“So great was the love she inspired that the peasants of the Western hills refused for many years to believe that she was dead. She had escaped they said, through an underground passage and was hiding in some deep fold of the Sahyadri mountains. When the time will come, she would again reveal herself, drive the Mughals across the Vindhyas and bring back once more the golden years of Ahmadnagar.”
The death of Chand Bibi was a heartbreak for the people of the Ahmadnagar Sultanate. Their fiery queen was all that stood between them and the Mughals. It wasn’t just Ahmadnagar who had something to fear, the Deccan Sultanates of Golconda, Bijapur and Bidar would have known that they would be next.
Chand Bibi was the wall that stood between the Northern Mughal Empire and the Southern Kingdoms. For many years, she had held out. But ultimately, the Mughal Emperor Akbar triumphed over her. But the warrior Queen left a stronger legacy in the South than the king of kings. She had united the Sultanates against the Mughals, including the armies of the Abysinnian slave-kings.
Had she not refused to accept Akbar’s yoke, she would have done well in the Mughal Empire. She was a fluent polyglot, who spoke Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Marathi and Kannada. She played the Sitar and painted flowers as a hobby. But the skills she showed the Mughals were different – representing her military training and tactics.
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