At first love seemed easy but after hard. [X]

For a couple whose legendary relationship was built on a love of poetry and music, Baz Bahadur and Rani Roopmati appear an awful lot in hunting scenes in miniature paintings. Their poems are celebrated + there are enough subsequent songs on the romance, unfortunately hard to track down good translations. A few snippets here.

There seems to be a single English translation dating to 1926 of the original Persian language romance of 1599 on Baz Bahadur and Roopmati authored by Ahmad-ul-Umri.

Pic source: X, X and X.

PostScript: Baz Bahadur was defeated by Rani Durgavati, the Gond Queen, around 1556. That decisive defeat left him averse to war. In 1561 however Baz Bahadur was forced to defend Malwa, lost to Akbar and fled.  Roopmati poisoned herself rather than surrender. The Mughals then turned to Gond.  Despite resistance the Gond army eventually lost, largely due to the lack of artillery. Rani Durgavati died in 1564 on the battlefield by her own hands resulting in the Gonds of Garha Mandla becoming a vassal state of the Mughals.

Adham Khan aka Baz Bahadur’s nemesis was more than taken up with the famed musicians and dancers of Baz Bahadur’s court retaining more than a few of them for his own pleasure and sending on only captured elephants to Delhi. Eventually Adham Khan was killed in 1562 by royal order. Those dancing girls? Akbar did get them, you can see them in the Akbarnama. And Baz Bahadur? He too ended up – probably as a musician – in Akbar’s court.