Based on : The history of Humayun / by Gulbadan Begam; the Memoirs of Babur; and The Akbar nama / by Abuʼl Fazl

Gulbadan Begam, Princess Rose body was the youngest daughter of Babur, the first Mughal Emperor of India. Her memoirs provide a unique document of history the story of a sixteenth-century Mughal royal family as seen through the loyal but keen eyes of a lady with a remarkable ability to remember and recount the smallest details of her eventful life. She describes battles, escapes, nomadic wanderings, life in the haram, her pilgr image to Mecca and many other scenes in a way which marvellously conveys the atmosphere of period and place. Her book, the Humayun-nama, together with two other official chronicles of the time, the Babur-nama and the Akbar-nama, form the basis of Rumer Godden’s enchanting account of the lifetime of Gulbadan Begam — a lifetime which spanned the reigns of three emperors, her father Babur's, her brother Humayun's and her nephew Akbar’s. The account begins with the Rose Princess's earliest memory of seeing her father ride off with his army from Kabul to conquer Hindustan, and ends with her death. She was in her eighties, and the Emperor Akbar himself helped to carry her bier. Beautiful Indian and Persian miniature paintings add a vivid commentary to this book

Mughal Library