Person · regent of Ahmadnagar for her son, 1565 – 1571

Khunza Humayun

خونزہ ہمایوں

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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.

What the sources did with her afterwards. After her son removed her — word that she should "live retired, like the other princesses", then her seizure on horseback outside the palace — Briggs’s Ferishta never records her death, her burial or any later fact of her life; the six-year regent vanishes from a text that narrates her son’s reign for twenty more years. The archive’s Ahmadnagar essay adds that her painted portraits in the Tarif-i Husain Shahi were scraped off, probably in that reign.

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

Six years behind a curtain

“As this Prince ascended the throne during his minority, his mother, Khoonza Sooltana, became for six years regent and manager of the affairs of the kingdom. She raised her three brothers, Ein-ool-Moolk, Taj Khan, and Etibar Khan, to the first rank of nobility. She appointed Moolla Inayut Oolla to the office of peshwa; and sat daily in durbar, transacting public business, behind a curtain”. She marched an army against Bijapur with her son beside her; her brothers’ advancement “at the expense of the most deserving nobles in the state, gave umbrage to the whole of that class”.

Her removal: “Enraged at this message, she summoned her creatures, and throwing a veil over her face, came from the palace on horseback, armed with a bow, a sword, and dagger. She was, however, seized, after a short resistance, and her attendants fled.” The Tarif-i Husain Shahi she commissioned, and the erasure of her painted portraits from it, are in the archive’s Ahmadnagar essay.

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