Family History

While Vagabond Princess mines history for insights into the fascinating life of Babur's daughter, Gulbadan Begum, Babur: The Chessboard King attempts to rewrite it

- T.C.A. Raghavan

VAGABOND PRINCESS The Great Adventures of Gulbadan

By Ruby Lal

JUGGERNAUT

₹699; 280 pages

For Mughal aficionados, Gulbadan Begum has a special appeal. While women of power and of literary merit were hardly rare in the Mughal heyday, Gulbadan Begum stands out. Babur's daughter, Humayun's sister and Akbar's aunt sums up her chronology and her status - yet she has had an afterlife of equal significance because she recorded her memories for posterity. It is, Ruby Lal reminds us, the only prose work by a woman emanating from a Muslim court - including the Ottomans, the Safavids and the Mughals.