Delhi in Moghal Times
Pursued hotly, Humayun reached Delhi on May 25, 1540, but could not remain, and had to march on into the Punjab, to wander homeless for
many a long year, through Sind into Persia, until at length he was able to re-establish a kingdom in Cabul. While in Sind he married, in 1541, Hamida Begam, then only fourteen years of age, and on the 15th of October in the following year there was born to him a son, the great Akbar, at Umarkot, on the confines of the Indian desert.
The circumstances of the birth, while the mother was enduring the hardships of a flight, made it necessary to employ foster-mothers, wives of nobles who were accompanying Humayun. Several monuments at Delhi are connected with the foster-relations of Akbar.
Farid-ud-din, having driven out Humayun, ascended the throne in 1540 with the title of SHER SHAH. Although Agra was his capital, he com- menced to build a wall round part of Firozabad, adjoining the Purana Kila of Humayun; but he cannot have spent many days there, for he was very busy throughout his short reign in conquering Malwa and other countries. He died in 1545 in the trenches before Kalinjar, a fort In Bengal, and was buried at Sasseram. He built caravan- sarais, at every ten kos distance, all the way from Bengal to the Indus, and had wells dug at each215
