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Timurid system of inheritance, there is no law of primogeniture,
Babur as a loving father, a tempestuous family man and a devoted husband.
The first biography by a Muslim woman in India, with an insight into the lives of the first generation of the women of the great Mughals.
‘O God! If a life may be exchanged for a life, I who am Babar, I give my life and my being for Humayun.’
Babur gone, dead at forty-seven
wearing blue, the colour of mourning in Islam.
I thought it was black
Humayun will be dead, having finally recovered his throne and his kingdom only to die in an accident, falling down a flight of stairs in his library.
incertitude,
fallibilities
hardly an unremarkable fact that even in his depleted, meagre following, Humayun has a painter accompanying him.
detritus
Very often, in the padshahs’ endless wanderings and ruinous search for a meaningful space, these women are the Timurid homeland.
attempt to impress Bairam Khan with his power, has a few heretics of the Ismalia sects brought into his presence and beheaded.
Tahmasp
(daal khuske)
Akbar has had a precipitous year since the death of his father made him padshah at the age of thirteen.
Badauni, Akbar’s much more critical biographer,
bandy
punctilious
Harkha Bai is shifted to the hospice of the sheikh to be near his blessed presence.
become customary for a family in Bengal to have at least one son castrated so as to be able to join the service of the padshah.
seraglio
By the mid-sixteenth century, the Portuguese are the greatest naval power of the region,
and the face must remain uncovered.
the Mughal women will be better educated than most of their contemporaries anywhere in the world.
it appears that these women are free to remain true to their own beliefs and the purdah is more ferociously applied to these young women than to the older,
Goa, the capital of the Estado da India with a population of 225,000, is larger than Madrid or Lisbon.
Of all the Europeans who are drawn to Hindustan’s shores by the spices and the cloth and the gold, it is the Portuguese who are the most thoroughly detested.
intransigence
Noblewomen in Hindustan, moreover, do not nurse their own children so that natural form of contraception is unavailable to them and yearly pregnancies are quite the norm.
Rauza-i-munavvara,
three months and then he goes away to the Deccan with his young wife. He will be gone, almost continuously, for twenty-two years.
austere sheikh, who has reached enlightenment through extreme breathing exercises, night vigils, fasts and introspection.
‘In the city where a mullah resides’, he claims, derisively, ‘no wise man is ever found’.
insouciance
zabaan-e-ordu (language of the camp).
Shah Jahan dislikes eating in the presence of Europeans, who are considered filthy for not attending to this basic hygienic practice.
Shukr Allah
Manucci is amazed and ‘much surprised to see that almost everybody was spitting something red as blood
Frugal in his habits, he is a vegetarian and renounces alcohol for most of his adult life.
seven padshahs rule in quick succession after Aurangzeb dies, and they are indiscriminately murdered, or blinded, or beheaded.
The exquisite hammams of the zenana have been broken up by the Marquess of Hastings, and the marble sold.
Her huge public hammans were also razed and a clock tower built to replace the pool in the middle of the square which gave Chandni Chowk its name.
It is the regret that is felt on waking from a dream.
bawds;
More changes will come, doubtless, as our pale blue dot swings on its axis through endless space.
