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- [00:01]
William Durimpole
If you want access to bonus episodes, reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community, discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast ad, free listening and a weekly newsletter. Sign up to empire club@www.empirepoduk.com.
- [00:19]
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- [00:35]
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- [00:39]
William Durimpole
And there it was, that hologram trading card. One of the rarest, the last one I needed for my set.
- [00:45]
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- [00:52]
William Durimpole
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- [01:00]
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- [01:06]
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- [01:29]
Anita Anand
Hello and welcome to Empire with me.
- [01:31]
William Durimpole
Anita Arnen and me, William Durimpole.
- [01:34]
Anita Anand
Now, the last episode we left you with Barbara, having exchanged his life with her, Maya, his son in the eyes of God. I mean, it was a very sort of sweet and actually quite touching promise that he makes to God, that if you spare my sick son, then just take me instead. It is said, I think this is really interesting, really, that Barbara's last words to his son are, do nought against your brothers, even though they may deserve it. Isn't that interesting? That's his advice to his son.
- [02:02]
William Durimpole
This is a crucial bind for Humayun because Humayun, who realizes in his view that his father has given his life for him, is not willing throughout his life to forget his father's last request. And as we will see, this is the single biggest flaw in Humayun's rule that he is continually messed around by his kid brothers who are always rebelling against them and he's always forgiving them. And this goes on and on and on till eventually his own followers take the law into their own hands and sort the problem out.
- [02:34]
Anita Anand
Don't blow the end.
- [02:35]
William Durimpole
Okay, I'm not saying a thing.
- [02:36]
Anita Anand
Yes, I mean, you just did. But it's okay, let's pretend you didn't. But let's Just remind people of her mayo because we sort of described him as this batik wearing hippie on a Gap yar. But we're talking about a man who was actually very glamorous. I mean, he was a glamorous man who liked colorful clothes.
- [02:54]
William Durimpole
I'm not sure I'd say glam, but he was certainly lively and dreamy, I think is the word I'd probably use. We talked last time about how Babur shows this sort of odd mixture of pride and extreme irritation with this boy.
- [03:11]
Anita Anand
Like so many Indian dads before.
- [03:13]
William Durimpole
Like so many Indian dads. Exactly. And the son is brave, dashing, intelligent, but also kind of unfocused, unambitious, and like me, perennially unpunctual. And. Except that while I'm often sort of half an hour late.
- [03:28]
Anita Anand
Half an hour late.
- [03:30]
William Durimpole
How are you?
- [03:32]
Anita Anand
Flames. Oh, my lord. Okay, well, let that stop.
- [03:36]
William Durimpole
I have never turned up three weeks late, which is what Humayun does when Babur's trying to invade India. But when you and I first worked together on our Koh I Noor book, I wrote quite a lot about Humayun in that. And I was very much of the view that he was this hippy, dippy, charming, dashing, but rather hopeless boy. But since then there has been a very important intervention by my wonderful friend Ebba Koch.
- [04:01]
Anita Anand
Ah, yes.
- [04:01]
William Durimpole
She's the greatest living scholar of Mughal architecture and she's a particular expert on the early Mughal period. And in the year following our Koh I Noor book, Ebba came out with a wonderful book called the Planetary King Humayun Padshah, inventor and visionary on the Mughal throne. And this has completely changed all our views on Humayun. And if I was writing that book again, I would write a very different portrait now, having read Eber's work, because Eber has shown that the kind of, you know, the kind of horoscope loving Humayun, who we always thought were just the hippie dippy. I mean, the story that is always told of him is he fires arrows in the air randomly and sees where they land and decides on his policy depending on where they land. Now that all sounded kind of completely bonkers to us, but she has shown that in fact he is, by the standards of the time, this sort of visionary mystic, stroke astronomer, mathematician, who, like everyone at this time, looks to the heavens for the answers. This is not unique to Humayun. This is absolutely par for the course in both Indian and in Islamic thought. And this whole science as it was thought of then, which the ancient Indians in Sanskrit called Jyotisha, which is both a mixture of astronomy and astrology and mathematics, was something that Humayun was a great expert in. And while he spent most of his life fighting, and a lot of his life fighting against his brothers, in between times he comes up with extraordinary inventions, which I had no idea about until I read Ebba's book. So what we're going to be talking about over the next two episodes is profoundly altered by Eber's work. And I recommend anyone who wants to know more about Humayun or anyone who wants to have a completely new take on one of the six famous Mogul rulers to go and buy the planetary king, because it's completely changed my view of this man. So, anyway, let's go ahead using Eber's work.
- [06:05]
Anita Anand
Eba's work is fabulous. I'll just give you a little bit of a pen portrait of the man himself. So he's born on the 6th of March in 1508 in Kabul to Baba's favorite wife. But he is the first of Barbara's children to survive infancy because infant mortality is so very terrible. And the Kabul that he is born into is very different to the one that Barbara first encounters in 1504. He's beloved, but will become infuriating to his father because, you know, his father will have numerous wives. He'll have four other sons, five daughters, a number of other children who died childbirth or as infants. But we should talk about the three most prominent brothers. That dark sort of muttering from Baba on his deathbed, you know, do not act against your brothers, even if they deserve it. The three brothers in question are Kamran, Askari and Hindal. Tell us a little bit about the family relationship. What are the personalities of these people?
- [07:01]
William Durimpole
Well, these three between them behave so badly in Humayun's rule that it subsequently changes the entire course of Mughal history. And it becomes the norm in Mughal rule henceforth to imprison younger sons within the fort. And this remains true right up until the time of the end of the Mughal dynasty in the 1850s as a whole. By that stage, there's a whole half of the Red Fort, which is the princely quarter. And these guys lead a very circumscribed life. They have to seek special permission to leave the fort. They're basically expected to live in great luxury, but within it, within this world, within the world. And this is all because Kamran, Askari and Hindal between them make Humayun's life completely impossible. It's a lesson which subsequent Moguls take to heart and they're never going to suffer the same as Humayun.
- [07:51]
Anita Anand
It would have been easier if Baba would have just named a successor, you know, that Humayun is going to be the one who takes over using a system that the others. I mean, the Ottomans, they killed their brothers, didn't they? Killed any other challenger. But in this system that Humayun inherits, the kingdom's kind of carved up into separate territories. So these other sons, I mean, Humayun is the main man. He's going to be the main man. But the others get regions where they can plot and fulminate against, you know, the fact that they haven't been the main man and have a chance to act against him.
- [08:25]
William Durimpole
I think you can find examples in the previous reigns of both approaches. There are examples where brothers are kept strongly under a leash, so to speak. There are other examples where people have taken the view that their brothers are their most useful allies and that, you know, keeping governorates within the family is the best way of keeping the whole empire together. So when Humayun is ruling, I don't think that he's breaking a precedent. I think it's just that from this point, the system has changed to make sure that what happens during Humayun's rule is never repeated. It's a very important part of Humayun's story, and it's one that alters subsequent history completely. So Humayun is 18 when his father goes to India, and Humayun has a good war. We've described him as this sort of hippy, dippy character, but he doesn't seem like that during the invasion of India, although he's very late setting off. He distinguishes himself at the Battle of Panipat and then races on to capture Agra. And remember, it's Humayun who captures the diamond that may be the Koh I Noor when he takes Lodi Agra and captures the Raja of Gwalior and his jewels. And in other periods, Babu has placed Humayun in charge of Badakhshan, which is one of the richest provinces in Afghanistan.
- [09:41]
Anita Anand
Badakhshan rubies. We've talked about so many Badakhshan rubies.
- [09:44]
William Durimpole
And Badakshan Lapis Lapis Lazuli comes from there. Exactly. Despite his sort of tendency to get excited about astronomy and the heavens, is a very successful general. It's one of the things he does very well. And we talked last time about the crucial Battle of Kanua, when Babur just manages to defeat Rana Sanga, partly due to his canon Partly due to the fact that Rana Sangha is subsequently betrayed by his. By his own people. And after that, while Babur is sort of mopping up resistance in India, Babur sends Humayun back to Kabul to maintain his interests in that whole region. And there's this wonderful moment when Humayun gets a bit bored in Afghanistan. Remember, his father longs to be back in Kabul and thinks he's done the kindest thing a father can do by sending Humayun back there. Humayun suddenly turns up in Agra in 1529 when he's meant to be governing Central Asia. And there's a famous miniature, I think, in one of the babu namas of Humayun turning up unexpectedly at court and his mother and all the other ladies sort of falling on him and giving him a kind of group hug. So Humayun is around in India, and it is in India that he gets his fever, and it is in India that he recovers as Babur falls ill and dies also.
- [11:08]
Anita Anand
I mean, we should really mark this because I think this is important, that the Hindustan that Hamayya will inherit has only been taken by Babur 4 years before. So you know what he is. He is not a very fresh. It's a very fresh. And in the minds of many people who live in India, the Mughals are still a military occupation. They are not a government. They haven't been accepted as a ruling family at all yet. So, you know, Hermayo is on pretty shaky foundations. Even if Barbara has been remarkably successful, he's not inheriting a state, he's inheriting a state in flux.
- [11:43]
William Durimpole
We look at history always with the eyes of hindsight because we know that the Moguls would go on until 1858 or 1857. And we always sort of forget how much is contingent on chance. And what Humayun inherits at the age of 22 is, as you say, an incredibly unstable India. There are warring Afghans who do not want the Mughals anywhere near Hindustan, running the whole of Bengal. Bengal has been in Afghan hands for a couple of hundred years. And Humayun has to go straight into battle when on December 29, 1530, his father dies. And his first battles are in Gujarat. He leads a campaign to Gujarat. He faces off against the Sultan of Gujarat, Sultan Bahardur. And Humayun besieges the great fortress of Champina. Have you ever been to Champana in Gujarat?
- [12:36]
Anita Anand
I actually have never been to Champana. So tell me what I'm missing.
- [12:39]
William Durimpole
So there's this whole world that is almost never visited by outsiders of these extraordinary Sultanate buildings in Gujarat. And the architecture of Gujarat so impresses Humayun's son, Akbar, a generation on the style of Fatehpur Sikri. And the style of Akbari architecture is very much borrowed and in a sense plagiarized from that of Champanna and the Gujarati Sultanates. But this is one of the most innovative Indo Islamic kingdoms and one of the richest because it has a very rich trading merchant class that trade along the Arabian Ocean and sail across to Africa and to Egypt at this period. This is what Humayun now is, is gunning for. As far as he's concerned, his father has successfully first defeated and then collaborated with the Rajputs. And so beyond Rajasthan, he now wants to go to war with the Gujaratis. And he defeats them. It's a success. 15:35, he defeats Sultan Bahadur, takes Champina, takes the treasury. He's so impressed by Champina and enjoys so much the architecture and the glorious world of gardens and delights that he finds that he remains there indulging in all sorts of astronomical interests and pleasures.
- [14:03]
Anita Anand
I'm going to say more about his superstition in a second. But interestingly, he doesn't kill Sultan Bahadur because Sultan Bahadur pegs it to the coast. And actually it's the Portuguese who are there already who protect him. He takes refuge with the Portuguese. It's not a vanquish forever because he doesn't manage to kill the man. It is, though, at a time when people start realizing just how superstitious this fellow is. And you sort of start saying he's a bit weird because instead of Humayun, he never placed his left foot first in any house or mosque. And if anyone else did, he would send them out and tell them to come back again. He's flexing, he's winning military things, but people are thinking he's decidedly odd at this time as well.
- [14:41]
William Durimpole
There are those like Eberkok, who defend this. And as far as she's concerned, it isn't weird that he actually has a deep engagement with both Indian and Islamic traditions of astronomy. Eber has found a whole series of new sources for Humayun's reign that point to what he was up to in a way that we didn't understand before. And he's trying to build. We did say he was a bit of a hippie dippy, a utopian society favored by the heavens. And Eber depicts Humayun as a ruler whose fixations were, first and foremost intellectual. He's besotted by numbers and geometry. No other ruler organizes his court like he does, according to planetary cosmology designs, court costumes, court gates based on this system, he conceives astronomical tents and carpets, which sound to me a bit. Do you remember that game Twister? Did you ever do.
- [15:40]
Anita Anand
Oh, yeah. Twister.
- [15:41]
William Durimpole
When you were ground, when you've got.
- [15:42]
Anita Anand
One, I played drunk Twister. That's something.
- [15:45]
William Durimpole
Well, there's a version, a kind of version of that, that he comes up with this carpet organized into different astronomical real that you have to move yourself into. But what's also fascinating is at this period in Ciampina and at the beginning of his reign, he begins to construct movable palaces as sort of boats, floating bazaars and gardens, boat palaces and movable bridges. It's all quite exciting stuff.
- [16:11]
Anita Anand
Let's talk about his sort of innovations in a bit. But I just want to talk about that moment, that sort of honeymoon period after he takes Ciampina because he really wants to party with the troops. You know, well done, boys. You done really, really well. And so he sits, you know, this is a lovely detail, in the new fortress that now belongs to him. And he wears the red clothing of Mars. And he sits on the throne and he says, let us. Let us celebrate. And they do, and they get really quite raucously drunk. And what happens is the army, because it's drunk and out of control, decide to lead their own expedition. They just go off, you know, thinking, oh, Homaiya's asleep. You know, he's probably asleep and is read, let's go off and do something ourselves. And Hamayu is incensed because it's the kind of like, give him an inch, those bloody troops, and they take a mile. So when they come back and he orders them back and they do come back, he orders a really savage punishment for anyone involved in this expedition, this extrajudicial expedition that he did not order. Even the imam, who he suspected of criticizing him and sort of, you know, egging these drunken troops on. And you know what the punishment is? He orders elephants to trample them to death. So hippy dippy he may be, but not like a hippie that you and I recognize, who is all peace and love, because there is a darkness about this as well.
- [17:32]
William Durimpole
Well, I don't think he regards it as a darkness. He's. He sees it as trying to keep the proper order, the proper cosmological order. He dresses each day in. In planetary colors so that it was red for Mars the day that that happened. The quarters of each of his Seven daughters are arranged in planetary formation, and Humayun visits them in the Pacific order. And we catch glimpses of Humayun's sort of weird, mathematical, astronomical mind in the structure of the monuments he commissions in these movable palaces and bridges and floating bazaars and all the rest of it. But it's something which is very much the. The source of Mogul style in the future. His architecture is very ornate and built with this sort of geometrical precision that he insists on maintaining at court. In the surviving buildings, you see the use of all these different colors in the way that he lays it down in his planetary system. So it all looks a bit weird to us, but the result is Mughal architecture. And Eberkok has made a very good case that all this sort of strange rules about color and geometry ends up with ultimately Humayun's tomb, which is the seed from which the Taj Mahal grows.
- [18:50]
Anita Anand
You've just jumped. We are jumping, but it's important.
- [18:54]
William Durimpole
What I'm trying to say is that all this sort of weird color and geometry that he imposes on the court ends with the Taj Mahal. So we can't complain too much. This is where all these ideas begin. And she makes the case. Ebba makes a case that it is without Humayun, we'd never have any of those beautiful gardens, any of those beautiful.
- [19:14]
Anita Anand
Can I put it this way? In conclusion? He's pretty weird, but his weird is pretty. Okay, we'll leave it at that. But he's sort of sitting there comfortably. He's trampled his unruly troops to death, so no one's going to do that again. But while he's sort of sitting pretty and thinking he's done very, very well, there is a threat that is on the horizon, and that is an Afghan warlord called Cher Chah. So join us after the break and we'll talk about what happens when he has to face another challenge which is not as easy to defeat. It doesn't go running off to the Portuguese. It is a real present danger to Humayun's short rule.
- [19:54]
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William Durimpole
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Anita Anand
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- [21:29]
Anita Anand
Welcome back. So just before the break, we were talking about this impending threat that is coming to Hamayo's rule in the shape of somebody I called Cher Shah. But he's not Shershah at the time because he's still Shere Khan. That's a name we all know if we've read our Jungle Book, Shere Khan. But he is the lion, the Lion King, if you like. And tell us a little bit because he's an Afghan warlord, is he not, William? And tell us a little bit about his story. What's up with him and where is he?
- [21:54]
William Durimpole
There is a whole world of supporters of Shekhar, particularly I think in modern Pakistan and Afghanistan, who make the case that in fact many of the things for which the Mughals are remembered, such as the Grand Trunk Road, some of the greatest buildings in Delhi are the result of Shere Khan or Sher Shah, not the Moguls. He's from one of these Pashtun Afghan tribes who have come down to Hindustan and settled in what's now Bihar and Bengal. He is a remarkable leader and he becomes the biggest thorn in Humayun side along with his brothers. Which should we deal with first? Because they're kind of simultaneous. Should we start with Kamran and Hindal?
- [22:38]
Anita Anand
Shall I do you a Kamran and then you do me a Hindal? Okay, so Kamran is the jealous second son and who is a right pain in Hamayo's Bottom Kamaran believed that Baba and Hamayo should have given him more greater lands, greater power. He really resented his older brother for not doing him the justice that he felt he deserved. He's occupied Punjab from his base in Kabul. He's got lots of officers who were formerly loyal to his father who are very, very loyal to him. So while Hamayya is looking at the threat of Shere Khan in the distance.
- [23:11]
William Durimpole
In Bengal and moving towards eastern India.
- [23:13]
Anita Anand
Yeah, importantly in the mean while he's looking at Bengal, you remember Sultan Bahadur, the man who was in Champina and who sort of gives up champagne and has gone into the arms of the Portuguese. He just moves back to Champion Air. While he's gone, you know, sort of otherwise occupied, he moves back in, the Portuguese kind of help him to take back his city and then they calmly kill him and take over that territory altogether. So you've got this sort of encroaching colonialism going on in the background of Hamayo's rule. And Himari's gonna have to deal with this at a later date and they will actually hang onto that territory for a lot longer than Bahadur does anyway. So we go back to Kamran, the pain in the bum. Malcontent.
- [23:53]
William Durimpole
Younger brother.
- [23:54]
Anita Anand
Yeah, younger brother. Jealous brother. He's four years younger and he looks like his brother, he looks like the emperor. And you see him, you know, in paintings, he's often depicted the same way that his brother's depicted in paintings. You know, he's sort of sitting cross legged, he's thoughtful, he's staring away into the distance. But there is a difference. Whereas Hamayo is still are tie dye hippie, you know, even by those standards, Mughal standards, this guy has always got little small knives attached to his belt. So it is very clear for everyone to see that he is a stabby brother. So that's sort of Kamran. Hindel on the other hand is the youngest brother of this group and he believes he is born to a destiny because Barbara has given him the name Hindal, that is Turkish for taker of India. So this is before at all there is any chance that this is going to be a reality. Hindal has the name and the destiny, Hind, the taker of India. So he too feels really miserable and sidelined. And the fact that, you know, his manifest destiny is being thwarted by his tie dye brother. And that is a very irritating thing for him. He's very close to Gulbud and Begum that, you know, the daughter I told you, who's also a chronicler of the Caught at this time.
- [25:09]
William Durimpole
Gulbuddin is a wonderful character and Ruby Lal has just written a wonderful book about her. And she's one of the things that I think might surprise people that don't know about the Mughals is how much the Mughal court women are incredibly highly educated. And over again, generation after generation, you get these princesses who are writers. And Gulbadan is one of the first princess rose body, the body of roses.
- [25:36]
Anita Anand
But Hindel has always been. I mean, he has a reason to be aggrieved because he has been his father's favorite. His father loves him even when he's getting really cross with Hermayya and Hermia's writing style and lack of, you know, sort of good grammar. He loves Hindel. And it's on his deathbed in Agra where he's desperately asking, yes, where is Hindel? Please bring me Hindel. And Hindel can't get back. Hermay is close enough to get back in time, but Hindel is not back in time because he's fighting in Kabul. He's doing, you know, the work that makes his father proud. So, you know, all of these unresolved things are in Hindel's mind. That is his blueprint. It should have been me.
- [26:13]
William Durimpole
So these two brothers will team up and not once, but on several occasions, they will unite against Humayun. And that is coming. Now. Humayun is heading eastwards. You can remember that when Babur first got to India, he had, in a sense, two enemies to choose from. He could either take on the Rajputs or he can take on the Afghans. Now he decides to take on the Rajputs and he defeats them. But it leaves the Afghans still at large in Bengal. And Humayun has gone to Gujarat, and he still hasn't grasped its nettle. So in July 1537, after Humayun has been rolling around enjoying himself in Gujarat, he suddenly wakes up to the threat that's coming from the east. And this is from the Afghans who had been running Bengal and Bihar. That's, you know, the great chunk of eastern India for several centuries before the Moguls turned up. And these guys had no intention of some new Moguls coming in, some Timurids coming in from Central Asia and taking what they thought was their part of the world. And Humayun sets off eastwards to combat Shere Khan. This is an epic battle between two very capable generals. And initially, Humayun is successful. He goes to Bengal. He captures Shere Khan's capital, which is called Gore. It's the most gorgeous area. I've been there a few years ago and it's this beautiful green landscape of meandering rivers and orchards and mango groves with these beautiful Bengali style mosques in red brick and tile work. Today it's cut in half by the border between West Bengal in India and East Bengal in Bangladesh. And you have to sort of make a 200 mile detour to see both sides of the city. You can't just go through a border there. But after capturing it, he likes it so much, which is thoroughly understandable because it's this beautiful green expanse and he spends too long enjoying himself in the mango orchards. And he allows time for Shershah to regroup and recapture his old territories. And it's during a negotiation for a peace treaty that Shere Khan suddenly falls on Humayun's camp. And to everyone's surprise, he defeats him. And Humayun has to take flight. He's never been defeated before. He's not used to this. And after he is defeated on the battlefield of Kanarj, which is some way now into Uttar Pradesh, not far away from Lucknow, that this famous incident takes place. And Humayun is driven into the river and is starting to drown when a humble water carrier who happens to have an inflatable hide, an inflated hide.
- [29:24]
Anita Anand
I've seen these relatively from about 112 years ago. I've got one of those, you know, those stereoscopes which have two pictures and I think it may even be in Bengal, but of people crossing the river on inflated cow carcasses.
- [29:37]
William Durimpole
I've done it.
- [29:38]
Anita Anand
You've done it? It's like an inner tube but with legs coming up.
- [29:41]
William Durimpole
Exactly.
- [29:41]
Anita Anand
Oh, God, no.
- [29:42]
William Durimpole
I've actually done it on the Indus.
- [29:43]
Anita Anand
Have you?
- [29:44]
William Durimpole
They've got four or five of these roped together and then they have a very kind of primitive raft and they punch you across the Indus at a place called Thakot. Anyway, so what Humayun is saved by is just one guy who has his water skin. And these skins which are normally used to carry water can be inflated as sort of life saving. Like what do you call these things that you have on the side of ships?
- [30:05]
Anita Anand
Yeah, rubber rings, you know. Rubber rings? Yeah, rubber rings. You know, they're like inner tubes, massive inner tubes. But you've got to imagine you've got the legs of the cow sticking out of them. So you can totally see it's a carcass. It's very, very weird.
- [30:18]
William Durimpole
So when this guy saves him, Humayun makes a vow to this Water carrier whose name is Nizam. He says, you are Nizam of the Saints, which is a kind of pun on Nizamuddin Awliya, the great saint of Delhi. And he promises him that he will reward him, saying that when I'm safely seated on the throne, I will make you king for half a day. And there are lots of pictures of this in Mughal painting. So this is a kind of terrible moment for Humayun. Not only are his brothers revolting and they've taken over Agra, but he's just been defeated by the Afghans. So this is a moment of complete crisis and poor old to mind has to take flight. This looks like the end of his rule. It looks like the end of Mughal rule.
- [30:59]
Anita Anand
So does he sort of almost become a little bit like Baba does for a while, a refugee in his own land? I mean, does he just sort of wander about a bit?
- [31:06]
William Durimpole
Exactly that. He wanders around a bit. He tries to get an army together. But then there's Another battle in 1540, the Battle of Kanaud, which is sort of about two or three hours outside Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh, further towards Agra, when Shershah defeats him a second time. And this time Hindal and Askari are fighting with Sher Shah against their brother. So it's a total betrayal.
- [31:31]
Anita Anand
Oh, they are such buggers, aren't they?
- [31:32]
William Durimpole
It's not the end of it. We'll see them do this again and again. So Humayun tries to do a deal, but he's got so few cards left in his hand that when he offers Sher Shah all of Hindustan except the Punjab, Sher Shah says no. And so Humayun has to flee further and become a nomad, as you say. He goes off to Sindh, then he heads off just over the border. Well, it's in Pakistan.
- [31:58]
Anita Anand
It's in Pakistan. It's Western India. It used to be then, but now it's Pakistan. Right?
- [32:02]
William Durimpole
So it's at this point, at this lowest nadir of Fortun, that he meets his future wife, Hamada. And even Hamada is not sort of immediately flattered by this failed king.
- [32:17]
Anita Anand
Well, he hasn't got much to recommend him. He's wandering around like a beggar. He's lost a kingdom. His brothers want to kill him. Shere Khan wants to kill him. He's just saved, you know, his own life. He probably still smells of damp cow, which is whatever saved his life. Going across the. He's not a catch. Harmuth is only 14 at this time. But I mean, you know, marriages took place at a much younger age at this time, didn't they? So what, she's not impressed, does she?
- [32:40]
William Durimpole
So she's not impressed? Well, she certainly resistes for 40 days, is what the chronicles say. And Hindel opposes the marriage because he wants to marry her himself. But let's see what Kindel has got really to recommend him since he's betrayed his own brother. And at this point, Humayun gives way to opium and despair. But eventually Hamida says yes and becomes pregnant. And as they both flee from Shersha and the betraying brothers, nine months later, Hamida gives birth in incredibly adverse circumstances, on the run in the deserts of Sind. And that child is the future emperor, Akbar the Great. Akbar the Great. So in this moment when everything looks like the Mughals are now history, that this brief attempt to seize Hindustan has completely failed. As Humayun is heading into exile towards Iran, Akbar is born a refugee in a tent with a failed father and a young mother who has nothing other than this son and this hopeless husband. So it's not looking at all promising.
- [33:52]
Anita Anand
It's an epic tale, isn't it? An epic tale. Join us next time for the continuing saga of Hamayu. What happens next? He's got enemies all over. He at least has a son who is, bizarrely, from his lowest ebb, eventually going to restore Mogul fortunes. But nobody knows this at the time. Till the next time we meet, it's goodbye from me, Anita Anand, and goodbye.
- [34:15]
William Durimpole
From me, William Durimpool.