Ruqaiya was born in the Timurid Dynasty and was a Mughal princess, the only daughter of the Mughal Prince Hindal Mirza and the younger son of the first Mughal Emperor Babur and his wife Dildar Begum.
Ruqaiya remained childless after her marriage and took over the main responsibility for the education of her favourite grandson Prince Khurram (the future Emperor Shah Jahan). When Akbar, the beloved grandson of Prince Khurram, was born at the age of six days in 1592, Babur ordered him to be taken away from his mother Jagat Gosaini and handed over to him by his wife, so he could grow up under her care and her husband fulfilling his wish to raise a Mughal emperor. Ruqaiyya oversaw Akbar's training, and both she and her husband were well educated.
The Mughal dynasty was formed in 1526 when Babur, a Central Asian Muslim prince, followed the example of his ancestor Timur (d. 1405) and invaded the country he knew as Hindustan on the Indian subcontinent. He took over the Sultanate of Delhi from his ruler Ibrahim Lodi and laid the foundation for one of the largest empires in the world. Through his mother line Babur descended from the Mongolian ruler Genghis Khan (1162-1227) and the Mughals became known through the Persian word Mongol.
The Mughal Empire was founded in 1526 by Mongol leader Babur after he defeated Ibrahim Lodi, the last of the Afghan Lodi sultans, in the first battle of Panipat, in which they first used gunpowder in India. The Mughals retained aspects of the sixteenth-century Mongolian culture, such as the arrangement of tents in royal camps and military maneuvers.
Ruqaiya Sultan Begum was the longest-serving Mughal empress with a term of office of over fifty years. This growth was used for immense power and money thanks to the six first Mughal emperors of the dynasty: Babur, Humayun, Akbar, Jahangir, Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb. The empire grew rapidly under Akbar the Great and continued to grow until the end of the reign of Aurangzeb.
In the early sixteenth century the descendants of the Mongolian, Turkish, Persian and Afghan invaders of southwest Asia invaded the Mughals under the leadership of Babur India. The Mughal emperors persecuted several Sikh gurus, with Jehangir executing the fifth guru. The great Mughal Emperors and their dominions began and ended with Babur (1526-1530), Humayun (1530-1556), Akbar the Great (1556-1605) and Jahangir (1605) who gave the British East India Company the rights to build factories in 1615.
Babur meets his Sultan Ali Mirza Samarkand, illustration from Babur Nameh, The Book of Babur, 1590, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. Babur was the fifth generation descendant of the Turkish conqueror Timur whose empire was established at the end of the 14th century and was formed in large parts of Central Asia and Iran. Babur came closest to this creed through the passage of 1507.
When the memoirs are resumed in 1519 after an 11-year hiatus, we meet a changed king. Since he owns Kabul and some surrounding provinces, he seems to be able to achieve his goals, which he has so far achieved only by accepting the supremacy of his Mongolian uncle, the Shah of Persia. The story begins with Babur preparing for the greatest conquest of his life, which would transform him from a marginal figure in the Timurian history into an emperor who had founded a great dynasty.
A mosque stood for more than 450 years on the site of Ayodhya, considered the beloved birthplace of Ram until it was razed to the ground on 6 December 1992 by Hindutva activists. A decade later, the final verdict in the dispute over the site is expected. The argument is that the mosque was built on the ruins of a demolished temple, but the evidence for this argument is thin.
In 1621, a delegation came to the court to present rare and exotic birds and animals to the Mughal Emperor. One of them was an African zebra, an animal the emperor had never seen before and which looked like a horse painted with stripes. A zebra presented to the emperor in opaque watercolour on gold paper, Mansur, 1621 (Mughal).
