“I'd rather be married to someone I can control”: Female Javānmardī in Gulbadan Begum's Humayunnamah as a Mirror for Princesses

Abstract

The mischievous quote making up this article’s title comes from the Humayunnamah, a chronicle written around 1587 in Persian by Gulbadan Begum (1523–1603). Gulbadan was a Mughal princess of Timurid heritage and the daughter of the founder of the Mughal dynasty, Zahir al-Din Muhammad Babur (1483–1530).1 In the Humayunnamah, Gulbadan recounts the response Hamidah Begum (1542–1605) gives upon being chastised by her future mother-in-law, Dildar Begum: “Look whether you like it or not, in the end, you are going to be married to somebody. Who could be better than the Emperor?” “Yes, you are right. But I’d rather marry someone whose collar my hand can reach.”2 Hamidah Begum’s refusal to be impressed by the status of the second Mughal emperor, Humayun (1508–1556), and her explicit declaration of intent to marry someone she could control, or share some equality of relationship, provides an example of when elite women from the Mughal empire perceived themselves as equal, or even superior, to their male counterparts. It also further highlights the active role elite women played in challenging the patriarchal norms that governed their lives.3 How were some Mughal women more powerful than their male counterparts? One answer lies in the concept of javānmardī (young-manliness). In the Humayunnamah, Gulbadan devotes significant attention to remembering the multifaceted ways elite Mughal women embodied javānmardī. Her recollection of this event raises another critical question: to what extent was Gulbadan effective in harnessing literature, specifically the “mirror for princesses” genre, as a weapon to assert women’s authority and navigate the prevailing male-centric order?4 Gulbadan was ordered by her nephew, Akbar, the third Mughal emperor and son of Humayun and Hamidah Begum, to construct the Humayunnamah. Akbar wanted Gulbadan to record the events of his father and grandfather’s reigns to be used as reference material for his vizier, Abu’l Fazl (1551–1602), who was responsible for writing Akbar’s chronicle, the Akbarnamah. In her study, Taymiya Zaman describes the Humayunnamah as a genre-crossing memoir that functions as a form of “instructive memory,” since Gulbadan uses her memories of Humayun to instruct Akbar on his father’s virtues, those worthy of emulation.5 Nasrin Askari coined the term “mirror for princesses” to describe literary works commissioned by elite female patrons in medieval and early modern Persianate contexts that used exemplary female characters to impart lessons on ideal behavior to other elite women.6 Expanding on Zaman and Askari’s scholarship, this article explores the multifaceted role of the Humayunnamah as more than just a guide for elite males, but also a “mirror for princesses” by a princess: an instructional manual written by Gulbadan Begum in which she uses her memories to teach elite Mughal women on how to be javānmardī.7 By looking at the Humayunnamah through the lens of this genre, I demonstrate how Gulbadan employs and redefines the prevalent literary conventions of her time to remember not only her own but also other remarkable displays of javānmardī by elite Mughal women during the reign of Humayun, given that he was well-known for falling “short specifically in fulfilling gender roles appropriate to a warrior king.”8 The Humayunnamah magnifies how an integrated matriarchy of female javānmards (manly youth) vastly contributed to the fabric of early Mughal empire-building.