Dr. Ruby Lal, Professor in the Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies and Associated Faculty in the History Department, recently author an article in TIME, “What a Mughal Princess Can Teach Us About Feminist History.” Lal’s piece centers on her latest book, Vagabond Princess: The Great Adventures of Gulbadan (Yale, 2023), which chronicles the life of Princess Gulbadan, a fascinating figure who travelled widely and authored the sole extant work of prose by a woman in the early decades of the Mughal Empire. Lal’s article also addresses the marginalization of feminist and women’s histories, both in Gulbadan’s time and our own. Read an excerpt below along with the full article.
“Books and chronicles from centuries past are precious gifts. Holding onto their words, we can delve into the beauty and torments of human life. With such rare possessions, we come close to another time; watch her creation, her uncertainties, her discoveries, the stuff of history. But uncovering feminist history is a slow process, and too often, women historians are the only ones willing to do that work. Beveridge taught herself Persian to reveal Gulbadan’s history. I have spent years combining hundreds of documents to assemble the adventures of daring and imaginative Mughal women.”
