Even in her husband’s day, Khunza appears to have had some say in politics. One poem, in fact, ascribes an insult to her as the provocation for Husain’s war against Vijayanagar. Of course, the battle in 1565 followed generations of tension and rivalry and had various causes, but it is telling that the Fath Nama-i Nizam Shah cites, in the words of scholar Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘a potentially sexually loaded’ reference to the queen as rousing the fury of her husband. The sultans of the Deccan often traded insults with Vijayanagar, but in this instance a line was crossed: in an inflammatory letter
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