Zainab Sultan Begum was

Queen consort of Ferghana Valley This is a list of Mughal empresses. Most of these empresses were either from branches of the Timurid dynasty or from the royal houses of the Rajputs. Alongside Mughal emperors, these empresses played a role in the building up and rule of the Mugha ...

and

Kabul Kabul (; ps, , ; , ) is the capital and largest city of Afghanistan. Located in the eastern half of the country, it is also a municipality, forming part of the Kabul Province; it is administratively divided into 22 municipal districts. Acco ...

as the second wife of Emperor

Babur Babur ( fa, , lit= tiger, translit= Bābur; ; 14 February 148326 December 1530), born Mīrzā Zahīr ud-Dīn Muhammad, was the founder of the Mughal Empire in the Indian subcontinent. He was a descendant of Timur and Genghis Khan through his ...

. She like two of his other wives

Aisha Sultan Begum Aisha Sultan Begum was Queen consort of Ferghana Valley and Samarkand as the first wife of Emperor Babur, the founder of the Mughal Empire and the first Mughal emperor. Aisha was a first cousin of her husband and was a Timurid princess by bi ...

and

Masuma Sultan Begum Masuma Sultan Begum ( ) was the Queen consort of Ferghana Valley and Samarkand as the fourth wife of Emperor Babur, the founder of the Mughal Empire and the first Mughal emperor. Masuma was a first cousin of her husband and was a Timurid princes ...

was a direct cousin of the Babur. She was one of the first Mughal cousins to marry among the own family, which later became a common practice, which would be especially be followed by

Humayun Nasir-ud-Din Muhammad ( fa, ) (; 6 March 1508 – 27 January 1556), better known by his regnal name, Humāyūn; (), was the second emperor of the Mughal Empire, who ruled over territory in what is now Eastern Afghanistan, Pakistan, Northern ...

, the second Mughal emperor who succeeded Babur after his death in 1530.

Family and lineage

Zainab Sultan Begum was born a Timurid princess and was the fifth daughter of

Sultan Mahmud Mirza Sultan Mahmud Mirza ( 1453 – January 1495) was a prince of Timurid branch of Transoxiana, son of Abu Sa'id Mirza. Biography His father gave him the government of Hisar and Termez in 1459 (according to Babur Astarabad), but lost to Sultan Husa ...

, who was

's paternal uncle. Her mother was the granddaughter of Mir Buzurg, and the daughter of a brother of Khanzada Begum, her father's first wife. Her father was a son of Abu Sa'id Mirza, the Emperor of the Timurid Empire. Zainab's paternal uncles included

Umar Sheikh Mirza Umar Shaikh Mirza II ( fa, , b. 1456 – d. 1494) was the ruler of the Fergana Valley. He was the fourth son of Abu Sa'id Mirza, the emperor of the Timurid Empire in what is now Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan and eastern Iran. His first wi ...

, the ruler of

Ferghana Valley The Fergana Valley (; ; ) in Central Asia lies mainly in eastern Uzbekistan, but also extends into southern Kyrgyzstan and northern Tajikistan. Divided into three republics of the former Soviet Union, the valley is ethnically diverse and in the ...

, who later became her father-in-law as well while her first cousins included her future husband, Babur, and his elder sister,

Khanzada Begum Khanzada Begum ( 1478 – 1545) was a Timurid princess and the eldest daughter of Umar Shaikh Mirza II, the ''amir'' of Ferghana. She was also the elder sister of Babur, the founder of the Mughal Empire. She and her brother remained deeply at ...

. Her sister Ak Begum, who was married to Babur's brother Jahangir Mirza, became her sister-in-law.

Marriage

Babur married her after annexing

in 1504. However she was not a favourite wife of the emperor because she was too proud of her parentage and failed to win Babur's affection. He also did not remember the year of her death correctly. Babur has written about the marriage of Sultan Mahmud Mirza to Khanzada Begum who was the daughter of Mir of

Tirmiz Termez ( uz, Termiz/Термиз; fa, ترمذ ''Termez, Tirmiz''; ar, ترمذ ''Tirmidh''; russian: Термез; Ancient Greek: ''Tàrmita'', ''Thàrmis'', ) is the capital of Surxondaryo Region in southern Uzbekistan. Administratively, it is ...

. After she died, he married her late wife's niece Khandaza Begum through whom he fathered five daughters and a son. This created Babur's hatred for his uncle, and subsequently he was reluctant to marry Zainab. It was due to the repeated pleas and insistence of Babur's mother that he married her as he could not resist the "good offers" of his mother for this marriage. Babur did not want to marry her, because according to him, she was "not very congenial". Historians however claim that Zainab Sultan Begum was the most influential lady in Babur's harem (due to her lineage), who had authority in controlling its activity though she was not a favourite wife of the first Mughal emperor.

Death

Zainab Sultan Begum died childless two or three years after her marriage, that is in 1506 or 1507. Contemporary family members write that she died of

small pox Smallpox was an infectious disease caused by variola virus (often called smallpox virus) which belongs to the genus Orthopoxvirus. The last naturally occurring case was diagnosed in October 1977, and the World Health Organization (WHO) cer ...

References

{{reflist Timurid princesses Mughal Empire people 1500s deaths