Vagabond Princess: The Great Adventures of Gulbadan

by Ruby Lal

Overview

A captivating biography of one of the world’s greatest adventurers, the itinerant Mughal Princess Gulbadan, based on her long-forgotten memoir
 
Longlisted for the Cundill History Prize • Finalist, Georgia Author of the Year Award • Shortlisted for James Tait Black Prize in Biography
 
“Ruby Lal coaxes the remarkable Gulbadan out from the shadows of history.”—Sara Wheeler, Wall Street Journal
 
Situated in the early decades of the magnificent Mughal Empire, this first ever biography of Princess Gulbadan 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’d 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 extant work of prose by a woman of the age. A portion of it is missing, either lost to history or redacted by officials who did not want the princess to have her say.
 
Vagabond Princess contemplates the story of the missing pages and breathes new life into a daring historical figure. It offers a portal to a richly complex world, rife with movement and migration, where women’s conviviality, adventure, and autonomies shine through.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780300281958
Publisher:	Yale University Press
Publication date:	03/04/2025
Pages:	280
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Ruby Lal is an acclaimed historian of India, a professor at Emory University, and the author of three books and numerous essays, op-eds, and literary pieces. Her book Empress: The Astonishing Reign of Nur Jahan won the Georgia Author of the Year Award in biography and was a finalist in history for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.

Editorial Reviews

In Vagabond Princess, Ruby Lal coaxes the remarkable Gulbadan out from the shadows of history.”—Sara Wheeler, Wall Street Journal

“A highly appetizing and exhaustively researched biography. . . . Lal does this with aplomb, marshalling the excerpts and ‘close reading’ the paintings for a triumph of historical reconstruction.”—John Keay, Times Literary Supplement

“A historian of India reveals the lush world of a sixteenth-century Mughal princess and her extraordinary pilgrimage to Mecca. . . . The author’s impressive scholarship encompasses Gulbadan’s immense influences and distinctive style. . . . Finally, a serious consideration of Gulbadan’s achievement, long ‘sidelined by modern historians.’”—Kirkus Reviews

“Lal’s research into previously hidden worlds is at the forefront of an exciting academic movement.”—Lucy Moore, Literary Review

“[Gulbadan’s] voice humanises some of the great characters of the time and provides a rare first-hand picture of life during the dramatic rise of the Mughals.”—Anthony Sattin, The Spectator

“Gulbadan, literate, observant, intelligent, a central observer to the establishment of the Mughal Empire, is a historical figure well worth discovering. Lal’s enthusiasm for her is infectious. . . . [Lal] is a fluent writer, with a good grasp of atmosphere and description [and who] knows how to tell a good story.”—Peter Gordon, Asian Review of Books

“Like a meticulous and careful detective . . . Lal unearths clues [and] writes with authority and panache.”—Madhulika Liddle, Frontline (India)

“At a time when the National Council for Educational Research and Training is reducing Mughal history content in school history textbooks in India, it is all the more important to continue bringing the lives of Mughal women to the attention of the world. Ruby Lal has succeeded in giving us a biography of an extraordinary life that women in the twenty-first century in India and the world can draw inspiration from.”—India Currents

“Lal delivers an insightful biography of princess Gulbadan Begum (1523–1603), an adventurer and influential presence at court during the early years of the Mughal empire. . . . A comprehensive and vivid portrait of an exceptional historical figure.”—Publishers Weekly

Named a “Most Anticipated Feminist Book of 2024” by Ms.

“A meticulously researched biography. . . . Drawing from Gulbadan’s own writings, this book beautifully evokes the vibrant Mughal court life. . . . An important portrait of a sixteenth-century Muslim woman that stresses the active role royal women played in politics, religion, and the arts.”—Library Journal

“A fascinating historical tale. . . . In drawing primarily on an archival source written by a woman, Lal paints a vivid and complex portrait, one marked by abundance and adventure but also sorrow and intrigue, thus challenging the academic and casual reader alike to rethink how we receive and perceive history.”—Girija Sankar, Khabar

“Lal manages to recreate [Gulbadan’s life] beautifully. . . . A very vivid book.”—Sophie Roell, Five Books, “Nonfiction Books to Look Out for in Early 2024”

“Lal breathes gorgeous life into a figure and her time and place in a history that has long been dominated by men’s actions and words.”—India-West Journal

“Rich with detail about a region that has known unrest for millennia. . . . Readers eager to understand 1500s Central Asia will relish this lush repository of colorful material about its most privileged figures.”—Larry Mathews, Washington Independent Review of Books

Longlisted for the 2024 Cundill Prize, sponsored by McGill University

Finalist for the Georgia Author of the Year Award

Shortlisted for The James Tait Black Prize in Biography, sponsored by the University of Edinburgh

“An astonishing work by one of the most exciting historians writing today. Vagabond Princess is more than just a brilliant page-turner of a biography, narrating in vivid detail a story few people know. It is a passionate and compelling argument to place the extraordinary Gulbadan among the pantheon of great adventurers like Ibn Battuta and Marco Polo. I loved this book.”—Reza Aslan, author of Zealot and An American Martyr in Persia

“Vagabond Princess is a deeply feminist text interrogating the making of archives, obsessed with imagining the spirit of freedom and love of learning in certain Mughal women, with a stunning buildup of the concept-metaphor of mujawir as ‘vagabond.’ A splendid teaching text, but also a reading text for sheer instructive pleasure; as we follow the epistemological performance of the making of the book with the book itself.”—Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, author of Other Asias

“In Vagabond Princess, Ruby Lal brilliantly illuminates the remarkable life and talent of Princess Gulbadan Begum, daughter of Emperor Babur and historian of her own times. Lost and forgotten for many centuries, Gulbadan and her work live again through Lal’s magisterial account of the sixteenth-century Mughal court.”—Amanda Foreman, author of The Duchess

“A work of meticulous scholarship and brilliant storytelling, Vagabond Princess is both an epic historical tale and a compelling personal account of one of the most interesting women to have lived during the Mughal Empire.”—Daniel H. Weiss, Homewood Professor of the Humanities at Johns Hopkins University and president emeritus of The Metropolitan Museum of Art

“Meticulous archival research combines with a strikingly imaginative evocation of the world inhabited by Mughal women in Ruby Lal’s writing. Whether set against the dust and grit of imperial caravans, salt-lashed sea voyages, or the manicured precision of Mughal gardens, her vagabond princess, Gulbadan, surprises us at every turn. A superb achievement.”—Nandini Das, author of Courting India: Seventeenth-Century England, Mughal India, and the Origins of Empire

From the Publisher

2023-11-28
A historian of India reveals the lush world of a 16th-century Mughal princess and her extraordinary pilgrimage to Mecca in 1578.

Lal, a professor of South Asian studies and author of Empress: The Astonishing Reign of Nur Jahan, brings us the fascinating story of Gulbadan Begum (1523-1603), daughter of Babur, founder of the Mughal Empire. In her position, she became a valuable literary witness to this rich period of Indian history. Deeply immersed in the early nomadic lifestyle of the court, which “inhabited the urbanity of Persian culture,” Gulbadan, at age 6, moved from the royal household in Kabul to Agra when Babur subdued Hindustan and needed “extensive settlement in this new land.” Raised by several of the emperor’s wives, within a deeply erudite and warlike culture, Gulbadan suffered the death of her father in 1530 and witnessed the beginning of the rule of her nephew Akbar, whose long reign (as a contemporary of Queen Elizabeth I) achieved the apotheosis of Mughal power and glory in India. Akbar permitted Gulbadan and a dozen other aristocratic women to travel the dangerous pilgrimage route to Mecca, where they caused such a sensation that Sultan Murad III of Turkey, custodian of the holy sites, ultimately evicted them. The entourage then wandered for four mysterious years, which Lal tracks through Gulbadan’s own book, which she called Conditions in the Age of Humayun Badshah. The author’s impressive scholarship encompasses Gulbadan’s immense influences and distinctive style, and she successfully raises this “audacious and unclassifiable” account of a keen observer and chronicler of her age into the literary ranks it deserves. Only one copy of this work survives, translated by Annette Beveridge, “a British colonial-era scholar,” in the 1890s. Lal also includes a helpful cast of characters at the beginning.

Finally, a serious consideration of Gulbadan’s achievement, long “sidelined by modern historians.

Kirkus Reviews