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Description
AFTER THE BATTLE OF PANIPAT in 1526, which gave Babur, the first Mughal king, a foothold in India, his close friend, Khvajeh Kilan, expressed a desire to return to his home in Kabul. As Babur (reluctantly) gave him permission to go, he asked him to carry "valuable presents and curiosities [tuhfeh va hadyeh] of Hind" to his relations and other people in Kabul. (1)
Two generations later, when asked to record her memories of the Mughal forefathers for the imperial history, the Akbarnama, Babur's daughter, Gulbadan Banu Begum, reconstructed Babur's conversation with Khvajeh Kilan as follows:
I shall write a list, and you will distribute them [the gifts] according to it.... To each begam is to be delivered as follows: one special dancing-girl of the dancing-girls of Sultan Ibrahim [Ibrahim Lodi, the king Babur defeated at Panipat], with one gold plate full of jewels-- ruby and pearl, cornelian and diamond, emerald and turquoise, topaz and cat's-eye--and two small mother-o'-pearl trays full of ashrafis, and on two other trays shahrukhis, and all sorts of stuffs by nines--that is, four trays and one plate. Take a dancing-girl and another plate of jewels, and one each of ashrafis and shahrukhis, and present, in accordance with my directions, to my elder relations the very plate of jewels and the self-same dancing-girl which I have given for them [sic]. I have made other gifts; convey these afterwards. Let them divide and present jewels and ashrafis and shahrukhis and stuffs to my sisters and children and the harams and kinsmen, and to the begams and aghas and nurses and foster-brethren and ladies, and to all who pray for me. (2)
Gulbadan's record of her father's inventory is striking for several reasons. It brings to life questions of correct deportment in the preparation of gifts and the manner of presenting (and accepting) them--so central to the sensibilities of the Timurid-Mughal world. It is particularly notable for depicting Babur's domestic life. The Begum gives us glimpses of the range of Babur's domestic relationships and associations, with the old as well as the young. The list of gifts is a pointer to the centrality and the hierarchical character of these relationships. Babur gave clear instructions about what should be given to whom and in what order. So the elder relations (vali-u-ni'matan) were to be given the following presents first: a dancing girl, a plate of jewels, and a plate each of ashrafis and shahrukhis (designation for coins), to be followed by "other gifts" that Babur had listed for them. Similarly his sisters, kinsmen and their wives, heads of households, nurses, and children were to receive presents later in accordance with Babur's list. The Begum's memoir pays a great deal of attention to such illustrative inventories. In her elucidation, the details of presents and invitations serve not merely as a descriptive catalog, but as symbols of the privileges of seniority. They index the creation and maintenance of hierarchical relationships, as well as the importance of building alliances and reinforcing kinship solidarities.
At another point in her memoir, Gulbadan discusses the time Humayun, the second Mughal king, spent with the royal women when his court was settled for a while in Agra:
On court days [ruzhaye divan], which were Sundays and Tuesdays, he used to go to the other side of the river. During his stay in the garden, ajam (Dil-dar Begam) and my sisters and the ladies (haraman) were often in his company. Of all the tents, Ma'suma Sultan Begam's was at the top of the row. Next came Gul-rang Begam's, and ajam's was in the same place. Then the tent of my mother, Gul-barg Begam and of Bega Begam and the others. They set up the offices (kar-khanaha) and got them into order. When they had put up the pavilions (khaima) and tents (khargah) and the audience tent (bar-gah), the Emperor came to see the camp and the splendid set-out, and visited the begams and his sisters. As he dismounted somewhat near Ma'suma Begam's (tent), he honoured her with a visit. All of us, the begams and my sisters, were in his society. When he went to any begam's or sister's quarters, all the begams and all his sisters used to go with him. (3)
Note the careful attention paid to precise rules: designated days to go to the other side of the river, the careful arrangement of the tents of women, the king himself coming to see the arrangement, the manner and timing of his visits, the deportment required of those who accompanied him, and so forth.
Now compare the above extracts with a statement on the Mughal harem that appears in K.S. Lal's The Mughal Harem (1988), one of the few academic accounts of the subject:
The term Mughal harem conjures up a vision of a sequestered place ensconcing beautiful forms in mysterious magnificence.... [T]he young girls were not exposed to all the celebrations in the Mahal [palace] in which sex orgies dominated or the master bargained for beauty and love on occasions.... Naturally, every lady of consequence tried to win the master's undivided love and openly competed to gain ascendancy in the harem. Women's beauty gave them a power as undefined as unique.... There were other tensions though not so deep in effect. These may be classed under the generic term jealousy. But on this we need not dwell much for the harem was not meant for the old and ailing. It was meant to be a bright place, an abode of the young and beautiful, an arbour of pleasure and retreat for joy. (4)
What we have here is the portrait of a sexualized, secluded, feminine domain (albeit not for the "old and ailing"), centrally premised on a crude principle of sensual pleasure that was supposed to regulate the "private" lives of imperial women and men. The single sentence on the harem in the volume on the Mughals in the "New Cambridge History of India" series' John F. Richards's The Mughal Empire (1993) reproduces this image: "Ideally, the harem provided a respite, a retreat for the nobleman and his closest male relatives-a retreat of grace, beauty, and order designed to refresh the males of the household." (5) It is echoed again in R. Nath's description in his Private Life of the Mughals (1994). The emperor Jahangir, for instance, was in Nath's view "a sensuous person" who "indulged excessively" both in wine and women. "By a routine estimate, he had nearly 300 young and beautiful women attached to his bed, an incomprehensible figure in the modern age. This shows his over-indulgence in sex and his excessive engagement in the harem [sic]." (6)
This received image of Mughal private life has been powerful in blinding historians to the density and variation of domestic life projected in the contemporary records, such as Gulbadan Banu Begum's Ahval-i Humayun Badshah, which I use as my central counterpoint in this article. The extracts from Gulbadan's memoir cited at the beginning of this article, which could be set beside many others in her text, reveal a harem far different from that commonly presented to us. The complexity of relationships that emerges in these is notable. By contrast, the academic accounts that I juxtapose with the Begum's memoir appear devoid of any historical depth and unaware of the intricacy of relationships and activities and the multifaceted and intimate community found in the harem.
This article examines the possibility of writing a history of Mughal domestic life. In thinking about this question, I have not unearthed any new sources. Instead, I have returned to sources that have been available all along (imperial chronicles, ethical digests, visual representations, and architectural remains). This revisiting has involved listening to "peripheral" stories and voices, "drowned in the noise of statist commands." (7) It has also meant looking at well-known but neglected sources (such as Gulbadan's memoir) and using them more centrally. The return to the mainstream official chronicles in the light of these peripheral sources is no less instructive for the many new insights it allows. On the basis of this "rediscovered" archive, then, I suggest several ways in which another history may be brought into view. I hope that this will be a gendered and more self-consciously political history that cannot simply be hived off as "supplementary," and that accounts such as the one I put forward here will serve to reopen other questions of central importance to Mughal history.
THE KINGS AND THE MEMOIRIST
As a first step, I provide a brief introduction to the Mughal memoirist Gulbadan Banu Begum and to the first three Mughal kings before I discuss the possibility of constructing a history of early Mughal domestic life through the Begum's memoir.
Zahir al-Din Muhammad Babur (1483-1530) was a descendent of the Mongol ruler Chingiz Khan (1167-1227) on his mother's side and Timur (1336-1405), the Turkic-Mongol ruler, on his father's. He spent most of his life fighting with the princes of other Timurid territories in parts of Central Asia and Afghanistan. Most notable among these combats are Babur's long drawn-out struggles with the Uzbiks, the direct descendants of Chingiz Khan through his son Juchi. Defeated in these struggles to gain a territorial foothold, Babur was pushed to Afghanistan. He finally acquired a territorial base in Hindustan in 1526 by defeating Sultan Ibrahim Lodi of Delhi. Thus he laid the foundation of Mughal rule in India.
Nasir al-Din Humayun (1508-1556), Babur's son, encountered massive difficulties in retaining his father's conquests in India. The biggest challenge to his kingship came from Sher Khan Sur who ruled southern Bihar in eastern India. After being defeated by Sher Khan in 1540 near Kanauj, Humayun became an exile in Persia and parts of Afghanistan. In 1554, however, he led his army... |
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