UpdateBot at 00:09, 28 April 2022

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{{Infobox royalty
| consort = yes
| name = Aisha Sultan Begum
| image =
| caption =
| title = [[Timurid princess]]
| succession = [[Queen consort of Ferghana Valley]] <br> [[Queen consort of Samarkand]]
| reign = {{circa}} 1499 – 1503
| birth_date =
| birth_place =
| death_date =
| death_place =
| burial_date =
| burial_place =
| spouse = {{Marriage|[[Babur]]|August 1499|1503|end={{Abbr|div.|divorced}}}}
| issue = [[Fakhr-un-Nissa]]
| house = [[Timurid dynasty|Timurid]] ''(by birth)''
| father = [[Sultan Ahmed Mirza]]
| mother = Qutaq Begum
| religion = [[Islam]]
}}
'''Aisha Sultan Begum''' was [[Queen consort of Ferghana Valley]] and [[Queen consort of Samarkand|Samarkand]] as the first wife of [[Mughal Emperors|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 birth. She was the daughter of Babur's paternal uncle, [[Sultan Ahmed Mirza]], the [[King]] of [[Samarkand]] and [[Bukhara]].<ref>{{cite book|last=Erskine|first=William|title=A History of India Under the Two First Sovereigns of the House of Taimur, Báber and Humáyun|url=https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.62925|year=1854|publisher=Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans|page=[https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.62925/page/n150 128]}}</ref>

==Family and lineage==
Aisha Sultan Begum was born a Timurid princess and was the third daughter of Sultan Ahmed Mirza (the King of Samarkand and Bukhara) and his wife Qutaq Begum. She was named 'Aisha' after [[Prophet Muhammad]]'s wife, [[‘Ā’ishah bint Abī Bakr]].<ref>{{cite book|last1=Urubshurow|first1=Victoria Kennick|title=Introducing world religions|date=2008|publisher=Journal of Buddhist Ethics Online Books|location=Providence, Utah|isbn=9780980163308|page=6}}</ref>

Her father, Sultan Ahmed Mirza, was the eldest son and successor of [[Abu Sa'id Mirza]], the [[Emperor]] of the [[Timurid Empire]]. Aisha's paternal uncles included [[Umar Sheikh Mirza]], the ruler of [[Ferghana Valley]], who later became her father-in-law as well. His children, Babur (her future husband), and his elder sister, [[Khanzada Begum]], were thus, Aisha's first cousins.

==Marriage==
In her infancy, Aisha was [[betrothed]] to her double first cousin, Babur, the son of Umar Sheikh Mirza and her aunt, [[Qutlugh Nigar Khanum]]. Their fathers were brothers and their mothers were sisters. The engagement happened in 1488 in [[Samarkand]], [[Uzbekistan]], when Babur himself was only five years old. Aisha married Babur eleven years later in August 1499 at [[Khojand]] and subsequently joined him in [[Ferghana]], where Babur had succeeded upon the death of his father as ruler of the valley of Ferghana.

The young queen found her husband a bashful, if not reluctant lover. Babur remained very shy of her in the beginning of their marriage and went to see her only once in ten or fifteen days. As Babur tells it, "Though I was not ill-disposed towards her [Aisha], yet, this being my first marriage, out of modesty and bashfulness, I used to see her once in ten, fifteen, twenty days."<ref>{{cite book|last1=abridged|first1=translated from the Turkish by Annette Susannah Beveridge|last2=edited|last3=Hiro|first3=introduced by Dilip|title=Babur Nama : journal of Emperor Babur|date=2006|publisher=Penguin Books|location=New Delhi|isbn=9780144001491|page=31|edition=1.publ.}}</ref> He soon bored even of this, and discontinued his visits altogether.<ref>{{cite book|last=Harold|first=Lamb|title=Swords from the East.|year=2010|publisher=University of Nebraska Press|isbn=9780803229723|page=364}}</ref> Thereafter, Aisha's aunt and mother-in-law, Qutlugh Nigar Khanum, used to scold him with great fury ("many dunnings" as he says in his autobiography, translated by Annette Beveridge) and send him to visit her every few days.<ref>{{cite journal|title=The London Literary Gazette and Journal of Belles Lettres, Arts, Sciences|year=1827|pages=22|publisher=H. Colburn}}</ref> Babur was simply not interested in her, or in marriage, at this time. Nevertheless, Aisha gave birth to Babur's first child after three years of marriage. This was a daughter, [[Fakhr-un-Nissa]], born in 1501 at [[Samarkand]] but died after a month or forty days. Her death grieved Babur the most as he had grown dearly fond of his little daughter.<ref>{{cite book|last=Shyam|first=Radhey|title=Babar|year=1978|publisher=Janaki Prakashan|page=105}}</ref>

==Divorce==
Though their relationship was much closer now, it seems that Aisha and Babur quarrelled and she left him before the overthrow of [[Tashkent]] in 1503. Babur states that his wife was misled by the machinations of her elder sister, Rabiah Sultan Begum, who induced her to leave his house.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Babur (Emperor of Hindustan)|editor1-last=Waddington|editor1-first=Charles|title=Memoirs of Zehir-Ed-Din Muhammed Baber: Emperor of Hindustan|date=1826|publisher=Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green|page=22}}</ref>

==References==
{{Reflist|3}}

[[Category:Timurid princesses]]
[[Category:Wives of Babur]]
[[Category:15th-century women]]

Aisha Sultan Begum - Revision history

UpdateBot at 00:09, 28 April 2022