NDA (I) 2018 General Ability Test · Question 136 of 150

Correct — C, Gulbadan Begum. Gulbadan Begum (1523-1603) was a daughter of Babur and therefore Humayun's half-sister and Akbar's aunt. Akbar, collecting material for the official history of his reign, commissioned her to set down what she remembered of his father's life, and she wrote the Humayun-nama in plain Persian from her own recollection. It is the only surviving piece of writing by a woman of the Mughal royal house from the sixteenth century, and it is valued precisely because it comes from inside the household rather than from the court chronicler's desk — it records the women of the family, the marriages, the journeys and the domestic detail that the formal chronicles leave out. She had spent much of her life in Kabul before Akbar invited her to Agra in 1557.

• (a)Roshanara Begum — Roshanara Begum (1617-1671) was the third daughter of Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal. She backed Aurangzeb in the war of succession and held the position of Padshah Begum for a decade; she is remembered for the Roshanara Bagh in north Delhi, not for a chronicle. She also belongs a century after Humayun's death.
• (b)Ruquaiya Sultan Begum — Ruqaiya Sultan Begum (c. 1542-1626) was Akbar's first and principal wife and a daughter of his uncle Hindal Mirza. She was consort for nearly fifty years and brought up the young Prince Khurram, the future Shah Jahan, but she wrote nothing.
• (d)Gauhara Begum — Gauhar Ara Begum (1631-1706) was the youngest child of Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal, born on the day her mother died. She kept a low profile at court and left no written work. Like Roshanara she belongs to the seventeenth century, far from Humayun.

The Mughals were unusually well chronicled, and each principal work can be tied to an author and a patron. Babur wrote his own memoirs, the Baburnama, in Chagatai Turkish; Akbar had Abdul Rahim Khan-i-Khanan translate them into Persian in 1589-90. Abul Fazl wrote the Akbarnama, whose third volume is the Ain-i-Akbari. Jahangir wrote the Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri himself. Abdul Hamid Lahori wrote the Badshahnama for Shah Jahan. Gulbadan Begum's Humayun-nama stands apart from all of them as the one account written by a woman of the family, and as one written from memory rather than from state records.

Three of the four options are seventeenth-century women of Shah Jahan's or Akbar's household, and only one belongs to Humayun's own generation. That chronology is the quickest way through the item — a memoir of Humayun's life written from personal recollection has to come from somebody who lived through it. It is also worth noticing how the booklet has set the titles: this stem prints Humayun Nama in ordinary roman type, while Q125 in the same paper prints Badshah Nama in italic. The inconsistency is the printer's, not the examiner's, and both are book titles. Nothing in either item turns on it.

• Gulbadan Begum (1523-1603) was a daughter of Babur, half-sister of Humayun and aunt of Akbar.
• Akbar commissioned the Humayun-nama from her; she wrote it in simple Persian from her own memories.
• It is the only surviving writing by a woman of the Mughal royal house from the sixteenth century.
• Akbar invited her from Kabul to Agra in 1557, and she lived to about eighty.
• The companion chronicles are the Baburnama by Babur, the Akbarnama by Abul Fazl, the Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri by Jahangir and the Badshahnama by Abdul Hamid Lahori.

• Picking a better-known Mughal princess without checking which century she belongs to.
• Assuming a work named after an emperor was written by his own court historian — here it was written by his sister, a generation later.
• Confusing the Humayun-nama with Khwandamir's Qanun-i-Humayuni, a different work on the same reign.

NDA asks for the author of a named chronicle, or gives a chronicle and asks which statement about it is not correct.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Gulbadan Begum, the author of the Humayun-nama, was the daughter of

  • (a)Humayun
  • (b)Babur
  • (c)Akbar
  • (d)Hindal Mirza

  Answer(b) Babur — which made her Humayun's half-sister and Akbar's aunt.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Badshahnama, the official chronicle of Shah Jahan's reign, was written by

  • (a)Abul Fazl
  • (b)Abdul Hamid Lahori
  • (c)Khafi Khan
  • (d)Badauni

  Answer(b) Abdul Hamid Lahori — Abul Fazl wrote the Akbarnama a reign and a half earlier.