Whatever Happened to Chand Bibi Sultan? Narratives of a Deccan Warrior Queen

Abstract

Drawing from Persian, Urdu, Dakkhani and Marathi sources, this article examines narratives about the sixteenth century Queen-Regent of Ahmadnagar and Bijapur, Chand Bibi (1550–1600), who was also widely regarded as ‘Queen of the Deccan’. Powerful Muslim women of the Deccan Sultanates have received scant, if any, attention. This article challenges the north-centric perspective of Mughal imperial development that has long dominated histories of Persianate India. Like the Deccan, Chand Bibi resists categorisation. This article delves into Chand Bibi’s afterlives by grappling with the multiple accounts of the queen’s demise in 1600—by murder, suicide and escape. The mythology of an immobile harem or ‘zenana’ is belied by the context of mobility within sixteenth century Deccan. It focuses upon on when narratives of Chand Bibi’s murder, suicide and legendary escape first emerged and how they were circulated. I argue that the existence of three distinct narratives about Chand Bibi’s demise reveals various perceptions about the queen, which characterise the multi-ethnic and multireligious pluralism of the Deccan region to which she belonged.

Keywords:

• Deccan sultanates
• gender
• harem
• Mughal empire
• narrative histories
• Persian Persianate
• regional households
• ruling elites

Acknowledgements

The research for this article was made possible by the Fulbright Nehru Professional Excellence Award, which I carried out in India in 2022. I am grateful to many archivists, librarians and historians in India: Rafiuddin Qadri of Idara-e Adabiya-e Urdu, Asif Khan of Ahmadnagar, Amena Tahseen of Maulana Azad Urdu University and Bhangya Bhukya of the University of Hyderabad. I could not have carried out this research without turning to experts on Dakkhani such as Sajjad Shahid and Majeed Bedar, and on the ground companions to various sites such as Riasat Ali Asrar, Maleeha Fatima, Haseeb Jaffri and Sibghatullah Khan. In the Salar Jung Museum and Archives, many thanks to Ahmed Ali and Ms. Kausar. I would like to especially thank historians of Mughal South Asia—Taymiya R. Zaman and Manan Ahmed Asif—for their generative engagements with earlier drafts of this article. This article is based on my larger work, and I am extremely appreciative of historians and other scholars of the Deccan who have helped me sharpen its points: Subah Dayal, Richard Eaton, Roy Fischel, Ayub Khan, Yamini Krishna, Pushkar Sohoni and Zoë Woodbury-High. For our valuable conversations about gender and Islam in South Asia, I wish to thank Tahera Aftab, Betül Basaran and Hafsa Kanjwal. About Chand Bibi in particular, I am much obliged to Shashi Dharmadhikari, Ameenuddin Hullur and Abdul Ghani Imraratwale. For a deeper understanding of Persianate history and Persian language sources, I am indebted to Matt Melvin-Koushki and Sunil Sharma. I deeply treasure the generous support and friendships across geographic borders and boundaries. All Persian and Urdu translations are my own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Roy S. Fischel, Local States in an Imperial World: Identity, Society and Politics in the Early Modern Deccan (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020): 14.

2. Ruby Lal, ‘Rethinking Mughal India: Challenge of a Princess’ Memoir’, Economic & Political Weekly 38, no. 1 (2003): 53–65; 53.

3. Firishta describes her as ‘bahādur’ (brave): Muhammad Qasim Firishta, Hindustan ki Mukammil Tarīkh: Tarīkh-i Firishta (Lahore: Tarjumah, Abdullah Khwaja, Almizan Urdu Bazar, 2008): 286; Taba Taba’i extols her in Burhan-e Ma’asir for ‘quwwat’ (strength and power): Saiyid ‘Ali Tabataba, Burhan-e Ma’asir (Delhi: Delhi Jam’i Press, 1936): 618.

4. Emma J. Flatt, The Courts of the Deccan Sultanates: Living Well in the Persian Cosmopolis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019): 299.

5. Richard M. Eaton, ‘The Rise and Fall of Military Slavery in the Deccan 1450–1650’, in Slavery and South Asian History, ed. Indrani Chatterjee and Richard M. Eaton (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006): 115–35; 122; Omar H. Ali, Malik Ambar: Power and Slavery aacross the Indian Ocean (The World in a Life Series), 1st ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016): 2.

6. Ibid.

7. Flatt, Courts of the Deccan Sultanate, 3.

8. Subah Dayal, ‘Vernacular Conquest? A Persian Patron and His Image in the Seventeenth-Century Deccan’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 37, no. 3 (2017): 549–69; 550; Sunil Sharma, ‘Forging a Canon of Dakhni Literature: Translations and Retellings from Persian’, in Iran and the Deccan: Persianate Art, Culture, and Talent in Circulation, 1400–1700, ed. K. Overton (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2020): 401–02.

9. M. Abdul Qadir, Tarīkh-e Ahmadnagar (Bombay: Khanah-Taj Office, 1940): 255–57. ‘Tora-Bibi’s Mosque was built in the reign of [Chand Bibi’s brother] Murtaza Nizam Shah (1565–1588)’ [and] ‘the mosque was built by Tora Bibi, one of Chand Sultana’s maids’: James M. Campbell, Gazetteeer of the Bombay Presidency, Vol. XVII (Ahmadnagar and Bombay: Government Central Press, 1884): 700.

10. Namrata Kanchan, ‘An Early Modern Khavarnamah from Bijapur’, Asian and African Studies blogbloglog, October 31, 2022, accessed April 23, 2024, https://blogs.bl.uk/asian-and-african/2022/10/an-early-modern-khavarnamah-from-bijapur.html.

11. Ibrahim Zubairi, Basatin-e-Salatin Urdu, trans. Maulana Mahboob al-Rahman Umri Madani (Bijapur: 2015): 107. 

12. Ghulam Yazdani, Epigraphia Indo-Moslemica, no. 13 (Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1907/08): 5.

13. Shireen Moosvi, ‘Work and Gender in Mughal India’, in People, Taxation, and Trade in Mughal India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008): 158. 

14. Untitled, Vijayapura: Gol Gumbaz Museum, ASI, Accession no. 2 (B-40).

15. Ibid.

16. Nazir Ahmad, ‘Kitab-e Nauras’, Urdu lithograph, Danish Mahal, Lucknow, 1955: 101–02.

17. Sultan Chand Bibi of Dakhin, Accession no. R.132 (C)/S.21, Indian Museum, Kolkata.

18. Shahpur Khorasan was Chand Bibi’s contemporary. Another painting attributed to him from 1534 features a dancing scene from a Sultanate manuscript: Bonnie C. Wade, Imaging Sound: An Ethnomusicological Study of Music, Art, and Culture in Mughal India (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1998): 118.

19. Jorge Flores, Unwanted Neighbours: The Mughals, the Portuguese, and TTheir Frontier Zones (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018): 183.

20. Ibid.

21. Saiyid ‘Ali Taba Taba’i, Burhan-e Ma’asir (Delhi: Jam’i Press, 1936): 619.

22. Flores, Unwwanted Neighbours, 182.

23. Amaresh Datta, ed., Encyclopaedia of Indian Literature: DDevraj to JJyoti, Vol. 2 (Sahitya Akademi, 1988): 1364. 

24. Leslie P. Pierce, The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993): 17.

25. Taymiya R. Zaman, ‘Instructive Memory: An Analysis of Auto/Biographical Writing in Early Mughal India’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 54, no. 5 (2011): 677–700; 687.

26. S.A.I. Tirmizi, Edicts from the Mughal Harem (Delhi: Idarah-e-Adabiyat-e Delhi, 1979): iii–v.

27. Qadir, Tarīkh-e Ahmadnagar, 255–57: this is an Urdu translation of Tarīkh-i Shahābi, whose last edition was republished in 1832, but this manuscript is no longer available. I have therefore relied upon Urdu translations of Tarīkh-i Shahābi such as Tarīkh-i Ahmadnagar and Muzdāh-e Ahmadnagar. Urdu historiography is an invaluable trove of primary source content. As Désoulières argues, ‘it would be unscientific to consider Urdu historiography as a mere secondary source and mere translation of Persian and English sources. Indeed, Urdu Historiography has and is producing so many original texts both in political and cultural (literary) history of India that are to be considered as “primary sources”. We may say that Urdu historiography excels in local or so-called provincial histories, be it South or North India; indeed, Urdu scholars were and are present at many places, not only former Muslim kingdoms or princely states. Those scholars, in addition to regional languages, are often scholars of Arabic and Persian and sometimes of Sanskrit. We have so many ‘Tārīx’ or Histories in Urdu that are genuine and original compositions from multiple sources, be it Histories/‘Tārīx’ of Panjāb or Dakkan (South India)’: Alain Désoulières, ‘Urdu Historiography, a Field of Urdu Literature in South Asia’, in Development, Governance and Gender in South Asia, ed. Anisur Rahman and Niharika Tiwari (Singapore: Springer, 2021): 195–206; 204.

28. Qadir, Tarīkh-e Ahmadnagar.

29. Flatt, Courts of the Deccan Sultanate, 74.

30. Qadir, Tarīkh-e Ahmadnagar, 251.

31. Gavin R.G. Hambly, ‘Armed Women Retainers in the Zenanas of Indo-Muslim Rulers: The Case of Bibi Fatima’, in Women in the Medieval Islamic World ((The New Middle Ages),), Vol. 6, ed. Gavin R.G. Hambly (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998): 438–40; 438.

32. Ruby Lal, Domesticity and Power in the Early Mughal World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005): 137.

33. Mansura Haider, Letters of Akbar in English Translation Edited with Commentary, Perspective and Notes (Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers and Indian Council of Historical Research, 1998): 86. Despite Akbar’s dictum, Mughal royal women rode horses as is evident from the records about Nur Jahan: see Ruby Lal, Empress: The Astonishing Reign of Nur Jahan (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2018).

34. Muhammad Qāsim Hindu Shah Astarābādī Firishta, Tārīkh-i Firishta/Ta’līf-i Muhammad Qāsim Hindu Shah Astarābādī; Tashih va ta’līq va tawÀīh va iÀāfāt-i Muhammad Rizza Nasīrī, Vols. 1–4, Vols. 1–4, ed. Muhammad Rizā Nasīrī (Tehran: Anjuman-i Āsār va Mafākhir-i Farhangi, 2009): 498–99.

35. Fuzūni, n.d., 232. 

36. al Mukhatab bah Khafi Khan Nizam al-Mulki Muhammad Hashim Khan, Muntakhab-al Labab: Ahval Salatin Mamalik-e Dakkan va Gujarat va Khandesh. Jild 3, Mufha, 253–54. 

37. According to one source, Ahmadnagar’s royal women entrusted the final rites to the Persian émigré, Mir Abutorab Torabi Mashadi, a scribe in the employ of the Nizam Shahis, who then carried the queen’s bones to Mashhad in the Khorasan province of the Safavid empire. Chand Bibi was laid to rest near the holy shrine of Imam Reza, the eighth Shi’a imam, one of the most sacred Shi’a sites in the world, and her name occurs in the list of persons buried there: see Ghulam Mirza Jalali, Mashāhir Madfūn Dar Haram Rezavi, Vol. 4 (Banyad Pashzohashahi Islami Aastan Qudus Rezavi, 1961): 193. 

38. Syed Ahmedullah Qadri, Memoirs of Chand Bibi: The Princess of Ahmadnagar, Nawab Lutf-ud-Daulah Memorial Series no. 2 (Hyderabad: Osmania University Press, 1939): 64; Qadri quotes Rafiuddin Shirazi’s Tazkirat-ul Mulk.

39. Zubairi, Basatin-e-Salatin Urdu, 145.

40. Fuzuni Astarabadi, Futuhāt-e Adil Shahi, British Museum, MS, Add. 27,251: 150–51.

41. Ibid.

42. Ibid., 195.

43. Zubairi, Basatin-e-Salatin Urdu, 156.

44. Eaton, ‘Rise and Fall of Military Slavery’, 122.

45. Muḥammad Qāsim Hindūshāh Astarābādī Firishta, History of the Rise of the Mahomedan Power in India till the YYear ADAD 1612, VVols. 1–4. 1–4, trans. John Briggs (Calcutta: Editions Indian, 1966): Vol. 3, 145–46.

46. Ibid., 43–46.

47. Astarābādi, Futuhāt-e Adil Shahi, 159.

48. Zubairi, Basatin-e-Salatin Urdu,164.

49. Firishta, History of the Rise, Vol. 3, 149.

50. Taba Taba’i, Burhan-e Ma’asir, 618.

51. On Bilqis, see Shahla Haeri, The Unforgettable Queens of Islam: Succession, Authority, Gender (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020).

52. Taba Taba’i, Burhan-e Ma’asir, 618.

53. Qadri, Memoirs of Chand Bibi, 55; see also Mirza Muhammad Khizar, Sultana Chand Bibi: Hayat aur Karname Ahmadnagar 1548–1600 (Aurangabad: Mirza Muhammad Khizar, 2021). As per my conversation with Dr. Khizar, the last Persian edition of Tarīkh-e Shahabi was republished in 1832, but this manuscript is no longer available. Translations of Tarīkh-e Shahabi are available in Urdu, such as Tarīkh--e Ahmadnagar, upon which I have relied: see Qadir, Tarikh-e Ahmadnagar, 250.

54. Qadri, Memoirs of Chand Bibi, 100. Qadri refers to a Persian chronicle (now extant), Jami-ul Ulum, written by Syed Jafar: Syed Jafar, Jami-ul Ulum, Zamimeh Jild Awwal, Mufhah 9.

55. Khan, n.d., 262. 

56. Shaikh Ismail Hafiz Ahmadnagri, Muzdah-e Ahmadnagar: Hissa Aval, 1905, Salar Jung Archives, Urdu Catalogue: Tarikh-e Deccan 143/6320: 63.

57. John T. Platts, A Dictionary of Urdu, Classical Hindi, and English (London: W.H. Allen & Co., 1884).

58. Veena Oldenburg, ‘Comment: The Continuing Invention of the Sati Tradition’, in Sati, the Blessing and the Curse: The Burning of Wives in India, ed. John Stratton Hawley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994): 164–65. Oldenburg writes, ‘internecine warfare among Rajput kingdoms almost certainly supplied the first occasions for jauhar, well before the Muslim invasions with which the practice is popularly associated’.

59. Harbans Mukhia, The Mughals of India (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2008): 152–53.

60. Taba Taba’i, Burhan-e Ma’asir, 618–19. The Persian word pyaleh—cup or drinking vessel—also referred to a kind of funeral rite for Muslim mendicants, as well as the fire-pan of a musket. The implication is that if enemies should get a hold of ‘that pyaleh’ meaning ‘if the fort should fall and I be subject to funeral, then only would I take the cup of poison’.

61. David Arnold, Toxic Histories: Poison and Pollution in Modern India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016): 18–21.

62. A.R. Kulkarni, ‘Akbar and the Conquest of Ahmadnagar’, paper presented at the International Seminar on ‘Akbar and His Age’, ICHR, New Delhi, October 15–17, 1992. Many thanks to Shashi Dharmadhikari, who shared the original document in Marathi. According to historian A.R. Kulkarni, who first translated the Marathi fatehnama into English, the now extant account ‘was traced by the research scholar D.B. Parasnis in the archives of the Bhonsales of Nagpur and published in his historical journal Itihas Samgraha in 1913’.

63. Stewart Gordon, The New Cambridge History of India: The Marathas 1600–1818 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993): 14–15.

64. Kulkarni, ‘Akbar and the Conquest’, 15.

65. Ibid.

66. Sharifji refers to one of Maloji Bhonsale’s sons. He had two sons, Shah and Sharif. Here, Shahji does not refer to the son, but to the father Maloji, for ‘shah’ is being used here as a term of respect, given his stature as a general.

67. Kulkarni, ‘Akbar and the Conquest’, 16.

68. Eaton, Social History, 123.

69. Pushkar Sohoni, ‘Architectural Continuity across Political Ruptures: Early Marathas and the Deccan Sultanates’, in Spaces and Places in Western India: Formations and Delineations, ed. Bina Sengar and Laurie H. McMillin (New York: Routledge, 2019): 107. 

70. James Laine, Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003): 15.

71. ‘[Maloji] could participate rather easily in both the cosmopolitan Islamicate court life and the popular religion where Sufis and Hindu saints traded on their charismatic powers without concern for communal boundaries. The Varkari tradition also includes Muslim devotees and writers [such as] Sheikh Muhammad, a seventeenth century saint from the Ahmadnagar region, who apologetically confessed that although born into the caste of Muslims, he still had sincere devotion to God (defined in Hindu bhakti terms)’: ibid., 16.

72. Ibid.

73. Ibid.

74. I have identified the saint as Hazrat Bagh-e Nizam, whose shrine is inside Ahmadnagar fort and continues to be an active site of worship to this day.

75. Nepti was a major source of water, and an aqueduct by the same name provided water channels to the earliest palaces in Ahmadnagar: Pramod Gadre, Cultural Archaeology of Ahmadnagar dduring Nizam Shahi Period (1494–1632) (Delhi: B.R. Publishing Corp., 1986): 50.

76. Kulkarni, ‘Akbar and the Conquest’, 13.

77. Ibid.

78. Abdul Baqi Nihavandi, Ma’asir-e Rahimi (Azamgarh: Shibli Academy Press, 2017): 158.

79. Ahmadnagri, Muzdah-e Ahmadnagar: Hissa Aval, 64–65.

80. C.A. Kincaid and Rao Bahadur D.B. Parasnis, A History of the Maratha People, Vol. 1: From the Earliest Times to the Death of Shivaji (London and Madras: Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press, 1918): 100.

81. James Wescoat, Michael Brand and Naeem Mir, ‘Gardens, Roads, and Legendary Tunnels: The Underground Memory of Mughal Lahore’, Journal of Historical Geography 17, no. 1 (1991): 1–17; 3.