Ruqaiya Sultan Begum
Empress consort of the Mughal Empire
Ruqaiya Sultan Begum (alternatively spelled Ruqayya or Ruqayyah; c. 1542 – January 1626) was the first and chief wife of the third Mughal emperor, Akbar. She was one of the longest-serving Mughal empress consorts for nearly fifty years. However, she never held the title of Padshah Begum. During Akbar's reign, the title was instead held by his mother, Hamida Banu Begum (titled Mariam Makani), until her death in 1604.
Ruqaiya was a first cousin of her husband and was a Mughal princess by birth. Her father, Hindal Mirza, was the youngest brother of Akbar's father, Humayun. She was betrothed to Akbar at the age of nine and married him at 14, but remained childless throughout her marriage. In later years, she raised Akbar and Mariam-uz-Zamani’s grandson, Khurram (the future emperor Shah Jahan).
Family
Early life
Ruqaiya Sultan Begum was born into the Timurid dynasty as a Mughal princess, and was the only daughter of Mughal prince Hindal Mirza, the youngest son of the first Mughal emperor Babur from his wife Dildar Begum.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ruqaiya Sultan Begum” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.