Moving quietly and methodically through the darkness, eight hundred men had formed a qamargah, a huge circle about a mile across, around the forest. The beaters had employed the age-old hunting practices of the Moghul clans brought from their homelands on the steppes of Central Asia. But a tiger hunt was too good to miss, Akbar had insisted, and Bairam Khan, a faint smile lightening his lean scarred face, had finally agreed. Bairam Khan, his guardian and khan-i-khanan - commander-in-chief - had tried to dissuade him from the hunt, arguing that with the Moghuls’ enemies on the move this was no time to be thinking of sport. The headman had left the camp well rewarded by Akbar, who could hardly contain his excitement. The village headman who had brought word of it to the camp, saying he had heard that the young Moghul emperor was fond of hunting, claimed it was a maneater that in the last few days had killed an old man labouring in the fields and two small children as they went to fetch water. While moonlight still silvered the hills in which Akbar’s army was encamped, a hundred miles northeast of Delhi, they had started towards the small forest where a large male tiger had been sighted. Even without it Akbar would have known the tiger was there. Zubaida, Salim’s former nursemaid and attendant to HamidaĪ low rumbling growl rose from the dense acacia bushes thirty yards away. Suleiman Beg, Salim’s milk-brother and friend Shaikh Mubarak, Islamic cleric and Abul Fazl’s fatherįather Francisco Henriquez, Jesuit priest, Persian by birthįather Antonio Monserrate, a Spanish Jesuit priest Shaikh Ahmad, an orthodox Sunni and leader of the ulama, Akbar’s senior Islamic spiritual advisers Muhammad Beg, a commander from BadakhshanĪbdul Rahman, Akbar’s khan-i-khanan after Ahmed KhanĪziz Koka, one of Akbar’s youngest commandersĪnarkali, ‘Pomegranate Blossom’, Akbar’s Venetian concubine Jauhar, Humayun’s steward and later Akbar’s comptroller of the householdĪbul Fazl, Akbar’s chief chronicler and confidant Maham Anga, Akbar’s wet-nurse (milk-mother) Bairam Khan, Akbar’s guardian and first khan-i-khanan, commander-in-chiefĪhmed Khan, Akbar’s chief scout and later his khan-i-khanan
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
December 2022
Categories |