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0:21

British Library in London. There is

0:23

a manuscript coffee of the memoir

0:25

of Princess Gold, the done who

0:27

was born in around fifteen twenty

0:30

three and died and sixteen or

0:32

three known as if I'm my

0:34

Unama It tells the story. Of

0:36

the origins of the Mughal Empire, Of

0:39

it's founder Go Burdens father, Bourbon,

0:41

and of her half brother and

0:43

my and it's second Emperor in

0:46

what is the only surviving female

0:48

authored memoir from the Mughal Empire,

0:51

Princess Go with on recounts her

0:53

itinerant childhood across Northern India, in

0:55

Kabul, the death of her father,

0:58

and the subsequent civil wars during

1:00

her brother's rain. She

1:04

tells of her marriage seventeen of

1:06

the regulations in stated by her

1:08

nephew Akbar then third local emperor

1:10

which would later can find her

1:12

to award hot on and finally

1:14

and perhaps most exception me of

1:16

what would be the first pilgrimage

1:18

made by a low muslim woman

1:20

to the holy lands. Go

1:23

Parents journey spanning seven years and

1:26

a distance of three thousand miles

1:28

cross the Arabian Sea through mountains

1:30

and across desert before reaching Mecca,

1:32

where her group. Stayed for nearly

1:35

four years before returning home.

1:37

My guess today is Professor

1:39

Will Be Low historian and

1:41

professor at Emory University who

1:43

has previously been on this

1:45

podcast before to talk about

1:47

know to Han the Co

1:49

Empress The Jungle. Her latest

1:52

book Vagabond Princess The Great

1:54

Adventures of Go But On

1:56

examines this largely forgotten manuscript

1:58

and the life of. The

2:00

made even he will. Ah,

2:07

Hello Welcome back to notice the Tudors!

2:09

Thank you! I'm delighted to be back

2:11

soon as he can. You breezy give

2:14

us a sense of who princess go

2:16

down was and how you came to

2:18

has story. Princess Global. Then was

2:20

the daughter of the it's founding to

2:22

go of the Mughals of India bobber

2:25

sister to whom I owe the second

2:27

king who was in and out of

2:29

in the style On and. On

2:31

top of the man was called the great

2:33

that has of but the grades. As

2:35

she was an itinerant princess born

2:38

in Kabul and then in the

2:40

aftermath. Of father's victories. Was

2:42

the first girl in a

2:44

caravan to India and saw

2:46

the early foundations of mobile

2:48

settlements. and then when her

2:50

brother whom I was happy

2:52

dance territorially defeated and then

2:54

exiles she went back to

2:56

Cobble and them as a

2:58

matriarch older woman returned. but

3:01

she carried on this you

3:03

know, itinerant lifestyle so I

3:05

met glue that and when

3:07

I was a graduate student

3:09

in Delhi and basically starting

3:11

my career. And as a mobile

3:13

historian and the thing that stabbed

3:15

me in the face was that

3:17

there was no feminist history of

3:19

this empire. and then saw the

3:21

translation. all the wonderful. Victorian scholar

3:23

and that beverage I came

3:26

across Good Buttons memoir. And

3:28

and I applied for a scholarship and I

3:30

came to upstairs to Adams has her book

3:32

which is housed in the Bricks library as

3:35

be though you know thanks to that book

3:37

I produced the first seven us to steal

3:39

the embark on. Until this the City and

3:41

Power in the early movement was so my

3:44

relationship with good But and has never. Stopped.

3:46

It's a very long relationship. You.

3:48

Mentioned dad that see is someone who's

3:51

round of sequential will be long time

3:53

and is revealed in her late to

3:55

use. As a woman as

3:57

wisdom and culture. Do. you have any

3:59

senses how she would have been educated,

4:01

were women taught at this time in

4:04

the same way as men. So there's

4:06

an informal and formal sense of

4:08

education. One of

4:10

the very strong strands of

4:13

cultivation and being literate is

4:15

really of course storytelling and

4:18

storytelling through myth, through history,

4:20

told not only by the women of the

4:23

family but also as a royal woman,

4:25

she would have a lady

4:27

teacher called Amal Lima come and

4:29

teach her. And you

4:31

know, the classics would be taught, books

4:34

pertaining to moral senses of the self

4:36

would be taught. And

4:38

you know, strong storytelling traditions such as to

4:40

be found in 2001 nights.

4:42

Now that's just a genre. There

4:45

were many of those. But

4:47

also experientially, this is something

4:49

I've thought about quite a lot. The

4:51

experiential is really what mattered, which

4:54

is what affects. She's

4:56

unusual in her writing eventually

4:58

because of writing this intimate,

5:01

what we call as the dual genre,

5:03

a memoir as well as a history

5:05

and deeply affected by a feminine point

5:08

of view. So all of these

5:10

and then the travels, the extensive travels. And

5:12

this was also, you know,

5:14

very much my investigations in

5:16

my first book, the peripatetic

5:18

nomadic character of the Mughals. When we think of

5:21

Mughals, the great of India, the

5:23

popular imagination is, you know, there's the

5:25

Taj Mahal and there is the Kohinoor

5:27

and what have you. You

5:29

know, so the important question for me

5:31

then, and also while writing this book was,

5:34

in a world that is broadly

5:36

and beautifully and animatedly shaped by

5:39

movement and migration, what does kingship

5:41

look like? And so I think

5:43

that nomadic is not the word,

5:45

but itinerant, I think comes closer because

5:47

nomadic has other kind of senses attached

5:50

to it. So I think all

5:52

that will have gone into her education in

5:55

an informal way, watching her father. I have

5:57

these scenes that I've said through her book.

6:00

She adored her father Baba and

6:02

she particularly adored him looking

6:04

at him while he used to sit

6:06

and write the pages of the Baba Dhammi after

6:09

he was in Nagra and so on. So

6:11

I think it's a formal and

6:13

informal sense of a cultivation of

6:15

a person and it would be

6:17

the same form of education

6:20

for boys who would also have tutors

6:23

assigned to them. But

6:25

there were specific requirements for a

6:27

boy and a girl and

6:29

those of course were divergent but

6:32

they were also shared grounds such

6:34

as learning books of conduct, such

6:36

as learning hunting, reading

6:38

the Quran, virtues, virtues

6:40

as a human being, distinct,

6:43

all of those kinds of things. And

6:45

I think it might be important, given what you've

6:47

just said about watching her father, to

6:50

think about whether Mughal

6:52

Royal Society at this time

6:55

was primarily homosocial. So were

6:57

men with men, women with

6:59

women, were women living typically

7:01

segregated lives? That's

7:03

an excellent observation. So homosocial is

7:05

a key word here which is,

7:07

you know, they thrived in communities

7:09

as Baba of course writes, how much

7:12

he thrived amongst his companions

7:14

and also, you know, the extension of

7:16

that point is that servants as we

7:18

think are not really servants. These

7:20

are close companions often because for

7:22

example, your taster

7:24

has the most significant job because

7:27

you could be poisoned to death

7:30

or your woman companions such as in

7:32

the case of Gulbadan, there are many

7:34

that, you know, the attendance of a

7:36

mother and her father lived to be

7:39

around her and they

7:41

had seen these women walk in

7:43

the harshest circumstances of the dynasty's

7:45

time and so on and so

7:47

forth. So it

7:49

is homosocial but not segregated.

7:51

I want to make that

7:53

distinction till Agbir's time, for the

7:55

first time in the career of the dynasty,

7:57

he builds the first stone of the dynasty.

8:00

walled harem and again it was the point

8:02

I was making in my first book. Up

8:05

until then there are of course as I was

8:07

saying earlier on in the context of literacy, there

8:10

are certain codes of respectability that

8:12

you'll have to observe as a woman

8:15

where you'd say what's going to happen, you

8:17

know what happens particularly during childbirth

8:19

for instance but women

8:22

accompanied Babur and Umayu all

8:24

the time into war-like situations.

8:27

In fact Babur's sister, Hansada,

8:29

who Gulbadan was extremely fond

8:31

of and does the most

8:33

amazing portrayal of her, she

8:36

was in the war, in the most

8:38

important wars that Babur was leading in

8:40

Samartran in order to gain the

8:42

seat of Timur which he loses to

8:45

one of his ardent enemies, a man

8:47

called Uzbe Khan, Uzbe Khan

8:49

Shabani and he's able to exit

8:51

from that city only after he

8:53

bartered his sister. So Gulbadan's

8:56

memoir is also an extraordinary

8:58

documentation of how many women

9:01

were in the war, not only women,

9:03

women and children, how many were bartered,

9:05

how some were lost. One of the

9:08

poignant accounts is her little niece who

9:10

she was very fond of, Akika, how

9:12

she's lost in this battle of Josef

9:15

when her brother loses the

9:17

battle of Josef to Shehshah Suri

9:20

and then there are of course they

9:22

go together for arties, for picnics, for

9:25

walks, for admiring the nature and

9:27

many other things. So I would

9:29

say it's more social but deeply

9:32

intersecting. So to give a grasp

9:34

on the history here, we know

9:36

that when she's still young it's

9:40

her half-brother, you've mentioned Humayun who

9:42

exceeds as emperor on the death

9:44

of their father but then we

9:47

have another brother plotting to overthrow him

9:49

and we have these civil wars that

9:51

you've just alluded to and I wonder

9:53

what you think we can learn from

9:56

her memoir about Humayun, about

9:58

the civil wars during his death? his reign.

10:00

Another really interesting thing that happens

10:03

in Mughal history, there are certain

10:05

kings and princes that are, you

10:07

know, highly regarded and they're

10:09

exceptional and they're great in their DNA,

10:11

so to speak. And then there are

10:13

some that have been dismissed badly

10:16

in history, such as Umayyun, her brother, or

10:19

in my book on empress, Jahangir was seen

10:21

as a drunk and so on. And

10:23

I think she portrays a

10:26

really sensitive, humane, vulnerable

10:28

picture, not only of my

10:30

own, but also of her father. I mean,

10:33

of course, Babur has been seen

10:35

as this lover of nature and a poet

10:37

and a writer and a great warrior

10:39

and all that. She

10:41

brings the vulnerability in

10:44

her brother, which is why I think

10:46

the genre of biography is so interesting,

10:49

because it takes away this cardboard picture

10:52

and you're able to really bring,

10:54

yes, you know,

10:56

in my case, an empress princess,

10:58

but also that these are human

11:00

figures that people can relate to

11:02

them and that it's only

11:05

through struggles they're able to do what

11:07

they did, which seems exceptional to us.

11:09

But then what is the history of

11:11

that exceptionalism, if you will? I think

11:13

sources like Gulbadan are extraordinary, unique

11:16

in that. Do you

11:18

think that what we get reflected through

11:20

her memoir is a sense of the

11:22

instability of the Mughal Empire? I

11:25

think it is what I call the

11:27

becoming of the Mughal Empire and the

11:29

processes that go into it. So there

11:31

are just in the sense of the

11:33

history of the production of this text,

11:35

I think it's really important to remember

11:37

that she was the only

11:40

woman invited by her nephew,

11:42

Akbar the Great, when

11:44

Akbar orders the writing of the first

11:46

official history of the empire called the

11:48

Akbar-Bama. And by this time, of course,

11:50

and we'll talk more about this, by

11:52

this time, she is back from this

11:55

extraordinary tumultuous and highly

11:57

scandalous journey to

11:59

West. What Akbar and Abu

12:01

Fazal would have liked, as I said,

12:04

is a kind of classic contribution that

12:06

many other men had written where the

12:09

male is centered, the empire really looks

12:11

great, it's highly institutionalized,

12:14

it's bureaucracy, it's administration,

12:16

it's agrarian policies, everything

12:18

is in place. And it comes to

12:20

be that way by late Akbar. But

12:23

what she brings to the fore, and

12:25

this is the uniqueness, is

12:27

this process that went into the

12:29

making of the so-called great empire,

12:31

right? What was happening? What were

12:34

the struggles? So back to that

12:36

question of the struggle of the

12:38

monarchs and the massive contribution of

12:40

women alongside in the

12:43

very making and the enunciation of the

12:45

principles of that dynasty. So

12:47

I think she is seminal,

12:49

ensuring the history as it was

12:52

being made and from this gorgeous

12:54

feminine point of view. So

12:57

what is so fascinating about this

12:59

is that what you're saying is

13:01

we have these great works of

13:04

memoir by the Mogor emperors and

13:06

we have depended on them and they

13:08

give this glorious story of triumph. But

13:11

actually from this one surviving

13:13

memoir by a woman from

13:15

the Mogor empire, we get the

13:18

underbelly, we get all the effort

13:20

it took, we get all the

13:22

other people, all the women who

13:24

revolved in making it happen. The

13:26

female perspective completely turns on its

13:29

head actually our understanding

13:31

of this period of history. That's exactly

13:33

right. I would also say, so here's

13:35

a visual I'd like to create, which

13:37

I created for myself when I wrote my

13:39

first book, which is I was

13:41

stunned. So the book, the Ewaalei Ma'yubhachan,

13:44

was well known to scholars, but

13:47

it had been in the sense that Annette

13:49

Beveridge had done the translation. It was published

13:51

by a low price publication series in India.

13:53

So had been easily available

13:55

in translation. People knew this.

13:58

And yet scholars had dismissed it

14:00

and it's a kind of a classic

14:03

male division that is created that it's

14:05

a sort society of women. It's

14:07

hardly a soft memoir, right? I

14:09

mean it's about the harshest of

14:11

travels, also soft and poignant moments

14:14

and it's not that it is just

14:16

about women, it's about men and women

14:19

in relation and I think that in

14:21

relation is key. So I

14:24

began to of course read this very closely

14:26

in Persian when I came to England and

14:29

of course Begga Bonn Princess opens with

14:31

that scene of my first encounter with

14:33

that book and how besotted I was

14:35

and how mesmerized by it I

14:37

was each time I turned the pages. But

14:40

here's the visual, after I

14:42

did that work I put that book

14:44

in the center of my attention and

14:47

I said now let me put

14:49

all the so-called canon around it.

14:51

Let me put the agbanami, let

14:53

me put the babarnami, let me

14:55

put badayoni, let me put all

14:57

the so-called classics and who makes

14:59

the classics? That's also a question

15:01

I was asking. It's a very male way of looking

15:03

and I can come to this later but let me

15:06

stay with the visual. So there

15:08

were two things that were happening, the book

15:10

is very unique, that's without question. A

15:13

lot of the information that we get through

15:15

her is not to be found in

15:17

these records but there

15:19

were also connections constantly I was

15:21

making in the classic in the

15:23

male canon in which for instance

15:25

a lot of the information she

15:27

has was mentioned in those chroniclers

15:29

and documents and observations and diaries

15:32

because there's many kinds. But

15:34

the way of mentioning was different

15:36

at times. For instance there would

15:39

be a one-line mention which then

15:41

you would find staggering detail in

15:43

Ulvadan's text. So I began

15:45

to pay attention to the one-liners in

15:48

the classic canon also that were not

15:50

to be found in Ulvadan's memoir the

15:52

other way around. What I

15:54

tell my students all the time and I write about

15:56

this in the book, looking

15:58

where we habitually don't look.

16:00

But we've been told not to look.

16:02

So it became an archival

16:05

practice because I really strongly believe that

16:07

thinking about sources is not just that

16:09

the book is sitting there and you'll

16:11

go look and you'll produce a history.

16:13

I think there's an interaction

16:15

we have as scholars, you and I,

16:17

with these texts and the history of

16:20

production of these texts, what's going, what's

16:22

being eliminated both at the time and

16:24

in the scholarly practice. Yes,

16:27

there's a scholar called Marisa

16:29

Fuentes who talks about reading

16:31

along the bias grain, that's

16:33

her terminology for it. And

16:36

the way that she understands that is

16:38

that it's, you know, sort of taking

16:40

the metaphor we talk about reading against

16:42

the grain in history, but she decides

16:44

to sort of recast it as tailoring

16:46

and the bias, and she's saying that

16:48

actually, you can sort of stretch to

16:50

accentuate the women who were there

16:52

that we can't otherwise see. And

16:55

she's writing about enslaved lives in

16:57

Barbados. And I found that

16:59

a very helpful way of thinking

17:01

about it, that, you know, those one lines

17:03

that you have in those various places, then

17:05

allow you to kind of reconsider how

17:08

you've approached that source or that

17:10

particular fact or whatever until that point, you

17:12

know, they give you that grain that you

17:14

can try and stretch and to see more

17:17

of. So I think fragments, to

17:19

use that word, I mean, why

17:21

do they appear in these texts? You know,

17:23

again, I'm jumping to the end of the

17:25

book when the commander of the Hajj is

17:28

sent to bring them back. There's one straight

17:30

line in the Agbanama that says the women

17:32

did not want to return. Now,

17:34

there's so much folded

17:36

into that. So, yes. Hey,

17:51

I'm Don Wildman, and on American History

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now on Wondery Plus. You

19:43

mentioned the scandalous journey to

19:46

Arabia. Let's talk about that. This is when

19:48

she's 53 years old.

19:51

Golubdan sought permission from her nephew,

19:53

who's by then, as you said,

19:55

the third Mughal emperor, to go

19:58

on pilgrimage to the Holy Sister. And

20:00

this is the journey for which she's best known.

20:03

Can you give some sense of this

20:06

journey and whether you think this is

20:08

a reaction actually to Akbar's order to

20:10

seclude the women of the royal household and

20:13

what we can learn from this journey specifically?

20:16

So yes, she's known

20:18

for leading an all women's

20:20

pilgrimage to Mecca, which was, you know,

20:23

as I call it cluster pilgrimage, which

20:25

was unprecedented in her time and later

20:28

on. This is a

20:30

bullet point that people knew. And the

20:32

reason why I came back to this

20:35

book was basically two things that I

20:37

had established in my first work I've

20:39

talked about. She leads this

20:41

search. So one point, the

20:43

second was that the manuscript that I

20:46

consulted her manuscript in the British Library

20:48

breaks off at folio 83. So

20:51

when people began asking me about Gubadhan,

20:53

these two facts started staring me in

20:55

the face. I didn't want to make

20:57

any assumptions, but I felt there's

20:59

some relationship between the two. And

21:02

as I done deeper, there may have been

21:04

many more. But anyway, I found five eviction

21:06

orders against the Mughal

21:08

women in Western Arabia by Sultan

21:11

Murad, the third of Turkey that

21:13

are housed in the National Archives

21:15

in Istanbul. That led

21:17

to several things. One is, as I said, this

21:20

was a bullet point history that people knew that

21:22

yes, she goes on the Hajj. And that's where

21:24

my first book stops. I wanted

21:26

to do several things. And this is the bulk

21:28

of the book. This is the new story. And

21:30

this is the new Gubadhan I have met. I

21:33

wanted to chart every step of

21:35

the journey from starting

21:38

from Fatehpur Sikri. It's a

21:40

contest, yes, of Akbar's authority

21:42

and being behind the Haram

21:45

walls. And this, of course,

21:47

links with my proposition of her commitment

21:49

to an itinerant lifestyle. But

21:51

she does this within the

21:53

terms of a cultural

21:56

language that was available to us. So

21:58

how would she experience? let's

22:00

say freedom and the language of

22:02

the pilgrimage was very much within

22:04

the terms of that she starts this journey.

22:07

So I wanted to chart what kind

22:09

of ships they traveled on, what happened

22:12

when they leave Surat, you

22:14

know, what was the nature of the ship,

22:16

what happened on the journey, the first point

22:18

of entry, Jeddah. Our senses

22:20

of the pilgrimage are

22:23

grounded in some gorgeous books. I

22:25

mean, amongst them, Sir

22:27

Richard Burton's beautiful account, which I've

22:29

loved and read extensively and many

22:32

others. But I felt

22:34

that the 16th century, of course,

22:36

not only the geographical and cultural

22:38

landscape of Western Arabia, but my

22:41

suspicion was that even so-called pilgrimage

22:43

itself would be very different. So

22:45

I delved into an

22:47

entirely different and new historiography and

22:49

I trained myself in Ottoman history.

22:51

You know, sources, of course, I

22:53

leaned on my fabulous

22:55

Ottoman history colleagues to understand,

22:57

to learn. It was really

23:00

wonderful. So each

23:02

of these things was the pilgrimage

23:04

is very different. But

23:06

there were three clues that were coming from

23:08

the orders themselves. And they're very related to

23:10

this whole journey. And I quickly talk about

23:13

them. One is Sadatath,

23:15

that was there all the way through

23:17

in all the five orders. The second,

23:19

the word mujabir from where actually the

23:21

title of the book comes was in

23:23

all the five orders. And the last,

23:25

the most stringent word in Ottoman Turkish

23:28

at that time called nameshru

23:30

and I sat with tons

23:32

of Ottoman fantastic scholars to

23:34

really understand the implications of that

23:37

word which actually comes in the fifth and sixth

23:39

orders. So first of

23:41

all, mujabir, and this relates to

23:44

my point about the pilgrimage. I

23:46

chart in the latter half of

23:48

the book, the presence of both

23:51

male and female mujabirs and sojournas

23:53

is not an exact translation but

23:55

will do in some ways. Basically,

23:58

these were people who. yes, did

24:00

the pilgrimage, but traveled

24:03

extensively in Western Arabia

24:05

as seekers. So

24:08

one of the important things about

24:10

pilgrimage was, and I think remains

24:12

to this day with varied meanings,

24:15

is what is the intention of a

24:17

seeker? What is she looking for? And

24:20

so travels were very much part

24:22

of it. Looking at gorgeous architecture

24:25

was very much part of it. I mean,

24:27

you know, people like Queen Zubayda, then

24:30

eventually gets very taken by the

24:32

dryness of the land and spends

24:35

over a million golden dinars

24:38

to build the longest road

24:41

between Mecca and Kufa in Iraq. These

24:43

are the ancestruses of Gulbadat

24:45

who she will know about. From

24:48

her own household, her sister-in-law, Bega

24:50

Begum, who spends a very long

24:52

time in the hijars, we

24:55

don't have very much on her, but we

24:57

know that when she goes back, she builds

24:59

whom I use too, the gorgeous mausoleum, and

25:02

she brings 300 Arab

25:04

masons who then live around there

25:07

and actions like that. And Gulbadat

25:10

very much comes into

25:12

these mujabers. So the relationship

25:15

in the orders is that right

25:17

from the start, Sustanghurad is saying,

25:19

these ladies of Adbar the Great

25:22

have traveled here and now they

25:24

are living like mujabers, long-term people.

25:26

And the orders are extremely significant.

25:29

They are issued to one of

25:31

the most important political moral

25:33

authority, that is the Sharif of Mecca.

25:36

He's among them, also

25:38

the Sharif of Medina

25:40

and local administrative authorities.

25:43

The scandal was basically that Murad

25:46

and his ancestors conquered Arabia,

25:48

parts of Egypt in 1517,

25:52

and they always stayed away, as

25:54

many Islamic monarchs did, away from

25:56

Arabia, mainly in Istanbul. But

25:59

they had to... Find a way

26:01

of. Establishing. Their

26:03

legitimacy and authority within the

26:05

framework of Islam and one

26:07

of the key principles was

26:09

again within the context of

26:12

Islam legal framework is that

26:14

they. Enunciate themselves as

26:16

services of the holy cities

26:18

that as they become the

26:20

protectors of all. Whether they're

26:22

pilgrims, bed winless residence it's

26:24

very complicated way in which

26:27

they work this authority the

26:29

all the as walking on

26:31

delicate glands Whether it's the

26:33

city of Mecca, whether it's

26:35

negotiating with bed when it's

26:37

who held. The. Pilgrims moved.

26:40

Various places in the sixteenth century

26:42

Whether it's transmission of greens that

26:44

comes from Egypt. So fifteen seventy

26:46

seven, the Yard will. But and

26:49

and a party lands is a

26:51

time of extreme shortage of brain.

26:53

And so she not only disperse

26:55

as the former huge quantities of

26:58

gifts and arms that are sent

27:00

by had never you, she also

27:02

disperse as I'm this is the

27:04

second word, soda thoughts and I

27:06

go into it's meanings and it's

27:09

in bottles. Morally ethically, And

27:11

she distributes that along with women had

27:13

go with her in all sorts of

27:15

places and Mecca and Medina that traveled

27:17

to the north Other for these cities

27:19

and it's Don Stall. And

27:22

batsmen. Basically the good news

27:24

people have carry the news

27:26

to. Grab. The third and he

27:28

gets live it, but the women stay on after

27:30

the first two quarters and that's really interesting. So.

27:33

we have the in other words

27:35

generous charitable behavior that is fracturing

27:37

relations between the moguls and the

27:39

ottomans how long did they remain

27:42

in arabia and what ultimately force

27:44

them to leave so it's charitable

27:46

behavior but the important thing about

27:48

that yard to typical behavior is

27:50

that that is basically what establishes

27:52

the ledger to monsieur have been

27:54

more up the third and women

27:56

are basically walking over his tools

27:58

right in bad But also it

28:00

makes Ambar the Great shine. And

28:03

this is the moment in which

28:06

every Islamic monarch is aspiring to

28:08

be the great millennial sovereign, right?

28:11

So there's this unspoken tension that's

28:13

going on between Murad and Ambar,

28:15

so to speak. These women

28:17

stay for four years and eventually

28:20

they leave in April 1580 as

28:23

the fifth order with that castigratory term

28:25

called namishru, basically meaning un-Islamic

28:28

behavior or creating chaos,

28:30

which is rooted in Islamic theology. The

28:32

word is called finnal and leads

28:34

off to the time of Prophet

28:36

Muhammad's favorite wife, Aisha, when

28:38

she leads the battle of the camel

28:41

against Ali, the contender to the caliphate.

28:44

And over time it's come to be

28:46

ascribed with Muslim women as a very

28:48

demeaning, very derogatory word and so on.

28:51

This is the interesting side. Although

28:53

there is no formal recording of

28:55

all this that is going on

28:58

in the Ottoman records, it

29:01

is not insignificant that Akbar

29:03

then sends the commander of the

29:05

Hajj to bring the women back.

29:07

And that line, the women did

29:10

not want to return, you know,

29:12

exploration of the senses, both

29:14

in spiritual and I think in the sense

29:16

of self. And of course they

29:19

come back, they had returned, but there's a

29:21

shipwreck in Babu-Mindab, which is right next to

29:23

Aden. So that was another history I had

29:25

to get into, how

29:27

the salvage operations were conducted

29:29

from Aden, how they were

29:31

brought, what all this looked

29:33

like. And of course

29:36

there's lots on Uambadan's Hajj and the

29:38

Agbanama, but these are very sanitized depictions.

29:42

And those are the sanitized depictions that I

29:44

think survived in public memory or this old

29:46

woman going on the Hajj and coming back.

29:50

Can I ask one last question about the Hajj, which

29:53

is what the royal rites and

29:55

ceremonies, both along the way and

29:57

when they had arrived, Have

29:59

different... From the experiences of

30:01

ordinary women and men who undertook

30:04

the same journey, I think the

30:06

rights were exactly the same. adults.

30:08

It'll a lot of ordinary people

30:10

like given passage. On and Barrios ships.

30:13

It was a state policy to support. Them

30:15

and from what I could chart

30:17

from the Ottoman or Arabian sources

30:19

and on and gromit be polite

30:21

and the agenda be was an

30:23

Ottoman bureaucrats and and did extensive

30:25

travels in Arabia wrote about it

30:27

and so on. The rights were

30:29

exactly the same, there was no

30:31

distinction except for royalty and them

30:33

as a policy and this is

30:35

of course the same thing that

30:37

was a policy of issuing of

30:39

pass by the Ottoman government and

30:41

some people like will but then

30:43

would be you know special guests.

30:45

They would be very special ways

30:47

in which. They would topple. I mean,

30:49

this was part of my journey to charge

30:52

him in the book. Not.

30:54

As you say, there is only

30:56

one surviving copy of her count

30:58

and as you've also told us

31:00

it's incomplete, it breaks. Also, midsentence

31:03

during the description of the blinding

31:05

us has stepbrother. What do you

31:07

make of this? Is this an

31:09

early access censorship? Oh, is this

31:11

simply as familiar example of damage

31:14

because of the passage of time.

31:16

I think there are two very

31:18

solidly as to and solid. I

31:20

mean, archival A and historically. Ways to

31:23

approach this. And again, I've had very

31:25

extensive my own research, but also. Conversations

31:27

with art historians, manuscript

31:30

experts and people written.

31:33

about this when a somebody wrote an

31:35

important manuscript such as this and you

31:37

know the first line is very significant

31:39

because it establishes into my more it

31:41

establishes the legality of the invitation she

31:43

says a whole thing was an imperial

31:45

lotta has been they should so when

31:47

something like that happen and ah contemporaries

31:50

along with her amongst other men was

31:52

a man called by as it by

31:54

off an officer and then very important

31:56

with seen will buy them through pretty

31:58

much all her life, even the water

32:00

carrier a man called Johar who in

32:02

this battle of Chaucer that I was

32:05

mentioning, he actually saves whom Ayyun then

32:07

stays with him, travels with him through

32:09

his exile in Persia and so on

32:11

and so forth. So even he by

32:13

this time when Akbar is inviting the

32:15

older servants and family

32:18

members, these two people

32:20

are invited. So multiple copies of

32:22

these were made in the Atalier.

32:24

Of these two, let's say Johar and

32:27

Mayazit Bayat survive. We don't

32:29

have extra copies. So this was

32:31

the first thing that had intrigued me.

32:33

If those had survived, what has happened

32:35

that this hasn't survived at all? The

32:38

second thing is now that I

32:41

have charted this whole journey of

32:43

Gulbaran and going by everything that

32:45

I've established around this extraordinary

32:47

debate, the context of the time.

32:50

In other words, that I have learned

32:52

a great deal about this person and

32:55

her society and the

32:57

imperial operations. There's another thing I'll say.

33:00

The sensorial policy. So Akbar is a very

33:02

interesting, this is a man I've been thinking

33:04

about for 20 years along with all

33:06

the women that I've been thinking about. He's

33:09

of course a really

33:11

experimental, interesting, syncretic

33:14

man. But

33:16

he was also, not

33:18

surprisingly, highly ambitious, very

33:20

egotistical. And one

33:23

thing that I learned during the course

33:25

of writing this book, which I hadn't

33:27

understood, either in the case

33:29

of Empress or domesticity and power, is

33:31

how highly sensorial he was. And

33:34

so it is not surprising that one

33:36

of the most important counter histories

33:38

to the Akbar Nama, that is

33:40

Badayoni's three volume Mundakha

33:42

puttavariq was written in hiding

33:44

while the Emperor was

33:47

alive and was brought to life

33:49

only after because it's a detailed

33:51

criticism of Emperor.

33:53

But he appeared for his life. Akbar

33:56

had backed off a couple

33:58

of important Muslim clever, So

34:00

all this documentation of

34:03

his censorship, I've

34:05

charted. I've also said earlier on

34:07

that, you know, there are sanitized

34:09

versions of this trip. And nonetheless,

34:11

these very enticing fragments float into

34:13

even the Imperial history. So

34:16

I think I'm at a point as an

34:18

expert in this field to definitely surmise that

34:21

I think these pages were

34:23

unlikely. The chances are given

34:25

the sensorial policies, they

34:27

will have been removed because, you know,

34:29

around the 19th century onwards, some

34:32

of the finest critics have suggested

34:34

that this memoir definitely

34:36

continued way beyond where it

34:39

exists now. So

34:41

if you look at the Imperial

34:43

seal, which is the seal of

34:45

Shah Jahan, the man who really

34:47

admired Akbar the Great, his grandfather,

34:49

this book was actually at one

34:52

time in his Imperial library. And

34:55

the seal itself actually suggests

34:58

that this would have been a longer

35:00

book. And I have

35:02

no doubt that Koonbadang, for whatever

35:04

reasons, I mean, those are intentions,

35:06

we can never fathom intentions

35:09

of historical subjects. But given

35:11

her storytelling poise, given her sharing,

35:14

I mean, the bartering of Kansada,

35:16

it's an extraordinary moment. Why wouldn't

35:18

she write about her own extraordinary

35:21

clusterpink image? So those are

35:23

my assessments. To close, then,

35:25

may I ask you why you

35:28

think this work by the first

35:30

and only woman historian of the

35:32

Mughal Empire has for so

35:35

long been reduced to what you

35:37

call a little thing? How can

35:39

we restore Goh Boudhan's life

35:42

and her name for the future? You know,

35:44

a very powerful question. And what has driven

35:47

me to write this? I think

35:49

writing history is a very delicate

35:52

and a political process. And

35:55

I've now begun to call it a male

35:57

disbelief. And I think

35:59

consistently. feminist historians, I'm not

36:01

exclusive in this. Any number of them and

36:04

us have experienced these questions.

36:06

So the question with the availability

36:08

of Gulbadan's manuscript I was asked when I

36:10

was writing my first book, you

36:13

know, where are the sources how you went to write

36:15

about a domestic life of

36:17

the early Mughals and right there was the

36:19

source and a seminal source

36:21

and as I said with the visual

36:23

that actually it's all of those sources.

36:26

When I was writing about Empress of

36:28

course by then I had established

36:31

a place as a scholar who

36:33

has thought and challenged

36:35

the question of evidence and

36:38

in her case the

36:40

sources are stupendous from literary

36:42

to visual to coins to

36:44

paintings and so one scholar

36:47

said to me isn't this a representation

36:49

or aren't these in representation and I

36:51

said to him I said what is

36:53

not representation isn't an en bernama a

36:56

representation. So there are those

36:58

cases I think writing

37:00

this book is in a way

37:02

a story of Gulbadan but it's

37:04

also a story of evasion and

37:07

practices of evasion in her time

37:09

and today you know I've

37:11

also been thinking and this is a project hopefully

37:14

I should be able to swing

37:16

very quickly. I think there's a

37:18

long genealogy here. I think Night

37:20

Beverages Yale asked me to do

37:22

a new translation of Gulbadan and

37:25

I think Annette Beverages translation is

37:27

exquisite and the kind of work

37:29

she has done in that translation

37:32

it's a translation that represents

37:35

a certain time in her case

37:38

itself it represents a certain kind

37:40

of time it's a Victorian translation

37:42

nonetheless it's an exquisite scholarly endeavor

37:44

and she learned Persian at the

37:46

time when she was going there

37:48

which is not a small thing

37:51

at the end she has this

37:53

gorgeous index of about hundred women

37:55

and drawing kinship I do that kind

37:57

of work so I know what that

37:59

means doing kinship charts of you

38:02

know you'll have 25 salimas in the

38:04

record is really a lot

38:06

of work. So I have now got

38:08

a contract with Yale in which we

38:11

are going to reproduce that translation and

38:13

I'm going to do a whole biography

38:15

of Annette Beverage to begin with and

38:18

then Gulbadan and then I will break

38:20

myself in that epilogue because I think

38:22

these are the ways to take care

38:25

of the Eurasia and I think people

38:27

are very familiar there's a lot of

38:30

interest in these questions

38:32

of why particular forms of texts

38:34

are erased and as you said

38:37

earlier on I would

38:39

use that title of a lovely

38:41

book it turns history upside down once

38:43

you go to these texts. So

38:46

interesting that what you're going to

38:48

do next is bringing that dual

38:50

perspective that you talked about Gulbadan

38:52

bringing in her work to your

38:54

own. We shall look forward to

38:56

that with great enthusiasm but meanwhile

38:58

it has not detract from the

39:00

fact that Vagabond Princess is now

39:02

available and if people want to

39:05

get into the writing of the 16th

39:07

century woman telling us about the Mughal

39:09

Empire telling us about adventure in Arabia

39:11

this is the one to pick up.

39:14

Professor Ruby Lyle thank you so much

39:17

for your time. Thank you very much it's

39:19

a delight and I love the second conversation

39:21

I look forward to many more. And thanks

39:24

to my producer Rob Weinberg

39:26

and my researcher Esther Arnott

39:29

and thanks to you for listening to Not Just

39:31

the Tudors from History Hits. We're

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