Gulrukh Begum

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Gulrukh Begum
Shahzadi of the Mughal Empire
DiedJune 1539
SpouseNuruddin Muhammad Mirza
Issue Salima Sultan Begum
House Timurid
Father Babur
MotherIdentity is disputed. May have been either Dildar Begum or Saliha Sultan Begum
Religion Islam

Gulrukh Begum (died June 1539), also known as Gulbarg Begum, was a Mughal princess, the daughter of Emperor Babur, the founder of the Mughal Empire. [1] She was also the younger half-sister of the second Mughal emperor Humayun [2] and an aunt of third Mughal emperor Akbar.

Mughal Empire 1526-1857 dynastic empire extending over large parts of the Indian subcontinent

The MughalEmpire was an early-modern empire in South Asia. For some two centuries, the empire stretched from the outer fringes of the Indus basin in the west, northern Afghanistan in the northwest, and Kashmir in the north, to the highlands of present-day Assam and Bangladesh in the east, and the uplands of the Deccan plateau in South India. At its greatest extent, it was one of the largest empires in the history of South Asia.

Babur Badshah of the Mughal Empire

Babur, born Zahīr ud-Dīn Muhammad, was the founder and first Emperor of the Mughal dynasty in South Asia. He was a direct descendant of Emperor Timur (Tamerlane) from what is now Uzbekistan.

Humayun Badshah of the Mughal Empire

Nasir-ud-Din Muḥammad, better known by his regnal name, Humayun, was the second emperor of the Mughal Empire, who ruled over territory in what is now Afghanistan, Pakistan, Northern India, and Bangladesh from 1530–1540 and again from 1555–1556. Like his father, Babur, he lost his kingdom early but regained it with the aid of the Safavid dynasty of Persia, with additional territory. At the time of his death in 1556, the Mughal Empire spanned almost one million square kilometres.

Contents

Gulrukh Begum was known for her great beauty and accomplishments in the imperial household [3] , and was the mother of Salima Sultan Begum, a wife of Akbar.

Salima Sultan Begum 16th and 17th-century Mughal empress

Salima Sultan Begum was the fourth wife of the Mughal Emperor Akbar, and the granddaughter of Babur.

Akbar Badshah of the Mughal Empire

Abu'l-Fath Jalal-ud-din Muhammad Akbar, popularly known as Akbar the Great,, and also as Akbar I, was the third Mughal emperor, who reigned from 1556 to 1605. Akbar succeeded his father, Humayun, under a regent, Bairam Khan, who helped the young emperor expand and consolidate Mughal domains in India. A strong personality and a successful general, Akbar gradually enlarged the Mughal Empire to include most of the Indian subcontinent. His power and influence, however, extended over the entire subcontinent because of Mughal military, political, cultural, and economic dominance. To unify the vast Mughal state, Akbar established a centralised system of administration throughout his empire and adopted a policy of conciliating conquered rulers through marriage and diplomacy. To preserve peace and order in a religiously and culturally diverse empire, he adopted policies that won him the support of his non-Muslim subjects. Eschewing tribal bonds and Islamic state identity, Akbar strove to unite far-flung lands of his realm through loyalty, expressed through an Indo-Persian culture, to himself as an emperor who had near-divine status.

Name

Her name varies in different sources as she appears as Gulbarg and Gulrukh. [4] She may have originally borne a Turkic name, and that the various forms her name assumes in Persian may have their origin in translations of a previous Turkic name. [5]

Persian language Western Iranian language

Persian, also known by its endonym Farsi, is a Western Iranian language belonging to the Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian subdivision of the Indo-European languages. It is a pluricentric language predominantly spoken and used officially within Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan in three mutually intelligible standard varieties, namely Iranian Persian, Dari Persian and Tajiki Persian. It is also spoken natively in the Tajik variety by a significant population within Uzbekistan, as well as within other regions with a Persianate history in the cultural sphere of Greater Iran. It is written officially within Iran and Afghanistan in the Persian alphabet, a derivation of the Arabic script, and within Tajikistan in the Tajik alphabet, a derivation of Cyrillic.

Family and lineage

The identity of Gulrukh Begum's mother is disputed. [5]

According to the Ma'asir-i-rahimi, Pasha Begum, a Baharlu Turkoman, married as her second husband, Sultan Mahmud Mirza Miran-shahi. By him she had three daughters and one son. The son was Sultan Baysonqor Mirza (b. 882H., 1477). One daughter whose name was Saliha Sultan Begum, married Babur and bore him a daughter, Gul-rukh (sic). Gulrukh married Nur-ud-din Muhammad Chaqaniani, and their daughter was Salima Sultan Begam who married first, Bairam Khan-i-Khanan and secondly, the Emperor Akbar. [5]

Sultan Mahmud Mirza was a prince of Timurid branch of Transoxiana, son of Abu Sa'id Mirza.

Bairam Khan Statesman and regent to Mughal Emperor Akbar. Also known for military strategy.

Bairam Khan was an important military commander, later commander-in-chief of the Mughal army, a powerful statesman and regent at the court of the Mughal Emperors, Humayun and Akbar. He was also guardian, chief mentor, adviser, teacher and the most trusted ally of Akbar. Humayun honored him as Khan-i-Khanan, which means "King of Kings". Bairam was originally called Bairam "Beg", but later became honored as 'Kha' or Khan.

If Babur ever married a woman named Saliha Sultan Begum, it may have taken place on a date which falls in a gap in the Baburnama, i.e., from 1511 to 1519. [6] This is the period which contains the exile from Kabul after the Mughal rebellion. Not only does Babur omit Saliha Sultan's name and his marriage with her, but Gulbadan Begum also does not mention this name in her writings, with no mention of the marriage and child of Saliha Sultan. This silence is remarkable as she enumerates her father's children and gives their mothers' names, and she enumerates some of his wives in more places than one in the Humayun-nama. From her lists a Timurid wife cannot have escaped, and especially one whose child became the mother of Gulbadan's associate Salima Sultan. [6]

<i>Baburnama</i> name given to the memoirs of Ẓahīr ud-Dīn Muḥammad Bābur

Bāburnāma is the name given to the memoirs of Ẓahīr-ud-Dīn Muhammad Bābur (1483–1530), founder of the Mughal Empire and a great-great-great-grandson of Timur.

Kabul Metropolis and municipality in Afghanistan

Kabul is the capital and largest city of Afghanistan, located in the eastern section of the country. It is also a municipality, forming part of the greater Kabul Province. According to estimates in 2019, the population of Kabul is 4.114 million, which includes all the major ethnic groups of Afghanistan. Rapid urbanization had made Kabul the world's 75th largest city.

Gulbadan Begum Shahzadi of the Mughal Empire

Gulbadan Begum was a Mughal princess and the daughter of Emperor Babur, the founder of the Mughal Empire.

An explanation of Gulbadan's silence and also of a part of Babur's has suggested that the existence of Saliha Sultan may be merely conjectural and hypothetical. [6] The absence of any mention of Saliha Sultan and of her child in the primary sources suggests that she may appear under another name in Gulbadan's list of her father's children and their mothers. She may have even been Gulbadan's own mother, Dildar Begum [5] , who in certain sources is also mentioned as a daughter of Sultan Mahmud Mirza and Pasha Begum.

It is therefore possible that Saliha Sultan Begum and Dildar Begum were the same woman, as both were recorded as daughters of Sultan Mahmud Mirza and Pasha Begum in certain sources.

Marriage

Abu'l Fazl states that Firdaus-makani [Babur] gave his daughter Gulbarg (sic), to Nuru-ud-din because a daughter of Mahmud and Pasha had been given to Nur-ud-din's grandfather Khwaja Hasan, known as Khwaja-zada Chaqaniani. He also states that Salima-sultan Begam was the issue of Gulbarg's marriage. [5]

In the Baburnama , there is no mention of Salha-sultan nor of Nuru-ud-din's marriage with a daughter of Babur. Yet Abu'l Fazl states that Firdaus-makani arranged Gulbarg's marriage. The first omission is the more remarkable because Babur states that Pasha 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 Salha's half-sister Zainab Sultan Begum and of her death. [7] The omission is remarkable and appears to have no good ground, since he chronicles his other Timurid marriages. Of Pasha's daughters it may be noted that one married Malik Muhammad Miran-shahi, another Khwaja Hasan Chaqaniani, and the third, Babur.

According to Annette Beveridge, the principal difficulty in the way of this identification is Abu'l Fazl's statement that Nur-ud-din's marriage was made by Firdaus-makani, whereas Gulbadan states that her father arranged two Chughtai marriages for her sisters. According to Beveridge, if one might read Jannat-ashyani [Humayun] for Firdaus-makani much would fall into place; the marriage with Nur-ud-din could be a remarriage of Gulchehra Begum 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. [8]

Death

Gulrukh Begum died fourth months after giving birth to her daughter, Salima Sultan Begum in June 1539. [9]

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References

  1. ↑ transl.; ed.; Thackston, annot. by Wheeler M. (1999). The Jahangirnama : memoirs of Jahangir, Emperor of India. New York [u.a.]: Oxford Univ. Press. p. 11. ISBN   9780195127188.CS1 maint: extra text: authors list (link)
  2. ↑ Eraly, Abraham (2007). Emperors Of The Peacock Throne: The Saga of the Great Moghuls. Penguin UK. ISBN   9789351180937. And Biram Khan, who was then in his fifties, married another young cousin of Akbar, the richly talented Salima Begum, daughter of Humayun's sister Gulrukh.
  3. ↑ Bose, edited by Mandakranta (2000). Faces of the feminine in ancient, medieval, and modern India. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 207. ISBN   9780195352771.CS1 maint: extra text: authors list (link)
  4. ↑ Beveridge, transl. from the orig. Turki text of Zahirud-din Muhammad Babur Badshah Ghaznvi by Annette S. (2002). Babur-nama. Lahore: Sang-e-Meel Publ. p. 713. ISBN   9789693512939.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 Gulbadan, p. 276
  6. 1 2 3 Gulbadan, p. 277
  7. ↑ abridged, translated from the Turkish by Annette Susannah Beveridge ;; edited; Hiro, introduced by Dilip (2006). Babur Nama : journal of Emperor Babur (1.publ. ed.). New Delhi: Penguin Books. p. 362. ISBN   9780144001491.CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link)
  8. ↑ Gulbadan, p. 278
  9. ↑ Nath, Renuka (1990). Notable Mughal and Hindu women in the 16th and 17th centuries A.D. (1. publ. in India. ed.). New Delhi: Inter-India Publ. p. 55. ISBN   9788121002417.

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