Person · regent at Bijapur in the 1580s and at Ahmadnagar 1596 – 1600; killed 1600

Chand Bibi

چاند بی بی

Can't read this? The Reading Bridge →

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.

A woman in a plumed turban riding a white horse across a green ground under a pale sky, a hawk on her bare, braceleted hand, a female attendant on foot carrying a second hawk, a flight of cranes above — a painting dated 1800, two centuries after its subject, not a likeness.
A woman in a plumed turban riding a white horse across a green ground under a pale sky, a hawk on her bare, braceleted hand, a female attendant on foot carrying a second hawk, a flight of cranes above — a painting dated 1800, two centuries after its subject, not a likeness.http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00routesdata/1500_1599/akbar/ahmadnagar/ahmadnagar.html (artist: unknown, dated 1800 per file metadata; depicts Chand Bibi, d. 1599, wife of 'Ali 'Adil Shah I of Bijapur, hawking) · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Draft. This entry is an unreviewed first draft. It has not yet been checked by a subject reviewer — see sources and method.

Bijapur

Ferishta opens Ibrahim II’s reign with her: “to the dowager Chand Beeby, the late king’s widow, was intrusted the care of the young king’s education.” She engineered the fall of the first regent, Kamal Khan, through Kishwar Khan; Kishwar Khan then accused her “of having secretly instigated her brother, Moortuza Nizam Shah, to invade Beejapoor” and had her confined at Satara; and when the people of the city turned on him, calling him “the gaoler of Chand Beeby”, she “was again intrusted with the care of the young King’s person.” Briggs footnotes that she brought the title of Peshwa from the Nizam Shahi court to Bijapur on this occasion.

Ahmadnagar

In 1595 the Abyssinian party at Ahmadnagar proposed that the infant Bahadur “should be proclaimed under her regency”; overruled by Miyan Manjhu in favour of a pretender, she prevailed within the year, obtained Bahadur’s release from Chavand and had him proclaimed. Her nephew Ibrahim Adil Shah II sent armies twice at her request. Ferishta’s chapter-head ends the story: “she recommends the surrender of the fort — her opinion overruled — she is seized by the garrison, and murdered.”

Her death has two irreconcilable dates in print. The archive’s essay on the Deccan’s women regents sets both out and asserts neither.

Connected to

Referred to by

Written about at length

Sources