Or. 16,623, f. 123, l. 7., has a clearly-pointed chūlī; also on f. 124b.
Chūlī (Jūlī) Begam was a daughter of a beg of the Azāks, and married Sulṭān Ḥusain Bāyqrā before he conquered Khurāsān in 878H. (1473). She was the mother of Sulṭanām, his eldest girl and her only child, and she died before 912H. (1506).
Mems., 181, 182.
Ḥabību-s-siyār, 327 et seq..
XLIII. Daulat-bakht āghācha.
(?) The lady of happy horoscope (bakht).
She may be the mother of Kāmrān's daughter 'Āyisha, with whom she was in flight for Qandahār. (Cf. 'Āyisha.)
Gul-badan, 78b.
XLIV. Daulat-bakht Bībī. (No. 85.)
She was clearly an active and working member of Humāyūn's household. She appeared to him in a dream (71a), and her name formed a part of Bakhtu-n-nisā's. She went on before the main body of begams when they visited the waterfall at Farza, and saw to the commissariat. She is named as being at Hindāl's marriage feast.
She may be the Daulat-bakht āghācha of the preceding notice.
Gul-badan, 26b, 71a, 74a.
XLV. Daulat-kitta (?) Arghūn.
Kitta I find only as a Turkī word, meaning noble, powerful. With it the name would be a mongrel of Arabic and Turkī. Perhaps Daulat-gītī might be read.
She was a servant in Mīrzā Muḥammad Muqīm Arghūn's house, and was an intermediary in effecting the elopement of her master's daughter, Māh-chūchak Arghūn, from Kābul. Mr. Erskine tells the story admirably.
B. & H., I. 348 et seq., and the sources there referred to.
XLVI. Daulat-nigār Khānam Chaghatāī Mughal.
Good-fortune itself; the very image of felicity. Ar. daulat, and Pers. nigār, effigy, image.
Daughter of Isān-būghā Khān Chaghatāī; wife of Muḥammad Ḥaidar Mīrzā Dughlāt.
Tār. Rash., E. & R., 88.
XLVII. Daulat-sulṭān Khānam Chaghatāī Mughal.
Ar. daulat, fortune, and sulṭān, sway. In many proper names, sulṭān does not appear to be a title, but rather to indicate the sway or dominance of the quality imputed by the first word of the name; e.g., Laṭīf-sulṭān, Daulat-sulṭān. In giving these names, one might suppose the prophetic notion to be that the first child should be a regnant delight and the second a prevailing felicity.
Youngest child of Yūnas Khān Chaghatāī and Shāh Begam Badakhshī; half-sister of Bābar's mother; wife by chance of battle, of Tīmūr Sulṭān Uzbeg; mother by him of a daughter.
In 907H. (1501-2) she was in Tāshkand, and Qūt-līq-nigār Khānam went to visit her after thirteen or fourteen years of separation. Bābar, dejected and an exile, joined the family party in the next year. In 909H. (1503) Shaibānī sacked Tāshkand and forcibly married Daulat-sulṭān to his son Tīmūr. She bore him a daughter, and she remained in his ḥaram until Bābar took possession of Samarqand in 917H. (1511), and she joined him. She went south with him in 1513, and remained several years in Badakhshān with another nephew, Mīrzā (Wais) Khān who behaved to her like a son.
Another nephew, Sa'īd, her own brother Aḥmad's son, then invited her, with costly gifts, to visit him in Kāshghar. She made the long and difficult journey; joined him in Yarkand; and with him she spent the rest of her life.
Bābar mentions that her foster-brother brought him news and letters from her in 925H. (September 8th, 1519). In the same year Manṣūr, Sa'īd's eldest brother, went to Kāshghar to visit her, his ‘beloved aunt.’
The Persian text of the Tārīkh-i-rashīdī says that Manṣūr went so that by looking at her kind face his grief for the loss of his father might be mitigated. The Bible Society's Turkī version reads: ‘Being prompted thereto by the extreme warmth of his affection for her.’ Both statements illumine her character. The second seems the more appropriate, since the death of Sulṭān Aḥmad Khān took place in 909H. (1503) and Manṣur's visit in 926H. (1520).
There is no mention of her remarriage, and her story is that of an affectionate and leisured aunt.
Mems., 14, 99, 105, 274.
Tār. Rash., E. & R., 108, 117, 156, 160, 351, 352, 356.
XLVIII. Daulat-sulṭān (?) Sakanj Begam.
Sakanj I cannot explain. B. M. Add. 24,090 (44b) has no points, and the word may be S-k-n-gh. B. M., Or. 137 (48a) has k-m-n-j or b-k-n-j. The Turkī (Bible Society's MS. translations) has Daulat.
Daughter of Amīr Shaikh Nūru-d-dīn Qibchāq Mughal, governor of Turkistān; wife of Wais Khān Chaghatāī Mughal.
Tār. Rash., E. & R., 64 and 64 n..
XLIX. Dil-dār Begam. (No. 48.)
The Heart-holding Princess; Pers. dil, heart, and dār, holding.
Neither her husband, Bābar nor her daughter, Gul-badan gives any clue to her parentage. Her marriage is not spoken of in the Memoirs; it, as well as Gul-rukh's, probably occurred in the missing decade of 1509-19. If Bābar held the view that four wives were a lawful number, Dil-dār, of whatever parentage, may be counted amongst them, since in 1509 Māham only remained of his earlier wives, 'Āyisha, Zainab, and Ma'sūma having disappeared from the household by death or divorce.
Dil-dār is mentioned once in the Turkī text of Kehr and Ilminsky, and then as āghācha. I am too ignorant of the import of this word in the domestic circle to venture to draw from its use an inference as to social status. It, however, as used by Bābar and by Gul-badan, supports Pavet de Courteille's definition of a ‘lady’ in contradistinction to a ‘begam,’ and does not convey reproach to the woman as its occasional English rendering (concubine) does.
The Akbar-nāma (Bib. Ind. ed., II. 62) makes use of the words ‘Dil-dār āghācha Begam,’ and adds āghā as a variant (cf. App., s.n. āghā). Gul-badan always styles her mother begam, and sometimes ḥaẓrat. In enumerating her father's children and their mothers, she does not mention the parentage of any wife besides Ma'sūma Mīrān-shāhī, a Tīmūrid, but no deduction as to the lower birth of the others can be drawn safely from this, and there is some ground for supposing that Dil-dār was of Mīrān-shāhī birth. (Cf. infra, p. 277.)
Perhaps some indication of non-royal birth is given by Māham's forcible adoption of Dil-dār's son in 1519, but I am too ignorant of the nuances of Muḥammadan etiquette to venture on assertion or even on opinion in such a matter. That Māham did not take Gul-rukh's 226 son tells nothing, since the chief factors in the adoption, i.e., Māham's loss of her own children and wish to adopt, may have become operative only when they were put into practice in 1519.
Five children of Dil-dār are mentioned by Gul-badan: Gul-rang, born between 1511 and 1515; Gul-chihra; Abū-n-nāṣir Muḥammad (Hindāl), born 1519; Gul-badan, born 1523; and Alwar, who died in India in 1529.
She is very frequently written of by her daughter; some other authors give of her a clear and pleasant impression; and she is always spoken of with respect and as a good and sensible woman.
Gul-badan, 6b, 16a, 23a, 25b, 29b, 30a, 35a, 35b, 38a, 42a,
50b, 51b, 65a, 70b.
Jauhar, Stewart, 30, 31.
Ilminsky, 281.
Akbar-nāma, Bib. Ind. ed., s.n..
B. & H., II. 164, 220, 302.
L. Dil-shād Begam.
The Heart-rejoicing Princess; Pers. dil, heart, and shād, rejoicing.
Daughter of Shāh Begam and grand-daughter of Fakhr-jahān Begam Mīrān-shāhī. Of her paternal descent nothing is recorded.
Gul-badan, 24b.
LI. Dūdū Bībī.
Wife of Sulṭān Muḥammad Shāh Lohānī, Afghān King of Bihār; mother of Sulṭān Jalālu-d-dīn; regent for her son in his minority from 1529.
B. & H., s.n..
LII. Fakhr-jahān Begam Mīrān-shāhī. (No. 1.)
The world's ornament. Ar. fakhr, ornament, and Pers. jahān, world.
She was a daughter of Sulṭān Abū-sa'īd Mīrzā; a paternal aunt of Bābar; the wife of Mīr 'Alā'u-l-mulk Termiẕī; and mother of Shāh and Kīchak Begams.
She went to India in 1526, the first year of Bābar's occupation, with her sister Khadīja, and stayed there nearly two years. She took leave of Bābar before starting on her return journey to Kābul on September 20th, 1528 (Muḥarram 5th, 935H.). She was again in Āgra and at the Mystic Feast in 1531.
Gul-badan, 11a, 24b.
Mems., 374, 382.
P. de Courteille, II. 453. (This is a fragment, supplied by
Kehr and Ilminsky, which has the appearance of memo-
randa and which concerns a period already and variously
written of in the Bābar-nāma of Kehr and contained in
the Memoirs of Mr. Erskine.)
Aīn-i-akbarī, Blochmann, 322.
LIII. Fakhru-n-nisā'.
The ornament of womanhood; Ar. fakhr, ornament, and nisā', woman.
She was a daughter of Bābar and 'Āyisha-sulṭān, and his first child, born when he was nineteen. She died when about a month old.
Mems., 90.
Gul-badan, 6b.
LIV. Fakhru-n-nisā' anaga and māmā.
Mother of Nadīm kūka; mother-in-law of his wife, Māham anaga.
She and Nadīm are several times mentioned by Gul-badan.
Gul-badan, 26a, 46a, 71a, 73b.
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, January, 1899, art.
Māham anaga, H. Beveridge.
Akbar-nāma, Bib. Ind. ed., s.n. Nadīm.
LV. Fakhru-n-nisā' Begam Mīrān-shāhī. (No. 61.)
Daughter of Humāyūn and Māh-chūchak; sister of Muḥammad Ḥakīm; wife (1) of Shāh Abū'l-ma'ālī and (2) of Khwāja Ḥasan Naqshbandī. (Cf. Bakhtu-n-nisā'.)
Akbar-nāma, Bib. Ind. ed., s.n..
Aīn-i-akbarī, Blochmann, s.n..
Badāyunī, Lowe, 72.
LVI. Fāṭima Sulṭān āghā.
Ar. Fāṭima, a name given presumably in honour of the Prophet's daughter. The meaning of sulṭān here is not apparent. It does not seem as, e.g., in Daulat-sulṭān, safe to consider it as a part of a compound word, and to read Faṭīma-sulṭān. Nor from the bearer's parentage does it suit to take it as a title, implying that she is of the sulṭāns of her tribe.
There are points in the use of the word sulṭān which require fuller discussion than is practicable here. One Fāṭima Sulṭān and her sister Bairām (Maryam) were the children of Ḥusain Bāyqrā by an Uzbeg servant of one of his royal wives. They are not given any further title, but their brothers are mīrzās.
Daughter of the chief of a Mughal tumān (10,000 men); first wife of 'Umar Shaikh Mīrān-shāhī; mother of his second son, Jahāngīr who was two years the junior of Bābar.
Mems., 10, 14.
LVII. Fāṭīma Sulṭān anaga and Bībī. (No. 60.)
Mother of Raushan kūka and of Zuhra, wife of Khwāja Mu'aẓẓam. Bāyazīd bīyāt speaks of her as the ōrdū-begi of Humāyūn's ḥaram, a title which Blochmann translates ‘armed woman.’
She was at Hindāl's marriage feast; she helped to nurse Humāyūn in 1546; and was an envoy to Ḥaram Begam for marriage negotiations; and she appears in Akbar's reign when her daughter is murdered.
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, October, 1898, art. Memoirs of Bāyazīd bīyāt, H. Beveridge.
Ṭabaqāt-i-akbarī, Elliot, V. 291.
Akbar-nāma, Bib. Ind. ed., s.n..
Gul-badan, 26a.
LVIII. Fāṭima Sulṭān Bāyqrā.
Daughter of Sulṭān Ḥusain Mīrzā Bāyqrā and of Mīnglī-bī āghācha Uzbeg; wife of Yādgār Muḥammad Mīrzā Shāh-rukhī (died 875—1470-71). She was dead before 912H. (May, 1506).
Mems., 182.
Ḥabību-s-siyār, 327 et seq..
LIX. Fāṭima Sulṭān Begam.
A wife of Shāh Ḥusain Beg Arghūn, and mentioned in the Tārīkh-i-sind.
LX. Fauq Begam. (No. 31.)
Ar. fauq, superiority, excellence.
Gul-badan, 25b.
LXI. Fīroza Begam. (No. 35.)
The princess of victory; Pers. fīroz, victorious, prosperous.
Gul-badan, 25b.
LXII. Fīroza Begam Mīrān-shāhī.
She was a grand-daughter of Tīmūr, and married Manṣūr Mīrzā Bāyqrā. Their son Ḥusain was therefore a double Tīmūrid, fourth in descent through Manṣūr and third through Fīroza.
Mems., 176.
LXIII. Gauhar-shād Begam and āghā, Turkomān.
The jewel of joy; Pers. gauhar, jewel, and shād, joy, delight.
Wife of Shāh-rukh, son of Tīmūr; sister of Qarā Yūsuf Turkomān; founder of the Masjid which bears her name in Mashhad, and, with her husband, of the Bāgh-i-zāghān (Ravens' Garden) at Harāt. Bābar saw her tomb (dated 861H., 1457) and her mosque in 1506.
Mems., 207.
Northern Afghānistān, C. E. Yate, s.n.
Tār. Rash., E. & R., 83 n..
LXIV. Gauhar-shād Begam Dughlāt.
Daughter of Muḥammad Dughlāt Ḥiṣārī; wife of Amīr Yār (sic); son of Amīr Jān-wafā, who was darogha of Samarqand under Shaibānī in 906H. (1500) when Bābar took the city, and who was an intimate of Muḥammad Ḥiṣārī, and saved his life by a warning word, as a reward for which Gauhar-shād was given in marriage to his son.
Mems., 86, 88, 239.
Tār. Rash., E. & R., 193.
LXV. Gauhar-shād Begam Mīrān-shāhī. (No. 5.)
Daughter of Sulṭān Abū-sa'īd Mīrzā and paternal aunt of Bābar. She was at the Mystic Feast.
Mems., 387.
Gul-badan, 11a, 24b.
LXVI. Gul-badan Begam Mīrān-shāhī. (No. 46.)
Cf. Biographical Introduction and her own Humā-yūn-nāma .
LXVII. Gul-barg Begam Barlās. (No. 49.)
The rose-leaf princess; Pers. barg, leaf.
Daughter of Niẓāmu-d-dīn 'Alī Barlās, Bābar's Khalīfa; niece, therefore, of Sulṭān Junaid Barlās, a brother-in-law of Bābar. (Cf. Shahr-bānū.) She may be the child of that Sulṭānam who received Gul-badan at Kūl-jalālī. (14a) She married, first, Mīr Shāh Ḥusain Arghūn, in 930H. (1524). The alliance was not happy and a separation took place. She appears to have remarried Humāyūn at some time before the defeat at Chausa (1539). She was with him subsequently in Sind, and from there went with Sulṭānam to Makka previous to 1543.
She was buried in Dihlī. Mīr Ma'ṣūm writes of her death: ‘She entrusted her soul to the guardians of the hour of death, and the leaves (gul-barg) of the rose-bush of her life were dispersed by the boisterous wind of mortality.’
Gul-badan, 21a, 25b, 29b, 30b, 49b.
Tārīkh-i-sind, Mīr Ma'ṣūm.
B. & H., I. 385.
LXVIII. Gul-barg, or - iẕar, or -rang, or -rukh Mīrān-shāhī.
By these various names is mentioned the mother of Salīma-sulṭān Begam. There are difficult points as to her descent which are discussed s.n. Salīma-sulṭān.
LXIX. Gul Begam. (No. 30.)
The rose princess.
She was at the Mystic Feast, and may be one of the various ladies of the rose who are entered infra.
Gul-badan, 25b.
LXX. Gul-chihra Begam Mīrān-shāhī. (No. 45.)
The rosy-cheeked princess; Pers. chihra, face.
Daughter of Bābar and Dil-dār; their second child, and born between 1515 and 1517. She was full-sister of Gul-rang, Hindāl, and Gul-badan.
She married Bābar's first cousin (a son of his mother's brother Aḥmad), Sulṭān Tūkhta-būghā Khān Chaghatāī Mughal. The marriage was arranged by Bābar, and took place in 937H. (end of 1530). She would then be about fourteen years old.
She was widowed cir. 940H. (1533), and nothing as to her remarriage is recorded until 956H. (1549), when she was over thirty years old. It is improbable that she remained a widow so many years. (Cf. App. s.n. Salīma-sulṭān.) In 956H. she entered upon what looks like a mariage de raison with 'Abbās Sulṭān Uzbeg, just before Humāyūn set out on his expedition for Balkh. The bridegroom came to suspect that the Tīmūrid army was about to act against his own people and ran away. Probably he did not take Gul-chihra with him. Her name next appears in the histories when she accompanies Gul-badan and Ḥamīda to India in 964H. (1557).
Gul-badan, 6b, 16b, 18b, 23b, 25b, 29b, 38a, 65a.
Akbar-nāma, Bib. Ind. ed., s.n.
LXXI. Gul-'iẕār Begam Mīrān-shāhī.
The rosy-cheeked princess; Pers. gul, rose, and 'iẕār, cheek, face.
Daughter of Bābar and Gul-rukh; full-sister of Kāmrān and 'Askarī.
Gul-badan names no marriage for her, but she may have been the wife of Yādgār-nāṣir.
Gul-badan, 6b.
Mems., 10.
LXXII. Gul-'iẕār Begam Mīrān-shāhī.
Daughter of Kāmrān Mīrzā; she accompanied Gul-badan Begam to Makka (983H., October, 1575). (Cf. App. s.n. 'Āyisha Mīrān-shāhī.)
Akbar-nāma, Bib. Ind. ed., III. 145.
LXXIII. Gul-nār āghācha. (No. 57.)
The red, red rose; Pers. gul, rose, and nār (anār), pomegranate, carnation red.
She was of Bābar's ḥaram, and may have been one of the two Circassian (Cherkis) slaves (the other being Nār-gul) who were presented to the Emperor by Shāh Ṭahmāsp in 933H. (1526).
She was at Hindāl's wedding-feast, and shared in the conferences of Humāyūn and his family; and she was one of Gul-badan Begam's pilgrim band (983H., 1575).
Gul-badan, 25b, 30a, 35a, 38a.
Mems., 347.
Akbar-nāma, Bib. Ind. ed., III. 145.
LXXIV. Gul-rang Begam Mīrān-shāhī. (No. 44.)
The rose-hued princess.
Daughter of Bābar and Dil-dār and her mother's first child. She was born in Khost, probably between 1511 and 1515, during Bābar's exile from Kābul after the Mughal rebellion. She was given in marriage to Isān-tīmūr Chaghatāī Mughal, her father's first cousin, during the last days of her father's life and in 1530.
Isān-tīmūr is last mentioned in 1543, and of Gul-rang there is no certain record after cir. 1534, when she was at Guālīār. (23a) (Cf. App. s.n. Salīma.)
Gul-badan, 6b, 16b, 18b, 23a, 25b, 29b.
LXXV. Gul-rukh Begam (?) Begchik Mughal.
The rose-cheeked princess.
Wife of Bābar; mother of Kāmrān, 'Askarī, Shāh-rukh, Aḥmad, and Gul-'iẕār. Outside Kābul there was in 1545 the tomb of Gul-rukh Begam. (64b) This may well have been hers.
She is perhaps a Begchik. This may be judged from the following notes:
(1) Kāmrān married a daughter of Sulṭān 'Alī Mīrzā ṭaghāī.233 (Mems., 388.)
(2) Humāyūn married a daughter of Yādgār ṭaghāī. (Mems., 388.)
Amongst contemporary Begchik amīrs are Sulṭān Alī Mīrzā and Yādgār Mīrzā.
If one follows the recorded incidents of Sulṭān 'Alī's life, one sees that Gul-rukh may be his sister.
(a) In 914H. (1508-9) he was ordered to drown Khalīl Khān. (Tār. Rash., 183.) Having done so, he took refuge with Bābar in Samarqand. (l.c., 265.)
(b) In 917H. (1511) he was with Sayyid Muḥammad Dughlāt in Andijān, apparently at Bābar's instance. (l.c., 248.) In the same year he was sent by Sa'īd Khān who had reinforced Andijān under Bābar's orders, to Kāzan.
(c) In 920H. (1514) he accompanied Sa'īd in his conquest of Kāshghar, and at this date is named amongst the Begchik amīrs of the Kāshghar army. (l.c., 308, 326.)
(d) In 925H. (1519) he waited on Bābar, and is styled ṭaghāī of Kāmrān. (Mems., 274.) Bābar says here: ‘Sulṭān 'Alī Mīrzā, the maternal uncle of Kāmrān (Ilminsky, 311, Kāmrān-nīnak ṭaghāī), who in the year in which I passed over from Khost to Kābul had proceeded to Kāshghar, as has been mentioned ,234 waited on me here.’
Bābar must several times have passed from Khost (Andar-āb) to Kābul. The Tārīkh-i-rashīdī fixes the occasion here alluded to as in 920H. (1514). This was Bābar's latest and last crossing of the northern passes to Kabul.
By thus bringing the statements of the Memoirs and the Tārīkh-i-rashīdī together, Sulṭān 'Alī Mīrzā Begchik is fairly-well identified with Sulṭān 'Alī Mīrzā, ṭaghāī of Kāmrān.'
(e) In 935H. (1528) Kāmrān married his daughter. (Mems., 388.)
Mems., 274, 388.
Tār. Rash., 183, 248, 264, 265, 280, 308, 326.
LXXVI. Gul-rukh Begam Mīrān-shāhī.
Daughter of Kāmrān Mīrzā; wife of Ibrāhīm Ḥusain Mīrzā Bāyqrā; mother of Muẓaffar Ḥusain who married Sulṭān Khānam, Akbar's eldest daughter, and of Nūru-n-nisā' who became a wife of Salīm (the Emperor Jahāngīr).
The story of her husband's rebellious pursuit and death (981H., 1573), and of her flight to the Dakhin with her son, is found at length in the histories.
She was living and visited by Jahāngīr in 1023H. (1614). (Cf. XIX. 'Āyisha-sulṭān.)
LXXVII. Gūn-war Bībī.
Wife of Humāyūn and mother of Bakhshī-bānū Begam.
Gul-badan, 39b.
LXXVIII. Ḥabība Begam Mīrān-shāhī.
The beloved or desired princess.
Eldest daughter of Kāmrān Mīrzā and probably of the daughter of Uncle (ṭaghāī) Sulṭān 'Alī Mīrzā Begchik whom Kāmrān married in 935H. (1528). She married Yasīn-daulat (the Fair Sulṭān) Chaghatāī Mughal, a brother of Gul-badan's husband, Khiẓr, and her own second cousin. It may be that she married a second time after she was forcibly parted from Yasīn-daulat in 1551-52. (Cf. App. s.n. Ḥājī Mīrān-shāhī.)
Gul-badan, 64b, 65a, 78a.
LXXIX. Ḥabība-sulṭān Begam Arghūn.
The desired of the desired; Ar. ḥabība, beloved, desired, and sulṭān, pre-eminence, sway.
‘Brother's daughter of Sulṭān Arghūn’ (? Muqīm, Shāh Shuja'a, or a brother of Ẕū'l-nūn); wife of Sulṭān Aḥmad Mīrzā Mīrān-shāhī; and mother of Bābar's wife, Ma'ṣūma. Bābar gave her a name of affection, yanga. (Cf. Index, s.v..)
Mems., 22, 23, 208, 238.
LXXX. Ḥabība-sulṭān Khānish Dughlāt. (No. 21.)
Daughter of Muḥammad Ḥusain Dughlāt and Khūb-nigār Chaghatāī; full-sister of Mīrzā Ḥaidar; first cousin (maternal) of Bābar; wife (1) of 'Ubaidu-l-lāh Uzbeg, and (2) of her cousin, Sa'īd Khān Chaghatāī.
She was taken captive as a child by Shaibānī Uzbeg, and she lived in his household until he gave her in marriage to his nephew, 'Ubaidu-l-lāh. Shortly before Shaibānī murdered her father (914H., 1508-9), 'Ubaidu-l-lāh asked for Ḥaidar (œtat. 11) to come to him and Ḥabība in Bukhārā, and thus saved him from a general massacre of Mughal sulṭāns.
When 'Ubaidu-l-lāh retreated to Turkistān (cir. 1511), Ḥabība remained in Bukhārā. She then joined her uncle Sayyid Muḥammad Dughlāt, in Samarqand, and with him went to Andijān where he married her to her cousin Sa'īd. She reared one of Sa'īd's children, Rashīd whose mother was a ‘tribeswoman,’ Makhdūm Qāluchī, but he certainly did her training no credit. She was widowed in 939H. (July 9th, 1533), so that Gul-badan may be wrong in saying that she was at the Mystic Feast in 1531. She may have been a wedding guest in 1537.
Tār. Rash., E. & R., 140, 192, 193, 206, 268, 451, 453.
Gul-badan, 24b.
LXXXI. Ḥājī Begam Mīrān-shāhī.
She was a daughter of Kāmrān, and accompanied Gul-badan Begam to Makka in 983H., but it is to be inferred that this was not the pilgrimage which gave her her title of Ḥājī, since she is so entered before the ḥaj of 983H. (Cf. XIX, 'Āyisha-sulṭān.)
(Ḥājī Begam, Bega, q.v.)
(Ḥājī Begam, Māh-chūchak Arghūn, q.v.)
LXXXII. Ḥamīda-bānū.
Ar. ḥamīda, praised, laudable, and Pers. bānū.
Daughter of Sayyid Muḥammad Qāsim. She died 984H. (1576-77), and was buried at Andakhui.
The above information is given by Captain Yate, and as Hamīda-bānū may be the daughter of one of Humāyūn's followers, I have inserted her name.
Northern Afghānīstan, Yate, p. 349.
LXXXIII. Ḥamīda-bānū Begam Maryam-makānī.
Posthumous style, Maryam-makānī, dwelling with Mary.
She was the mother of Akbar. There is difficulty in making precise statement as to her family relations. She was of the lineage of Aḥmad Jāmī Zinda-fīl.
(a). Gul-badan, whose long intimacy with Ḥamīda invests her statement with authority, states that Mīr Bāba Dost was Ḥamīda's father, and that Khwāja Mu'aẓẓam was her barādar, i.e., brother undefined.
(b). The Tārīkh-i-sind states that her father was Shaikh 'Alī-akbar Jāmī who was one of the pillars of Mīrzā Hindāl. Niẓāmu-d-dīn Aḥmad says that 'Alī-akbar was father of Mu'aẓẓam.
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). Niẓamu-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'aẓẓam.
(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'aẓẓam 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'aẓẓam Ḥamīda's ukhuwwat-i-akhyāfī,238 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'aẓẓam 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'aẓẓam (? 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 Ṭahmāsp 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 Ṭahmāsp, and at Qandahār would meet Dil-dār and Hindāl, her former protectors.
It was not until November 15th, 1545 (Ramẓan 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, Niẓāmu-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.
Gul-badan, 39a, 42a, 43b, 48a, 55a, 55b, 58a, 59b, 62b, 66a,
74a, 78b, 83a.
Akbar-nāma, Bib. Ind. ed., s.n..
Aīn-i-akbarī. Aīn, 26, Ṣufīyāna, Blochmann, 61, 62.
Jauhar, l.c., Niẓāmu-d-dīn Aḥmad, etc.
Ma'āsiru-l-umarā' Bib. Ind. ed., I. 618.
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, October, 1898, art.
Bāyazīd bīyāt, H. Beveridge, 16.
LXXXIV. Ḥaram Begam Qibchāq Mughal.
Princess of the Ḥaram. Her name has been transliterated by some European workers as Khurram, ‘blossoming, cheerful,’ and this seems the more probable name to bestow on a child. But some of the Persian texts support Ḥaram, and the editors of the Bib. Ind. Akbar-nāma have adopted it. Gul-badan has Ḥaram.
Ḥaram Begam may be a sobriquet bestowed after the revelation of the facts of the bearer's character and dominance.
Daughter of Sulṭān Wais Kulābī Qibchāq Mughal; and sister of Chakr 'Alī and Ḥaidar Begs and of Māh Begam, a wife of Kāmrān. She married Sulai-mān Mīrzā Mīrān-shāhī, son of Khān Mīrzā (Wais). She had one son, Ibrāhīm (Abū'l-qāsim), and several daughters. Her children, through Shāh Begam Badakhshī, their paternal ancestress, claimed descent from Alexander the Great.
Most of the incidents of her career are given in the Introduction to this book, and her remarkable character is exhibited there. Badāyunī calls her Walī-ni'amat , and says she was known by this name. This may be a tribute to her pre-eminence in character and action and also to the fact of her belonging to an older generation than Akbar's, under whom he wrote. The elder men of royal birth were Lords and the elder women Ladies of Beneficence in those days.
Gul-badan, 65a, 75b.
Akbar-nāma, Bib. Ind. ed., s.n..
Badāyunī, Lowe, 61, 89, 90, 217.
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, October, 1898, art. Bāyazīd bīyāt, H. Beveridge, 12, 16.
B. & H., s.n..
Aīn-i-akbarī, Blochmann, s.n..
Introduction, supra.
LXXXV. Hazāra Begam.
Princess of the tribe of the Hazāra. This is a title, and not a personal name.
She was the daughter of a brother of Khiẓr Khān Hazāra who was the chief of his tribe during the struggles for supremacy of Humāyūn and Kāmrān. She married Kāmrān.
Gul-badan, 64b.
LXXXVI. Ḥusn-nigār Khānam Chaghatāī Mughal.
The image of beauty; Ar. ḥusn, beauty, and Pers. nigār, image.
Daughter of Isān-būghā Chaghatāī and niece of Yūnas Khān; sister of Dost-muḥammad and wife of Abā-bakr Dughlāt Mughal.
Tār. Rash., E. & R., 89, 99.
LXXXVII. Isān-daulat Khānam and Begam Qūchīn Mughal.
Her name takes several forms. The Bābar-nāma, Turkī text (B.M. Or. Add. 26,324), has a clearly pointed Ishān; Ilminsky has Isān passim. An early Persian MS. (B.M. Or. 3,714) has Isān and Isan.
The Memoirs have Isan in all but two instances (p. 12), where Ais is used. But Mr. Erskine's Persian text (B.M. Add. 26,200), which is presumably his authority, can (I venture to think, after comparing the words he renders Ais with those he renders Isan) yield Isan in all places. Where he reads Ais (pp. 10 and 141) the nūn is not dotted; the letters closely correspond with those where it is dotted, and where he reads Isan.
The Tārīkh-i-rashīdī (B.M. Or. 157) writes Isān.
The weight of authority is in favour of Isān.
Isān-daulat was Bābar's maternal grandmother and a daughter of Mīr Shīr-'alī Beg Qūchīn (Kunjī), chief of the Sagharīchī tumān (10,000) of the Qūchīn Mughals.
She married Yūnas Khān Chaghatāī Mughal when he was forty-one years old. He was born in 818H. (1415-16), so that the date of her marriage is, approximately, 1456. At this time Yūnas was made Great Khān of the Mughals.
Isān-daulat bore three daughters, who were named Mihr-nigār, Qūt-līq-nigār, and Khūb-nigār. She had many brothers, of whom three, Shīram, Mazīd, and 'Alī-dost, took leading parts in Bābar's affairs. Her chief co-wife was Shāh Begam Badakhshī.
She shared the vicissitudes of her remarkable husband's remarkable career for some thirty years; nursed him through two years of paralytic helplessness till his death in 892H. (1487) at the age of seventy-four, and survived him about eighteen years.
Four times at least she fell into the hands of an enemy:
(1) In Kāshghar, cir. 860H. (1455-56), when Mihr-nigār was an infant at the breast and when she was returned in safety to her husband.
(2) In Tāshkand in 877H. (1472-73), when Yūnas had gone to buy barley at a time of dearth in Mughal-istān. It was then that there occurred the well-known episode which shows Isān-daulat's high spirit and decision of character and which is briefly narrated in the Introduction (p. 68). She was returned with honour to her husband.
(3) In Andijān in 903H. (1497-98), when the town was taken from her grandson Bābar by his kinsfolk. She was sent after him in safety to Khojand, and from there went on to the protection of her third daughter's home in Kāshghar.
(4) At Samarqand in 906H. (1500-1), when the town was taken by Shaibānī. She remained behind when Bābar left the place, and rejoined him in a few months with his ‘family, heavy baggage, and a few lean and hungry followers.’
In the eighth year of her widowhood (900H.) she was guiding Bābar's affairs with decision and sense in Andijān. He says that few women equalled her for sagacity, far-sight and good judgment, and that many important affairs were carried out by her counsel.
News of her death reached Bābar in Kābul early in 911H. (June, 1505), during the forty days' mourning for his mother.
Two slight records of her remain for mention. Desert-born and of a tribe which clamoured against settled life, she yet had a garden-house at Andijān. She reared a half-sister of Bābar, Yādgār, daughter of Aghā āghācha.
Mems., 10, 12, 16, 27, 58, 59, 100, 111, 169.
Tār. Rash., E. & R., 86, 94, 175, 197, 308.
B. & H., s.n..
LXXXVIII. Jahān-sulṭān Begam.
The world-ruling princess; Pers. jahān, world, and Ar. sulṭān, sway.
Probably a child of Humāyūn. She died in Kābul, aged two, in 954H. (1547).
Gul-badan, 70a.
LXXXIX. Jamāl āghā.
Grace; Ar. jamāl, grace, beauty.
Wife (1) of Sanīz Mīrzā Dughlāt, and by him mother of 'Umar and Abā-bakr and Jān (or Khān)-sulṭān Khānam.
(2) of Dost-muḥammad Chaghatāī in 869 H.
(3) of Muḥammad Ḥaidar Dughlāt, and by him mother of Muḥammad Ḥusain Mīrzā Ḥiṣārī (Ḥaidar's father) and Sayyid Muḥammad Mīrzā.
Her third marriage was made by the Mughal custom of yanga-lik, i.e., marriage by a younger brother of an elder brother's widow. (Cf. Khān-zāda Mīrān-shāhī.)
Tār. Rash., E. & R., 88, 89, 99, 102, 104.
XC. Jān-sulṭān Begam. (No. 32.)
The soul-ruling princess; Pers. jān, life, soul, and
Ar. sulṭān, sway.
She was at the Mystic Feast in 1531.
Gul-badan, 25b.
(Jūlī Begam, Chūlī, q.v.)
XCI. Khadīja Begam.
Presumably she was named after Muḥammad's first wife.
She was first a slave246 of Sulṭān Abū-sa'īd Mīrzā, and upon his death in 873H. (1469) she betook herself to Harāt and there became the wife of Sulṭān Ḥusain Bāyqrā.
She had a daughter, known as Āq Begam, by Abū-sa'īd, and two sons, Shāh Gharīb and Muẓaffar Ḥusain, by her marriage with Ḥusain.
Here is an instance where the conferring of a title is mentioned. Bābar says that Ḥusain was passionately fond of her and that he raised her to the rank of begam; also that she managed him entirely. To her are attributed the intrigues and rebellion which ruined Ḥusain's family. She acquired more influence than any other of his wives, and it was consequently round her surviving son Muẓaffar Ḥusain, that adherents gathered after his father's death. She forced on the joint-kingship which excited Bābar's ridicule. Mīrzā Ḥaidar when speaking of the death of Jahāngīr Mīrān-shāhī, said that he was generally reported to have been poisoned in his wine by Khadīja Begam after her old fashion.
In 912H. (1506-7) Bābar saw her in Harāt, and he was there unlawfully entertained by her at a wine-party. When Shaibānī conquered the city in 913H. she was cast down from her high estate and given up to be plundered, and was treated as one of Shaibānī's meanest slaves.
Mems., 179, 182, 183, 198, 204, 223.
Tār. Rash., E. & R., 196, 199.
XCII. Khadīja-sulṭān Begam Chaghatāī Mughal.
Fourth daughter of Sulṭān Aḥmad Khān Chaghatāī. After her father's death in 909H. (1503-4), Mīrzā Abā-bakr Dughlāt took possession of his capital, Aksu, in Farghāna, and with it of Khadīja-sulṭān, then a child. He however, says Mīrzā Ḥaidar, treated her kindly and when she was of age, he gave her in marriage to his son Jahāngīr who was her second cousin. She accompanied her husband to her full-brother Sa'īd's court, shortly after 920H. (1514), and while in Kāshghar, Jahāngīr was murdered by an unknown hand, in Yangī-ḥiṣār. She then remained, respected and honoured, in her brother Sa'īd's family circle. In 923H. (1517) she was married to Shāh Muḥammad Sulṭān Chaghatāī, a grandson of Sulṭān Maḥmūd Khān, through Muḥammad, the only son of Maḥmūd who survived the massacre of sulṭāns by Shaibānī. The marriage of one of Khadīja's brothers, Aiman, was celebrated at the same time.
When Rashīd succeeded his father Sa'īd, in Kāsh-ghar (939H.—July, 1533) Khadīja was badly treated by him. She was then ill and confined to bed, but Rashīd banished her and her children and made her start on the weary journey for Badakhshān. She died on the road after much hardship of travel. She left four children, Ismā'īl, Ishāq, Ya'qūb, and Muḥtarima. They went on to Kābul, and were there received with fatherly kindness by their uncle, Isān-tīmūr.
Tār. Rash., E. & R., 161, 329, 352, 382, 451.
XCIII. Khadīja-sulṭān Begam Mīrān-shāhī. (No. 6.)
Daughter of Sulṭān Abū-sa'īd Mīrzā Mīrān-shāhī and paternal aunt of Bābar. I have not ascertained the name of her husband. She went to India in 934H. (1527), arriving in November, with Fakhr-jahān and their children. She planned to return with her sister and Bābar took leave of them both on Muḥarram 5th, 935H. (September 20th, 1528), but various business detained her and Bābar paid her another of his dutiful visits on October 9th. When or if she returned to Kābul is not said, but she was at the Mystic Feast in Āgra in 1531.
Gul-badan, 11a, 24b.
Mems., 374, 382, 387.
XCIV. Khāl-dār anaga.
The nurse with a mole; khāl-dār, mole-marked.
Mother of Sa'ādat-yār kūka.
Akbar-nāma, Bib. Ind. ed., I. 44.
XCV. Khānam Begam. (No. 18.)
Daughter of Āq Begam; grand-daughter of Abū-sa'īd Mīrān-shāhī. The ‘Khānam’ may indicate that she is a Chaghatāī chief's child.
Gul-badan, 24b.
(Khānam, Muḥtarima, q.v.)
XCVI. Khānish āghā Khwārizmī.
Daughter of Jūjūq Mīrzā Khwārizmī; wife of Humāyūn; mother of Ibrāhīm who died as an infant. Bāyazīd calls her child Muḥammad Farrūkh-fāl, but Gul-badan and Abū'l-faẓl are against him. Farrūkh-fāl was the child of Māh-chūchak. Ibrāhīm was born on the same day as Muḥammad Ḥakīm, i.e., Jumāda I. 15th, 960H. (April 19th, 1553).
Gul-badan, 71a, 71b, (?) 73b.
Bāyazīd (I. O. MS. 72a), Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, October, 1898, art. Bāyazīd bīyāt, H. Beveridge, p. 14.
Akbar-nāma, Bib. Ind. ed., I. 331.
XCVII. Khān Sulṭān Khānam and Sulṭānam Dughlāt.
Both these names appear to be titles, and not personal.
Daughter of Sanīz Mīrzā Dughlāt and Jamāl āghā; full-sister of Abā-bakr.
She was a woman of life-long piety and devotion to good works. Perhaps for this reason her brother who seems to have been an incarnation of unjust cruelty, treated her with studied barbarity, as a consequence of which she died in torture and suffering.
Tār. Rash., E. & R., 88, 258.
XCVIII. Khān-zāda Begam Bāyqrā. (No. 16.)
The khān-born princess; Turkī khān, and Pers. zāda, born.
Gul-badan says she is a daughter of Sulṭān Mas'ūd Mīrzā Mīrān-shāhī, and through a daughter grandchild of Pāyanda Muḥammad (sic) Sulṭān Begam, paternal great-aunt of Humāyūn. Bābar names no such marriage of a daughter of Pāyanda. ‘The second of the daughters [of Pāyanda] was Kīchak Begam [whose name is probably a sobriquet]. Sulṭān Mas'ūd Mīrzā was extremely attached to her, but whatever efforts he made, Pāyanda-sulṭān Begam, having an aversion to him, would not consent to the match. She was afterwards ’ (Turkī sūngrā, P. de C. dans la suite) ‘married to Mullā Khwāja.’
A daughter of Ḥusain Bāyqrā and of Bābā āghācha, whose name was Sa'ādat-bakht and title Begam Sulṭān, was married to Mas'ūd after his blinding. Her daughter might be fitly described as of inferior rank to the great begams. Such a description is given by Bābar of ‘Khān-zāda, daughter of Sulṭān Mas'ūd Mīrzā.’ Ḥusain and Pāyanda's daughter would certainly rank as equal in birth to the daughters of Abū-sa'īd, since she was a full Tīmūrid.
The ‘extreme attachment’ of Mas'ūd to Kīchak fits Musalmān marriage better than Musalmān courtship. It may be that, spite of Pāyanda's opposition, Mas'ūd married Kīchak. The ‘afterwards’ of the Memoirs (supra) and the de la suite of Pavet de Courteille seem to demand some more definite antecedent than Mas'ūd's attachment. Moreover, this presumably persisted with his wish to marry Kīchak.
Did he marry Kīchak, and was she divorced after his blinding or at some other time, and then was Sa'ādat-bakht given to him?
Mems., 181, 182, 387.
Gul-badan, 24b.
XCIX. Khān-zāda Begam Mīrān-shāhī.
Daughter of 'Umar Shaikh Mīrzā Mīrān-shāhī and of Qūt-līq-nigār Khānam; full-sister of Bābar and five years his senior. Eldest of her father's daughters. She is recorded as thrice married: first, to Shaibānī in 1501 (907H.); secondly, to a man of inferior rank, Sayyid Hada; and, thirdly, to Mahdī Muḥammad Khwāja,250 son of Mūsa Khwāja. One child of hers is recorded, Shaibānī's son, Khurram-shāh Sulṭān.
She was born circa 1478 (883H.). This is known from the statement of her brother that she was five years his senior. In 1501 (907H.) she was married by Shaibānī when he captured Samarqand from Bābar. Gul-badan makes the marriage a condition of Shaibānī's peace with Bābar; Ḥaidar says she was given in exchange for Bābar's life, and Khāfī Khān, as a ransom (ba tarīq-i-faida). She was in Shaibānī's power and could have been married without consent of Bābar. As in 1501 she was twenty-three years old, she had almost certainly been married before, possibly to Mahdī. Her marriage arrangements with Shaibānī might include the divorce which the Musalmān law requires. Bābar does not go into details as to the marriage; he says she fell into Shaibānī's hands. Presumably as himself of Tīmūrid birth, Shaibānī would treat a Tīmūrid woman with respectful forms even when she was spoil of battle. To marry Khān-zāda, he divorced her maternal aunt, Mihr-nigār Chaghatāī.
Khān-zāda's son by Shaibānī, Khurram-shāh, died a young man. Shaibānī divorced her because she leaned to her brother's side in disputed matters. He then gave her in marriage to a certain Sayyid Hada, who fell in the battle of Merv with Shaibānī himself (1510).
In 1511 and at the age of thirty-three, she was returned to Bābar by Shāh Ismā'īl. At what date she married Mahdī Muḥammad Khwāja I am not able to say. It is probable that the marriage would take place within no long time after her return. As Mahdī is never described by Bābar in any way (as is his custom when a new actor comes upon the scene of his Memoirs), it is probable that Mahdī's joining Bābar and his marriage with Khān-zāda took place in the decade 1509-19, of which no record is known to survive.251 Mahdī was with Bābar in 1519 (925H.), and is frequently mentioned subsequently.
There are many references to Khān-zāda by Gul-badan who frequently calls her Dearest Lady (āka-janām ). She died at Qabal-chak in 1545 (952H.), aged about sixty-seven years, and after a life full of sorrows and chagrins.
Gul-badan, 3b, 15b, 18b, 23b, 24b, 27b, 28b, 50b, 62b, 63a.
Mems., 10, 98, 241 (Supplement).
Tār. Rash., E. & R., 117, 155, 175, 196, 239, 400.
Ḥabību-s-siyār, under date 923H.
Khāfī Khān, I. 33 (here Khāna-zāda).
C. Khān-zāda Begam Mīrān-shāhī.
Daughter of Sulṭān Maḥmūd Mīrān-shāhī and Khān-zāda Termiẕī II.; wife (1) of Abā-bakr Dughlāt, and mother by him of (?) Jahāngīr, Turāngīr, and Bustāngīr; (2) of Sayyid Muḥammad Dughlāt who married her in conformity with the custom of yanga-lik. (Cf. Jamāl āghā.)
Mems., 30.
Tār. Rash., E. & R., 330.
CI. Khān-zāda Begam Termiẕī.
Of the family of the Khāns of Termiẕ; wife of Sulṭān Aḥmad Mīrzā Mīrān-shāhī. She was a bride when Bābar was five, i.e., in 893H. (1488) but, according to Turkī custom, was still veiled. Sulṭān Aḥmad desired Bābar to pluck off the veil and run away, a little ceremony which it was supposed would bring him good luck when his time for marriage should come.
Mems., 23.
CII. Khān-zāda Begam Termiẕī (a.).
Daughter of the chief (mīr-i-buzurg) of Termiẕ; wife of Sulṭān Maḥmūd Mīrzā Mīrān-shāhī; mother of Sulṭān Mas'ūd Mīrzā. She died apparently early in her married life. The mīrzā was greatly afflicted at her death.
Mems., 29, 30.
CIII. Khān-zāda Begam Termiẕī (b.).
Daughter of a brother of Khānzāda Termiẕī (a.); grand-daughter of the chief of Termiẕ; wife of Sulṭān Maḥmūd Mīrzā Mīrān-shāhī; mother of Ḥusain (who died, aged thirteen, before his father) and of five girls, Khānzāda, Bega, Āq, Āī, and Zainab.
Mems., 29, 30, 38, 128.
CIV. Khān-zāda Khānam.
‘Épouse légitime’ of Muẓaffar Mīrzā Bāyqrā, and illegally taken by Shaibānī.
Mems., 224.
Pavet de Courteille, II., 10.
CV. Khūb-nigār Khānam Chaghatāī Mughal.
The image of beauty. Here khānam has its full value, since Khūb-nigār was daughter of the Khāqān, the Khān emphatically.
Third daughter of Yūnas Khān Chaghatāī and Isān-daulat Qūchīn; wife of Muḥammad Ḥusain Dughlāt Ḥiṣārī; mother of Ḥaidar and Ḥabība.253 She was a year older than her husband, and was married in 899H. (1493-94). Bābar, writing in 907H. (1501-2) mentions the reception of news of her death. Her husband was murdered in 914H..
Mems., 12, 99, 218.
Tār. Rash., E. & R., 117, 118, 153, 156, 197.
CVI. Khurshed kūkī. (Nos. 55 and 64.)
Pers., the sun, sunshine.
Gul-badan, 26a.
CVII. Kīchak Begam Bāyqrā.
The small princess; Turkī, kīchak, small. The name is probably a sobriquet.
Daughter of Sulṭān Ḥusain Mīrzā Bāyqrā and Pāyanda-sulṭān Begam Mīrān-shāhī; wife of Maulānā Khwāja who was of the family of Sayyid Atā one of her father's best vazīrs.
Khwānd-amīr reverses her marriage with that of her sister Bega, and makes her marry Bābar, son of Rabī'a.
Mems., 181.
Ḥabību-s-siyār, 327 et seq..
CVIII. Kīchak Begam Termiẕī. (No. 23.)
Daughter of Mīr 'Alā'u-l-mulk Termiẕī and Fakhr-jahān Mīrān-shāhī; wife of Khwāja Mu'īn Aḥrārī; mother of Mīrzā Sharafu-d-dīn Ḥusain.
She went to Hindūstān with her mother, and was at Hindāl's wedding feast.
Mems., without names. (Cf. Fakhr-jahān and Shāh Begam.)
Gul-badan, 25a.
Akbar-nāma (lith. ed.), s.n..
Aīn-i-akbarī, Blochmann, 322.
CIX. Kīchak māham. (No. 80.)
Cf. s.n. Māham for meaning of the word.
She is named as at Hindāl's wedding.
Gul-badan, 26b.
CX. Kilān Khān Begam.
This is clearly not a personal name. Pers. kilān, elder, great, and Turkī khān, a title.
Daughter of Sulṭānam Begam Mīrān-shāhī and grand-daughter of Sulṭān Aḥmad Mīrzā. Which of Sulṭānam's three husbands was Kilān Khān Begam's father is not said; from her daughter's title, Tīmūr Sulṭān Uzbeg seems most probable.
Mems., 22.
Gul-badan, 24b.
CXI. Lād-malik Turkomān.
(?) Mistress of the Fort; Pers. lād, fortress, and Ar. malik, possessor, ruler.
Wife of (1) Tāj Khān Sarangkhānī and (2) of Shīr Khān Sūr (935H., 1528-29).
B. & H., II. 131, 132, and authorities there cited by Mr.
Erskine.
CXII. Lāl-shād Khānam Chaghatāī Mughal.
Perhaps, with a lip like the gleam of a ruby; Pers. lāl, ruby, and shād, gleam, happy.
Eldest daughter of Sulṭān Aḥmad Khān Chaghatāī and of a ‘slave’ (amm-i-wald).
‘Although she was outside the circle of distinction, she was finally married to Muḥammad Amīr Mīrzā Dughlāt.’
Tār. Rash., E. & R., 161.
CXIII. Laṭīfa-sulṭān āghācha.
Of pre-eminent delicacy or gentleness; Ar. laṭīfa, delicate, and a jest, and Ar. sulṭān, sway.
Chār-shambihī, a Wednesday wife, of Sulṭān Ḥusain Mīrzā Bāyqrā; mother of Abū'l-ḥasan and of Muḥam-mad Muḥsin (kepek, round-shouldered).
The Ḥabību-s-siyār says she was a relation of Jahān-shāh (? Turkomān or Barlās). She was dead before 912H. (1506).
Mems., 179, 183.
CXIV. Laṭīf Begam Duladāī Barlās.
Grand-daughter of Aḥmad Hājī Beg; wife (1) of Sulṭān Aḥmad Mīrzā Mīrān-shāhī; (2) of Ḥamza Sulṭān Uzbeg, and by him mother of three sons who fell into Bābar's hands at Ḥiṣār, and were released by him.
Both her grandfather Aḥmad and his paternal uncle, Janī Beg Duladāī, were amīrs of her first husband.
Mems., 23.
CXV. Māh-afroz Begam.
The princess who outshines the moon; Pers. māh, moon, and afroz, dazzling, illuminating.
She was a wife of Kāmrān and mother of Ḥājī Begam. Two of Kāmrān's wives are not known by their personal names, Hazāra Begam and the daughter of Uncle 'Alī Mīrzā Begchik. Māh-afroz may be one of these.
Gul-badan, 64b.
CXVI. Māham anaga.
Nurse of Akbar; wife of Nadīm kūka; mother of Bāqī and Adham kūkas. Cf. Bābū āghā. Much of her story is given in the Introduction to this volume.
CXVII. Māham Begam: ākā and ākām (lady and my lady).
The word Māham is explained by Mr. Erskine (who did not know Gul-badan's book) as Bābar's name of endearment for his favourite wife, and as meaning ‘my moon.’ Mr. Schuyler also translates it by the same words. He says that a woman who was shot for political offences in Bukhārā was known as ‘My moon (Māham) of Keninghez.’
But many Māhams are chronicled, and not only Bābar gives the name to Humāyūn's mother; Gul-badan speaks frequently of ‘my lady who was Māham Begam,’ and Māham seems to be her personal name. It is used at least once as a man's. (Akbar-nāma, I. 320, Māham 'Alī Qulī Khān.)
Whether māham is to be classed with sulṭānam, khānam, begam, shāham, I am unable to say.
Sir Douglas Forsyth (Mission to Yarkand, 84) translates khānam and begam by my lord and my ehief. But neither is a domestic word; both are in common use in the sources to designate, for general readers, the wives or daughters of khāns and begs, or princes. Sulṭānam also is a common title, and from Gul-badan's use of it does not appear to be a personal name, but to answer to sulṭān as khānam to khān, etc..
Against reading khānam as my lady, with a sense of possession or admission of superiority (as is done by Sir Douglas Forsyth), there are the Turkī words formed from it, viz., khānam-alī, honeysuckle, and khānam-būjakī, ladybird. Shāham, which has the appearance of being formed from shāh like the others by the suffix am or im, is used both for man and woman. Shīram occurs as a man's name.
Māham was a wife of whom it was said that she was to Bābar what 'Āyisha was to Muḥammad, and she was Humāyūn's mother. Gul-badan mentions her often, yet no one of the numerous sources I have consulted, sets down her family or the name of her father.
At one time it appeared to me probable that she was a Begchik Mughal, because Bābar calls Yādgār Begchik, ṭaghaī when speaking of him in connection with Humāyūn. Further consideration led to the abandonment of the theory.
Uncle Yādgār, Uncle 'Alī, and Uncle Ibrāhīm (Chapūk , slashed-face) are named as being three of the eight brothers or half-brothers of Gul-rukh, the mother of Kāmrān; and Bega (Ḥajī) Begam is the daughter of Uncle Yādgār.
Amongst these eight Begchiks I do not find one named Uncle Muhammad 'Alī, and there is a good deal to lead one to regard a certain Khwāja Muḥam-mad 'Alī ṭaghāī as being Māham's brother.
He was associated with Khost, and it is on record that Humāyūn visited his maternal grandparents (nanahā) in Khost. The Begchiks do not seem to have been connected with Khost. Bābar speaks frequently of Khwāja Muḥammad 'Alī as being employed in the government of Khost (925H.); as coming from Khost for orders, etc., and the mīr-zādas of Khost also are recorded as visiting the court. One of Māham's children was born in Khost.
Bābar frequently mentions an 'Abdu-l-malūk Khostī, and he may be a connection of Māham. He, however, appears as Khostī, Khwastī, Qastī, qūrchī, Qūrchīn, and without a more complete good Turkī text no opinion can be formed as to his identity.
Gul-badan says that Ākā (Māham) was related to the owners of the New Year's Garden in Kābul, and this was made by Ulugh Beg Kābulī Mīrān-shāhī.
Abū'l-faẓl says Māham was of a noble Khurāsān family, related to Sulṭān Ḥusain Mīrzā (Bāyqrā), and, like Ḥamīda-bānū Begam, was of the line of Shaikh Aḥmad Jāmī (az dūdman-i-a'yān wa ashrāf-i-Khurāsān and, wa ba Sulṭān Ḥusain Mīrzā nisbat-i-khwesh dārand. Perhaps nisbat-i-khwesh implies blood-relationship on the father's side.
Gul-badan speaks of Māham's Mughal servants, but a Chaghatāī, a Begchik, a Qūchīn is also a Mughal, and Bābar often sinks the divisional tribe-name in the general one, Mughal (e.g., Mems. 9 and 21).
Some considerations suggest that Māham was a Dughlāt Mughal, and of the family of 'Abdu-l-qadūs, but no valid opinion can be formed until a text as good as the Elphinstone is available for guidance.
Bābar married Māham in Harāt when he visited that city after Sulṭān Ḥusain Mīrzā's death, and in 912H. (1506). Humāyūn was born on March 6, 1508 (Ẕū'l-qa'da 4th, 913H.). Four other children were born to her, and all died in infancy. They were Bār-bul, Mihr-jahān, Isān-daulat and Fārūq.
The events of her career are detailed in the Introduction to this volume and in Gul-badan Begam's book.
Mems., 250, 405, 412, 423, 428 n..
Gul-badan, 4a, 6b, 7a, 8b, 11b, 13b, 14b, 16a, 16b, 17a, 18b,
21a and b, 22a and b, 23a and b, 24b.
Akbar-nāma, Bib. Ind. ed., and H. Beveridge, s.n. Māham
and Māham 'Alī Qulī Khān.
Turkistān, Schuyler, 95 ff..
CXVIII. Māham Kābulī. (No. 81.)
At Hindāl's marriage feast.
Gul-badan, 26a.
CXIX. Māham Khānam Chaghatāī Mughal.
Second daughter of Sulṭān Aḥmad Khān Chaghatāī and full-sister of Manṣūr Khān. Their mother was Ṣaḥib-daulat Dughlāt, sister of Mīr Jabār Bardī Dughlāt. Māham married Builāsh Khān Uzbeg Kazāk, son of Awīq.
Ḥaidar Mīrzā names her as a hostage given, with her mother, by her brother Manṣūr to his half-brother Sa'īd at a time of their meeting in 1516. She had two other full-brothers, Bābājāk and Shāh Shaikh Muḥammad.
Tār. Rash., N. E. & R., 160, 344.
CXX. Māh Begam Qibchāq Mughal.
The moon princess; Pers. māh, moon.
Daughter of Sulṭān Wais Qibchāq Mughal and sister of Ḥaram Begam; wife of Kāmrān Mīrzā.
Gul badan, 64b.
CXXI. Māh-chachaq Khalīfa.
She is mentioned by Bāyazīd as interceding for him with Ḥamīda-bānū. She may be a servant (khalīfa).
J. R. A. S., October, 1898, art. Bāyazīd bīyāt, H. Beveridge
p. 16.
CXXII. Māh-chūchak Begam Arghūn, Ḥājī Begam.
The word chūchak presents difficulties. Ilminsky writes chūchūq; Bāyazīd. chachaq; Gul-badan, chūchak and jūjak; the Memoirs, chuchak. Mr. Blochmann and Mr. Lowe transliterate, jūjak. There is a Turkī word jūjūq, but its meaning of sweet-savoured is less appropriate for a woman's name than a word which, spite of vowel variation it seems safer to take from the Persian; viz. chachak, a rose, and chachak, chuchuk, a lovely cheek, a mole.
Daughter of Mīrzā Muḥammad Muqīm Arghūn and of Bībī Zarīf Khātūn; wife (1) of Bābar's kūkaltāsh Qāsim; (2) of Shāh Ḥasan Arghūn of Sind (died 963H.); (3) of 'Īsā Tarkhān Arghūn of Tatta and Sind.
By Qāsim, she was mother of Nāhīd Begam and by Shāh Ḥasan of his only child, Chūchak or Māh-chūchak, Kāmran's wife.
She had an interesting story which Mr. Ersking tells at length. (B. & H., I. 348 et seq..)
On the death of 'Īsā (975H.) his son and successor Muḥammad Bāqī Tarkhān, who was a madman, ill-treated Mah-chūchak and Nāhīd who was then visiting her. This led to a plot against him, but in the end Māh-chūchak was imprisoned by him and starved to death. (Cf. s.n. Nāhīd.)
Mems., 233.
B. & H., I. 348 et seq.:
Tārīkh-i-sind, Mīr Ma'ṣūm, in the account of Shāh Ḥasan's
family.
Aīn-i-akbarī, Blochmann, 420.
Ilminsky, 273.
XXIII. Māh-chūchak Begam Arghūn.
Daughter of Shāh Ḥasan and Māh-chūchak Arghūn and her father's only child; wife of Kāmrān; married 953H. (1546). Her wifely fidelity is commemorated by the historians. She went with Kāmrān to Makka after his blinding, and attended him until his death, October 5th, 1557. She survived him seven months.
Tārīkh-i-sind, Mīr Ma'ṣūm, in the account of Shāh Ḥasan's
family.
CXXIV. Māh-chūchak Begam.
Sister of Bairām Oghlān and of Farīdūn Khān Kābulī.
She married Humāyūn in 1546. She had two sons, Muḥammad Hakīm (born 960H.—1553) and Farrūkh-fāl. Gul-badan says she had four daughters and then, with discrepancy frequently found in her writings, names three: Bakht-nisā', Sakīna-bānū, and Amīnabānū. The name of the best-known of her girls, Fakhru-n-nisā', is omitted.
Māh-chūchak's story is told by her sister-in-law, in the Introduction of this volume, by Mr. Bloch-mann and by several Persian writers.
She was murdered by Shāh Abū'l-ma'ālī in Kābul in 1564.
Gul-badan, 71a, 71b, 73b, 78b, 83a.
Jauhar, Mr. William Irvine's MS., Part II., Chapter II..
Bāyazīd, I.O. MS., 72a.
Niẓāmu-d-dīn Aḥmad, 27th year of Akbar.
Badāyunī, Lowe, 54 et seq..
Āīn-i-akbarī, Blochmann, s.n..
CXXV. Makhdūma āghā. (No. 59.)
The Lady āghā; Ar. makhdūma, lady, mistress.
Wife of Hindū Beg.
Gul-badan, 26a.
CXXVI. Makhdūma Begam (Qarā-gūz).
Wife of 'Umar Shaikh Mīrān-shāhī; mother ?? Ruqaiya, a posthumous child; she was married at the end of 'Umar's days; she was tenderly beloved, and to flatter him her descent was derived from his uncle, Manūchahr Mīrān-shāhī.
Mems., 10, 14.
CXXVII. Makhdūma-jahān.
The mistress of the world; Ar. makhdūma, mistress, and Pers. jahān, world.
Mother of Sulṭān Bahādūr Gujrātī.
B. & H., II. 96.
CXXVIII. Makhdūma Qāluchī.
A wife of Sa'īd Khān Chaghatāī; a ‘tribes-woman’; mother of Rashīd; sister of Suqār Bahādūr Qāluchī.
Tār. Rash., E. & R., 140, 187, 309.
CXXIX. Makhdūma Khānam.
The Lady Khānam; Ar. makhdūma, lady, mistress.
Daughter of Shīr 'Alī Khān Chaghatāī Mughal; sister of Wais Khān; wife of Amāsānjī Taishī Qālmāq; mother of Qadīr, Ibrāhīm, and Ilyās.
Her marriage was a ransom for her brother Wais of whom it was commonly reported that he was routed sixty times by the Qālmāqs. On her marriage, Wais made Amāsānjī become a Musalmān, and Makhdūma continued the work of her husband's conversion and that of his tribe.
She named one of her daughters Karīm Bardī in affection and respect for the Dughlāt amīr of this name.
Mems., 409.
Tār. Rash., E. & R., 67, 91.
CXXX. Makhdūma-sulṭān Begam.
Daughter of Sulṭān Maḥmūd Mīrzā Mīrān-shāhī and Zuhra Begī āghā Uzbeg; elder sister of Sulṭān 'Alī Mīrzā. ‘She is now in Badakhshān.’ (Mems., 30.) The ‘now’ may be in the late twenties of 1500, and she may have been with Mīrzā Khān (Wais Mīrān-shāhī ).
Mems., 30.
CXXXI. Makhfī.
Hid, concealed.
This is the poetical name (takhalluṣ) of Salīma-sulṭān Begam Chaqānīānī, Nūr-jahān Begam, and Zību-n-nisā', a daughter of Aurang-zīb.
CXXXII. Malika-jahān.
The world's queen; Ar. malika, queen, and Pers. jahān, world.
Elliot and Dawson, V. 81, 87, 88.
CXXXIII. Ma'ṣūma-sulṭān Begam Mīrān-shāhī.
The very chaste princess; Ar. ma'ṣūm, chaste, innocent, and sulṭān, sway, pre-eminence.
Fifth and youngest daughter of Sulṭān Aḥmad Mīrzā Mīrān-shāhī. Her mother was Ḥabība-sulṭān Begam Arghūn. She married Bābar (her first cousin) in 913H. (1507), and from his account of the affair it was a love-match on both sides. She was half-sister of 'Āyisha, Bābar's first wife. She died in child-bed, and her infant received her name.
Gul-badan, 6b.
Mems., 22, 208, 225, 231, 429 Supplement.
CXXXIV. Ma'ṣūma-sulṭān Begam Mīrān-shāhī. (No. 43.)
Daughter of Bābar and Ma'ṣūma; wife of Muḥam-mad-zamān Mīrzā Bāyqrā.
Gul-badan, 6b, 23a, 25b, 29b.
Akbar-nāma, s.n..
Mems., 22, 395, 429 Supplement.
CXXXV. Maywa-jān.
Fruit of life; Pers. maywa, fruit, and jān, life.
Daughter of Khazang yasāwal and a servant of Gul-badan Begam; an inferior wife of Humāyūn.
Gul-badan, 21b, 22a, 30a.
CXXXVI. Mihr-angez Begam. (No. 29.)
The princess who commands affection; Pers. mihr, affection, and angez, commanding. raising.
Daughter of Muẓaffar Ḥusain Mīrzā Bāyqrā; granddaughter of Sulṭān Ḥusain Bāyqrā and Khadīja.
She was accomplished after the fashion of gentlemen-at-arms and she played polo.
She was married by 'Ubaidu-l-lāh Uzbeg when Harāt was taken by Shaibānī (913H., June, 1507).
She was at the Mystic Feast in 1531.
Gul-badan, 24b.
Ḥabību-s-siyār, 397 et seq..
CXXXVII. Mihr-bānū Begam Mīrān-shāhī. (? No. 27.)
The beloved; Pers. mihr, affection, and bānū. possessing.
Daughter of 'Umar Shaikh Mīrān-shāhī and of Umīd Andijānī; full-sister of Nāṣir and Shahr-bānū; born cir. 886H. (1481-82).
Gul-badan mentions a Mihr-līq Begam (No. 27.) who was a paternal aunt of Humāyūn, as being at the Mystic Feast. This may be Mihr-bānū. No aunt named Mihr-līq is mentioned elsewhere, and līq and bānū have the same sense.
Gul-badan, 25a.
Mems., 10.
CXXXVIII. Mihr-bānū Khānam.
I think she is a relative of Bābar, and she may be the daughter of 'Umar Shaikh and Umīd, and thus Bābar's half-sister. (See infra.) From her title of Khānam, she is very possibly a Chaghatāī on her mother's side (Umīd was an Andijānī), or the style is due to her marriage with a khān. She appears to have married a man of high rank; perhaps Kūchūm (Qūch-kunjī) Khān who was Khāqān of his tribe from 1510 to 1530, or his son and successor (ruled from 1530 to 1533). She had a son Pulād whom Bābar mentions as fighting with ‘Qūch-kunjī’ and his son Abū-sa'īd Uzbeg at Jām (1528).
The Qūch-kunjī was the tribe of Isān-daulat.
Kūchūm, Abū-sa'īd, Mihr-bānū, and Pulād sent ambassadors and messengers to Bābar in the same year, and Bābar mentions his return gifts with quaint particularity. The envoys were entertained at a feast by him on December 12th, 1528 (935H.).
Mems., 10, 390, 395, 397, 399.
Tār. Rash., E. & R., s.n. Kuchum and Sulṭān and 206 n..
Muḥammadan Dynasties, Stanley Lane-Poole, 273.
CXXXIX. Mihr-jahān or -jān Begam Mīrān-shāhī.
Sun of the world or of life; Pers. mihr, sun, and jahān, world, or jān, life, soul.
Daughter of Bābar and Māham; born at Khost; died an infant.
Gul-badan, 6b.
CXL. Mihr-nigār Khānam Chaghatāī Mughal.
The image of affection, or a very sun.
Eldest daughter of Yūnas Khān Chaghatāī and Isān-daulat (Qūchīn, Kunjī); born cir. 860H. (1455-56); wife of Sulṭān Aḥmad Mīrzā Mīrān-shāhī; first cousin of Bābar.
In 905H. (early in July, 1500) she was captured by Shaibānī and married by him. In 906H. (1500-1) she was divorced when he wished to marry Khān-zāda, her niece. She then stayed awhile in Samarqand. In 907H. (1501-2) she went to Tāshkand and joined the large family party which assembled there. (Mems. 99.) In 911H. (middle of 1505) she came to Kābul with other kinsfolk, soon after the death of her grandmother (Isān) and of her father, and during the ceremonial mourning of Bābar for his mother. ‘Our grief broke out afresh,’ he writes.
Mīrzā Ḥaidar gives a pleasant account of the welcome she accorded her generous and kindly nephew Bābar in 912H. (1506-7), when he put down Khān Mīrzā's (Wais) rebellion in Kābul: ‘The Emperor leapt up and embraced his beloved aunt with every manifestation of affection. The khānam said to him: “Your children, wives, and household are longing to see you. I give thanks that I have been permitted to see you again. Rise up and go to your family in the castle. I too am going thither.”’
In 913H. (1507), when Khān Mīrzā set out for Badakhshān with his mother, Shāh Begam, to try his fortunes in her father's ancient lands, Mihr-nigār also ‘took a fancy to go. It would have been better and more becoming,’ writes Bābar, ‘for her to remain with me. I was her nearest relation. But however much I dissuaded her, she continued obstinate and also set out for Badakhshān.
Mihr-nigār rued her self-will. She and Shāh Begam were captured on their way to Qila'-ẓafar by one of Abū-bakr Dughlāt's ‘marauding bands,’ and ‘in the prisons of that wretched miscreant they departed from this perishable world.’
Mems., 12, 22, 99, 169, 232.
Tār. Rash., 86, 94, 117, 155, 196, 197, 200, 258.
CXLI. Mīnglī-bī āghācha Uzbeg.
A low-born wife (ghūncha-chī) of Sulṭān Ḥusain Mīrzā Bāyqrā. The Ḥabību-s-siyār calls her a Turk and a purchased slave (mamlūqa) of Shahr-bānū Begam Mīrān-shāhī who brought her when she herself married Sulṭān Ḥusain, and presented her to him.
She was mother of three sons: Abū-tūrāb, Muḥam-mad Ḥusain, and Farīdūn Ḥusain; and of two daughters: Bairām (or Maryam) and Fāṭima.
Mems., 181, 182, 183.
Habību-s-siyār (lith. ed.), 327 et seq..
CXLII. Mīng-līq kūkaltāsh.
She escaped from Samarqand with Bābar's mother on its capture by Shaibānī in 907H. (1501).
Mems., 98.
CXLIII. Mubārika Bībī; Afghānī āghācha. (No. 56.)
Ar. mubārika, blessed, fortunate.
She was a daughter of Shāh Manṣūr Yūsufzai, and was married by Bābar at Kehrāj on January 30th, 1519 (Muḥarram 28th, 925H.). The alliance was the sign and seal of amity between him and her tribe. A charming account of her and her marriage is given in the Tārīkh-i-ḥāfiẓ-i-raḥmat-khānī, and Mr. Beveridge has translated it in full under the title ‘An Afghān Legend,’ so that it need not be reproduced here.
Gul-badan never gives the name Mubārika (Blessed Damozel) as that of the Afghān lady (Afghānī āghācha) whom she so frequently and pleasantly mentions. Ḥafiẓ Muḥammad (l.c.) says that Mubārika was much beloved by Bābar, and this is borne out by the fact that she was one of the small and select party of ladies who were the first to join him in India. She went there, it is safe to infer, with Māham and Gul-badan in 1529.
She bore no child, and this misfortune Ḥafiẓ Muḥammad attributes to the envy of other wives who administered drugs to deprive her of motherhood and weaken her husband's affection.
She died early in Akbar's reign.
A brother of Mubārika, named Mīr Jamāl, accompanied Bābar to Hindustān in 1525, and rose to high office under Humāyūn and Akbar. Hindāl had a favourite follower of this name who passed, on his death, into Akbar's service. He may well be the Yūsufzai.
Gul-badan, 8a, 25b, 30a, 35a, 38a, 73b.
Mems., 250, 250 n., 251.
Akbar-nāma, Bib. Ind. ed., I. 315.
Asiatic Quarterly Review, April, 1901, art. An Afghān
Legend, H. Beveridge.
(Mughal Khānam, 'Ayisha, q.v.)
CXLIV. Muḥibb-sulṭān.
The very loving khānam; Ar. muḥibb, a lover, one who loves, and sulṭān, pre-eminence.
Daughter of Sulṭān Ḥusain Mīrzā Bāyqrā and a ‘handmaid’ (ghūncha-chī).
Mems., 30.
CXLV. Muḥibb-sulṭān Khānam Chaghatāī Mughal. (No. 20.)
Third daughter of Sulṭān Aḥmad Khān Chaghatāī; wife of Mīrzā Ḥaidar Dughlāt.
Gul-badan, 11a, 24b.
Tār. Rash., E. & R., 161, 280,267 341.
CXLVI. Muḥtarima Khānam Chaghatāī Mughal.
The honoured khānam; Ar. muḥtarim, respected, honoured.
Daughter of Shāh Muḥammad Sulṭān Kāshgharī Chaghatāī, and Khadīja Sulṭān Chaghatāī; wife (1) of Kāmrān, (2) of Ibrāhīm Mīrān-shāhī, the son of Sulaimān and Ḥaram.
She is occasionally spoken of simply as ‘Khānam.’
Gul-badan, 62b.
Akbar-nāma, s.n..
Aīn-i-akbarī, Blochmann, s.n..
Tār. Rash., E. & R., 451.
Cf. Introduction.
CXLVII. Munauwar Sulṭān Begam Bāyqrā.
The illuminated princess; Ar. munauwar, bright illuminated.
Daughter of Sulṭān Ḥusain Mīrzā Bāyqrā and Bābā āghācha; wife of Sayyid Mīrzā of Andekhud who appears also to have married her niece. She was famed for her beauty. The Memoirs and Ilminsky's text do not give her name, and I have found it in the Ḥabību-s-siyār. From this same work is derived the information that Sayyid Mīrzā is a name given to a son of Ulugh Beg Mīrzā Mīrān-shāhī.
Mems., 182.
Ḥabību-s-siyār, 327 et seq.
CXLVIII. Nāhīd Begam. (No. 54.)
Pers. Nāhīd, the name of the mother of Alexander;
a name for the planet Venus, etc..
Daughter of Māh-chūchak Arghūn by her marriage as a captive of Bābar, with his foster-brother Qāsim; wife of Muḥibb-'alī Barlās.
When her mother, resenting her position in a misalliance, ran away, Nāhīd, then eighteen months old, remained in Kābul.
When her mother was imprisoned in Sind by Muḥammad Bāqī Tarkhān, Nāhīd escaped to Bhakkar, and was protected, till her return to Akbar's court, by Sulṭān Maḥmūd Bhakkarī (975H.).
She was at Hindāl's wedding feast. Much of her story is contained in the Introduction of this volume.
Gul-badan, 4a, 26a.
Tārīkh-i-sind, Mīr Ma'ṣūm.
Bādshāh-nāma s.n. (fully used by Blochmann).
Aīn-i-akbarī, Blochmann, s.n..
B. & H., I. 348, 351, 352, 385.
CXLIX. Nār-gul āghācha. (No. 58.)
(?) Red as a rose, pomegranate-red. For nār see infra. Pers. gul, a rose.
She was perhaps one of two Circassian slaves, of whom Gul-nār may be the other and who were sent to Bābar by Ṭahmāsp in 1526.
Mems., 347.
Gul-badan, 25b, 35a, 38a.
CL. Nār-sulṭān āghā. (No. 77.)
Presumably Pers. nār, a pomegranate; but it might be Ar. nār, advice, counsel, or even fire, and sulṭān, pre-eminence, a high degree of what is expressed by the first word of the compound name.
Gul-badan, 26a.
CLI. Nigār āghā. (No. 76.)
Pers. nigār, a mistress, a sweetheart.
Mother of Mughal Beg.
Gul-badan, 26a.
CLII. Nizhād-sulṭān Begam Bāyqrā.
The princess of highly distinguished race; Pers. nizhād, family, high-born; Ar. sulṭān, pre-eminence.
Eldest daughter of Sulṭān Ḥusain Mīrzā Bāyqrā and Bābā āghācha; wife of Sikandar Mīrzā, son of Bāyqrā Mīrzā who was her father's elder brother.
Mems., 182.
Ḥabību-s-siyār, 387 et seq.
CLIII. Pāpā (? Bābā) āghācha.
Mr. Erskine writes Papa, and Ilminsky, perhaps following him, Pāpā. Bābā—i.e., darling—would seem a more fitting name for one who is said to have been much beloved.
She was a low-born wife of Sulṭān Ḥusain Mīrzā Bāyqrā and foster-sister of Āfāq Begam. The mīrzā ‘saw her and liked her,’ and she became mother of seven of his children, i.e., four sons, Muḥammad Ma'ṣūm, Farrūkh Ḥusain, Ibn Ḥusain, Ibrāhīm Ḥusain; of three daughters, Nizhād-sulṭān, Sa'ādat-bakht, and a third whose name Bābar does not give.
Mems., 181, 182, 183.
CLIV. Pāshā Begam Bahārlū Turkomān of the Black Sheep.
(?) Turkī Pāshā, a lord, or Pers. pecha, chief, before. The Ma'āsir-i-raḥīmī writes pāshā.
Daughter of 'Alī-shakr Beg Bahārlū; wife (1) of Muḥammadī Mīrzā of the Black Sheep; (2) in 873H. (1468-69) of Sulṭān Maḥmūd Mīrzā Mīrān-shāhī; mother by Maḥmūd of three daughters and one son, Bayasanghar (born 882H.).
Bābar does not give the name of any one of the three girls, nor does he mention that one of them was a wife of his own. One married Malik Muḥammad Mīrzā Mīrān-shāhī. The Ma'āsir-i-raḥīmī supplies the information that another was Ṣālḥa-sulṭān Begam and that she had a daughter by Bābar whose name was Gul-rukh; that Gul-rukh married Nūru-d-dīn Muḥammad Chaqānīānī, and had by him Salīma-sulṭān Begam. Abū'l-faẓl says that a daughter of Pāshā by Sulṭān Maḥmūd Mīrzā was married to Khwāja Ḥasan Khwāja-zāda, and that on account of this connection Firdaus-makānī (Bābar) married Mīrzā Nūru-d-dīn to his own daughter, Gul-barg Begam, and that Salīma-sulṭān Begam was the issue of this marriage.
(There are difficulties connected with the account here given of Ṣālḥa which are set forth under the name of her daughter, Salīma-sulṭān.)
Pāshā Begam was of the same family as Bairām Khān. (Cf. genealogical table s.n. Salīma-sulṭān.)
Mems., 29, 30, 31, 72.
Tār. Rash., E. & R., 93 n..
Ma'āsir-i-raḥīmī, Asiatic Society of Bengal MS. in year
1024H..
CLV. Pāyanda-sulṭān Begam Mīrān-shāhī.
(?) Of fixed pre-eminence; Pers. pāyanda, firm, stable, and Ar. sulṭān, pre-eminence.
Daughter of Abū-sa'īd Sulṭān Mīrzā Mīrān-shāhī; paternal aunt of Bābar; wife of Sulṭān Ḥusain Mīrzā Bāyqrā; sister of Shahr-bānū whom Sulṭān Ḥusain Mīrzā divorced; mother of Ḥaidar Mīrzā Bāyqrā; of Āq, Kīchak, Bega, and Āghā Begams.
When the Uzbegs took Khurāsān, 913H. (1507-8), she went to 'Irāq, where ‘she died in distress.’
Mems., 30, 180, 181, 182, 204, 208 and n., 223.
Gul-badan, 25a (here a Muḥammad is inserted after Pāyanda
in the name).
CLVI. Qadīr Khānam Qālmāq.
Daughter of Amāsānjī Taishī Qālmāq and Makh-dūma Khānam Chaghatāī.
Tār. Rash., E. & R., 91.
CLVII. Qarā-gūz Begam Bāyqrā.
The black-eyed princess. Qarā-gūz is a sobriquet, and I have not found her personal name.
Daughter of Sulṭān Ḥusain Mīrzā Bāyqrā and Pāyanda-sulṭān Begam Mīrān-shāhī; wife of Nāṣir Mīrzā, Bābar's half-brother.
Mems., 181.
(Qarā-gūz Begam, Rabī'a, q.v.)
(Qarā-gūz Begam, Makhdūma, q.v.)
CLVIII. Qūtūq āghācha and Begam.
Ilminsky writes Qūtūq; Mems., Katak.
Foster-sister of Terkhān Begam; wife of Sulṭān Aḥmad Mīrzā Mīrān-shāhī; mother of four daughters: (1) Rabī'a (Qarā-gūz), (2) Salīqa (Āq), 'Āyisha (wife of Bābar, (4) Sulṭānam.
She was married ‘for love,’ and Aḥmad was ‘prodigiously attached’ to her. She drank wine; her co-wives were neglected from fear of her. At length her husband put her to death, and ‘delivered himself from his reproach.’
Mems., 22.
CLIX. Qūt-līq (Qutluq) Khānam Chaghatāī Mughal.
(?) The image of happiness; from Turkī qūtla, happy, and līq, endowed with.
Daughter of Sulṭān Maḥmūd Khān Chaghatāī; wife of Jānī Beg Khān Uzbeg.
Her marriage was a sequel of victory by Shaibānī over her father. Cf. 'Āyisha (her sister).
Tār. Rash., E. & R., 160, 251.
CLX. Qūt-līq-nigār Khānam Chaghatāī Mughal.
Second daughter of Yūnas Khān Chaghatāī and Isān-daulat Qūchīn; chief wife of 'Umar-shaikh Mīrān-shāhī ; half-sister of Maḥmūd and Aḥmad Khāns; mother of Khān-zāda and Bābar.
She accompanied her son in most of his wars and expeditions, and lived to see him master of Kābul. She died in Muḥarram, 911H. (June, 1505).
Mems., 10, 11, 12, 30, 90, 94, 98, 99, 104, 105, 134, 169.
Gul-badan, 4a.
Tār. Rash., s.n..
Akbar-nāma, s.n..
CLXI. Rabī'a-sulṭān Begam Bāyqrā and Bedka Begam Bāyqrā.
These two names may indicate the same person.
The Memoirs (176 and 177) say that Sulṭān Ḥusain Mīrzā Bāyqrā had two full-sisters, Āka and Bedka, and that Bedka married Aḥmad Hājī Tarkhān, and had two sons who served Sulṭān Ḥusain.
These statements are contained also in the Turkī texts (B.M. Add. 26,324, and Ilminsky), and also in a considerable number of good Persian texts in the British Museum and Bodleian.
There is, however, this difference of statement. The Turkī texts write: Bedka Begam ham mīrzā nīnak aīkā-chī sī aīdī. P. de C. translates: était aussi l'ainée du mīrzā. The Persian texts have: Bedka Begam ki khwāhar-i-khurd mīrzā būd; and from this Mr. Erskine translates: … the mīrzā's younger sister.
The Turkī, it should be observed, uses of Āka precisely the same word as of Bedka, aīkā-chī sī.
It may be right to regard Bedka as the younger of the two sisters of the mīrzā, and not as the sister younger than the mīrzā.
To pass now to what has led me to make a tentative identification of Bedka with Rabī'a-sulṭān.
The Memoirs (181) mention Rabī'a-sulṭān as the younger sister of the mīrzā (Ḥusain) and as having two sons, Bābar and Murād who were given in marriage to two daughters of Ḥusain.
The Turkī texts do not describe Rabī'a-sulṭān in any way, or say that she was Ḥusain's sister. They simply mention the marriages.
The Persian texts say of Ḥusain's two daughters (Bega and Āghā): ba pisarān-i-khwāhar-i-khurd-i-khudrā Rabī'a-sulṭān Begam, Bābar Mīrzā wa Sulṭān Murād Mīrzā, dādā būdand.
The Persian texts which state that Rabī'a-sulṭān was Ḥusain's own sister, have greater authority than most translations can claim for such additional information as is here given, because the Persian translation of the Tūzūk-i-bābarī was made in a court circle and at a date when such additional statements were likely to be known to many living persons.
Ḥusain may have had a younger and half-sister, but the words in the Persian texts which are used of Rabī'a-sulṭān are those used of Bedka, and they are more applicable to a full than a half sister.
The Āka of the passage in which Bedka is mentioned has no personal name recorded. Bedka may be a word of the same class as āka, i.e., a title or sobriquet, and Rabī'a-sulṭān may be the personal name of Bedka. Perhaps the word Bedka is Bega.
The facts of Bedka's descent are as follows: she was a daughter of Manṣūr Mīrzā Bāyqrā and of Fīroza Begam Mīrān-shāhī, and thus doubly a Tīmūrid. She was full-sister of Bāyqrā and Ḥusain Mīrzās and of Āka Begam. She married Aḥmad Khān Hājī Tarkhān, and had two sons whose names (if Bedka be Rabī'a-sulṭān) were Bābar and Murād and who married two of her nieces, Bega and Āghā.
Mems., 176, 177, 181.
Ilminsky, 203, 204, 208.
B.M. Turkī Add. 26,234, f. 48a and b; 53.
Other texts under 911H..
CLXII. Rabī'a-sulṭān Begam (Qarā-gūz) Mīrān-shāhī.
Daughter of Sulṭān Aḥmad Mīrzā Mīrān-shāhī and Qūtūq (Katak) āghācha (Begam); wife (1) of Sulṭān Maḥmūd Khān Chaghatāī and mother of Bābā Sulṭān, and (2) of Jānī Beg Uzbeg who married her after the murder of her father and her son by his cousin Shaibānī in 914H. (1508).
Mems., 22.
Tār. Rash., E. & R., 114, 116.
CLXIII. Rajab-sulṭān Mīrān-shāhī.
Ar. rajab, fearing, worshipping. Sulṭān may here be a title.
Daughter of Sulṭān 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-sulṭān Begam Mīrān-shāhī.
Daughter of 'Umar Shaikh Mīrān-shāhī and Makh-dūma-sulṭān 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 Sulṭān) Bāyqrā.
Of happy fortune; Ar. sa'ādat, happy, and Pers. bakht, fortune.
Daughter of Sulṭān Ḥusain Mīrzā Bāyqrā and Papa (Bābā) āghācha. She was married to Sulṭān 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 Sulṭān 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-sulṭān Begam Mīrān-shāhī.
Cf. Salīma-sulṭān Chaqānīānī.
CLXX. Salīma-sulṭān 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, Sulṭān Maḥmūd Mīrzā Mīrān-shāhī. By him she had three daughters and one son: Bayasanghar (b. 882H., 1477). One daughter whose name was Sālḥa-sulṭān 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-sulṭān 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-sulṭān Begam was the issue of Gul-barg's marriage.
In the Memoirs, as we have them, there is no mention of Sālḥa-sulṭān 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-sulṭān 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-sulṭān's name and his marriage with her (Mems., 30), but Gul-badan is also silent as to name, marriage and child of Sālḥa-sulṭān. 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-sulṭān.
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-sulṭān 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-sulṭān'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-sulṭān was a Tīmūrid through Bābar, one of her grandfathers, and through Maḥmūd, one of her great-grandfathers.
A few words must be said about her age at the time of her marriage, because the question has been raised through Jahāngīr's statement that she died at the age of sixty in 1021H., and commented upon by the Darbār-i-akbarī. If Jahāngīr gives her age correctly she must have been born in 961H., and this would make her a child of five when she married Bairām, and needs her betrothal by her father to Bairām to date from babyhood.
The Darbār-i-akbarī says that it is clear from Jahāngīr's statement of her age at death that she was married to Bairām ætat. 5, and that her memory is thus cleared from the reproach of two marriages!
Whatever is concealed in Jahāngīr's ‘sixty,’ nothing is said to indicate that he desired to bring Salīma-sulṭān into the circle of Hindū propriety. He may have had the wish; he was a Hindū mother's son. The comment of the modern author of the Darbār-i- akbarī witnesses to the Hindūizing action to which Moslim custom and thought have submitted. Adult remarriage was no reproach to Islām in Salīma's day.
It does not, however, seem correct to accept Jahāngīr's statement that Salīma-sulṭān was sixty only at death To have betrothed her as a baby and to have married her to a man of, at least, middle-age at five, is not in harmony with the Muḥammad custom of Ḥumāyūn's day. Moreover, Jahāngīr himself speaks of her as married (kad-khudā) to Bairām. She is said by Abū'l-faẓl to have been betrothed (nāmzād) by Humāyūn, and married (sipurdan) by Akbar to Bairām Khān.
Badāyunī's words indicate adult and not child marriage; sābiqā dar ḥabāla-i-Bairām Khān Khān-i-khānān būd, b'ad azān dakhl-i-ḥaram-i-pādshāhī shūd.
After the murder of Bairām in 968H. Salīma-sulṭān was married by Akbar. She was probably a few years his senior.
In 983H. she made her pilgrimage with Gul-badan. Particulars of the expedition are given in the Introduction to this volume.
Her name appears in the histories as a reader, a poet who wrote under the pseudonym of makhfī, and as pleading with Akbar for Salīm's forgiveness.
Her death is chronicled by Jahāngīr who heard of it on Ẕū'l-qa'da 2nd, 1021H. (December 15th, 1612). He gives particulars of her birth and descent, and of her marriages; and he states that she was sixty at the time of her death. By his orders her body was laid in a garden which she herself had made.
Jahāngīr praises her both for her natural qualities and her acquirements. She creates an impression of herself as a charming and cultivated woman.
Gul-badan, (?)26a.
Akbar-nāma s.n..
Badāyunī, Lowe, 13, 216, 389.
Tūzūk-i-jahāngīrī, Sayyid Ahmad, Aligarh, 113.
Khāfī Khān, Bib. Ind. ed., I. 276.
Āīn-i-akbarī, Blochmann, s.n..
Darbār-i-akbarī, 736.
The genealogical table on the next page illustrates Salīma-sulṭān's descent, and the following dates bear also upon the topic:
| Pāshā married Maḥmūd | 873H.—1469. |
| Bayasanghar born | 882H.—1477. |
| Maḥmūd died | 900H.—Jan. 1495 |
| Bābar married Zainab, d. of Maḥmūd | 910H.—1504. |
| Zainab died | 913H.-914H.—1507-8. |
| Sālḥa's child, the wife of Nūru-d-dīn, was not born in 911H.—1511, because she is not in the list of children who left Kābul with Bābar in that year. (Gul-badan, 7a.) |
CLXXI. Salīma Khānam Chaghatāī Mughal.
Daughter of Khiẓr Khwājā, but whether also of Gul-badan is not recorded.
She went with Gul-badan to Makka in 983H. (1575).
Āīn-i-akbarī, Blochmann, 441.
CLXXII. Salīqa-sulṭān Begam (Āq Begam) Mīrān-shāhī.
(Ilminsky, 25, reads Ṣālḥa.) The princess of excellent disposition; Ar. salīqa, of good disposition, and sulṭān, pre-eminence.
Daughter of Sulṭān Aḥmad Mīrzā Mīrān-shāhī and Qūtūq (Katak) Begam; wife of her cousin Ma'sūd. The marriage was announced to Bābar in 900H. (1494) with gifts of gold and silver, almonds, and pistachios. She was captured by Abū-bakr Dughlāt with Shāh Begam and Mihr-nigār Khānam.
Mems., 22, 27.
CLXXIII. Sāmiḥa Begam Barlās.
The gentle princess; Ar. sāmiḥ, gentle.
Daughter of Muḥibb 'Alī Barlās (son of Niẓāmu-ddīn 'Alī Khalīfa), and presumably of Nāhīd Begam; mother of Mujāhid Khān.
Mujāhid (who is named in the Ṭabaqāt-i-akbarī as commander of 1,000, but is not in the Āīn) was a son
| Chaqānīān. | Black Sheep Turkomāns. | ||
| Khwāja 'Alā'u-d-dīn, | |||
| first successor of Khwāja | |||
| Naqshbandī. | 'Alī-shukr Beg | Pīr-'alī Bahārlū | |
| Bahārlū Turkomān. | Turkomān. | ||
| Khwāja Ḥasan 'aṭṭār. | |||
| Not named. | Sulṭān Mahmūd | ||
| Mīrzā Mīrān-shāhī. = Pāshā Begam. | Bīr-bal Beg. | ||
| Khwāja Ḥasan,??d. Khwāja-zāda Chaqānīānī. | d. = Malik Muḥam-mad. | Salḥā-sulṭān Begam = Bābar. | Saif-'alī. |
| Mīrzā 'Alā'u-d-dīn Muḥāmmad. | |||
| Mīrzā Nuru-d-dīn Muḥammmad. | Gul-rukh, or -barg, etc. | ||
| Salīma-sulṭān Begam. | Bairām Khān-i-khānān . | ||
of Muṣāhib Khān, son of Khwāja Kilān (Bābar's friend).
Aīn-i-akbarī, Blochmann, 421, 533.
CLXXIV. Sarv-qad and Sarv-i-sahī.
Straight as a cypress; Pers. sarv, a cypress, and qad, form, or sahī, erect.
Sarv-i-sahī, to use Gul-badan's word, was a singer and reciter. She belonged to the households both of Bābar and Humāyūn, and was subsequently married, with full nisbat, to Mu'nim Khān-i-khānān.
She acted as go-between of Mu'nim and Khān-i-zamān ('Alī Qulī Uzbeg-i-shaibānī) during the rebellion of the latter—probably in the tenth year of Akbar, and Bāyazīd calls her a reliable woman and the ḥaram of the Khān-i-khānān. She sang on the way to Lamghān by moonlight in 958H. (1551); she was with Mu'nim at the time of his death in Gaur (Ṣafar, 983H., 1575), and in Rajab of the same year accompanied Gul-badan to Makka.
Gul-badan, 82a (inserted in the translation after 73b).
Bāyazīd, I.O. MS., 122b, 147b.
Akbar-nāma, Bib. Ind. ed., III. 145.
CLXXV. Shād Begam Bāyqrā. (No. 28.)
Daughter of Ḥaidar Bāyqrā and Bega Mīrān-shāhī ; wife of 'Adil Sulṭān.
Gul-badan, 25a.
Mems., 180.
CLXXV (a). Shād Bībī.
Wife of Humāyūn; lost at Chausa.
Gul-badan, 33b.
CLXXVI. Shāham āghā.
(?) My queen; from Pers. shāh, king, ruler.
Of the ḥaram of Humāyūn. She went with Gul-badan Begam to Makka in 983H..
Aīn-i-akbarī, Blochmann, 441.
CLXXVII. Shāh Begam Badakhshī.
The princess of royal blood.
She was one of six daughters of Shāh Sulṭān Muḥammad, King of Badakhshān, the last of a long line of hereditary rulers of his country who claimed descent from Alexander of Macedon. Her mother was a sister of Sulṭān Sanjar Barlās.
She was given in marriage to Yūnas Khān Cha-ghatāī and was the mother of Maḥmūd and Aḥmad Khāns and of Sulṭān-nigār and Daulat Khānams. She was widowed in 892H. (1487), and survived Yūnas more than twenty years.
She dwelt in Mughalistān with her elder son, Maḥmūd, the then Khāqān of the Mughals, from the time of Yūnas' death until about 911H. (1505-6). Then ‘base advisers provoked a quarrel between the mother and son—a son so obedient that he had never even mounted for a ride without her permission… They [the base advisers] decided to send Shāh Begam to Shāhī Beg Khān to solicit a country for herself, because she found living in Mughalistān distasteful… Now, as the Begam was a very sensible woman, she went under this pretext, and thus left her son before those base advisers could bring about an open rupture, which would have caused endless scandal and reproach to herself. The rumour was that she had gone to entreat Shāhī Beg Khān while she was really enjoying in Samarqand the company of her children.’ (Tār. Rash, E. & R., 180.)
Shāhī Beg did not permit her to remain in Samar-qand but banished her to Khurāsān. From Khurāsān she went with other connections and relations to Bābar in Kābul. They arrived early in 911H. (June, 1505), during the ceremonial mourning for Bābar's mother, Shāh Begam's stepdaughter. With Shāh Begam was Ḥaidar Mīrzā's father and also Bābar's aunt, Mihr-nigār. Ḥaidar says that Bābar gave the party a warm welcome and showed them all possible honour; and that they spent some time in Kābul in the greatest ease and comfort.
Bābar's kindness fell on ungrateful ground, since in the following year, 912H. (1506-7), Shāh Begam fomented a rebellion against him in favour of her grandson, Mīrzā Khān. Ḥaidar says that during Bābar's absence in Harāt her motherly love (it was grandmotherly) began to burn in her heart, and persuaded her that Bābar was dead, and that room was thus made for Mīrzā Khān. The story of Bābar's magnanimity to her when he had put down the rising she had stirred, is well known and is detailed in the histories.
In 913H. (1507-8) she laid claim to Badakhshān, saying that it had been her family's hereditary kingdom for 3,000 years; that though she, a woman, could not attain to sovereignty, her grandson would not be rejected. Bābar assented to her scheme, and she set off for Badakhshān, together with Mihr-nigār Khānam and Mīrzā Khān.
The latter went on in advance to Qila'-ẓafar. The ladies and their escort were at once attacked and plundered by robber bands in the employ of the ruler of Kāshghar, Abā-bakr Dughlāt, and were by them conveyed to him in Kāshghar. They were placed in confinement, and ‘in the prison of that wicked miscreant they departed from this perishable world’ (cir. 913H.).
Mems., 12, 13, 22, 32, 60, 74, 99, 104, 105, 106, 169, 216,
217, 231.
Tār. Rash., E. & R., s.n..
CLXXVIII. Shāh Begam Termiẕī. (No. 24.)
Daughter of Fakhr-jahān Begam and of Mīr Alā'u-l-mulk Termiẕī. She may be ‘Kīchak’ Begam, and if not, is her sister.
She was the mother of Dil-shād Begam. If she be Kīchak, she was the wife of Sharafu-d-dīn Ḥusain. (Cf. Kīchak.)
She was at the Mystic Feast.
Gul-badan, 24b.
CLXXIX. Shāh Khānam. (No. 17.)
Daughter of Badī'u-l-jamāl Begam.
Gul-badan, 24b.
CLXXX. Shahr-bānū Begam Mīrān-shāhī.
(?) Ar. shahr, the moon, the new moon.
Daughter of Sulṭān Abū-sa'īd Mīrzā Mīrān-shāhī; wife of Sulṭān Ḥusain Mīrzā Bāyqrā, and married to him before his accession in 873H. (March, 1469).
Bābar gives an entertaining detail about her married life. Once at Chekmān her husband was engaged in a battle with her brother Maḥmūd. All his ladies except herself alighted from their litters and mounted on horseback, presumably for rapid flight if the day went against Ḥusain. Shahr-bānū, however, ‘relying on her brother,’ remained in her litter. This being reported to her husband, he divorced her and married her younger sister, Pāyanda-sulṭān.
Of her subsequent history nothing seems recorded. (Cf. Mīnglī-bī āghācha.)
Mems., 182.
CLXXXI. Shahr-bānū Begam Mīrān-shāhī. (No. 7.)
Third daughter of 'Umar Shaikh Mīrzā Mīrān-shāhī and Umīd Andijānī; half-sister of Bābar and eight years his junior; born cir. 1491; full-sister of Nāṣir and Mihr-bānū; wife of Junaid Barlās (brother of Niẓāmu-d-dīn 'Alī Khalīfa); mother by him of Sanjar Mīrzā; widowed cir. 944H. (1537-38).
She seems to have gone to Sind with her nephew, Yādgār-nāṣir Mīrzā, in 1540 and after the débacle in Hindūstān, for when Yādgār-nāṣir had fled from Sind to Kāmrān in Qandahār (a traitor cast aside by his employer, Shāh Ḥusain Arghūn), Kāmrān sent ambassadors to Shāh Ḥusain to request that the begam and her son might be returned to his charge. [Shahr-bānū was Kāmrān's paternal (half)-aunt and full-aunt of Yādgār-nāṣir.]
She was at once started on her journey, but was insufficiently provided with necessaries for traversing the difficult desert tract which stretches towards the western mountain barrier of Sind. Numbers of her party perished before reaching Shāl (Quetta); and many died in that town from ‘malignant fever.’ Amongst its victims was Shahr-bānū, at the age of about fifty-one years.
Gul-badan, 24b.
Mems, 10.
Akbar-nāma, s.n..
B. & H., I. 526 and II. 253. (Here occur errors of statement,
i.e., that Shahr-bānū was Yādgār-nāṣir's wife and Kām-
rān's sister.)
CLXXXII. Shāh Sulṭān Begam.
(?) Wife of Abū-sa'īd Mīrzā Mīrān-shāhī; mother of 'Umar Shaikh Mīrzā.
The news of her death in Andijān reached Bābar in 907H. (1501).
Mems., 20, 99.
CLXXXIII. Shāh-zāda Begam and Sulṭānam Khānam Ṣafawī.
The daughter of kings.
Sister of Shāh Ṭahmāsp of Persia. Her protection of the Emperor Humāyūn during his sojourn in Persia is named by many of the historians.
Gul-badan, 58a, 58b.
CLXXXIV. Shāh-zāda Khānam Mīrān-shāhī.
Daughter of Sulaimān Mīrzā Mīrān-shāhī and Ḥaram Begam. She was betrothed to Humāyūn in 958H. (1551), but the affair went no further.
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1898, art. Bāyazīd
bīyāt, H. Beveridge.
B. & H., II. 397.
Cf. appendix s.n. Ḥaram and Fāṭima.
CLXXXV. Sulṭānam Begam Bāyqrā.
For meaning of Sulṭānam, cf. app. s.n. Māham.
Daughter of Sulṭān Ḥusain Mīrzā Bāyqrā and Chūlī Begam Aẕāk; her father's eldest girl and her mother's only child. She married, first, her cousin Wais, son of her father's elder brother Bāyqrā, and, secondly, 'Abdu-l-bāqī Mīrzā Mīrān-shāhī. By her first marriage she had a son, Muḥammad Sulṭān Mīrzā, and a daughter who married Isān-qulī Shaibānī, younger brother of Yīlī-bārs Sulṭān. Through her son Muḥammad she was ancestress of those numerous rebel Bāyqrās whom history knows as ‘the mīrzās.’
When the Uzbegs took Harāt in 1507 (913H.) she went to Khwārizm, and there her daughter was married. On April 12th, 1519 (Rabī' II. 12th, 925H.), Bābar records her arrival with her daughter in Kābul. He gave her the Garden of Retirement (Bāgh-i-khilwat) for her residence, and waited upon her with the ceremony due to an elder sister. He bowed and she bowed; he advanced, they embraced; and having established this form of greeting, they kept to it.
Sulṭānam started from Kābul for India in 1527 with a grandson (her sons had six sons), but she died at the Indus and her body was taken back to Kābul for burial.
There are curious discrepancies of the texts in the passage about Sulṭānam which occurs at Mems., 181.
The first point to note is contained in the words: ‘Her elder brother gave her in marriage to Sulṭān Wais Mīrzā, the son of Miāngī Bāyqrā Mīrzā.’ (Mems., 181.)
Barādar kilānash ba pisar miāngī Bāyqrā Mīrzā Sulṭān Wais Mīrzā dāda būd. (Waqi'āt-i-bābarī, Persian text, B.M. Or. 16,623, 123b.)
Āghā sī Bāyqrā Mīrzā nīnak ortānchī oghalī Sulṭān Wais Mīrzāgha chīqārīb aidī. (Tūzūk-i-bābarī or Bābarnāma , Turkī text, B.M. Add. 26,324, f. 52b, and Ilminsky, 209.)
‘Son frère ainé l'avait donnée en mariage à Sulṭān Wais Mīrzā, fils cadet de Bāyqrā Mīrzā.’ (Pavet de Courteille, I. 375.)
Both the English and French versions make the elder brother of Sulṭānam give her in marriage. But she was an only child, and her father was living to act for her. The French version, here as in so many other places, appears to have relied upon Mr. Erskine. The Turkī text appears to yield something more probable, i.e., ‘His elder brother, Bāyqrā Mīrza's middle son, Sulṭān Wais Mīrzā…’
Mr. Erskine has read miāngī as part of Bāyqrā's name. Comparison with the Turkī makes appear as the more probable reading: ‘the middle son’—pisar-imiāngī .
M. Pavet de Courteille's fils cadet lets slip the notion of mīyān. Redhouse gives for the ortānchī oghal of the Turkī text, ‘the middle son out of an odd number’ —e.g., the third out of five, the second of three, etc..
In the same passage the Memoirs have: ‘Sulṭānam Begam set out along with her grandson…’ Here the Persian words ba hamīn tārīkh (Turkī, ushbū tārīkh) are omitted, with loss of precision, for they fix the date of her journey by conveying the information that it occurred at the time of her son's appointment to the government of Kanauj, i.e., April, 1527.
Mems., 181, 190, 266.
Ḥabību-s-siyār, 327 et seq..
Also the places mentioned in the notice above.
CLXXXVI. Sulṭānam Begam Mīrān-shāhī. (No. 12.)
Daughter of Sulṭān Aḥmad Mīrzā.
A Sulṭānam of this parentage is mentioned by Bābar (Mems., 22), by Ḥaidar (E. & R., s.n.), and by Gul-badan (24b). These appear to be at least two, and perhaps are three women. Their record is as follows:
(1). Sulṭānam, fourth daughter of Sulṭān Aḥmad Mīrzā. (Mems., 22.) She was the child of Qūtūq (Katak) Begam. She married her cousin 'Alī, son of Maḥmūd Mīrzā. 'Alī was murdered by Shaibānī (cf. s.n. Zuhra) in 906H. (July, 1500), and his widow was taken to wife by Shaibānī's son, Muḥammad Tīmūr. A third marriage is mentioned by Bābar, viz., to Mahdī Sulṭān. By this style the histories mention the Uzbeg chief who was associated with Ḥamza (Khamza) Sulṭān. But this Mahdī was put to death by Bābar in 1511, and Tīmūr was living in 1512 (918H.). Either Sulṭānam was divorced, perhaps to make marriage with some other kinswoman and later captive legal; or Mahdī Sulṭān may be the father of 'Adil Sulṭān; or he may be Maḥdī Muḥammad Khwāja.
(2). Sulṭānam, daughter of Sulṭān Aḥmad Mīrzā, married Muḥammad Ḥusain Dughlāt in the autumn of 1503. She was given to her husband by Khusrau Shāh who describes her as daughter of Sulṭān Aḥmad Mirzā wa pādshāh-zāda-i-man, by which Mr. Ross has understood that she was of Khusrau's ‘family.’ There was a son, issue of this marriage and named 'Abdu-l-lāh.
It is difficult to regard No. 1 and No. 2 as one woman, both because of their marriage dates and of the circumstance that No. 1 was an Uzbeg captive and No. 2 in Badakhshān. Bābar mentions no marriage of a Sulṭānam with Muḥammad Ḥusain Dughlāt. A surmise—it is nothing more—has occurred to me, namely: No. 2 was married to the Dughlāt mīrzā shortly after the destruction of Tāshkend; Bābar's wife 'Āyisha, third daughter of Sulṭān Aḥmad Mīrān-shāhī , had left Bābar shortly before that disaster. She might be Sulṭānam No. 2.
(3). Sulṭānam, or Sulṭānī, daughter of Sulṭan Aḥmad Mīrzā, was at the Mystic Feast in 1531. She is said to be the mother of Kilān Khān Begam. This title is not appropriate for the child of any of the marriages mentioned for No. 1 or No. 2. It is quite appropriate for the child of the marriage of Sulṭan Aḥmad and Qūtūq's firstborn daughter, Rabī'a-sulṭān, because Rabī'a married Sulṭān Maḥmūd Khān who was the Elder Khān (kilān) and also the Great Khān (Khāqān) of the Mughals. Shaibānī murdered five of Maḥmūd's six sons, but probably his girls escaped because of their value as wives.
The above notes make for the opinion that Sul-ṭānam is a title, and not a name. Cf. app. s.n. Māham.
Mems., 22.
Gul-badan, 24b.
Tār. Rash., E. & R., 164, 170, 193.
CLXXXVII. Sulṭānam. (No. 52.)
Wife of Niẓāmu-d-dīn 'Alī Khalīfa.
Gul-badan, 14a, 14b, 26a, 50a.
CLXXXVIII. Sulṭān-nigār Khānam Chaghatāī Mughal.
Daughter of Yūnas Khān Chaghatāī and Shāh Begam Badakhshī; wife of Sulṭān Maḥmūd Mīrzā Mīrān-shāhī; mother of Sulṭān Wais (Khān Mīrzā); widowed in 900H. (January, 1495).
On Maḥmūd's death in Samarqand she joined her brothers in Tāshkand, going off ‘without giving any notice of her intentions,’ says Bābar. Later on she married Awīq (Adīk) Sulṭān Jūjī, the chief of the Uzbeg Qazāqs. Her story is somewhat confused in the Memoirs (13 and 14) by a double mention of her marriage to Awīq. Ḥaidar Mīrzā throws some light, and it seems that when Shaibānī had murdered her brother, Mahmūd Khān, Awīq left him and joined the Uzbeg Qazāqs, his own people, and Sulṭān-nigār followed him into Mughalistān.
She had two daughters by Awīq, one of whom married 'Abdu-l-lāh Qūchīn and died a young wife, and the other married Rashīd Sulṭān Chaghatāī.
On Awīq's death, Sulṭān-nigār was married to his brother Qāsim, presumably in consonance with the Turkī custom of yang-lik.
With Qāsim's death, the khānship of the Qazāqs devolved on Sulṭān-nigār's stepson (i.e., Awīq's by a co-wife) named Ṭāhir. ‘He was,’ says Ḥaidar, ‘very much attached to her, and even preferred her to the mother who had given him birth.’
What follows is full of colour and feeling. Nigār-sulṭān showed her appreciation of Ṭāhir's affection, but petitioned him, saying: ‘Although you are (as) my child, and I neither think of nor desire any son but you, yet I wish you to take me to my nephew, Sulṭān Sa'īd Khān. For I am grown old, and I have no longer the strength to bear this wandering life in the deserts of Uzbegistān. Take me where I may enjoy some quiet and repose.’ She then offered to mediate for him and to obtain the support for him of the Mughal Khāqāns against his foes. Ṭāhir accordingly escorted her to the Mughalistān borders, and with her waited upon Sa'īd. ‘The latter, from love of his aunt, rose, saying that although his rising to receive Ṭāhir was contrary to the rules of Chingīz (their common ancestor), yet that he did it out of gratitude because Ṭāhir had brought his aunt.’
Sulṭān-nigār died of a hæmorrhage in the summer of 934H. (1528).
Mems., 13, 14, 30, 31, 99, 105.
Tār. Rash., E. & R., s.n.
CLXXXIX. Tarkhān Begam.
This is a title, and not a personal name.
In Bābar's time, according to Mr. Erskine (Mems., 24 n.), the ancient title of Tarkhān had come to belong to a particular family or clan. This may be well seen by consulting Professor Blochmann's Āīn-i-akbarī, 361, where the genealogical table of the Arghūns of Tatta shows the title to have become hereditary in their branch of the Arghūns.292
The Tarkhān Begam whose name stands above this notice was linked with these Tarkhān Arghūns in the way shown below. She married her first cousin, Aḥmad Mīrān-shāhī, and Qūtūq Begam was her foster-sister.
| Urda-būghā Tarkhān Arghūn. | |||
| Daughter=Abū-sa'īd Mīrān-shāhī . | Darvish Muḥam-mad Tarkhān. | Daughter='Abdu-l-'alī Tarkhān Arghūn, d. cir. 1490. | Muḥammad Mazīd Tarkhān. |
| Maḥmūd, | Aḥmad,=Tarkhān Begam. | Bāqī Tarkhān. | |
| b. 1453. | b. 1451; | ||
| d. 1490. | |||
Mems, 22, 24.
Āīn-i-akbarī, Blochmann, 361.
B. & H., I. and II. s.n. Sind, Arghūn, etc..
CXC. Tarkhān Begam and Bega.
Gul-badan, 75b.
(Tarsūn-sulṭān, Yūn, q.v.)
CXCI. Ulugh Begam. (No. 10.)
Daughter of Zainab Sulṭān Begam; grand-daughter of Sulṭān Abū-sa'īd; first cousin of Bābar.
Gul-badan, 24b.
CXCII. Ulūs (Anūsh and Alūsh) āghā Turkomān. (? No. 53.)
Turkī, ūlūs, tribe. Clearly a title.
Daughter of Khwāja Ḥusain Beg Turkomān of the White Sheep, an amīr of 'Umar Shaikh Mīrān-shāhī; wife of 'Umar Shaikh; mother of a girl who died in infancy. She was removed from the ḥaram a year or eighteen months after her marriage. Gul-badan mentions a begam of this name as at Hindāl's wedding-feast; whether she is Ūlūs āghā promoted, I have no means of knowing.
Mems., 14.
Gul-badan, 26a.
CXCIII. Ūmīd āghācha Andijānī.
Pers. ūmīd, hope.
An inferior wife of 'Umar Shaikh Mīrzā Mīrān-shāhī whom she predeceased. She was the mother of Mihr-bānū who was two years older than Bābar and will have been born therefore in 1481; of Nāṣir who was born in 1487; and of Shahr-bānū who was born in 1491.
Mems., 10, 14.
CXCIV. Umm-kulṯūm Begam Mīrān-shāhī.
A surname of Fāṭima, daughter of Muḥammad; Ar. umm, mother, and kulṯūm, plumpness.
Grand-daughter of Gul-badan Begam and a member of the Ḥaj of 983H..
Akbar-nāma, III. 145.
CXCV. Ūzūn-sulṭān Khānam Chaghatāī Mughal.
(?) Pers. auzūn, or ūzūn, ample, increase.
Daughter of Shīr 'Alī Khān Oghlan Chaghatāī; sister of Wais Khān and Makhdūma Khanām; paternal aunt of Yūnas Khān; wife of Amīr Sayyid 'Alī Dugh-lāt ; mother of Muḥammad Ḥaidar Dughlāt and great-grandmother of Ḥaidar Mīrzā, the historian.
She was widowed in 862H. (1457-58), and then, in conjunction with her son, received Kāshghar and Yangī-ḥiṣār from her stepson, Sāniz.
Tār. Rash., E. & R., 64, 87, 88.
CXCVI. Yādgār-sulṭān Begam Mīrān-shāhī. (No. 8.)
Pers. yādgār, remembrance.
Daughter of 'Umar Shaikh Mīrān-shāhī and Āghā Sulṭān āghācha; half-sister of Bābar, and brought up by his grandmother, Isān-daulat. She was a posthumous child, and, if one may draw an inference from her example and others similar, is for this reason called Yādgār (Souvenir). Her father died Ramẓan 4th, 899H. (June 9th, 1494). When a child of not more than ten, and in 908H. (1503), she fell into the hands of 'Abdu-l-laṭīf Uzbeg, after the conquest of Andijān and Akhsī by Shaibānī, and in 916H. (1511) Bābar's successes at Khutlān and Ḥiṣār enabled her to return to him and her own people.
I do not find any marriage mentioned for her by her name.
She is in the list of the guests at the Mystic Feast, and her mother is named (as such) as present at Hindāl's wedding festivities.
Mems., 10.
Gul-badan, 24b, 26b.
CXCVII. Yūn (Tarsūn)-sulṭān Mughal.
Ilminsky, 15, writes Tarsūn.
Inferior wife of 'Umar Shaikh, and married at the end of his life.
Mems., 14.
CXCVIII. Zainab-sulṭān Begam Mīrān-shāhī.
(?) From Ar. zain, adorning.
Fifth daughter of Sulṭān Maḥmūd Mīrzā and Khān-zāda Begam (b.) Termiẕī; first cousin and wife of Bābar.
She was married at the instance of Qūt-līq-nigār, in the year of the capture of Kābul, i.e., 910H. (1504-5), perhaps at the time that Jahāngīr Mīrzā, Bābar's half-brother, married her half-sister, Āq Begam. The marriage was not happy. Two or three years later Zainab died of small-pox.
Mems., 30.
CXCIX. Zainab - sulṭān Khānam Chaghatāī Mughal. (No. 19.)
Daughter of Sulṭān Maḥmūd Khān Chaghatāī Mughal; favourite wife of Sulṭān Sa'īd Khān Kāshgharī, her first cousin; aunt of Shāh Muḥammad Sulṭān whom Muḥammadī Barlās put to death; mother of Ibrāhīm who was born 930H. (1524), Sa'īd's third son and favourite child, of Muhṣin, and of Maḥmūd Yūsuf.
On her husband's death in 939H. (July, 1533), she was banished by her stepson Rashīd, and went with her children to Kābul where she met Ḥaidar Mīrzā and where she was under the protection of Kāmrān.
Gul-badan mentions her in the guest-list, and places her name as present at the Mystic Feast (1531), but this can hardly be right. She could easily have been at the marriage festivities in 1537.
Tār. Rash., E. & R., 146, 375, 383, 467.
Gul-badan, 11a, 24b.
CC. Zainab-sulṭān Begam Mīrān-shāhī.
Gul-badan describes her as the paternal aunt or great-aunt ('ama) of Humāyūn. Bābar had no such sister, and no Zainab is mentioned by Gul-badan as a daughter of his grandfather Abū-sa'īd. An Āq Begam, however, is spoken of by her, and Zainab may be her personal name. Zainab had a daughter Ulugh Begam.
Gul-badan, 24b.
CCI. Zainab-sulṭān Begam.
There is a difficulty in identifying the begam of this name, whom Bābar mentions (Mems., 387) as coming to India. It will be seen by comparing the sources and their French and English interpretations:
Mems., 387. ‘another, by name Zainab-sulṭān Begam, the
granddaughter of Bikeh Chichām.’
P. de C., II. 355. ‘et la petite-fille de Yenga-Tchetcham,
autrement dite Zeineb-sulṭān Begam.’
B. M. Or., 3714, Pers., p. 482. dīgar nabīra yanga chichām
ki Zainab-sulṭān Begam bāshad.
Bodleian, Elliot, 19, f. 180a. dīgar nabīra bega chichām ki
Zainab-sulṭān Begam.
Ilminsky, Turkī text, 447. yana, yanga chichām ki Zainab-
sulṭān Begam būlaghā'ī nabīra sī kīlīb.
It seems safer to take Zainab as the name of Bābar's relation (i.e., the yanga of his chicha) than as that of the granddaughter (nabīra).
It may be observed here that the best authorities quoted above, i.e., Ilminsky, behind whom is Kehr, and Or., 3714, have yanga where Mr. Erskine and Elliot, 19, have bega. This exchange may occur in the case of other begas of this appendix. Until a good Turkī text more complete than that in the B. M. is found, this must be left an open question.
If Zainab be taken as the name of the yanga, she may be identifiable with one of the other women already entered in the appendix, but for deciding this point more examples are necessary of Bābar's application of the word yanga.
Mems., 387.
CCII. Zobaida āghācha Jalāīr.
The marigold; Ar. zubaida.
Grand-daughter of Ḥusain Shaikh Tīmūr of the Shaibān Sulṭāns. According to the Ḥabibu-s-siyār, she was a Jalair.
She was an inferior wife of Sulṭān Ḥusain Mīrzā and the mother of 'Āyisha Begam. She predeceased her husband who died April, 1506.
CCIII. Zuhra Begī and Āghā Uzbeg.
Ar. zuhra, beauty, a yellow flower, the star Venus.
An inferior wife of Sulṭān Maḥmūd Mīrzā; mother of Makhdūma-sulṭān Begam and of Sulṭān 'Alī Mīrzā.
She was married during the lifetime of Maḥmūd's father, and therefore before Rajab 873H. (January, 1469), and was widowed Rabī II., 900H. (January, 1495). In 905H. (1499-1500) she entered into an intrigue with Shaibānī, a fellow-tribesman, of which the ultimate aim was dominance in Samarqand for her son 'Alī. A part of her scheme and offer was her own remarriage with Shaibānī. Bābar stigmatizes her action as ‘stupidity and folly,’ and says, further, ‘the wretched and weak woman, for the sake of getting herself a husband, gave the family and honour of her son to the winds. Nor did Shaibānī Khān mind her a bit, or value her even so much as his other handmaids, concubines, or women. Sulṭān 'Alī Mīrzā was confounded at the condition in which he now found himself, and deeply regretted the step he had taken. Several young cavaliers formed a plan for escaping with him, but he would not consent. As the hour of fate was at hand, he could not shun it. They put him to death in the meadow of Kulba. From his overanxiety to preserve this mortal and transitory life, he left a name of infamy behind him; and, from following the suggestions of a woman, struck himself out of the list of those who have earned for themselves a glorious name. It is impossible to write any more of the transactions of such a personage (? Zuhra), and impossible to listen any further to the recital of such base and dastardly proceedings.’
Mems., 29, 30, 31, 83, 84.
To found opinion of relationship on the unsupported use of the word is to court disaster. Great wariness is needed. A quite perplexing ṭaghāī is the Machiavelli of Mīrzā Ḥaidar's life, 'Alī Mīrzā ṭaghāī (Dughlāt). He is constantly on the scene, and the one fact not mentioned which it is desirable to know is, whose brother was he? Only with much trouble can a surmise as to his parentage be hazarded.
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