To face p. 702.
The story, in brief, is as follows:—At the time of Bābur’s death Niz̤āmu’d-dīn Aḥmad’s father Khwāja Muḥammad Muqīm Harāwī was in the service of the Office of Works.[2724] Amīr Niz̤āmu’d-dīn ‘Alī Khalīfa, the Chief of the Administration, had dread and suspicion about Humāyūn and did not favour his succession as Pādshāh. Nor did he favour that of Bābur’s other sons. He promised “Bābur Pādshāh’s son-in-law (dāmād)” Mahdī Khwāja who was a generous young man, very friendly to himself, that he would make him Pādshāh. This promise becoming known, others made their salām to the Khwāja who put on airs and accepted the position. One day when Khalīfa, accompanied by Muqīm, went to see Mahdī Khwāja in his tent, no-one else being present, Bābur, in the pangs of his disease, sent for him[2725] when he had been seated a few minutes only. When Khalīfa had gone out, Mahdī Khwāja remained standing in such a way that Muqīm could not follow but, the Khwāja unaware, waited respectfully behind him. The Khwāja, who was noted for the wildness of youth, said, stroking his beard, “Please God! first, I will flay thee!” turned round and saw Muqīm, took him by the ear, repeated a proverb of menace, “The red tongue gives the green head to the wind,” and let him go. Muqīm hurried to Khalīfa, repeated the Khwāja’s threat against him, and remonstrated about the plan to set all Bābur’s sons aside in favour of a stranger-house.[2726] Here-upon Khalīfa sent for Humāyūn,[2727] and despatched an officer with orders to the Khwāja to retire to his house, who found him about to dine and hurried him off without ceremony. Khalīfa also issued a proclamation forbidding intercourse with him, excluded him from Court, and when Bābur died, supported Humāyūn.
As Niz̤āmu’d-dīn Aḥmad was not born till 20 years after Bābur died, the story will have been old before he could appreciate it, and it was some 60 years old when it found way into the T̤abaqāt-i-akbarī and, with less detail, into the Akbar-nāma.
Taken as it stands, it is incredible, because it represents Khalīfa, and him alone, planning to subject the four sons of Bābur to the suzerainty of Mahdī Khwāja who was not a Tīmūrid, who, so far as well-known sources show, was not of a ruling dynasty or personally illustrious,[2728] and who had been associated, so lately as the autumn of 1529 AD., with his nephew Raḥīm-dād in seditious action which had so angered Bābur that, whatever the punishment actually ordered, rumour had it both men were to die.[2729] In two particulars the only Mahdī Khwāja then of Bābur’s following, does not suit the story; he was not a young man in 1530 AD.,[2730] and was not a dāmād of Bābur, if that word be taken in its usual sense of son-in-law, but he was a yazna, husband of a Pādshāh’s sister, in his case, of Khān-zāda Begīm.[2731] Some writers style him Sayyid Mahdī Khwāja, a double title which may indicate descent on both sides from religious houses; one is suggested to be that of Tirmiẕ by the circumstance that in his and Khān-zāda Begīm’s mausoleum was buried a Tirmiẕ sayyid of later date, Shāh Abū’l-ma‘ālī. But though he were of Tirmiẕ, it is doubtful if that religious house would be described by the word khānwāda which so frequently denotes a ruling dynasty.
His name may have found its way into Niz̤āmu’d-dīn Aḥmad’s story as a gloss mistakenly amplifying the word dāmād, taken in its less usual sense of brother-in-law. To Bābur’s contemporaries the expression “Bābur Pādshāh’s dāmād” (son-in-law) would be explicit, because for some 11 years before he lay on his death-bed, he had one son-in-law only, viz. Muḥammad-i-zamān Mīrzā Bāī-qarā,[2732] the husband of Ma‘ṣūma Sult̤ān Begīm. If that Mīrzā’s name were where Mahdī Khwāja’s is entered, the story of an exclusion of Bābur’s sons from rule might have a core of truth.
It is incredible however that Khālīfa, with or without Bābur’s concurrence, made the plan attributed to him of placing any man not a Tīmūrid in the position of Pādshāh over all Bābur’s territory. I suggest that the plan concerned Hindūstān only and was one considered in connection with Bābur’s intended return to Kābul, when he must have left that difficult country, hardly yet a possession, in charge of some man giving promise of power to hold it. Such a man Humāyūn was not. My suggestion rests on the following considerations:—
(1) Bābur’s outlook was not that of those in Āgra in 1587 AD. who gave Abū’l-faẓl his Bāburiana material, because at that date Dihlī had become the pivot of Tīmūrid power, so that not to hold Hindūstān would imply not to be Pādshāh. Bābur’s outlook on his smaller Hindūstān was different; his position in it was precarious, Kābul, not Dihlī, was his chosen centre, and from Kābul his eyes looked northwards as well as to the East. If he had lost the Hindūstān which was approximately the modern United Provinces, he might still have held what lay west of it to the Indus, as well as Qandahār.
(2) For several years before his death he had wished to return to Kābul. Ample evidence of this wish is given by his diary, his letters, and some poems in his second Dīwān (that found in the Rāmpūr MS.). As he told his sons more than once, he kept Kābul for himself.[2733] If, instead of dying in Āgra, he had returned to Kābul, had pushed his way on from Badakhshān, whether as far as Samarkand or less, had given Humāyūn a seat in those parts,—action foreshadowed by the records—a reasonable interpretation of the story that Humāyūn and his brothers were not to govern Hindūstān, is that he had considered with Khalīfa the apportionment of his territories according to the example of his ancestors Chīngīz Khān, Tīmūr and Abū-sa‘īd; that by his plan of apportionment Humāyūn was not to have Hindūstān but something Tramontane; Kāmrān had already Qandahār; Sulaimān, if Humāyūn had moved beyond the out-post of Badakhshān, would have replaced him there; and Hindūstān would have gone to “Bābur Pādshāh’s dāmād”.
(3) Muḥammad-i-zamān had much to recommend him for Hindūstān:—Tīmūrid-born, grandson and heir of Sl. Ḥusain Mīrzā, husband of Ma‘ṣūma who was a Tīmūrid by double descent,[2734] protected by Bābur after the Bāī-qarā débacle in Herāt, a landless man leading such other exiles as Muḥammad Sult̤ān Mīrzā,[2735] ‘Ādil Sult̤ān, and Qāsim-i-ḥusain Sult̤ān, half-Tīmūrids all, who with their Khurāsānī following, had been Bābur’s guests in Kābul, had pressed on its poor resources, and thus had helped in 932 AH. (1525 AD.) to drive him across the Indus. This Bāī-qarā group needed a location; Muḥammad-i-zamān’s future had to be cared for and with his, Ma‘ṣūma’s.