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India Today
|December 23, 2024
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
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.
This story is from the December 23, 2024 edition of India Today.
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