A Prince of Dreamers. Flora Annie Webster Steel

"The fiction which resembles truth is better than the truth which is dissevered from the imagination," said the Persian poet Nizami, in the year 1250.

It remains true, however, to-day. So I give no excuse for this book. It is not one which will appeal to the man in the street. Nevertheless I make the attempt to give the character and the times of the Prince of Dreamers with a glad heart. It is as well that the twentieth century of the West should know something of the sixteenth century in the East.

So many of my dramatis personæ once lived in the flesh and spoke many of the words imputed to them in the following pages, that it will be shorter to designate those who are purely imaginary puppets.

To begin with Mirza Ibrahîm and Khodadâd. For obvious reasons it is always safer in historical novels to draw the out-and-out villains with imagination. The death of the latter, however, together with the curious privileges of the Târkhâns are part of the truth which is stranger than fiction.

For Âtma Devi I have also no warranty; Indian history does not concern itself with womenkind. But dear Auntie Rosebody's Memoirs^[1] have supplied me with my sketch of the Beneficent Ladies, while, of course, the story of Mihr-un-nissa, who in long after-years did, under the name of Nurjahân, become Prince Salîm's wife, and, as such, did undoubtedly add to the honour and glory of his reign as Jâhangîr, is purely historical; even to the chance meeting in the Paradise Bazaar.

Pâyandâr Khân, the Wayfarer, is so far possible that the heir to the throne of Sinde, who bore that name, suddenly lost his senses in consequence of some direful tragedy, disappeared into the desert, and was no more heard of. The crediting of him with hypnotic powers is offered as an explanation of many marvels which are constantly cropping up in Indian story and legend.

It has been suggested to me that for those to whom the word Mogul is mixed up with tobacconists' shops and packs of cards, a brief outline of the dynasty called by that name might be advisable.

It was founded, then, by one Babar, poet, knight-errant, perfect lover, who is, without doubt, the most charming figure in all history. He sacrificed his life in 1540 for his son Humâyon, that most unfortunate of kingly adventurers from whose opium-soddened hands the thirteen-year-old boy, Akbar, took an uncertain sceptre. In him the glory of the Moguls culminated. After him three more kings were worthy of the title "Great," and then by slow degrees the dynasty dwindled down to one Bahâdur Shâh, a feeble old man, who after defying us at Delhi, died miserably in exile.

Akbar was cotemporary of Queen Elizabeth, and his rightful place is among the great company of dreamers--Shakespeare, Raphael, Drake, Galileo, Michelangelo, Cervantes, and half a hundred others--who in the sixteenth century arose (and God alone knows why or whence) to place the whole world, spiritual and temporal, under the sway of imagination for the time.

I have chosen as my period in Akbar's life that time of glorious peace before the abandonment of the City of Victory, Fatehpur Sikri, which he had built to commemorate the birth of his son.

The reason for this abandonment is unknown, though scarcity of water was certainly one of the factors in it.

One

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