Some of the most extraordinary people in history are not forgotten because they were insignificant, but because the stories told about the past were never designed to include them. Chand Bibi, the sixteenth-century queen-regent of Ahmadnagar, is one such figure. While her courageous resistance to Mughal forces has endured in folklore and regional memory, she has largely remained on the periphery of India’s historical imagination, overshadowed by more familiar imperial narratives.
In Chand Bibi: The Lives and Legends of a Warrior Queen, historian Sarah Waheed undertakes an extraordinary act of historical recovery. The book is far more than a biography of a forgotten ruler; it is an ambitious exploration of memory, power and historical erasure that asks a fundamental question: who gets to enter history, and who is left behind?
Chand Bibi is best known for defending Ahmadnagar against Mughal expansion in 1595, emerging as one of the fiercest opponents of imperial ambition during Emperor Akbar’s reign. But Waheed resists the temptation to reduce her life to a single episode of military heroism. Instead, she reconstructs an entire world around her—the politically dynamic and culturally rich Deccan Sultanates, a region that has often remained overshadowed by histories centred on Delhi and the Mughal court.
The book’s greatest strength lies in its refusal to present Chand Bibi as an extraordinary exception. Waheed argues that she was part of a much larger tradition of women’s political authority in the Deccan, where women served as rulers, diplomats, military strategists, patrons of architecture and defenders of kingdoms. In doing so, she challenges deeply entrenched assumptions about medieval India as a space exclusively dominated by men.
One of the most compelling aspects of the book is its treatment of historical evidence. Chand Bibi’s life survives in contradictions. Even the circumstances surrounding her death remain unresolved. Historical accounts variously suggest that she was murdered by her own soldiers, died by suicide to avoid capture or escaped through secret underground tunnels. Rather than privileging one version over another, Waheed treats each account as a window into the societies that preserved them. The result is a nuanced meditation on how history is created—not simply through facts, but through memory, imagination and the stories communities choose to carry forward.
The author’s own voice adds another dimension to the narrative. As a Muslim woman from Hyderabad, Waheed acknowledges her personal connection to Chand Bibi’s world and reflects on the challenges of researching Muslim histories in contemporary academia. These reflections are woven seamlessly into the book and reinforce one of its central arguments: history is never entirely neutral. The stories we inherit are shaped by power structures that determine whose experiences are preserved and whose are neglected.
Waheed also brings attention to the many women who inhabited Chand Bibi’s world. Readers encounter queens, female soldiers, attendants, diplomats and patrons whose contributions have rarely entered mainstream historical discourse. Particularly fascinating is her discussion of the urdu-begis—armed female retainers who guarded royal households, transmitted political information and participated in military life. Such details fundamentally alter conventional understandings of gender and power in medieval India.
Equally memorable is the recurring image of Chand Bibi holding a falcon while riding horseback. Waheed unpacks this iconography with remarkable insight, explaining how the falcon symbolized sovereignty, discipline and kingship within Persianate political culture. The image also came to embody resistance and regional autonomy long after Chand Bibi’s lifetime, transforming her into a symbol that transcended her historical moment.
Ultimately, the book offers a profound lesson about power itself. Chand Bibi was not an all-powerful sovereign ruling from a position of unquestioned authority. She governed amid factional rivalries, political instability and imperial pressure. Her strength lay in endurance, negotiation and her ability to hold together a fragile world under siege.
That message resonates deeply today.
At a time marked by political polarization, authoritarian tendencies and social fragmentation, Chand Bibi’s story offers an alternative understanding of leadership. It reminds us that power does not always reside in conquest and domination. Sometimes, power lies in persistence—in the ability to navigate uncertainty, build alliances and refuse to surrender in the face of overwhelming odds.
Chand Bibi: The Lives and Legends of a Warrior Queen is, therefore, much more than a work of historical scholarship. It is an invitation to rethink the stories we tell about India’s past and to recognize the silences that have shaped our collective memory. Sarah Waheed has not merely recovered a forgotten queen; she has expanded the very boundaries of historical imagination.
In restoring Chand Bibi to the centre of the narrative, she reminds us that history is always richer, more complex and more inclusive than the versions we inherit. And perhaps that is the book’s most important achievement: it transforms a forgotten ruler into a powerful lens through which to reconsider memory, gender, sovereignty and the enduring meaning of political power itself.
