Gulbadan Begum

Gulbadan Begum (20 November 1522 – 7 February 1603) was a Mughal princess and the daughter of Emperor Babur, the founder of the Mughal Empire.

She is best known as the author of Humayun-Nama, the account of the life of her half-brother and Babar's successor, Emperor Humayun, which she wrote on the request of her nephew and Humayun's son, Emperor Akbar. Gulbadan's recollection of Babur is brief, but she gives a refreshing account of Humayun's household and provides rare material regarding his confrontation with her half-brother, Kamran Mirza. She records the fratricidal conflict among her brothers with a sense of grief.

Gulbadan Begum was about eight years old at the time of her father's death in 1530 and was brought up by her older half-brother, Humayun. She was married to a Chagatai noble, her cousin, Khizr Khwaja Khan, the son of Aiman Khwajah Sultan, son of Khan Ahmad Alaq of the Turpan Khanate in Moghulistan at the age of seventeen.

She spent most of her life in Kabul. In 1557, she was invited by her nephew, Akbar, to join the imperial household at Agra. She wielded great influence and respect in the imperial household and was much loved both by Akbar and his mother, Hamida Banu Begum. Gulbadan Begum is mentioned throughout the Akbarnama (lit. 'Book of Akbar') of Abu'l Fazl and much of her biographical details are accessible through the work.

Along with several other royal women, Gulbadan Begum undertook a pilgrimage to Mecca and returned home seven years later in 1582. She died in 1603.

Gulbadan Begum's name means "body like a flower" or "rose body" in Classical Persian.

When Princess Gulbadan was born on 20 November 1522 to Dildar Begum, her father, Babur, had been lord in Kabul for nineteen years; he was also the ruler of Kunduz and Badakhshan, had held Bajaur and Swat since 1519, and Kandahar for a year. During ten of those nineteen years, he had been styled padishah as the head of the House of Timur and for his independent sovereignty.

Gulbadan's siblings included her older brother, Hindal Mirza, and two other sisters, Gulrang Begum and Gulchehra Begum, while her younger brother Alwar Mirza, died in his childhood. Among her siblings, Gulbadan was very close to her brother, Hindal Mirza.