Babur and His Beloved Pathan Empress
By Dr Akbar Ahmed
American University
Washington, DC
By writing his epic poem Bibi Mubarika and Babur, Sahibzada Riaz Noor has not only done a favor to literature but also to history. He has given us not only a poem rich in imagery, color, and emotion but a history lesson full of insights. (For the sake of transparency, I must state that I wrote the Foreword and have leaned on it for this article).
The poem is in the Homeric vein—its characters heroic, its scope vast and the story consequential. The history throws light on a little-known aspect of the life of one of the great figures of world history, Babur or, as some prefer, Babar, the founder of the Mughal empire, arguably India’s greatest and most glorious empire. In the process the poet has given us in Bibi Mubarika, Babur’s empress, a marvelous icon and role model, a woman of grit and honor, an empress with compassion and courage. The epic is called Bibi Mubarika and Babur. The poet deliberately put her name first in the title in order to restore her place in history and honor her.
Sahibzada Riaz Noor, together with his friend, mentor, and colleague, Ejaz Rahim, who wrote the excellent Prologue, have kick-started an entire poetic tradition in a land where English—inherited at birth—now languishes neglected. These two poets have picked up the dying language and not only resuscitated it but given it some of its most brilliant expressions as well. As both write in epic mode, there are universal references to, for examples, Helen of Troy in Europe and Queen Cleopatra in Africa.
We hear the voice of Bibi Mubarika early in the poem as she establishes her narrative style and identity:
This is my history
Bibi Mubarika Yusafzai
Gulbadan’s Afghan Aghachi
In palace with title Bega Begi
Bibi as such did Humayun
In affable and solemn
Honored deference
Refer to me or my address
As a rose creeper my tale
With the odyssey of Babur
Is intertwined that prince
Among princes proper
The powers of descriptions, imagery and empathy are demonstrated by the poet in describing the enchanted Pukhtun lands where Mubaraka grew up in her voice:
I opened my eye and grew up
In dales of pines and spruces
Cool waters feeding orchards
Of peaches plums and apricots
Grew up with friends fair
In nature’s pristine purity
Flowers and meadows green
Beatific youth was company mine
Bred in piety and learning
Graces of honor and arts
Though I was no queen yet
But best could I all hearts
My life of playful virtue
By a quake was struck suddenly
To my core deep me it shook
To be trothed to a Padishah Turk
Perhaps there is no one better qualified to know an individual than a spouse. So many iconic male figures turn out to be loathed and hated by their spouses because of their behavior. The test for Babur was to view him through the eyes of his wife Bibi Mubarika. She came from the Yusufzai Pathan tribe who had fought Babar and she played a role in reconciling the two. On his death he was temporarily entered in Agra but Bibi Mubaraka had promised her husband that she would take him to Kabul to bury him there. It was an immense task fraught with problems of logistics of transport etc. In the background the newly founded Mughal Empire was wobbly and Babur’s son Humayun would lose the empire for a while, only regaining it after he made various compromises in order to win the support of the Persian monarch. With the empire itself facing uncertainty, the burial wish of Babur was of little priority. People it seems had simply forgotten Babur’s last wish.
This was the moment that Bibi Mubarika stepped out from behind the segregated pavilion of the women’s quarters and claimed her position in history. She was determined to honor her husband’s last wish. Not only would she honor her husband but she herself would accompany him on his last journey. As a cursory glance of a map will tell you, the journey from Agra to Kabul is fraught with dangers and challenges. There are mighty rivers to cross, dangerous passes to negotiate and some of the fiercest tribes along the route ready to raid and loot the traveler. It would take a person of great courage to even contemplate such a journey but then Bibi Mubarika was not only a Pathan but a Yousufzai Pathan, the tribe considered to be the quintessential Pathan tribe. And as we know at the heart of Pathan culture is Pukhtunwali or the way of the Pathtans. And at the heart of Pukhtunwali is the notion of honor. In the noble act, Bibi Mubaraka was embodying Pukhtunwali and thus honoring her people. Because the spotlight has been so firmly fixed on Babur and his fascinating life, the heroic warrior, the autobiographer, the builder of an empire, Bibi Mubaraka is little known in history.
The epic is sprinkled with graphic descriptions of several key moments in Babur’s story. In spite of his various military adventures and sometimes precarious position, Babur was consistently gracious and generous. Here is the time Babur wins the great battle at Panipat against Ibrahim Lodhi and in victory shows his characteristic chivalry:
A fallen fighter to venerate
We marched to the spot
Where Sultan Ibrahim Lodhi’s
Body had dropped
Lifting his head I remarked
‘Honor to your courage’
A brocade laid where he lay
A solemn burial we gave
Babur, sitting with his kin in the garden of Zarafshan after vanquishing all the possible threats from the west and east of Agra, stated in a moment of candor that:
I am weary of ruling,
To the Zarafshan garden,
I wish to retire,
With only an attendant one
The poet is careful while extolling Babur’s military genius to also underline his humanity to the defeated.
So orders to my troops
Were sent no hurt be brought
Neither to the herds nor flocks
Nor even to their cotton stalks
There is that heart-reading and mysterious episode at the end of Babur’s life. Humayun is fatally ill on what appeared to be his death bed and all medicines and doctors have failed. Babur is aware that he has just won India, but he will not have an heir to pass it on to in order to create a dynasty, The Mughal Empire is over before it has even begun. He consults everyone and tries everything. He is advised—a life for a life: if he gives up his most precious possession his son’s life may be spared. The fabulous Koh-i-Noor is offered but Babur knows it has to be his own life and he offers it without hesitation. The family women are torn and traumatized—which one will they pray for: Father or son? Here is how the episode is depicted in the epic:
Refusing offering Koh-i-Noor
Babur resolved upon
Supplicating his own life
In return for his son’s
Invoking help of a saint
Firdous Makani Babur
Thrice he circumambulated
Humayun’s bed
If a life be exchanged
O God for another
Implored Babur
Mine for my son do offer
A soaring fever
During prayer grew
Upon Babur
Wave upon wave
He cried out aloud
Bardashtan! Bardashtan!
Unladen have I the burden!
Mine is now the misfortune!
The poem concludes with Bibi Mubarika quoting these powerful lines:
I brought him back
From Hind to Kabul
To lay him down
In his resting place final
Thus did I ultimately
Requite the love he gave me
In ever lasting
Timeless memory.
Shortly before he died, the Emperor Babar wrote a personal letter to his son and successor Humayun. It is a guide to governance and has the stamp of the integrity of the dying testament:
“Dear son,” he wrote with the tenderness of a father sensing he may not have long to live. “Oh my son. The realm of Hindustan is full of diverse creeds. Praise be to God, the Righteous, the Glorious, the Highest, that He hath granted unto thee the empire of it. It is but proper that you, with heart cleansed of all religious bigotry, should dispense justice according to the tenets of each community. And in particular refrain from the sacrifice of cow, for that way lies the conquest of the hearts of the people of Hindustan; and the subjects of the realm will, through royal favor, be devoted to thee. And the temples and abodes of worship of every community under imperial sway should not be damaged. Dispense justice so that the sovereign may be happy with the subjects and likewise the subjects with their sovereign. The progress of Islam is better by the sword of kindness, not by the sword of oppression.
Ignore the disputations of Shias and Sunnis, for therein is the weakness of Islam. And bring together the subjects with different beliefs in the manner of the four elements, so that the body-politic may be immune from the various ailments. And on us is but the duty to advise” (from Written in History: Letters That Changed the World by Simon Sebag Montefiore, 2019).
The letter radiates the warmth of Babar’s personality and his hugely enlightened world view. It is well to recall that during the same time period Catholics and Protestants were slaughtering each other in the thousands across Europe. Yet here was Babar the conqueror who, after defeating his main Muslim and then Hindu rivals, set about winning them through diplomacy: Houses of worship were to be protected and care must be taken of the cow because it was sacred to the majority populations. It is precisely this aspect of his character that has endeared him to those who have contemplated his life. Getting to know him through his detailed autobiography writers have hailed him as the “Prince of Biographers.”
Babur is an almost irresistible figure in world history and has many admirers. He is the classic poet-warrior in the wuxia tradition. Babur mesmerizes a range of people, from E.M. Forster to the great historian Stanley Lane-Poole. It is well to recall that both Forster and Poole were British at the time the British ruled India, their admiration is thus authentic. The latter described the emperor’s autobiography Babur Nama in these words:
“His autobiography is one of those priceless records which are for all times, and is to fit to rank with the Confessions of St. Augustine and Rousseau and the memoirs of Gibbons and Newton. In Asia it stands almost alone” (page 12).
Stanley Lane-Poole emphasizes the “utter frankness” and “honesty” of Babur’s autobiography:
“The utter frankness of self-revelation, the unconscious portraiture of all his virtues and follies, his obvious truthfulness and a fine sense of honor, give the Memoirs an authority which is equal to their charm. If ever there were a case when the testimony of a single historical document, unsupported by other evidence, should be accepted as sufficient proof, it is the case with Babur's memoirs. No reader of this prince of autobiographers can doubt his honesty or his competence as witness and chronicler” (page 12).
Today, Babur is considered a national hero in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, and many of his poems are celebrated as folk songs. His Babur Nama, which he wrote in Turkic, was translated into Persian during the reign of his grandson, the Emperor Akbar. Aitchison College, the elite school of Pakistan, has a Babur House named in his honor. In October 2005, Pakistan developed the Babur Cruise Missile, also named in his honor.
I too was a great admirer of Babur and to express my abiding admiration, one of my earliest poems written in Peshawar was called “Spring Thoughts in Farghana,” which tried to capture the irrepressible spirit and ambition of a young, twelve-year-old Babur when he had just lost his tiny kingdom to grasping uncles.
Sahibzada Riaz Noor has done a great favor to not only Pakistani literature but to the very understanding of South Asian history and culture. Babur is today too frequently projected as a monster in contemporary Indian popular culture and literature. Indeed, he is depicted as Ravana, thus neatly linking his villainy with the classic Hindu sacred literature, the Ramayana. Every kind of calumny is heaped on Babur. There is a political reason for this. Babar and other Muslim rulers are cast as “rapists, murderers and looters,” and the Muslims of India are noisily and aggressively cast as the children of Babur, “Baburki aulaad.” Their association with Pakistan is underlined. Thus, by attacking Babur the Muslims of India and Pakistan are also targeted.
Babur is accused of breaking Ram’s temple at Ayodhya and building a mosque on the site, thereby justifying the demolition of the mosque which stood there for half a millennium. Indian scholars, judges and historians have challenged the narrative of the Babari Masjid or Babur’s mosque. There is no hint of any incident of this kind in Babur’s very detailed and very frank autobiography. Besides, anyone who wishes to find the truth as to the Emperor’s views only has to read the letter I have quoted to understand his notably tolerant nature. A father who advises his son not to harm Hindu temples and to take special care of the Hindu community to the point of protecting cows would be unlikely to demolish a prominent temple. Besides, Riaz’s epic poem confirms that Bibi Mubarika, a lady of discernment and courage, would not have so loved Babur if he were the monster depicted in the wild literature clogging the internet. To suggest that Babur was a bigot is to project current prejudices onto the past. The fact is that Babur first faced a Pathan Muslim king who ruled in Delhi at the battle of Panipat. Later his son Humayun was toppled by another Pathan Muslim leader, Sher Shah Suri.
Indian historians have a splendid record of scholarship, and the current commentators are in danger of overwhelming and thus polluting that reputation with their caricature of history. History needs to be presented in a more balanced and fairer manner than what we are seeing today. In the end, we only distort our own capacity to learn and benefit from the lessons of history. Perhaps the contemporary commentators could start by reading Bibi Mubarika and Babur.
(Professor Akbar Ahmed is Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies, School of International Service, American University, Washington, DC and author of The Flying Man: The Philosophers of the Golden Age of Islam)
