Zainab Sultan Begum was Queen consort of Ferghana Valley and

Kabul Kabul 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. The city is divided for administration into #Districts, 22 municipal districts. A ...

as the second wife of Emperor

Babur Babur (; 14 February 148326 December 1530; born 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 father and mother respectively. He was also ...

. Like two of her husband's 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 ...

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 a Timurid princess ...

, she was a direct cousin of 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 al-Din Muhammad (6 March 1508 – 27 January 1556), commonly known by his regnal name Humayun (), was the second Mughal emperor, who ruled over territory in what is now Eastern Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Northern India, and Pakistan from ...

, 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 ( Chagatai and ; 1453 – January 1495) was a Timurid prince from the branch of Transoxiana. He was the second son of Abu Sa'id Mirza, the ruler of the Timurid Empire. Biography His father gave him the government of Hisar ...

, 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 Abu Sa'id Mirza ( Chagatay/; 14248 February 1469) was the ruler of the Timurid Empire during the mid-fifteenth century. Born a minor prince of the Timurid dynasty, Abu Sa'id quickly established himself as the most prominent among his warring re ...

, the Emperor of the

Timurid Empire The Timurid Empire was a late medieval, culturally Persianate, Turco-Mongol empire that dominated Greater Iran in the early 15th century, comprising modern-day Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, much of Central Asia, the South Caucasus, and parts of co ...

. Zainab's paternal uncles included Umar Sheikh Mirza, the ruler of

Ferghana Valley The Fergana Valley (also commonly spelled the Ferghana Valley) in Central Asia crosses eastern Uzbekistan, southern Kyrgyzstan and northern Tajikistan. Encompassing three former Soviet republics, the valley is ethnically diverse and relation ...

, who later became her father-in-law as well while her first cousins included her future husband, Babur, and his elder sister, Khanzada Begum. Her sister Ai 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 ''Mir'' (, ; ) was a space station operated in low Earth orbit from 1986 to 2001, first by the Soviet Union and later by the Russia, Russian Federation. ''Mir'' was the first modular space station and was assembled in orbit from 1986 to ...

of Tirmiz. 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 A virus is a submicroscopic infectious agent that replicates only inside the living Cell (biology), cells of an organism. Viruses infect all life forms, from animals and pla ...

References

{{reflist Wives of Babur 1500s deaths