Everything on Female Rulers

Women's Contributions

6 items

• Regents, Not Consorts: The Women Who Governed the Deccan — essay · Chand Bibi · 21 sources
  A mother and her daughter each governed Ahmadnagar. One was deposed by her own son after riding out armed to arrest his conspirators; the other held two sultanates as regent, faced down Akbar's army from a besieged wall, and was killed by her own garrison. At Golconda a third ran the state for a boy sultan and negotiated its terms with Aurangzeb. The Deccan produced more women with executive power than any comparable court system in India, and the record of them is thin, contradictory, and in one case literally scraped off the page.

• Hayat Bakshi Begum — Person · regent from 1626; d. 26 February 1667 · Hayat Bakshi Begum
  Daughter of one sultan, wife of the next, mother of the third, and regent for her son from 1626 — the only woman in the royal necropolis whose tomb is the size of a king’s.
• Khunza Humayun — Person · regent of Ahmadnagar for her son, 1565 – 1571 · Khunza Humayun — regent 1565–1571
  Widow of the victor of Talikota and regent for six years for her son, governing “behind a curtain” — until the boy, at fourteen, sent word that she “should no longer engage in public affairs”, and she rode out against him with a bow.
• Nur Jahan — Person · wife of Jahangir; the amirship granted early 1622 · Nur Jahan
  The empress to whom Jahangir, in his own memoir, gave her dead father’s whole establishment and office, and ordered that her drums be sounded after his own — power with an instrument, recorded by the man who granted it.
• Jahanara — Person · eldest daughter of Shah Jahan; her dates not yet read from a page · Female Rulers
  Shah Jahan’s eldest daughter, the "Begam Sahib", with an income of three million rupees and the revenues of Surat, and kept unmarried under what Manucci calls "the regulation of Akbar that daughters should not be given husbands".
• Razia Sultana — Person · r. 1236 – 1240 · Razia Sultana
  Daughter and designated heir of Sultan Shams-ud-Din Iltutmish of Delhi; the only woman to rule the Delhi Sultanate in her own right. Minhaj-us-Siraj, writing within a generation of her death and translated by H. G. Raverty, records that Iltutmish passed over his adult sons to name her heir-apparent by written decree, that she reigned as 'Sultan Raziyyat-ud-Dunya wa ud-Din' for three years, six months and six days, and that she was seized by rebel Turk Amirs, imprisoned, married her captor, and was killed in 638 H. (1240 CE) after a final defeat.

Historical Periods & Dynasties

4 items

• Qudsia Begum — Person · Regent of Bhopal, 1819 – 1837 · Bhopal Begums
  Widow of a nawab shot dead by a child, named Regent for her infant daughter in 1819, and the first of the four women who governed Bhopal for a century — removed in 1837 by an arrangement that gave her an estate and gave her son-in-law the throne.
• Sikandar Begum — Person · Regent from 1847; proclaimed Ruler c. 1860; d. 1868 · Bhopal Begums
  Regent of Bhopal from 1847 and its proclaimed Ruler from 1859/60, Sikandar Begum was the only child of Nawab Nazar Mahomed and Qudsia Begum; her own daughter Shah Jahan Begum stood aside from the throne in her favour before eventually succeeding her.
• Shah Jahan Begum — Person · r. 1868 – 1901 · Bhopal Begums
  The only child of Sikandar Begum, Shah Jahan Begum was recognized as heir in infancy, briefly waived her claim to her mother in 1859, and was installed as Ruler of Bhopal in November 1868, reigning for thirty-three years until her death on 16 June 1901.
• Sultan Jahan Begum — Person · r. 1901 – 1926 · Bhopal Begums
  The only surviving child of Shah Jahan Begum, Sultan Jahan Begum succeeded on her mother's death on 16 June 1901 and was formally installed at a durbar at the Sadar Manzil palace on 4 July 1901; her own account of the accession, and of her mother's death, survives in her memoir An Account of My Life.

Regional Divisions

1 item

• Chand Bibi — Person · regent at Bijapur in the 1580s and at Ahmadnagar 1596 – 1600; killed 1600 · Chand Bibi
  Daughter of one sultanate, dowager-queen of another, jailed at Satara by one regent and restored by the mob that expelled him, then regent for her infant great-nephew at Ahmadnagar until her own garrison murdered her — the one person in the Great Houses who belongs to two of its three houses.