Accounts of Mughal India, and certainly of Anglo-European encounters with the empire, are often dominated by male actors. This is not because women were not prominent in these moments, but often due to the various biases to be found in historical study. Reading against the grain and re-examining available sources can be rich experiences of discovery, as these neglected voices are unearthed.

One such prominent female figure who has finally gained increasing attention in recent years is the Princess Gulbudan Banu Begum (c. 1523-1603). The daughter of Zahir al-Din Muhammad Babur (r. 1526-1530), the Mughal founding father, the Begum spent her childhood observing the early years of the empire as her father established it. She would go on to live a long life, surviving the period of turbulence and exile during the reign of her half-brother Humayun (r. 1530-1540, 1555-1556), and witnessing the empire’s newly gained stability and prosperity under her nephew Akbar (r. 1556-1605). A scholarly individual with her own private library, the Princess would go on to write a history of Mughal imperial formation as she witnessed it in her memoirs, the Humayunnama. The memoirs would form a primary source for the official chronicle of the reign of Emperor Akbar, the Akbarnama.

It would be during Akbar’s reign that the then elderly Princess would undertake a dramatic journey, complete with entourage, from the imperial haram. In 1578 she organised and led a Hajj pilgrimage, a trip that would last several years. The Hajj is an annual pilgrimage to the holy land of Makka that Muslims undertake at least once in their lifetimes if they have the means. Whereas in modern times the journey is relatively easy, in the Princess’s time it would have been a long and treacherous affair by land or sea.

Akbar’s own chroniclers record the event in the Akbarnama, which reports that when the Princess expressed her desire to make the journey to the Emperor, the latter granted her request by gifting a large sum of money and goods for the journey and providing guards to accompany the convoy to the coast. The haram pilgrims then undertook the voyage and remained in Makka for three-and-a-half years.

An account of the pilgrimage is recorded by the Portuguese Jesuit priest, Antonio Monserrate, who attended Akbar’s court as part of the first Jesuit mission there. Although Monserrate would not have had access to the Princess nor the haram quarters, the event was famed and conducted with sufficient fanfare to have not been missed by this European visitor. Monserrate would write:

When his [Akbar’s] aunt returned from Makka, the king had the street-pavements covered with silken shawls, and conducted her himself to her palace in a gorgeous litter, scattering largesse meanwhile to the crowds.^[1]

The Princess Gulbudan Banu Begum’s Hajj is not the first example of a Mughal princess’s journey to the holy land, but it is perhaps the first to be recorded by a European observer. To the visitors it would be an illustration of the authority of imperial Mughal women, particularly those of seniority, and the respect with which they were regarded by the emperor himself. While perceptions of haram women’s quarters in the Islamic worlds, including Mughal India, are to this day coloured by stereotypes of seclusion and restriction, the Begum’s grand pilgrimage is a lavish, and thoroughly necessary, disruption to such notions.

Image: Sixteenth century Mughal miniature of Makka. (Source)

[1] J S Hoyland (trans.) and S N Banerjee (ed.), The Commentary of Father Monserrate, S. J. On his Journey to the Court Akbar (London, 1922), p. 205.