Bakshi Banu Begum

Shahzadi Bakshi Banu (1540 - 1596) was a Mughal princess as the second daughter of Emperor Humayun from his wife Gunwar Bibi.^[1] She was also the granddaughter of Emperor Babur, the founder of the Mughal Empire and the first Mughal Emperor, as well as the older half-sister of the third Mughal Emperor Akbar.

Biography

Bakshi Banu Begum was born in September of 1540 in Lahore to Gunwar Bibi, in the year of the Timurid exodus from India. She fell into the hands of her uncle, Askari Mirza, with her father's camp along with her half-brother, the baby Akbar in 1543.^[2] In the depth of the winter of 1545, she was sent with Akbar from Qandahar to Kabul by the orders of her uncle, Askari Mirza, while being accompanied by their attendants and foster mothers.

In 1550, at the age of ten, she was betrothed by her father to Ibrahim Mirza, the eldest son of Sulaiman Shah Mirza, the Governor of Badakshan and his wife Haram Begum. Ibrahim was also a descendant of Alexander the Great through his mother's side. He was six years older than Bakshi, and was killed in 1560, leaving the princess a widow at the age of twenty. In the same year, Bakshi was given in marriage to Mirza Sharif-ud-din Hussain Ahrari, the Viceroy of Ajmer and Nagaur, by her younger brother, the Emperor Akbar.

Death

She was 56 she orders to her murder she killed by her assistant named nazma nazma later imprisoned by Akbar her body was buried gardens of Babur the tomb of her grand father ^[3]

References