Thus, the male nawwāb departed and the work fell to the woman (wife),
What can these feminine ones know of the worth of men?
The eunuchs (khwāja sarās) spoke forcibly in every matter,
As such, the work of men had fallen to the miserable ones.Footnote 1
…on the death of this brave viceroy [Muin al-Mulk] …his son, a child, and at his death, his widow [Mughlani Begum], were permitted to succeed as governors in his room, a plain proof of the miserable state of affairs at Delhi, that in such difficult times children and women were thought capable of being entrusted with places of such high importance.Footnote 2
All evidence agrees that the widow [Mughlani Begum] lost her character along with her husband [Muin al-Mulk] and was led by her eunuchs, the instruments of her pleasure.Footnote 3
…the widow of Muin-ul-Mulk [sic], then appeared on the stage of the Panjab history. She [Mughlani Begum] was a very clever woman, and, if she had only overcome the weaknesses of her sex, she would have given to the Panjab an energetic and capable woman-administrator.Footnote 4
In November 1753, the governor of Lahore Nawab Muin al-Mulk died mysteriously while on a hunting expedition. Mughal emperor Ahmad Shah Bahadur (d. 1775, dethroned 2 June 1754) in Delhi and Afghan ruler Ahmad Shah Abdali-Durrani (d. 1772) confirmed his son, Muhammad Amin Khan (d. 1754), a mere toddler, as his late father's successor. During this period, Mughals and Afghans claimed Lahore and the surrounding cities and areas that made up Multan and the Punjab. Unsurprisingly, multiple contestants sought to control Lahore's government after Muin al-Mulk's untimely death. His widow, and mother of his newly appointed young successor, Suraya Murad Begum (d. 1779)—also known as Mughlani Begum—succeeded as the de facto governor for six months following her husband's death and periodically thereafter. Her short-lived and controversial political career invited documentation—and commentary—from both her contemporaries and colonial/post-colonial historians.
It was not uncommon in Islamic societies for elite Muslim women to govern, manage, and distribute wealth, or to contribute to literature and historiography.Footnote 5 The scholarly trend towards feminist scholarship has bolstered Islamic studies through the examination of women in Islamic societies over the past few decades.Footnote 6 This article builds on feminist scholars’ interventions and illuminations about the political, social, and cultural life of the marginalised 50 per cent of the human population across time and space. In particular, it focuses on how an eighteenth-century woman was depicted in contemporary historical texts and the ways in which those descriptions, anecdotes, and analyses of her life and the brief period she spent as the Punjab's governor change as these primary sources were translated into English and Urdu. Reading the most informative Persian auto/biography about Mughlani Begum and its English translation and summaries alongside an Urdu history of the Punjab begs the question: why was the life of a female governor reduced to that of an ‘immodest flirt’ in English, and yet is incredibly nuanced in Persian and Urdu? While it is nearly impossible to understand the reasons why English-writing historians chose to depict her in a flattened way, we can be more critical of our readings of histories written in English, especially when original accounts are available.
Most of the sources that mention Mughlani Begum are actually about the Punjab, and because she was married to its governor, Muin al-Mulk, they include some references to her. The exception is Miskin's Persian auto/biography, which is about the life of an ex-slave who was inherited, enslaved, and then freed by Mughlani Begum. Because he witnessed the events that took place, his life story was used by Indian historians to write an ‘objective’ history of eighteenth-century Punjab.Footnote 7 Tracing a genealogy of sources in colonial-period English accounts is rather simple, as these provide an abundance of citations and, in most cases, a verbatim summary of the original Persian sources that have been translated. Urdu histories, on the other hand, are more difficult to trace, since the important histories of the Punjab, including the one under analysis in this article, do not include footnotes and page citations of the sources that were consulted. We can generally assume where the information is coming from, based on mentions in the text itself or in bibliographies, if they are provided.Footnote 8 Post-colonial historians writing in English, however, rarely reference Persian originals and reproduce what English writers before them said—in the process completely ignoring Urdu histories.
Borders generated by decolonisation have managed to create epistemological boundaries. While there is a large Urdu-reading scholarly class of historians in India, they very rarely cite Urdu histories published in Pakistan. Post-colonial historians of the Punjab, a region that was also partitioned in 1947, have questioned nationalist readings and constructions of history, and histories based on one particular religion or language.Footnote 9 Very few, however, have carefully studied how transmission of knowledge, language politics, and gender biases influence studies on the Punjab, in any period. This article re-examines the Persian auto/biography to reconstruct Mughlani Begum's life, and to trace how it was translated in colonial English histories that were later uncritically accepted by post-colonial historians. Finally, it summarises how Mughlani Begum's life is described in an Urdu history of the Punjab to underline what is lost when we do not read across borders.
Persian historiography and Mughlani Begum
Very few eighteenth-century Persian sources mention Mughlani Begum.Footnote 10 She is included in Mughal histories, such as Tārīkh-i Aḥmad Shāhī, the Persian history of Ahmad Shah Bahadur, the thirteenth Mughal emperor, composed by Muhammad Ali Khan Ansari (d. unknown). In Shāh ‘Ālam nāmah (Shah Alam's Treatise), the history of the sixteenth Mughal emperor, Shah Alam II, by Ghulam ʻAli Khan ibn Bhikhari, she is mentioned twice.Footnote 11 In both instances she is not referenced by her name; instead, she is called zan Mu‘īn al-Mulk (wife of Muin al-Mulk).Footnote 12 Bhikhari describes how vizier Ghazi al-Din Imad al-Mulk took Mughlani Begum and the treasures of Lahore and moved them to Delhi.Footnote 13 Beyond this, we have very little information about her life and her role as the Punjab's governor in Mughal sources.
The most relevant account of Mughlani Begum's life is an auto/biography written by her freed enslaved person, Muhkam al-Daula, Itiqad-i Jang, Tahmas Beg Khan Bahadur, hereafter referred to by his nom de plume, Miskin.Footnote 14 He named his auto/biography Kitāb-i Qissa-i Tahmās Miskīn, also called Tahmās Nāma (Book of Tahmas Miskin's Story, or the Tahmas Treatise). He completed his recording of his life, according to the date that appears towards the end of the narrative, on 11 Jumadi al-Awwal, 1196 ah (24 April 1782), in the twenty-fourth julūs (regnal year) of Mubarak Shah Alam Badshah Ghazi, the Mughal emperor Shah Alam II (d. 1806).Footnote 15 Miskin died in 1802, leaving the last two decades of his life unaccounted for. As Miskin's auto/biography is the most detailed account of Mughlani Begum, this article focuses much of its attention on this primary source.
From Miskin's auto/biography, we can piece together social relations, including gendered relations, in eighteenth-century Punjab. It is telling how Miskin describes and interacts with people whom he sees as equal or below him, in contrast to those whom he greatly admires and respects. Noting where Miskin is silent provides further insight into the social and cultural context of the time regarding gender relations. He rarely speaks about his wives, his marital relationships, or his daughters. He writes about his two weddings (the first one was a marriage arranged by Mughlani Begum while he was her slave, and the second, of his own choosing when he was free, to a Mughal woman from Kabul); when his wives give birth; when his first wife is robbed; and when he strategically moves his family. Other than this, he does not disclose anything else, including their names (although we do learn the names of his sons). Likewise, Miskin does not name his hum-shīr ‘milk sister’ and refers to her as his Uzbek milk sister. He does name other women in the account, including Mughlani Begum, her daughters, and a prostitute with whom he almost had premarital sexual relations.Footnote 16 It is unclear why he chooses to reveal some women's names and not others. Perhaps he felt comfortable identifying public figures, such as prostitutes, or elite women like Mughlani Begum, but that the women in his family, real and forged, ought to remain unidentified.
Mughlani Begum was from a powerful family that was well connected to the Mughal centre and governed over the Punjab for decades; and she was married into another influential noble family. Miskin relates that Mughlani Begum was the granddaughter of Abd al-Samad Khan (d. 1726),Footnote 17 a Turani and a follower of the Naqshbandi saint Khwaja ‘Ubaidullah Ahrar (d. 1490).Footnote 18 Abd al-Samad Khan was the governor of Lahore and Multan. Zakariyya Khan (d. 1747), her maternal uncle, consolidated power in the Punjab. Upon his death, his younger son, Shah Nawaz Khan, ousted his elder brother from the governorship. When in 1748 Ahmad Shah Durrani arrived in Hindustan to reinstate the treaty stipulating that the lands west of the Indus would be part of his domain (as had been settled between Nadir Shah and Muhammad Shah in 1739), he defeated Shah Nawaz Khan. While fighting the Mughal troops, Ahmad Shah Durrani's troops killed Qamar al-Din, vizier of the Mughal empire, Nizam al-Mulk.Footnote 19 His son, Muin al-Mulk—Mughlani Begum's husband—was honoured for his valiant fighting against the Afghans and was appointed as the new governor of the Punjab by the Mughal emperor Muhammad Shah (d. 1748) and confirmed by Ahmad Shah Durrani in 1748 and again in 1752. Muin al-Mulk's sister was the mother of the Mughal vizier Ghazi al-Din Imad al-Mulk (d. 1782), who was based in the Deccan before being summoned to the Mughal court during Ahmad Shah Bahadur's reign. Upon arriving, Ghazi al-Din removed the Mughal emperor and placed Alamgir II on the throne, followed by Shah Alam II.Footnote 20
The first mention of Mughlani Begum in Miskin's account comes on page 96 in a section entitled ‘The Description of the Nawwab Sahib's [Muin al-Mulk] Household’. According to this, despite the ‘intoxication and power of youth’, Muin al-Mulk kept one wife in the royal house and eight other wives in separate quarters. Mughlani Begum was his favourite wife and they had two daughters, one of whom was to be married to Nawwab Ghazi al-Din Khan, wazir of Hindustan, while their second daughter was married into the house of their ancestors in Bukhara, to a man named Mumin Khan, son of Khwaja Musa (Miskin does not give the daughters’ names). Mughlani Begum bore one son in Lahore, named Muhammad Amin Khan.Footnote 21
The next full mention of Mughlani Begum in Miskin's account is after Muin al-Mulk's death in November 1753.Footnote 22 She immediately requested that payments be disbursed to anyone who had served her late husband and had not yet been paid, and this was completed within three days.Footnote 23 Muin al-Mulk's deputy, Bhikhari Khan, wanted to transport Muin al-Mulk's body to Delhi for burial but she was suspicious of this and insisted that he be buried in Lahore. Bhikhari Khan immediately ordered 500 men to guard his body and prevent Mughlani Begum from removing it. This surprised her and, since the Mughal army was on Bhikhari Khan's side, she sought out a man named Qasim Khan from Badakhshan to aid her. Following some deliberations, she and Qasim Khan decided that Miskin, with a few other slave boys, would protect Muin al-Mulk's body. This was Miskin's first interaction with Mughlani Begum. Qasim Khan came with his own entourage, and Mughlani Begum proceeded to Lahore with her husband's body and entered the city, which was in mourning.Footnote 24 When her son, Muhammad Amin Khan, was conferred in his father's place, Mughlani Begum asked a respected nobleman, Khwaja Mirza Khan, who had initially sided with Bhikhari Khan, to summon the latter. When he came into her presence, she had him imprisoned and ordered her guards to rob his soldiers of their possessions. When they asked her what they had done to deserve such ill treatment, she, ‘out of the goodness of her heart’, forgave them, returned their goods, and they were permitted to remain in their posts, on the royal payroll.Footnote 25
During the first few months of Mughlani Begum's de facto power, Miskin writes that she often took the path of wisdom (rāh dānā-ī).Footnote 26 As Bhikhari Khan was still plotting against her, from prison, and beginning to recruit Afghan troops from Qasur,Footnote 27 in order to ensure the loyalty of the Mughal troops, Mughlani Begum increased their pay. She also bestowed titles of honour and land on those who had aided her soon after her husband's passing: Khwaja Mirza Khan received the title khānī sarfarāz and he was allotted the land and revenue of Aminabad; Qasim Khan was honoured with the title khānī iftikhār and given the land and revenue of Patti (a town in the district of Amritsar).Footnote 28
After Muin al-Mulk's death, Miskin fell under the supervision of Qasim Khan. He notes that Mughlani Begum trusted Qasim Khan and referred to him as her son (or farzand).Footnote 29 He came from Badakhshan and sent word to his relatives and associates, inviting them to join his retinue, and some 300 Badakhshani men arrived to join him.Footnote 30 Qasim Khan told Miskin that he was like his brother, and he should join him and his retinue in Patti. Miskin agreed to this because he was still heartbroken by Muin al-Mulk's death, and he did not feel comfortable receiving orders from Mughlani Begum's eunuchs. At this point, Miskin writes the couplet quoted at the beginning of this article:
Miskin and some of the other enslaved boys obtained permission to join Qasim Khan. When Qasim Khan encountered Sikh opposition, he had to fight them in order to take possession of the land that had been granted to him by Mughlani Begum.Footnote 33 Miskin reports that during these encounters with the Sikhs, the men who had come from Badakhshan died and many of the Mughal soldiers too. Miskin offered Qasim Khan advice, but after a difference of opinion, he left Qasim Khan and returned to Lahore. A few days later, Qasim Khan, too, returned to the outskirts of the city and Miskin went to see him. Qasim Khan told him that he subdued (through negotiation) 8,000 Sikhs, and with this large army, he would take Lahore and then march on to Shahjahanabad to claim the throne.Footnote 34 At this time, Miskin writes, he was 15 years old. In response to Qasim Khan's promise that he would make Miskin his paymaster general, he counselled Qasim Khan not speak such words and warned him that he would be unsuccessful.Footnote 35 A few days later, Qasim Khan's army demanded to be paid and since he was unable to do this, they captured him and took him to Mughlani Begum. She promptly confined him in the palace for treachery.
In May 1754, Mughlani Begum's son died from poisoning in the same manner as his father.Footnote 36 Miskin speculates that it was Bhikhari Khan who poisoned the youngster, with the help of a eunuch named Zamarrud. Mughlani Begum's son-in-law, Momin Khan, was made the governor, but she continued to be in control of political affairs.Footnote 37 Miskin mentions that Momin Khan's wife, Mughlani Begum's eldest daughter, had died, but he does not say whether she had had any children. Mughlani Begum's three eunuchs—Miyan Khush Fahm, Miyan Arjumand, and Miyan Mahabat—controlled the receiving and answering of petitions and, according to Miskin, they ruled dishonourably. Because of their ineptitude, Miskin reasons, affairs of the state weakened and declined as time went on.Footnote 38
Meanwhile, Mughlani Begum was rumoured to be having an illicit affair with Ghazi Beg Khan, the provincial paymaster (bakhshī sarkār). According to Miskin, ‘the story of Ghazi Beg Khan, bakhshi sarkār, and Begum Sahiba [Mughlani Begum] had become so dishonorable that the secret was made public and the rumour was on everyone's lips’.Footnote 39 Miskin does not confirm or deny that this liaison actually took place; the only information he provides is that the rumour spread. A man called Khwaja Muhammad Said Khan, who was closely associated to Bhikhari Khan (who was still imprisoned in the castle where Mughlani Begum resided), informed him of this gossip. They promptly wrote to Khwaja Mirza Khan (who had been given the province of Aminabad by Mughlani Begum) to let him know that the eunuchs were causing havoc in government, and Mughlani Begum had become the source of the deterioration as well as dishonour (tanāzul wa badnāmī).Footnote 40
Miskin was upset that political affairs were managed by Mughlani Begum's eunuchs whose quarrels, he believed, were rendering the act of governing impossible. He and the other boys were neglected and began to roam the streets. Miskin then fell into a depraved state and had sexual relations with someone, having previously resisted temptation in the form of a prostitute named Allah Datti.Footnote 41 Like everyone in the city, Mughlani Begum learned about how her enslaved boys were turning to immoral ways, something that she felt reflected badly on her. To correct their mistakes, she summoned Qasim Khan and appointed him the boys’ guardian. She warned him to ensure that they did not become dishonourable:Footnote 42 to this end, they were allowed outside for two hours after sunrise, but they had to be back inside two hours before sunset, after which they were not permitted to leave again. Qasim Khan, Miskin writes, now had a pretext to be in regular contact with Mughlani Begum.
Khwaja Mirza Khan, after hearing the rumours about Mughlani Begum's illicit relations from Khwaja Muhammad Said Khan, left Aminabad and hastily entered Lahore. Mughlani Begum reassured reporters that Khwaja Mirza Khan was loyal to her. But when he entered the palace, he killed two guards who attempted to stop him and his troops set about plundering it. Mughlani Begum fled and took up residence in another house. Khwaja Mirza Khan released Bhikhari Khan from prison and he persuaded Khwaja Mirza Khan to allow Momin Khan to continue as governor, while he (Bhikhari Khan) took up the post of deputy for the province. After this was settled, they brought Mughlani Begum back to the palace.Footnote 43 She remained there for a short while and later, after more internal dissent, was forced to move to her mother's house, which resulted in Khwaja Mirza Khan ejecting her son-in-law from the governorship.
Khwaja Mirza Khan now donned the garb of a ruler and began to make appointments and take control of political affairs. Miskin names the noblemen who paid homage to the new governor, including Bhikhari Khan who came after eight days. Initially, it seemed as if they were friends, but soon their differences began to manifest, and more infighting ensued. Additionally, Khwaja Mirza Khan had to contend with the Sikhs. He appointed his brother Khwaja Qazi, who had recently come from wilāyat,Footnote 44 to fight them.Footnote 45 Qasim Khan accompanied him, and they both emerged victorious against the Sikhs.Footnote 46 A few months after this event, Khwaja Mirza Khan was now the governor of the Punjab. Miskin and his friends were robbed of their goods and faced financial hardship. Upon the advice of Mughlani Begum, they went to Khwaja Mirza Khan, who promptly replaced their beaten horses with healthy ones and gave them an allowance of Rs 2 a day. As they had been raised in Muin al-Mulk's household, Khwaja Mirza Khan was advised that he should not trust these ‘sons of serpents’ (mār bachche), who might be tempted to only submit to the household of their upbringing. Hence, Miskin and the other boys were sent to Jammu.Footnote 47
Mughlani Begum was constrained by Khwaja Mirza Khan, so she wrote to the Mughal vizier, Ghazi al-Din Khan, to whom her daughter was betrothed, and to Ahmad Shah Durrani, who was in Qandahar. She also sent Khwaja Abd Allah Khan, her maternal uncle, to Qandahar. Ahmad Shah Durrani sent Mulla Aman Khan with 2,000 men on horse and foot soldiers (men from Kabul, Peshawar, Rohilla Afghans, and a few Durranis and Qizilbash) to Lahore in order to assist (muʻāwanat) her.Footnote 48 They crossed the rivers and when they arrived at the Chenab, they encountered Khwaja Qazi with a troop of 5,000 Mughal soldiers. The Mughal troops retreated to Lahore, where they felt they would be able to fight better. Aman Khan and his troops followed and soon bordered Lahore. On that day, Miskin and his friends returned from Jammu to Lahore. The Mughals believed a rumour that Khwaja Abd Allah Khan was to become the governor, with Khwaja Mirza Khan as his deputy, and thus the latter went to see the Afghan envoy Mulla Aman Khan; he was captured and thrown into prison, while Bhikhari Khan was presented to Mughlani Begum. Charged with poisoning her late husband and son, he was executed.Footnote 49 In April 1755, the Afghan envoy appointed Mughlani Begum as the governor (sūbah dār) of Lahore and her maternal uncle, Khwaja Abd Allah Khan, was appointed as her deputy (nāīb).Footnote 50 Mulla Aman Khan left Lahore in the direction of Qandahar and the Mughal chiefs who had rebelled against Mughlani Begum were duly imprisoned.Footnote 51
According to Miskin, Mughlani Begum's uncle, who was now the deputy, could not tolerate being subordinate to a woman.Footnote 52 He began recruiting soldiers, with the intention of overthrowing her. Aware of his plot against her, she began to enlist her own soldiers. Mughlani Begum used the same tactics as before: increasing salaries and distributing more honours, titles, and gifts to ensure loyalty to her. Khwaja Abd Allah Khan, seeing that his men were being lured by her offers of money and rank, launched an attack.Footnote 53 During the confrontation, Miskin and his friends valiantly defended Mughlani Begum's attendants. She was again put under surveillance and guarded in her mother's home. She advised Miskin to leave her, assuring him that when she returned to her rightful position as governor, she would have him attend on her once again. Miskin accordingly went to the home of his adopted sister (or hum-shīr). His adopted Uzbek sister was married to a man named Adraz Beg, and while Miskin stayed with them, she bore a son named Iwaz Bedil Beg.Footnote 54
While Mughlani Begum was confined (nazr bandī-i khūd) at her mother's house, she secretly wrote another letter to Ghazi al-Din, then newly instituted vizier who had removed Ahmad Shah Bahadur from the Mughal throne, replacing him with Alamgir II.Footnote 55 As he was betrothed to her daughter, she implored him to come to her aid. She informed him that Ahmad Shah Durrani had sent her help from Qandahar, and now that his (Ghazi al-Din) name was associated with her daughter's, it would only be appropriate that he assist her.Footnote 56 The vizier responded positively and made his way to Sirhind. Adina Beg Khan, who had been appointed by Mughlani Begum as the naib (administrator) of the do-āb (alluvial plains between two rivers), wrote to Ghazi al-Din asking him to remain in Sirhind and to send a eunuch with 2,000 to 3,000 troops to assist him in restoring Lahore. Ghazi al-Din sent a eunuch named Nasim Khan with the troops and instructions to follow Adina Beg's orders. The large army went to Lahore, visited Mughlani Begum, and then proceeded to visit Khwaja Abd Allah Khan. He received them, bestowing honours and robes. But he knew that he would be ousted from his position as governor within a few days and so decided to flee to Jammu. The next morning, Mughlani Begum entered the palace accompanied by the ‘drum of victory’ and the entire city was lit up with sounds of triumph and happiness.Footnote 57
Mughlani Begum prepared for her daughter's betrothal to Ghazi al-Din for a month. During the preparations, Miskin attempted to gain an audience with Mughlani Begum, to remind her of what she had promised him: namely that if he went to his adopted sister's home, she would give him a diamond when she was reinstated as governor. Eventually, he was granted an audience and she asked if her late husband had planned to send him as part of his daughter's dowry. Miskin told her that he had chosen four other boys, but one had died and the other three had fled during the civil strife. Mughlani Begum then asked her eunuchs which of the boys had fought to protect them and to whom she had promised diamonds. They pointed to Miskin, and she enquired if he preferred diamonds or pearls. Miskin, to everyone's surprise, said that he preferred pearls, because diamonds required fancier clothing and other jewellery.Footnote 58 Miskin writes that his thoughtful response pleased Mughlani Begum, and she decided that he should be married to an enslaved girl named Moti (Pearl), who had served her well. Mughlani Begum had told Moti to go to her parents’ house when Khwaja Mirza Khan had revolted against her, but Moti had refused to leave her side during this turbulent and uncertain time, and so Mughlani Begum had promised to find her a suitable husband.Footnote 59 Mughlani Begum stated that until she heard Miskin speak, no other suitable boy had pleased her enough to marry her servant.Footnote 60
Miskin continues the narrative about his marriage in the next section. He writes that Mughlani Begum rebuked him for earning a bad reputation throughout the city (badnāmī wa ruswā), and insisted it would only be proper that he marry.Footnote 61 Even though the eunuchs had told him that it would not do to go against Mughlani Begum's wishes, Miskin told her that he did not wish to marry a Hindustani. Mughlani Begum retorted that she would get him married through force (ba-zūr), and, in fact, she would have four or five more boys married, because they were ‘blossoming young men’ and had reached the state of ‘mature youth’.Footnote 62 Thus, the marriages of Miskin, Muhammad Quli, Darab Beg, Muqim Beg, Faiz Allah Beg, and Muhammadi Beg were arranged. Still, Miskin opposed the marriage and again went to his adopted sister's home. She advised him to comply. As soon as he returned to his quarters, a man came and took Miskin back to the palace, upon which Mughlani Begum ordered that all six boys be confined there and not be allowed to leave. Mughlani Begum then came to them and gave them each a shawl and money. She commanded that they should be made ready and that the ritual of henna be performed that night. Henna was applied on the boys’ hands and feet, in Mughlani Begum's presence.Footnote 63
The next day, the boys were clothed in costly robes and inserted into the royal procession in the city. They visited Sufi shrines to pay their respects, and then the religious wedding ceremony was performed for the boys and their wives. Mughlani Begum paid for the ceremonies, clothes, and wedding gifts (Miskin, for example, additionally received pearl earrings). Miskin calculated the cost to be close to Rs 12,000 per boy.Footnote 64 In the presence of Mughlani Begum, each couple was given their own separate quarters (khwābghāh-hāī ‘alīhudah). She addressed Miskin, saying that it was because of him that she had been able to fulfil her promise and was able to arrange the marriages of the other boys too, on the occasion of her daughter's betrothal. Miskin describes the dowry and people who would leave with Mughlani Begum's daughter, and here he provides her name, Umda Begum.Footnote 65 Two months later, Miskin was given a land grant (mansab) of Rs 100 a month.Footnote 66
After his wedding, Miskin writes that Ghazi al-Din believed in his heart that Mughlani Begum, who was simply the wife of the late Muin al-Mulk, was governing Lahore like a man, and in the eyes of nobles this was dishonourable and insulting (bī nāmūsī wa sabukī).Footnote 67 He sent Syed Jamil al-Din with 10,000 men and ten eunuchs to Lahore, and they occupied the palace. The eunuchs went to Mughlani Begum and apprised her of the situation, then she was put on an elephant and sent to Sirhind. Syed Jamil al-Din Khan reappointed Mughlani Begum's son-in-law, Momin Khan, as governor of the Punjab, with himself as deputy.Footnote 68 Miskin asked Syed Jamil al-Din for horses, and he gave him four. Miskin and three of his companions rode out to accompany Mughlani Begum and in ten to 12 days they reached Sirhind, where Ghazi al-Din was camped.Footnote 69 Ghazi al-Din rode out to welcome her and she entered the camp with him, accompanied by the eunuch Naseem Khan. A few days later, they all marched towards Machhiwada.
During the march, it happened that Mughlani Begum, Khankhanan (Muin al-Mulk's brother), his mother (Mughlani Begum's mother-in-law), along with Miskin and his three companions, took the wrong route and were separated from the rest of the group. Ghazi al-Din, afraid that Mughlani Begum would run away, sent two camel riders to search for them. When they were found, Mughlani Begum insisted that instead of resting and proceeding in the morning they should ride through the night to catch up with Ghazi al-Din. On their arrival, Ghazi al-Din asked her why they had not halted as the roads were unsafe. She responded by saying that her four boys were as strong as 4,000 men, and accordingly she had not been afraid. Ghazi al-Din reported this to his maternal aunt, Mughlani Begum's mother-in-law Khala Begum, who did not like Mughlani Begum and suggested that she ‘most likely had intimate relations with the boy who wore pearl earrings [i.e. Miskin]’.Footnote 70 The vizier responded that if this were true, he would kill Miskin the very next day. When Mughlani Begum was apprised of the conversation, she told Miskin and his companion Muhammad Quli to return to Lahore immediately because their wives were there.Footnote 71 Miskin obeyed, and in a few days he was back in his own residence in the city.Footnote 72
In this second instance of Mughlani Begum's alleged sexual transgression, it was a woman who suggested that Mughlani Begum had had illicit relations with one of her male slaves. It is noteworthy that, whether this happened or not, Miskin chose to include how this rumour was formulated in his auto/biography. We must question what purpose this served for him. Perhaps it showed relatives, like Ghazi al-Din's maternal aunt (who was also Mughlani Begum's mother-in-law), that the connection between the slave and master was so close that they seemed to have an intimate relationship, whether or not this was a sexual one. Close proximity to a woman in Mughlani Begum's position and noble lineage may have been a source of pride for Miskin, who was a young slave, and yet a source of dishonour for an elite family. How this is received, told, and retold in English translations will be discussed later.
In 1756, Khwaja Abd Allah Khan, Mughlani Begum's uncle who had taken her position as governor only to flee to Jammu, went to Ahmad Shah Durrani in Qandahar and told him that Ghazi al-Din had occupied Lahore, and had kidnapped Mughlani Begum, whom Ahmad Shah Durrani had called his daughter (ke khūd bezubān-i mubārak dokhtar khwandeh būdand).Footnote 73 Abd Allah Khan claimed, according to Miskin, that this was an insult (sabukī) to Afghans,Footnote 74 and suggested that with Ahmad Shah Durrani's permission, he could release Khwaja Mirza Khan, who was still imprisoned, and along with him and a few others, Khwaja Abd Allah Khan could retake Lahore. In doing so, they would reclaim Lahore as part of Ahmad Shah Durrani's territories. Ahmad Shah Durrani agreed and decreed that Khwaja Mirza Khan and the other captured chiefs be released. They were to join Peshawari Afghans to reoccupy Lahore.Footnote 75
Miskin, in the meantime, sent his wife and their goods to Delhi for safety. While in Sirhind she and her companion were robbed of everything, but she managed to make it to Delhi, and Miskin joined her soon after. He told Mughlani Begum (who was now also in Delhi) what had happened to his wife and their possessions, and Mughlani Begum sent them two trays of food every day.Footnote 76 His wife stayed with her, and eventually Mughlani Begum asked Ghazi al-Din to secure housing for Miskin and his family in the city. Ghazi al-Din arranged for them to stay in a house outside of the Ajmer Gate near a school.Footnote 77
During this period, Ahmad Shah Durrani entered Delhi to secure Hindustan for himself. Because Mughlani Begum had written to him asking him to aid her and take the throne, Ahmad Shah addressed Mughlani Begum: ‘Before, I had referred to you as my daughter (dukhtar-i khūd). From today forth, I bestow the title Sultan Mirza Sarfaraz, and will call you my son (pisr-i khūd).’Footnote 78 Ahmad Shah Durrani gave her his turban with the jigha (ornament) and the special robe that he had worn.Footnote 79 He also told her to prioritise her daughter's wedding to Ghazi al-Din. However, after the marriage had taken place and upon their return to Lahore, Mughlani Begum learned that she was not going to be given the governorship of Lahore as she had been promised. Under the pretext of the marriage alliance, Ahmad Shah Durrani had regained the territories he once controlled in the Punjab. Instead, Timur Shah, Ahmad Shah Durrani's son, was appointed by his father to the position of governor of Lahore. As a consolation to Mughlani Begum, he allocated her an annual salary of Rs 30,000.Footnote 80 But Timur Shah's vizier Jahan Khan robbed her of her possessions and, furthermore, she was physically assaulted by Jahan Khan for interfering with politics in the Punjab (she had allegedly colluded with Adina Beg Khan who refused to submit to the Afghans).Footnote 81 After this assault, she refused to comply when Jahan Khan summoned her. According to Miskin, she was so terrified that she told him that Jahan Khan could take her daughter, but he should let her be as her life was dearer than her daughter's (dukhtar az jān-i man ziyāda ‘azīz nīst).Footnote 82 Miskin managed to take Mughlani Begum and her daughter safely back to Delhi, and it was at this point that she freed him from bondage.Footnote 83
Miskin chose to carry on serving Mughlani Begum and her household, even after he was a freed man. She obtained land and land revenue in Sialkot, and Miskin travelled there to manage her affairs, while she resided in Jammu. Mughlani Begum continued to struggle for financial security, and after a time of what seemed like complete hopelessness to Miskin, she decided to marry a man of her own choosing. This is the only place in the text where Miskin passes judgement on Mughlani Begum's private life. He writes that one day he found the begum alone with a man. She had sent away all her attendants after she had concluded the nikāh (marriage contract) with him.Footnote 84 This event, it must be noted, did not happen when she was intermittently in power from 1753–1756. Rather, it took place after 1758, following her very traumatic experience at the hands of the Afghan vizier. Miskin was unhappy with this marriage and reprimanded her, reminding her of her noble birth and genealogy. For Miskin, her status demanded that she marry someone worthy. He reminded that she came from a very noble lineage, and that she and her daughters were married into nobility, and yet she had chosen to marry a man who had no name or rank. Mughlani Begum, upset at his bold reprimand, plotted to kill him, and it was at this point that Miskin ran away from her and entered the service of Qasim Khan in Sirhind. Miskin writes that three years prior to completing his narrative, he had heard that Mughlani Begum was in a destitute state, financially and socially, and so he gifted money to her granddaughter for her wedding.
The circumstances of Mughlani Begum's life were volatile and perhaps more fraught than Miskin's. It highlights the extent to which the lives of men and women operated on different power differentials as defined by their gender. Miskin was able to free himself as a slave, and even within the institutions of slavery, he managed to rise to the status of a khān. Mughlani Begum, on the other hand, remained a woman vulnerable to financial insecurity and physical assault. She lost all the guardians with whom she had forged relations: her husband, her uncle, her adopted father. Even non-guardian males whom she trusted betrayed her: Qasim Khan, her adopted son, tried to usurp her power and attempted to take over the whole of Hindustan; and Mirza Khan, whom she entrusted with land, charged through her palace in an attempt to take over Lahore. She even attempted to protect Adina Beg Khan from Timur Shah Durrani and his vizier, only to be deceived by him, which led to her being severely beaten at the hands of the vizier. There was not, it seemed, a single person on whom she could rely for support. She was often suspicious of Miskin and imprisoned him multiple times, even once plotting to have him killed. Unlike Miskin, who was able to choose whom he would marry after his manumission, she was not able to marry freely without acquiring a bad reputation and even being placed in a position where she was reprimanded by her former slave. She died financially destitute and, as we will now see, came to be recorded in English colonial and post-colonial historiography as an ‘immoral’ woman, reputedly hungry for power and sexual pleasure.
Mistranslating gender in English
In eighteenth-century Hindustan, Muslim and non-Muslim women accumulated wealth, composed poetry, and were politically important.Footnote 85 Rather than placing Mughlani Begum in the historical context of her time, Sir Jadunath Sarkar and Pagdi Setu Madhava Rao's implicit and explicit biases about women penetrated English primary and secondary sources, which continue to be unchecked.Footnote 86 This process was not limited to the way in which histories of South Asia were written; similar pejorative commentary about women can be found in Ottoman history and historiography.Footnote 87 Post-colonial historians of the Punjab, such Hari Ram Gupta, Ganda Singh, and Rajmohan Gandhi (the representative sample to be used in this analysis), have unquestioningly accepted Sarkar and Rao's view on women, thanks, it would seem, to their adherence to apparently ‘objective history writing’.Footnote 88
Sir Jadunath Sarkar translated Miskin's life story and used it as one of his primary sources for the second volume of Fall of the Mughal Empire. The narrative in the chapters on the Punjab in the eighteenth century, in most instances, are his own translation or interpretive summaries taken from Miskin. From reading his loose translations and interpretation of Mughlani Begum's story, it is clear that Sarkar inserted his own views on appropriate gender roles. For example, he used the word ‘seduces’ when describing how she managed to win over political support,Footnote 89 even though the Persian word to this effect is completely missing from the original text. Sarkar further described her as a ‘virago’, an offensive word meaning a woman who is easily annoyed or angered.Footnote 90 Later, he called her an ‘unreasonable woman’, commenting that ‘her obstinacy only humiliated her and brought down upon her head poverty and scorn in a city which she had once ruled with sovereign power’.Footnote 91 As Sarkar put it, ‘Soon afterwards, her infant son Md. Amin Khan [sic] died (early in May 1754) and she threw caution and shame to the winds in the pursuit of pleasure.’ Unfortunately, he did not cite the source of this information. He went on to say that although the eunuchs could not agree with each other, it was they who were the ones in power, acting on behalf of the begum, and for this he references Miskin.
Curiously, Ganda Singh, the post-colonial biographer of Ahmad Shah Durrani, who was proficient in Persian, perpetuated Sarkar's biases, incorporating them rather uncritically in his own work. For instance, he cited Sarkar's book, Fall of the Mughal Empire, and two Persian sources, Tārīkh-i Ahmad Shāhī and Miskin's Tahmās Nāma, all three of which include descriptions of Mughlani Begum. Yet, Singh, despite understanding Persian, followed Sarkar's lead and described Mughlani Begum as ‘seductive’. In a section entitled ‘Bhikari Khan Imprisoned by Mughlani Begum’, he wrote:
The authority of the Mughal emperor had, in the meantime, been already flouted by the Begum. Equipped with the appointment order from Intizam-ud-Daulah, the prime minister at Delhi, Raushan-ud-Daulah Bhikari Khan had tried to assert himself in the affairs of the state. But he found his position irksome under the petticoat government of an immodest flirt, whose fancy and urge it became impossible for him to satisfy…The tension continued for some days till Mirza Jan of Bhikari's party was seduced away by the Begum by conferring upon him the title of Khan and the faujdari of the parganah [sic] of Eminabad.Footnote 92
He describes Mughlani Begum as an ‘immodest flirt’ and glosses her tactics with sexual connotations, such as ‘seducing’ men with titles of honour. A more accurate word would have been ‘bribed’. In this way, Ganda Singh, perhaps unreflexively, perpetuated the stereotype that a woman could only obtain power by using her body. According to such thinking, she had to succumb to performing unsavoury acts to obtain and remain in power; whereas, in reality, as we have seen, she did what most men in the same position would have done, namely set out to win loyalty by elevating people with local power to local positions of authority. Her gender, it would seem, was assumed to render her unable to govern, and when she did succeed, this was explained as her losing her morality for the sake of power.
Ganda Singh used the same type of language as Sarkar: Mughlani Begum ‘soon sank into evil life, threw all modesty to the winds and became notorious for her loose morals’. As he explained in a footnote: ‘It is not necessary to go into the details of Mughlani Begum's clandestine love affairs. The pages of the Tahmās Nāma are replete with pointed references to her notorious connections with a number of people.’Footnote 93 Moreover, he went on, ‘…the Panjab is not the province which could be ruled by a profligate woman. Her foolish pranks and profligacies turned her best supporters and devoted servants against her.’Footnote 94 Upon her son's death, Singh commented, ‘With the loss of her son were gone even the last traces of caution and shame and she was hopelessly lost in the pursuit of her pleasures.’Footnote 95 Following these general depictions of a woman who has no morals and resorts to sexual pleasure to seize the reins of power, he finally provided some evidence when he included the rumour concerning Mughlani Begum and Bakhshi Ghazi Beg Khan: ‘It was about the month of December 1754, that Mughlani Begum's illicit connections with Bakhshi Ghazi Beg Khan became so notorious that it was an open scandal on the lips of all and sundry.’Footnote 96
Rajmohan Gandhi's 2013 history of the Punjab cites and reproduces Hari Ram Gupta's pejorative assessment of Mughlani Begum:
Delhi's climate of scandal-cum-chaos was matched by that of Lahore, where the Begum [Mughlani], it seems, ‘abandoned modesty’. Encouraged by ‘the shameless examples of the highest dignitaries in the Delhi court’, she carried on an affair with an officer that was ‘on the lips of everybody big and small in Lahore’ and later tried also, it appears, to seduce a youth barely out of his teens called Tahmas Beg Khan Miskin, whom ‘she really loved’. Moreover, senior officials were being ordered about by eunuchs in the Begum's employ.Footnote 97
Gandhi's treatment of Mughlani Begum does not deviate from earlier colonial historians’ views of her and, likewise, from earlier post-colonial commentaries. In turn, Gupta relied on Sarkar and Rao, who in their translations and summaries of Miskin's auto/biography, took gossip regarding Mughlani Begum's supposed illicit sexual relations to be factual, further adding that she was of ‘unsavoury character’ when she chose to marry someone who was not a nobleman.
The ethical implications of the begum's character thus translated, for colonial English-writing scholars, into either good or bad governance. For them, it was not simply that as a female she could not govern; it was being an impious woman that made her unfit to rule. Colonial historians, especially Sarkar, tended to judge an empire by the morality or immorality of the person in power.Footnote 98 The fall of the Mughal empire could be explained, according to him and others, by the fact that the men who ascended to the throne were immoral, unskilled in the manners and etiquette of good governance, and lacked vision. This historiographical trend has of course been critiqued and newer scholarly approaches have identified other factors that contributed to Mughal decline, including the rise of regional powers, economic factors, and internal contestations for power.Footnote 99 But while there have been correctives for men in history, the same has not been true for the women, assuming they are discussed at all. That a woman should govern was contested during Miskin's life and he, along with other men writing in the same period, concluded that it was not proper and furthermore that it would lead to bad governance.Footnote 100 Indeed, these male authors cite the same Qurānic verse 4:34 as divine proof that men are in ‘charge’ or ‘protectors’ of women (al-rijāl qawwāmūna ‘ala al-nisā). Arguably this world view remained consistent throughout Miskin's life, according to his narrative and his status as a man who benefitted from Mughlani Begum's inability to govern in public. But to project that perspective onto Mughlani Begum is problematic. She may not have seen gender responsibilities in the same way, and no scholar to date has yet attempted to understand her on her own terms.
It is very possible that she was an ‘immoral’ woman for the times in which she lived—some would argue even afterwards—and that reasonable people would deem it improper for such a woman to hold positions of rank, authority, and power. But to read her as only an ‘impious’ woman does not do justice to her complex life. Moreover, Miskin's narrative does not provide an indisputable depiction of her as immoral. He never confirms that she had illicit relations with anyone, even with Bakhshi Ghazi Beg Khan, only that a rumour about them had become well known. Sarkar, Gupta, and Singh draw the conclusion that Mughlani Begum had sexual relations with Miskin also, but yet again there is no conclusive proof of this from Miskin's text itself. If it did occur, it may be that Miskin omitted this information; Miskin does admit his premarital sexual transgression with someone soon after Muin al-Mulk's death, but this could not have possibly been Mughlani Begum because he had not met or conversed with her at that point in his life. Furthermore, he does write that her maternal aunt accused Mughlani Begum of sleeping with him, and reported it to the Mughal vizier, her son-in-law, Ghazi al-Din Imad al-Mulk.Footnote 101 Miskin reports these rumours, discloses the fact that they were spread, and sometimes by whom, but he does not verify their veracity. Only through pure speculation can it be concluded that Mughlani Begum had sexual relations with anyone other than her first or her second husbands. Nevertheless, she has been recorded by historians writing in English over the past 250 years as an immoral woman who had sexual relations outside of marriage.
Urdu historiography and Mughlani Begum
Post-colonial historians writing in Urdu depict Mughlani Begum in a much more nuanced fashion than colonial and post-colonial writing in English. Iqbal Salah al-Din's 1974 Tārīkh-i Punjāb (History of the Punjab), for one, does not reduce Mughlani Begum's character to that of an immodest flirt. In fact, there is no mention of Mughlani Begum's alleged sexual relations after her husband's death, nor that she behaved in immodest ways. Perhaps this is because Salah al-Din did not read (and he certainly does not cite) the English-writing historians mentioned above. Epistemologically, Salah al-Din draws on different bodies of knowledge, which leads to different conclusions about Mughlani Begum. While Salah al-Din does not footnote his citations, there is a robust list of the sources that he consulted, categorised by language: Punjabi, Persian, Urdu, and Arabic in one section, and English in another. In post-colonial India, this would be rather difficult. Even if Indian historians have disagreed with Sarkar, especially his methods, they have still engaged with his work. This is not the case on the other side of the border, at least in this case of Salah al-Din's history of the Punjab.
How does Salah al-Din write about Mughlani Begum then? He refers to her as both Murad Begum and Mughlani Begum; and Muin al-Mulk as Mir Mannu. In the few pages devoted to the aftermath of Muin al-Mulk's death, he deems Mughlani Begum to have been competent in the matters of government. He writes: ‘Murad Begum herself was a kind of wise and perceptive lady.’Footnote 102 After her husband's death, Mughlani Begum obtained the appointment of her young son as the new governor of the Punjab (albeit overseen by her) from both emperors, the Mughal emperor Ahmad Shah Bahardur in Delhi and the Afghan Ahmad Shah Abdali-Durrani in Kabul. Unfortunately for Mughlani Begum, her son only lived for a further ten months. Once he died, the nobles at the Punjab court refused to retain Mughlani Begum as the de facto governor.
Salah al-Din writes that because the Punjab was overseen by the Mughals in Delhi and the Durranis in Kabul, there was disagreement about what should happen next. Ahmad Shah Abdali-Durrani agreed that Mughlani Begum should continue to govern, which made the nobles unhappy.Footnote 103 The spies of both courts stalled in finding a resolution, so the condition of the Punjab continued to decline. Mughlani Begum soon became tired of dealing with the daily tensions at the court, and so invited Ahmad Shah Abdali-Durrani to the Punjab. He sent his military chief, Jahan Khan, to rid Lahore of Mughal spies and supporters. Upon hearing this, Ghazi al-Din Imad al-Mulk, who represented the Mughal court, sent troops to Lahore to rid it of the Durrani influence. Now, the Punjab became the battlefield between these two empires, which emboldened Sikhs to increase their attempts to subjugate the region.Footnote 104 According to Salah al-Din, Mughlani Begum tried her best to resolve the situation, keeping the interest and safety of the people of the Punjab in mind, even though no beneficial outcome resulted from these endeavours.Footnote 105
In the next section of his history, entitled ‘Murad Begum's Decline’, Salah al-Din writes that because there were so many spies on both sides of the Lahore court, Mughlani Begum started to suspect every person of being one.Footnote 106 She even distrusted her old supporters who had enabled her to govern in the first place. One day, Mir Bukhari, who was a close confidante of Muin al-Mulk and had continued his service during Mughlani Begum's reign, entered the zenana, or women's quarters, to obtain all the papers of governance. Mughlani Begum ordered that he be killed on the spot (perhaps for entering the women's space without permission? Or for demanding government documents?). After the deed was done, and when the nobles of the court heard of this, they were extremely upset, and complained about her actions in Kabul and Delhi. From Delhi, Imad al-Mulk sent Syed Jalal al-Din who then gained power and support; Mughlani Begum demanded that the Mughal court summon him back, but Imad al-Mulk did not heed this request. Annoyed with this situation, Mughlani Begum once again asked Ahmad Shah Abdali-Durrani to come to Lahore to free it from Delhi's grip.Footnote 107
Ahmad Shah Abdali-Durrani granted her request and started for Lahore. Upon hearing this, Ghazi al-Din gathered a large force and marched towards the city to confront the Afghans. When Ghazi al-Din reached Sirhind, he joined forces with its governor, Adina Beg. He promised Adina Beg that if he successfully defeated Ahmad Shah Abdali-Durrani, he would appoint him as governor of the Punjab.Footnote 108 Ghazi al-Din gave further instruction to imprison Mughlani Begum if she refused to come with her daughter to Sirhind. Before Muin al-Mulk's death, he had betrothed his daughter to Ghazi al-Din Khan, who was his sister's son. When the decree was presented to Mughlani Begum, she and her daughter refused contemptuously (intihāī haqārat) to comply with Ghazi al-Din's order.Footnote 109 Accordingly, they were taken by force and sent to him in Sirhind.Footnote 110 In Salah al-Din's account, when Mughlani Begum and her daughter were presented to Ghazi al-Din, he again tried to bargain with them about the marraige, but their resolve did not waver (magar murād begum aur us kī larkī kā ‘azm mutazalal na hūa).Footnote 111 Mughlani Begum warned Ghazi al-Din about the Afghan threat to avenge any wrongdoing inflicted upon her and reminded him of Nadir Shah's destruction of Delhi. Despite her warning and threats, Ghazi al-Din married her daughter with force (zabr dastī) and placed Mughlani Begum under house arrest in Delhi.Footnote 112
In the meantime, Ahmad Shah Abdali-Durrani swiftly defeated Adina Beg in Lahore and appointed his son Timur Shah Abdali-Durrani as its governor. Ahmad Shah marched to the outskirts of Delhi via Sirhind. When the Mughal court heard of the speed of his advance towards them, the emperor Alamgir II collected all the nobles and left Delhi to welcome (istiqbāl) Ahmad Shah in Karnal.Footnote 113 Salah al-Din writes that all the nobles and inhabitants of Delhi panicked and began deserting the city—the memory of Nadir Shah's sacking of Delhi some 18 years prior must still have been fresh in their minds.Footnote 114 Ghazi al-Din was the most worried, according to this account, because he knew that he had severely mistreated Mughlani Begum and her daughter (bahut zīadtī kī thī) and it was precisely on account of these transgressions that Ahmad Shah had come to the subcontinent to seek revenge on their behalf (aur Ahmad Shāh inhī zīādtī-on kā badla lene ke liye barr-i saghīr aayā thā).Footnote 115 Ghazi al-Din apologised to her for his misconduct, and Mughlani Begum forgave him. Later, she vouched for Ghazi al-Din in front of Ahmad Shah when he was accused of mistreating the Afghans and ‘saved his life’ (jān bachādī).Footnote 116 Salah al-Din reasons that Mughlani Begum did this because Ghazi al-Din was now her son-in-law and she was concerned for the welfare of her daughter, whom she did not wish to see widowed.
Ahmad Shah demanded payment for the cost incurred by him in coming to Delhi. His demands were high and the Delhi nobles insisted they did not have the money that he required. A eunuch informed Ahmad Shah that treasures were buried in the Delhi home of the late vizier, Qamar al-Din, which was the house of Mughlani Begum's father-in-law. Ahmad Shah had Mughlani Begum inform them where the treasure was buried, and vast amounts of gold, silver, and other jewels were recovered and taken by Ahmad Shah. He then allowed his troops to loot Delhi.Footnote 117 After the pillaging, Ahmad Shah summoned his son Timur Shah from Lahore and oversaw his marriage to Alamgir II's daughter. Ahmad Shah Abdali-Durrani also married into the Mughal family and wedded Ahmad Shah Bahadur's daughter.
This history then continues with Ahmad Shah Abdali-Durrani's movement to surrounding regions and his stay in Lahore and Multan. It is followed by a section on Timur Shah's governorship in Lahore and his skirmishes with the Sikhs and Adina Beg Khan. Salah al-Din did not return to Mughlani Begum after the Delhi sacking.
Conclusion
Historians aim at being unbiased and objective in their reconstructions of history, something that they ‘prove’ by using multiple sources and sometimes other perspectives. The English-language histories of the Punjab, and more specifically the fall of the Mughal empire, would appear at face value to be ‘objective’: after all, they are replete with citations and footnotes. Indian historians writing in English have arguably gained the authority to construct history precisely because they cite and summarise sources written in Persian. Urdu histories, which may not follow the same conventions of history writing, especially when it comes to the provision of footnotes and citations, tend not to be read by historians who write in English. Perhaps this is for language reasons or limited access to Urdu books. Maybe it is also because Urdu histories do not follow agreed-upon Western conventions of history writing, which require proper citation. But this raises the question: what do we lose when we ignore a whole body of scholarship that may not conform to our criteria for scholarly work?
This article has explored how so-called ‘objective’ histories written in English have succeeded in reducing a woman's identity to simply that of an opportunist who used her feminine wiles to secure and maintain power. In English-language historiography, for over 250 years, Mughlani Begum has been depicted, repeatedly, as an ‘immodest flirt’ who ‘threw caution to the wind’ and governed the Punjab badly. But if we return to the original Persian text upon which these English translations and summaries have been based, we find a complex life. Mughlani Begum was faced with obstacles throughout her life, replete with volatility and insecurity. At times she governed well, and at other times she proved to be helpless and dependent on the goodwill of the men she knew.
Urdu histories about the Punjab, unlike their English-language counterparts, depict Mughlani Begum in a completely different light. Here she is represented as a wise woman who came from a good family and could govern well. She had the support of both the Afghan and Mughal courts. Her fortune changed when her future son-in-law exerted his power over her and her daughter. On the other hand, Urdu histories’ tendency not to follow accepted historiographical conventions of providing proper citation and bibliographies can deter scholars and students today from reading or drawing from them, and hence limit the impact of the insights that they may provide on the past.
Conflicts of interest
None.
