208. Humayun Reconquers India

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0:29Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnans. And me, William Drupal. So just in the last episode, we left you at a low point in the story of Hamayo, first son. And he is the man who has made a promise to his father that no matter how shitty his brothers are, he's not going to kill them. And this is going to be a very great difficulty for him. He's in the deserts of Sin. He's at his lowest point. But then he discovers love. He finds his wife far away from everything that he knows in exile. but his heart is full. And he's also got this rather wonderful enemy in the form of Sher Shah, the lion king, if you like, if you translate it, who has usurped everything that his father fought for and his throne in India and established his own empire there instead.

1:18Now, just to pick up on this, this is not such a well-known story as some of the other moguls because Hamayu is so often overlooked in the pantheon, isn't he? He is. And there's been a lot of interesting new work on Humayun. We've always thought of Humayun as this completely hopeless, hippy-dippy sort of would-be mystic who's always sort of shooting arrows in the air to make predictions about the future. But he's also sort of brilliant and erudite and far more sort of bookish and fascinating and complicated than I think anyone guessed before. And the thing I like best about him is that even now when he's in exile in sin, the world he's abandoned, the new country that he's conquered is gone.

2:04The new city he's been planning, Dean Panna, is gone. His fantastic palaces, including a mystic palace in Agra that he's just built. All that is behind him. But he's got the thing that matters most to him, which is his two library camels. A library camel? How marvellous. We all need a library camel on Empire Pond. This is the precursor to the mobile library that goes to distant places, is it? I mean, what? He really literally had two camels laden with books. Laden with books. And there's a lovely moment when, at the lowest point of his life, later, we will come across, when he suffers a defeat.

2:39We won't say any more than that at this stage, because I wouldn't like to… No, because it's not like you at all. That's not you. I wouldn't ever spoil the ending. but there's this wonderful moment when a week later when finally he finally succeeds the camels come back as sort of homing pigeons and find him and he gets all his books back he's also rather a good poet which i don't think any of us had had realized before oh really because his father was deeply critical of his writing wasn't he his dad was like one of those withering indian dads who just you know you bring home an essay with an a on it and he goes well the syntax was poor i've got for you here, a little love poem he wrote.

3:18It's not clear whether this is directed at his new 14-year-old wife who's just given birth to Akbar, Hamida Begum, or whether for someone of a completely different sex and age, but here it is. My fate has fallen with a moon-faced beauty, and fire has fallen into my heart. My house was brightened with the face of my beloved. From the moon-faced beauty has fallen a ray. In every direction my heart, oh life, draws me since my heart has fallen to become captive to this attractor of hearts. The object of my heart I shall seize now with exhilaration has fallen into my hand. Do not seek reason and wit in me when Humayun has fallen into senselessness.

4:02And that, sadly, is a state that he seems to have been in quite a lot of his life. He's often in senselessness. Do you know, I'm quite interested, you know, so he's writing poetry again. He's got love in his life, clearly, whether it's with his wife or somebody else, we're not entirely sure, but there's love. in his heart. But he has very little else. I mean, his pockets are empty. So when he meets people along the way, because, you know, if you want to try and regain your kingdom, I'm sure that's in his mind that, you know, he's been reduced to nothing. But what does he have to offer? If he wants to make allegiances, what does he have to woo, if you like, other leaders?

4:36Well, I think this is one of the reasons why he loves Hamidah Begum as he does and why Akbar in due course also will absorb his heart because both of them are associated with this moment when he had nothing and they came to him. Hamidah Begum sees him in Sindh when he's lost everything. And at this lowest moment in winter in Sindh, when he's trying to cross some mountains towards Afghanistan, they get stuck in the snow and they get separated from their supplies. and he has to kill one of the horses and cook it in a helmet of one of his guards. So that is absolutely the lowest of the low. You know, if you needed any more proof, that is living like a, not just like a nomad, but like a beggar.

5:20But again, at this moment, even when he is in extremis, he's got with him a painter. We know there's a moment when a bird turns up and he loves the bird and he tells the painter to paint it. And there's just this one little note in Gulbadan, his sister's account of this life. But it shows that even when he's down to eating the horse flesh of his guards, he doesn't want to be anywhere without a mogul painter. He's still writing poetry. He's got his two library camels. And also, there's lovely details. Eber Koch has found that one of his inventions was he had this sort of movable palace, which was quite a large and sort of substantial building, which could be sort of IKEA'd down and put in a crate and then erected.

6:06It was far more than a normal tent. And he also had this sort of other very substantial zodiac tent called the 12 Signs Tent. And I think these things are probably traveling with him. So what is a Zodiac tent? What does that mean? What even is that? Well, one of the things that always makes historians fascinated by the Mughals is that they break stereotype and they embrace the Hindu ideas of the India they come to. And it's always said that traditionally the Akbar is the first to do this. But it seems that Humayun, although he's born in Afghanistan and comes as a young man to India, that he immediately engages with Indian mystics and Indian astronomers and astrologers, that his very complicated ideas about wearing different colors on different days of the week actually comes as much from Hindu ideas as it does from Muslim ones.

7:04And among these ideas that he has, I think he's traveling with Hindu astrologers when he's on his way to Iran again, despite everything. Oh, I see. So there's a tent full of those guys. It's a mobile version. Remember I talked about his sort of twister carpet when he rolls a dice and goes into different phases of the moons and all sorts of complicated astronomical stuff. Yes, postures of heavenly direction. Exactly. That's very nicely put, actually. It's a cross between a sort of Christmas party game and a mystical practice. I just had a thought about this man because he's much more interesting than I thought he was before we started this.

7:42My first knowledge of Hamayu was in Delhi the first time I went. And there were these roundabouts with sort of very overgrown and you'd suddenly see a little bit of a ruin. And my cousin, I was like, what is that? That looks very old. And she said, oh, that's nothing. It's just the tomb of Hamayu. That wasn't even correct. It was the tumour for Maya's mother. I have a friend that restored it. When they got up to the roof, they found that the previous group of restorers on the quiet, rather than putting in proper roof tiles, had cut Bata flip-flops and put them onto the roof, confident that no one would make the effort to go up and check their work.

8:17Can I just tell people about a flip-flop? So anyone who's got any connection with India will know, but they are the ubiquitous flip-flop of everybody in India. They're just these rubber things, plastic thongs and rubber on the bottom. And they had used that as shingle. I think that's rather marvellous. Okay, so can I just ask, his situation obviously is not great, but he's got the added problem, which we discussed just in the last episode, in that he's got these brothers, Kamran, Hindor, and Asghari, who are the most disloyal, awful people that he's not allowed to kill. So what are they up to?

8:54Well, he's on his knees, as it were, and popping in and out of the Zodiac tent for some solace. What are they doing? So Kamran has seized Kabul. He was originally sent there as a governor, but now he's just ruling it as the Lord. He gives absolutely no help to him. And in fact, he sends the other brother, Asghari, to cut him off when he works out what Humayun's plan is, which is to go all the way through Sindh to Iran and to appeal for help to the Safavids of Isfahan, which is, of course, what his father did. Babur did the same thing in extremists when they were trying to recapture Samarkand. And Babur fell out with all the people of Samarkand because he converted to Shia Islam.

9:38So I think the other brothers realized that this is Humayun's plot, that he's going to go and try and offer to convert in order to get support to win India back. And Asghari tries to cut him off, but he doesn't do it. But it's as he's fleeing to Iran that there is one of the most tragic stories about quite how hopeless Humayun is. It is actually probably the most hopeless thing he does in all his very erudite, brilliant, but hopeless life. and the one thing that he has successfully brought away other than his sort of fancy zodiac carpet and tent and the painter and all the other camel library let's not forget the camel library and the camel library the one thing of value and importance that can really change his situation is he's brought a bag of enormous indian diamonds all the best diamonds that babo won including this famous diamond called the Babur diamond that many experts believe is the Koh-i-Noor.

10:39It's not proven, it's not provable really, but it's a whopper. Whether it is or is not the Koh-i-Noor sitting in the Tower of London at this moment, there is an enormous diamond with Humayun as he flees. And one morning when he gets up on his way to Iran, about to cross the border, He goes to the riverbank to do his ablutions as his servant records. And he does his business, gets back on his horse and gallops away. And it's only when he's about sort of half a mile off that his servant realizes. I feel a little lighter. I feel a little lighter than when I got, what is it that I, hang on, it's not keys.

11:20I've got my keys. I've got my specs. What is it that I, oh. And it's not his mobile phone. No, he left every single one of the diamonds on the riverbank. and just walked off. You've got to love a man that can do that. You do, but you've also got to maybe question that because in the story of Koh-I-Noor, which we have told and written a book about, there are other tales of people who have mislaid the diamonds supposedly and then suddenly found them in a waistcoat in a drawer because they threw them in the dirty laundry. I mean, do we believe this story? Are these from reputable sources? So we do because he then rewards the servant who gives it back to him, who's called Juha.

11:58He's very generous, Humayun. And not only, can you remember in the last episode, we had that story of the water man who blows up his buffalo hide and uses it as a rubber ring to paddle Humayun to safety when he's driven into a river. So just like he rewards him, he rewards Juha. And Juha in due course becomes such a senior figure, he actually writes his own memoir where he tells this story. And he says, as the emperor was about to remount his horse, I saw a green flowered purse lying on the ground and a pen case by the side of it. And I rode up after him. And as soon as I'd overtaken him, I presented them.

12:35When his majesty saw these articles, he was amazed and astonished and said, oh, my boy, you have done me the greatest possible favor. If these have been lost, I should have been subject to the meanness of this Persian monarch. In future, please take care of him. So he gives them to this boy to look after on the basis that he's more reliable. this young page boy is given all these things. And I think we should continue with this story because in due course, it absolutely is the diamonds which save Humayun. Shah Tamas, who we've dealt with in earlier episodes of the Empire Pod, is a grumpy religious extremist.

13:12We did him, for those who maybe want to go and revisit, in our Persian series. And initially, when Humayun arrives in Persia, he's given a very lukewarm welcome because these guys, the thing that matters most to the Safavids is, are you Sunni or Shia? They are this minority, the Shia, and they regard all Sunnis with enormous suspicion. And Humayun is a Sunni. So initially, he doesn't get a very warm welcome. And the thing that turns it around is the gift of this enormous diamond, the Babur diamond. And we read in Johar's account, we remained several days encamped on the Shah's hunting grounds, during which time his majesty ordered his diamonds and rubies to be brought to him.

13:56And having selected the largest diamond, placed it in a mother-of-pearl box. He then added several other diamonds and rubies, and having placed them in a tray, gave them to the charge of Byron Begg to present to the Persian monarch with the message that they were brought from Hindustan purposely for his majesty. When Shatam Asp saw these precious stones, he was astonished, and he sent for his jeweller to value them. The jewellers declared that they were above all price, on which the Persians signified his acceptance to help Umayyad. So this thing that he just left by the riverbank does literally turn his fortunes around.

14:36Well, I mean, it really does, because when, again, I'm doing a Dalrymple, but let's just say he does return to India. If he were. If he were to return to India. I mean, having a Persian cavalry with you, which is one of the best cavalries in the world, is not a hindrance. Let's put it that way. Okay. But Shah Thomas, as we have described in our previous Persian series, is a really grumpy, angry, difficult to get on with man. So how do these two, you know, Hippie Dippie, Humayu, who sounds absolutely sweet. A bit hopeless, yeah. Ever so slightly hopeless. How do they get on? Because does he have to also embrace the religion of Tomas and say, look, you know what?

15:21I know I am a Sunni, but I want your help. So I'm willing to think about shiaism. I'm quite interested in shiaism. How far does he have to go and how much is Tomas convinced by him? This is exactly the game he has to play. He knows what happened to his father, Babur, when he embraced Shia Islam or certainly made an outward appearance of having embraced it. Well, everyone turned against him and said, you're a treacherous man we can't follow. Exactly. But he now is in a situation where he really does have no option. And so there is this month when the two of them travel through Iran and they travel through all the nicest places.

15:58I mean, when I have traveled through Iran, if I had to choose my favorite places, he goes to Persepolis, which at this stage of history was believed by the Persians to have been built by the hero Jamshid. He goes to another building we've talked about also in our Persian series, the extraordinary mausoleum of the Mongol Khan Uljetu at Sultania, which is definitely the seed which stays in Humayun's mind. And when he's planning his own tomb, as we now know he did, It's partly modeled on Sultania. So he's passing through all these places and he basically he gets it right. He makes enough of a show of interest in Shia Islam and certainly tells Shil's…

16:43Striking his beard. I'm fascinated by this without saying I'm actually converting to this. This is just fascinating. So certainly Shah Tamas is persuaded that he's serious. And having made whatever private promise he did to, he gets given at the end of this long tour of places like Tabriz and Ardebil and all these gorgeous places in Iran that he visits. He's given 12 ,000 Persian cavalry to go and retake Kandahar. And so this is the beginning of the comeback. And Humayun has been now for whatever it is, 18 months on the run, ever since he lost the battle near Kanoj and has been fleeing ever westwards into Persia.

17:25Now, for the first time, can begin to head eastwards back to India. Am I remembering it rightly that he also, and maybe this forges the relationship further, does he have to leave his son, Akbar, his newly minted son, in the Persian care as well? I mean, is that part of the deal? Not the Persian care, no. He's ended up with Askari, who's the least devious of the uncles. And the young Akbar, who's now, whatever he is, two years old or something, a toddler, is sitting in the Balahisar in Kabul, hoping that his dad may come and his fortunes will change. And this begins at this moment with the Persian cavalry behind him.

18:03He takes Kandahar and defeats Asghari and begins to look towards his first major step to reclaiming India, which is to try and capture Kabul. And in Kabul is the other brother, Kamran, who has proven himself to be a snake at every possible turn, every possible moment that And he could have been a good brother. He has been the worst, the absolute pits of brotherhood. So, I mean, with this advancing army that has already been successful in Kandahar, no small thing. So what does Kamran do? When he sees the dust being kicked up by this cavalry of, you know, crack Persian cavalrymen, does he stand or does he run?

18:46So, no, there's a battle and Hormayn wins. Hormayn is not a bad general, although he does lose a couple, including the famous one to Cher Shah. overwhelmingly in his life he's a man who wins the battles that he sets out towards so despite being the hippy dippy mystic despite being the bookish poet and the guy with you know he's always dreaming up mad inventions of floating gardens and collapsible palaces and ikea tents and all this sort of thing he is actually like all the timurids he's an amazing battlefield commander and he moves against kamran in kabul and he leaves kandahar in the hands of his great ally Byram Khan.

19:25And he gives his household and his baggage to his now 16-year-old wife, Hamida Begum. She's getting on a bit. Yep. She's cracking on a bit. Yes. And he sets off with his troops for Kabul. And on the way, they had the good luck to meet with a caravan of horse traders who'd just come from India and acquired Persian horses. and they offer to support Humayun's campaign by supplying him with a thousand horses against just a promissory note. So they're persuaded to give them all these new horses for the cavalry. And there is a battle on the outskirts of Kabul and quite a lot of Kamran's men just go over to Humayun because I think everyone always regards him as a good egg.

20:09Everyone knows that this guy is the true heir of Babu, that he's a decent man. And they also know that Qamran is a slippery fox. There's a real issue of loyalty in what you think of a man. And if you see a man betray his brother, that is not good propaganda. No matter what the ruler has done, people don't forgive it very easily. And that certainly seems to be the case when people keep joining him. Does Qamran run away after losing the battle? After losing the battle, Qamran flees off to Sindh, the same place that Humayun was walking through. Eating his camel in a helmet. Eating his horse in a helmet, I should say.

20:47And Humayun enters Kabul without having to fight any more battles on the 17th of November, 1545. And he's acclaimed by the population. Everyone comes out and cheers. And at that moment, he sees his son Akbar for the first time in two years. He's just left this little baby in a swaddling clothes and now it's a little two-year-old running around. Which I would suggest is quite irresponsible as a parent to do that. But, okay, look, let's take a break here because it looks like all will be well and Hamayo will live happily ever after. Join us after the break because of course it's not going to be that.

21:21Of course it's not.

21:26Welcome back. So, just before the break, we left you with success in Kandahar, success in Kabul. Bit by bit, Hamayo is claiming back territory from his treacherous brothers. And he's got his little boy back now as well, who's now a toddler who he last left with a really murderous and treacherous brother as a baby. And everything is looking good. And what I love about Hamai, William, and he reminds me a bit of you, is he has a huge success and then he kind of does a gap yard again because he loves his tours and parties. He does. He likes both those things. So, the couple turns into party central after this victory.

21:59What kind of thing does he do? I mean, it's wonderful. I mean, the wrestling matches and planting are particularly cute here. So what is it like? He likes all that sort of thing. And he likes to combine a bit of wrestling with taking quite a lot of opium. So the two... Oh my God. It's like drunken boxing. And it's over this period that it's realized, because they try to educate Akbar at this point. Akbar's gone slightly wild, I think. He's been out toddling around watching all these warriors. and he has far more interest in war and battles than he does in his books as a young kid. And they try and teach him to read and he can't.

22:40And he remains bizarrely illiterate, uniquely among the Mughal emperors for his whole life. This is so mad. He's basically dyslexic, I think, in modern terms. Well, Ebbe Koch as well has sort of said that she thinks he may be dyslexic. But you have to understand that if you've got tutors who are faced with this slightly wild boy who's finding it very hard to read, that bears absolutely no resemblance to the legacy of Akbar, who we're going to cover in an episode all of his own, who is known as one of the most learned, one of the most voracious hunters of truth of the entire Mughal dynasty. But does this without ever being able to read or read properly?

23:21I think it's crackers. Isn't that amazing? And the chroniclers of the time, or certainly Abul Faisal, who is the biographer of Akbar later in his life, writes that his majesty was not destined for the formal knowledge of the world. And instead, he shows great promise as a huntsman, as a kind of young warrior. He's doing all the right things. And he's sitting there with his little baby sword and everything else. But they sack a couple of these old poor old mullahs who are brought in to try and teach him. the first teacher who's called Mullah Zadda Mullah Issam al-Din Ibrahim, who's a very sort of grand and great scholar, is sacked and accused of being more interested in flying pigeons than teaching the emperor, the future emperor.

24:04But the subsequent tutors do know better. Can I do a little bit of pop psychology? I mean, you can't stop me even if you wanted to, you know I'm on one now. But I think that these formative years are so telling because Akbar will grow up to be a great esthete. He will treasure things that he can see and things that he can hear. He's going to be more tolerant than any who have come before him. Because look, they may have fired the teachers, but you can guarantee that that poor little boy who's not reading the Quran as he should, or not reading the books is going to get frequent beatings for not doing his work and not concentrating.

24:41And I think that remoulds a man, actually. I'll just end by reading two little lines by Abul Faisal. He says, his majesty was not receptive to lines scribbled by a pen. God did not desire that his special protege be sullied with formal knowledge. And instead, his majesty turned to pigeon flying, dog racing and hunting. Well, why wouldn't he? I mean, it's the equivalent of going to play football around the back with your mates. Let's get back to the dad though. So he's sort of done his tour. He's had his opium wrestling matches. Everybody's had a massive party. Carball has been very, very jolly with pink blooming Judas trees and, you know, discolour and all sorts of wonderment that he brings.

25:23And there's one other good omen, which is an important thing, which we have many pictures of. It seemed to be, I mean, it's a weird moment to us, but it was clearly considered very significant at the time. Humayun, even in his lowest moments, had a pet cockerel. And he clearly didn't eat the pet cockerel when he had the option to let the horse instead. And there's a moment when he hears that Kamran is coming for him again. The wicked brother has gathered an army in Sindh and is marching on Kabul. And at that moment, when this news comes, the pet cockerel allegedly flies onto his shoulders and crows.

26:02So Humayun takes this as a moment that he's definitely going to win. And they set off together. I'm looking at a picture of it. I'm looking at a picture of it Right now, a snowy white cockerel on his shoulder and all of his retinue sort of looking in wonder. Behold the cock on your shoulder, they say. And this is suddenly, you know, this is now going to be the thing that grants him victory. Oh, that's amazing. So magic cockerel, as you say, there are a few depictions of the magic white cockerel. Okay, so what is Kamran doing? He's not giving up. He's a scheming bastard, as we've established before.