Vagabond Princess

Vagabond Princess
Vagabond Princess: The Great Adventures of Gulbadan
 
Set in the early decades of the Mughal Empire, this definitive biography of Princess Gulbadan, the daughter of Emperor Babur, offers an enthralling portrait of a charismatic adventurer and unique pictures of the multicultural society in which she lived. Following a migratory childhood that spanned Kabul and north India, Gulbadan spent her middle years in a walled harem established by her nephew Akbar to showcase his authority as the Great Emperor. Gulbadan longed for the exuberant itinerant lifestyle she had known. With Akbar’s blessing, she led an unprecedented sailing and overland voyage, and guided harem women on an extended pilgrimage in Arabia. Amid increasing political tensions, the women’s “un-Islamic” behavior forced their return, lengthened by a dramatic shipwreck in the Red Sea.

Gulbadan wrote a book upon her return, the only surviving work of prose by a woman of her times. A portion of it is missing, either lost to history or redacted by officials who did not want the princess to have her say. As she contemplates the story of the missing pages, Ruby Lal breathes new life into an extraordinary Mughal figure and establishes her place in a history that has long been dominated by men’s actions and words. Vagabond Princess shape-shifts our views of the magnificent Mughals as we begin to see and feel Gulbadan’s world, full of freedom, movement and migration, and encounters with new cultures, tongues, and art forms.