Mirza Zn-J-Qamaln, a Christian Grandee of three Great Moghuls, with 

 Notes on Akbar's Christian Wife and the Indian Bourbons. 



By the Rev. H. Hosten, S.J. 



After publishing in The Examiner, Bombay (1912), 1 extracts from the Annual 

 Letters of Goa and Cochin (1618-24), we were asked repeatedly to publish further 

 particulars about the famous Prince, Mirza Zu-1-Qarnain or Alexander, the founder of 

 what was called the " Agra College." 



We regret we cannot fully satisfy at this stage the curiosity of our friends. 

 For sixty years and more, the history of the Mirza and of his father Sikandar 

 (Alexander) is so closely bound up with that of the Mogor Mission that to write the 

 former would mean exhausting the latter. For the moment, we intend going chiefly 

 through the more accessible printed sources, a piece of work which we attempted 

 a first time as far back as 1907; and, since one of the chief points of interest 

 and surprise in the Mirza' s history is the high dignity to which he was raised by the 

 Moghul Emperors and his great benefactions to the Mogor Mission, we shall select for 

 publication an important Portuguese document by Fr. Francis Corsi, S.J., which 

 reviews the Mirza' s history up to the year 1628, and another by Father Anthony 

 Botelho, S.J., summarising the chief events of the Mogor Mission until after the 

 Mirza 's death. 



Mirza Zu-1-Qarnain's father is mentioned clearly for the first time in a letter 

 of Fr. Jerome Xavier to the General of the Society (Lahore, August ?, I59 8 )- 



" Quite recently," he wrote, "a violent storm fraught with danger burst over us, 

 and little more was needed for the pestilential and baneful sect lately started by the 

 King [Akbar] to gather fresh strength and overwhelm us. It came about thus. 

 After the death of his Christian wife, a certain Armenian, a Christian,— if a man 

 in such dispositions can yet be called a Christian,— was bent on a sacrilegious 

 marriage with his niece (ex ea neptem volebat sacrilegiis nuptii& sibi copulari): 1 I 

 refused to agree to these incestuous nuptials; whereupon, he tried by soliciting 

 the interference or an order of the King to make me consent to, or at least wink at, 

 his union The King had us called for, and, as we suspected the motive of this excep- 

 tional summons, we commended ourselves to God, offering Him such prayers and 

 vows as the little time at our diposal allowed, and determined to lay down our lives 



1 Cf. The Examiner, Bombay, February 3, 10. 17, March 9, 16, 23, 30, April 6, 1912. 



2 Oranus (1601), Hayus (1605), du Jarric (Preach edn. , II. 485) and Louis de Dieu (Historia S. Petri, 1639) have 

 neptem= niece, but the Mainz edn. of Recentissima de amplissima Regno Chinae, item de statu rei Christianae apud Magnum 

 Regem Mogor (1601), which I have not seen, has "sister," says General R. Maclagan (J.A.S.B., 1896, p 78, >i. 1, 

 and compare with p. 44, No. 5). Sister is evidently the correct version as the sequel will show. In our present quotation 

 there is question of two sisters. 



