Gulbadan Begum was born in 1523 C.E. to Dildar Begum and his wife, who ruled over Kabul and surrounding providence’s for over 19 years, which came to be known as the Mughal Empire. In 1530, when she was eight years old, her father passed away and her older half brother took the responsibility of raising her. It is said she was raised with a high education standard and that she wrote poetry in both Persian and Turkish, although none of her poems survived after her death. When she was just 17 years old, she was married to her cousin Khizr Khwaja Khan, the son of a Sultan. Together, they spent most of their life in Kabul but in 1557, she was invited by her nephew to join the imperial household of the Delhi Empire in Agra, which had only just been reestablished after the death of her brother, Humayun. Her nephew, Akbar, later commissioned her to write the story of his father Humayun, Gulbadan Begum’s older brother. She was told to write everything she remembered about her brothers life, which would come to be known as Humayun-Nama. The document was written in simple Persian and unlike other documents at the time, written without embellishment of her brother’s life. The manuscript is now the only surviving writing written by a Mughal royal woman from the 16th century and a battered, incomplete copy sits in the British Library. Later in life, along with the other women in the harem, she journey to Mecca for Hajj, where she stayed for nearly four years before returning to Agra. When she was 80 years old, in February of 1603, she fell ill with fever and eventually passed away surrounded by her family.In 1994, Shamima was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent intense radiation and chemotherapy. During her battle with cancer, she became the Editor of Al-Qalam, pushing the publication to becoming a flagship of progressive Islam in South Africa. In 1997, she performed hajj for the first time and later wrote about it in “Journey of Discovery: A South African Hajj”, which was published in 2000 after her death. She passed away on 8 January 1998 after a relapse of cancer. One of the funeral prayers was performed by a close female friend of hers who led both men and women in prayer in accordance with her wishes.