A review of the book 'Vagabond Princess : The Great Adventures of Gulbadan' written by Ruby Lal.
Vagabond Princess shape-shifts our views of the magnificent Mughals as we begin to see and feel Princess Gulbadan’s world, full of freedom, movement and migration, and encounters with new cultures, tongues, and art forms.
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Coming up: A review of the book 'Vagabond Princess: The Great Adventures of Gulbadan' written by Ruby Lal.
Namaste Friends. My name is 'Shinil Subramanian Payamal' and you are listening to the Historylogy podcast.
Before I proceed, a full disclosure: This book was bought with my own money and not been provided to me by the author or publisher.
Little bit about the author:
Emory University professor and acclaimed historian of India, Ruby Lal is the author most recently of Empress: The Astonishing Reign of Nur Jahan, which won the Georgia Author of the Year Award in Biography and was a Finalist in History of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Among the top ten picks of Time Magazine, The Telegraph, and Prospect Magazine London, Empress has been lauded by New Yorker, The Guardian, New York Times, BBC, and Indian Express. Lal is also the author of the much-lauded Domesticity and Power in the Early Mughal World (2005) and Coming of Age in Nineteenth-Century India: The Girl-Child and the Art of Playfulness (2013). Before joining Emory University, Lal taught at the Johns Hopkins University. She has won fellowships from the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Studies and the Jackman Humanities Institute, University of Toronto, and several other establishments.
Let me read what is written on inside flap of the cover of the book:
QUOTE
Set in the early decades of the Mughal Empire, this definitive biography of Princess Gulbadan, the daughter of Emperor Babur, offers an enthralling portrait of a charismatic adventurer and the multicultural society in which she lived. Following a migratory childhood in Kabul and north India, Gulbadan spent her middle years in a walled harem established by her nephew Akbar to showcase his authority as the Great Emperor. Gulbadan longed for the exuberant itinerant lifestyle she had known. With Akbar's blessing, she led an unprecedented sailing and overland voyage, and guided harem women on an extended pilgrimage in Arabia. Amid increasing political tensions, the women's "un-Islamic " behavior forced their return, lengthened by a dramatic shipwreck in the Red Sea.
Gulbadan wrote a book upon her return, the only surviving work of prose by a woman of her times. A portion of it is missing, either lost to history or redacted by officials who did not want the princess to have her say. As she contemplates the story of the missing pages, Ruby Lal breathes new life into an extraordinary Mughal figure, and establishes her place in a history that has long been dominated by men's actions and words.
Vagabond Princess shape-shifts our views of the magnificent Mughals as we begin to see and feel Gulbadan’s world, full of freedom, movement and migration, and encounters with new cultures, tongues, and art forms.
UNQUOTE
As you can from the description above, Princess Gulbadan was the daughter of the first Mughal Emperor Babur and the aunt of Akbar.
Some of the things I learnt after reading this book:
1st ─ Gulbadan was sixty-four when she wrote this unique book, the Ahval-i Humayun Badshah or Conditions in the Age of Humayun Badshah, popularly called the Humayun-nama.
2nd ─ How did the Kohinoor get into the hands of the Mughals? On his way toward Badakhshan, Humayun went to Delhi, where he broke open the treasury and stole its contents. Among these was a great diamond that the queen of Gwalior had given the Mughals to save her honour during an attack. Distraught, Babur chided Humayun in a letter and reminded him of the lavish financial awards he had already received. Nonetheless, Humayun kept the Kohinoor diamond.
3rd ─ Wonderful story of the courtship of Babur and Bibi Mubarika which was handed down in the Baburnama.
4th ─ The debacle at Chausa in 1539 in which many Mughal women and children died.
5th ─ Gulbadan got married to Khizr Khwaja Khan in the summer of 1539.
6th ─ The retreat of the Mughals during which Humayun went towards Sind and Gulbadan went with Kamran back to Kahul.
7th ─ How Humayun gets married to Hamida Banu and gives birth to Akbar while in exile.
8th ─ How critics and rebels were often packed off to western Arabia with the supposition that they would atone for their sins in the House of God.
9th ─ Akbar refused to let Gulbadan’s group travel via the land route through Persia because of “bigoted interference” from the Shi’a militant groups operating in the Persian territories who frequently attacked travelers.
10th ─ One needed a pass from the Portuguese known as the cartaz to travel via the sea route. Mughal court critic Badauni was infuriated by what he considered the idolatrous imagery the Portuguese pass bore: a stamp with the heads of the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ. This is the first book in which I came across a description of the cartaz.
11th ─ There lived in Surat a thriving community of Hindu converts to Islam, the commercially active Ismaili khojahs and bohrahs. A branch of the Shi’a Muslims, they revered ‘Ali, Prophet Muhammad’s son-in-law. The esteemed book of the Khojahs was adorned with nine incarnations of the Hindu God Vishnu. The Khojahs adopted Vishnu as an avatar of Adam; the tenth avatar in this line was ‘Ali!
12th ─ How Sultan Murad III became more and more irate as self-assured Gulbadan and her companions handed out bounties to all and sundry in Mecca and Medina. The women flourished in the act of giving, visible to all in all sorts of places.
What was worse for Murad was that the harem denizens exuded by their very presence the might of Emperor Akbar. The Mughal’s bid to project himself as a great, pious ruler was vividly apparent.
13th ─ Three years prior to the return of Gulbadan and her companions, to the bewilderment of the clergy and several court members, Emperor Akbar had promulgated the famous Infallibility Decree. Prepared by a leading jurist and signed by a premier judge, the document, Mahzar, gave Akbar the power to interpret the law of Islam. As supreme arbiter in civil and ecclesiastical matters in his land and a godlike king, Akbar would be the final authority in all legal matters concerning his state and people. Akbar styled himself as “Padshah of Islam,” “Imam of Justice,” and Caesar—all favoured usages of the Ottomans. In bearing these titles, Akbar posed a challenge to the Ottoman dynasty’s claim to the protector of the Holy Muslim Cities. He went further and took the revered appellation “Amir-al-Muminin,” Commander of the Faithful, which “even the Ottoman Sultans had not dared to assume publicly.”
14th ─ A year before Gulbadan’s return, Akbar stopped donations as well as the hajj caravan to the Holy Cities. Mughal amounts for disbursement—Khwaja Yahya took 400,000 rupees, and the commander of the hajj, Hakimul Mulk Gilani, 500,000 rupees in 1580—were hugely welcome in Mecca and Medina. Akbar sent a polite letter to the sherif of Mecca expressing regrets that the subvention for 1581 could not be sent because of his engagements in suppressing a revolt in Kabul. This was a subtle Mughal rejoinder to the Ottoman orders against the princess and the women of the royal household.
15th ─ When Princess Gulbadan passed away in February, 1603 at the age of eighty, Akbar helped to carry her bier for some distance. This was a great honour—an imperial nod to Gulbadan’s preeminence.
Conclusion:
This brilliantly written, fast-paced autobiography is a wonderful tribute to Princess Gulbadan and an absolute must-read if you are interested in the early days of the Mughal Empire. It is exactly 200 pages and at times, feels like an Arabian Night fairy-tale especially when the Princess and her companion are on the Sea voyage to the Holy Cities. The book has eight colour pages featuring the Bala Hisar fortress in Kabul which is the birthplace of the Princess, along with the Bagh-e Babur where Babur and his sister Khanzada Begum are buried. Also are pictures of the harem quarters of the Fatehpur-Sikri, and the Jodha Bai Palace. Then there are miniature paintings of Akbar, the Ottoman Sultan Murad III, Mecca and Medina.
This book is a perfect example of feminist history and I give it a rating of 4.5/5.
The printed price of the book is Rs. 699/- but is available for around Rs. 575/- on Amazon India and for around Rs. 665/- on Flipkart. And it is available for $26.68 USD on Amazon USA. I have given the respective buy links in the show notes. Please check them out for the latest prices.
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