Empress
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In the absence of a man in whose name she could fight, and with no nobles or family members supporting or celebrating her imperial service, Nur could take no further action to retain her position as co-sovereign. Her rise to power had been relatively swift, her fall was even swifter.
The official historians of Shah Jahan’s reign deliberately wrote Nur Jahan’s merits and accomplishments out of Mughal history. Later records omit all the extraordinary achievements of a twentieth wife who became a co-sovereign, giving audience from the imperial balconies, offering political advice, making laws, shooting a tiger to protect her subjects, commanding a battle on a roaring river, and rescuing a kidnapped emperor. Also effaced from the record is her compassion for the people of the court, the harem, and beyond—the matriarchs she honored, for example, or the orphan girls whose lives she transformed with the marriages she arranged.
When Nur isn’t absent from the histories written during the reign of Shah Jahan, she is blamed for the chaos that befell the empire during the final years of Jahangir’s reign. A modern scholar who compared two such volumes found that in Mu’tamad Khan’s Iqbalnama and Kamgar Husaini’s Maathir-i Jahangiri, descriptions of events related to Mahabat’s coup and Shah Jahan’s rebellion are exactly the same. He underlines the fact that both these recorders held Nur responsible for the disorder that occurred in the 1620s. This version of events, he writes, “was most probably inserted at the instance of Shah Jahan …”19
Long before he became emperor, Shah Jahan was obsessed with his “unique place in history.”20 While Jahangir had preferred to write his own straightforward memoir, Shah Jahan was determined to have his royal activities recorded in many volumes by chroniclers writing in the florid and flattering literary style of Abul-Fazl, the author of the Akbarnama. These several volumes, known collectively as the Shah Jahan Nama or the (Chronicle of the king of the world), were meant not only to highlight Shah Jahan’s specialness, but also, in a post-Nur world, reassert the importance of the male line of descent among the Mughals. In the Shah Jahan Nama, as in the Akbarnama, the genealogical tree began with the Central Asian forefather Timur, also known as Tamerlane—and as “The Lord of the Auspicious Planetary Conjunction.” To the string of Shah Jahan’s honorifics he added the title Lord of the Auspicious Planetary Conjunction and claimed to be the second Timur. There certainly would be no female co-sovereigns for a second Timur—and no laudatory record of such a woman preceding him.
Shah Jahan may have attempted to erase Nur from history in another way, ambitious but futile. Some scholars have suggested that Shah Jahan withdrew the coins of Nur and Jahangir, “to wipe out all memory of her [Nur Jahan’s] erstwhile sway.”21 If such a mandate were indeed issued—though Shahjahani records don’t mention it—collecting the coins already in circulation would have been extraordinarily difficult. Even if there were an attempt to withdraw Nur’s coins, some survive to this day in museums.22
The attempted erasure of Nur Jahan’s contributions and accomplishments extended even to Jahangir’s tomb. The basic facts about its construction and patronage were hotly contested in the Shahjahani chronicles, and in the public square. In 1660 the writer Muhammad Salih Kanbo described Jahangir’s tomb as Shah Jahan’s project.23 The only concession that Kanbo made to Nur Jahan’s involvement was a statement that the Heart-Contenting Garden had belonged to the empress, a pleasure garden that she designed and which the couple frequently visited.24
Architecture experts and historians, however, have a different view, declaring that Jahangir’s tomb was the product of Nur Jahan’s vision.25 Shah Jahan gave the orders for its construction, but the tomb was designed by and built under the supervision of Nur Jahan. It would take her ten years, from 1628 to 1638, to complete this monument to the memory of her husband.
Jahangir, though not a particularly devout Muslim, wanted a tomb that allowed direct connection with the divine. The dilemma for Nur Jahan would have been to reconcile her husband’s wish for an uncovered tomb with the requirements of a proper burial. A Mughal architecture expert explains that Nur solved that problem by incorporating some elements of the platform tombs then in fashion. But Jahangir’s mausoleum was unique: a “monumental bare plinth,” with high minarets at the four corners, open to the sky, the rain, and the clouds, “a symbol of divine mercy.”26 She adds: “The design of Jahangir’s tomb was repeated only once, on about half the scale and without corner minarets, in the tomb of Nur Jahan, built by Jahangir’s widow herself nearby.”27
Following Shah Jahan’s accession, Nur chose not to stay in the harem, as other elder Mughal women had done. Perhaps if she had, Asaf and Shah Jahan would eventually have turned to her for counsel, as kings and nobles had done with other Mughal matriarchs for generations. Modern biographies of the empress generally conjecture that though she was not in the harem, she lived in strict confinement.
She had to spend the rest of her life in retirement and seclusion. Shah Jahan fixed an annual pension of rupees two lakhs for her expenses.… She spent the rest of her life in Lahore in her personal house near the city. She used to spend lavishly on the needy and the poor.… She herself led a very simple life wearing only black garments. She was often seen visiting the grave of her beloved husband accompanied by her … attendants.28
Yet there is little actual evidence that the eighteen years she lived after Jahangir’s death were inactive and empty. Nur’s resources as a royal wife and a nawab, an aristocratic landowner, were still considerable. An eighteenth-century biographer of Mughal nobles estimated that the estates assigned to her corresponded to a numerical ranking of 30,000 in the mansab system devised by Akbar—higher than her father’s was.29 By law, she would have retained these property rights until her death, when they would be returned to the imperial exchequer. And if the records of the British East India Company and other European traders and visitors in India are credible, by 1627 she would have accrued a great deal of profit in commerce. In the event, an aging Nur may well have remained actively engaged in both business and charity.
After Nur passed away, on November 18, 1645, even the Shah Jahan Nama acknowledged her greatness:
In the city of Lahore, the Queen Dowager Nur Jahan Begam—whom it is needless to praise as she had already reached the pinnacle of fame—departed to Paradise in the seventy-second year of her age.… The renowned Begam was the chaste daughter of I’timad al-Daula and sister of the late Yamin al-Daula [Asaf Khan]. From the sixth year of the late Emperor’s reign, when she was united to him in the bond of matrimony, she gradually acquired such unbounded influence over His Majesty’s mind that she seized the reins of government and abrogated to herself the supreme civil and financial administration of the realm, ruling with absolute authority till the conclusion of his reign.30
The remarkable fact of Nur Jahan’s supremacy emerges undiluted despite the disparaging tone of Shah Jahan’s chronicle. In the centuries that followed, the caricature of a besotted, drunken Emperor Jahangir came to dominate the public imagination as the most likely explanation of Nur’s power. And the woman who married Jahangir in her mature years, and ruled with him, was reduced to a paradigm of flighty romantic love. Yet in the Shahjahani histories, in her coins and monuments, in the work of feminist scholars, a much richer and more complete story of Nur’s achievements resides. It is as if, no matter what, some people will themselves into history.
SIXTEEN
Beyond 1627, an Epilogue
Islamic history is full of powerful women—Ayisha, wife of the Prophet Muhammad, who fought the Battle of the Camel; Borte, the senior consort of Chingiz Khan; Pari Khanum, the Safavid princess who secured the throne for her brother Isma’il II. Wise matriarchs worked behind the scenes in Mughal India and Ottoman Turkey; so did judicious women counselors in North Africa and the Middle East.1 Some might say their presence was a central facet of Islam. But faced with the reality of a de facto woman sovereign, most official observers of Nur’s achievements, instead of acknowledging that she’d earned her
position on the strength of her talents, explained it in terms more palatable (to them) and conceivable (to them): she was a gold-digger and schemer.
Contemporary European observers trapped in their own judgments about feminine power were hardly better. Nur Jahan reminded them of the “overmighty favourites” of the European courts, almost always a man. The European favorite’s hold over the monarch was not because of good looks or manners, but rather because he was a “doer,” an efficient, effective administrator and political fixer. The favorite often rose because of a “peculiarly lazy” monarch.2 Until very recently, historians brought a distinct orientalism to bear on the depiction of Jahangir: a drunk, stoned, and oversexed despot, an unexceptional ruler who didn’t measure up to his father, Akbar the Great. Several scholars have now taken a hard look at these old-fashioned histories of Jahangir, and reappraised him as a man with diverse talents, an aesthete, nature lover, philosopher open to many doctrines, and curious traveler.
It is fully in keeping with his open-mindedness that having a co-sovereign was no problem for Jahangir. From the moment he became the emperor, he continually challenged limits, including his father Akbar’s prescriptions for how an ideal Mughal king should live and be. Drawing upon the wisdom of his early philosophical conversations with the young monk Siddhichandra, Jahangir might well have reminded critics of his co-sovereign that absolutist thinking itself was a heresy.
In a picture likely painted by the brilliant Bishandas, dated 1627, Nur Jahan stands holding a portrait of Jahangir. Standing tall against a forest-green background, she wears a tunic, made of the prized diaphanous muslin that she likely invented, over stylish striped pants. Dark sandalwood paste scents the armpits, and tendrils of wavy hair fall loose down her back.3
The painter knew the Indian and Persian literary and painterly tradition of depicting women and men holding portraits.4 A wife gazes at a portrait of her husband; a princess observes a portrait of herself or of someone else; a lone heroine draws a portrait of her lover or an absent husband.5 In a Mughal portrait now in the Musée Guimet in Paris, a youngish Jahangir tenderly holds a portrait of his father, Akbar the Great.
Holding: owning, enjoying, viewing, feeling, embracing, continuing, extending.
Jahangir holds his father’s image—father to son, ruler to ruler. Nur Jahan holds her husband’s portrait, a visual mark of the imperial couple in conversation with each other.
Nur’s legacy was furthered in a potent way by Jahanara, the daughter of Arjumand and Shah Jahan. Born in 1614 while her father, then Prince Khurram, was on a campaign against Mewar, young Jahanara accompanied the imperial cavalcade many times. On the road and in court, she could closely observe the activities of Empress Nur, taking them in even if she didn’t fully understand their import. Coming of age when her grand-aunt Nur was at the height of her imperial powers, Jahanara would have seen the empress personally supervising the care of young Prince Shuja, discussing family matters with Arjumand, designing buildings, and making vital political decisions with her husband the emperor and her father Ghiyas.
Jahanara was devoted to Sufi practices, but when her mother, Arjumand, by then known as Mumtaz Mahal, died in 1636 giving birth to her fourteenth child, Jahanara took over as the lady of the realm. In that role, she handled imperial duties in place of her mother, enhancing her father’s authority and the Islamic face of the empire through her patronage of sacred works, prayer, and pilgrimage, such as the many months she spent in Kashmir with a Sufi spiritual master, Mulla Shah. Her piety is evident in the architectural works she commissioned, such as the Agra mosque and the Mulla Shah mosque in Srinagar, dedicated to her master. According to one art historian, whereas Nur Jahan’s constructions were “bold and blunt … monumental and exuberant” expressions of her authority, Jahanara’s were “sacred commissions,” an extension of the “princess’s spiritual persona.”6 This scholar is not of the opinion that the architectural works of the “prescient feminist” Nur Jahan were the inspiration for those of the Sufi princess.7 But Jahanara emulated Nur in an important way. In 1637, a decade after Jahangir’s death, and a year after Arjumand’s passing, Jahanara asked her father if she could oversee and personally pay for a new mosque being built in Agra on the banks of the Yamuna River, alongside another work in progress—the Taj Mahal, her father’s memorial to his late wife, modeled on the tomb Nur had built for her parents.
Jahanara’s Agra mosque has a unique feature. Inscriptions frame the main entrance—Persian eulogies praise the detail of the mosque—and its patroness: The mosque was built by Jahanara Begum, who is “Veiled with chastity … the pride of her gender.… The most honored of the issue of the head of the Faithful [Shah Jahan] …”8
Only two imperial women had built mosques before Jahanara: Jahan gir’s mother, Harkha, who had commissioned the Begum Shahi mosque in Lahore in 1611, and Nur, who built the Patthar mosque in Srinagar in 1620. The inscriptions on mosques were usually verses from the Quran, or statements that conveyed a sovereign’s policies and attitudes. Jahanara’s Persian eulogies had no precedent. But personification of the imperial patroness—inscribing the name of the woman responsible for a remarkable building is exactly the precedent that Nur Jahan had skillfully established. Jahanara, who referred to herself as faqira (ascetic) in her Sufi treatises and constantly effaced herself in relation to the divinity she sought, was enchanted by the force of naming. It was there for her to see in everything that her grand-aunt had done.
ILLUSTRATIONS
The mythical Wak-Wak tree first found popularity in Shahnama, the Book of Kings, an eleventh-century epic poem by the celebrated Iranian author Firdausi. A Floral Fantasy of Animals and Birds, early 1600s. India, Mughal, © The Cleveland Museum of Art.
The fort complex at Agra, built during the reign of Emperor Akbar. Completed in 1573. Exterior View of the Fort Complex © Aga Khan Trust for Culture/Michael Peuckert.
Nur Jahan surrounded by harem women, this painting depicts the moment after she came to Agra in 1608. Behind her, the small girl is meant to represent Ladli. The lotus blossom in her right hand is suggestive of longevity. Chiterin: An Illustration of the Nur Jahan Episode © Bharatiya Kala Bhavan.
Court painter Abul-Hasan Nadir uz-Zaman’s remarkable painting: Nur Jahan Holding a Musket, c. seventeenth century CE, courtesy of Rampur Raza Library.
A clear indicator of Nur’s sovereignty: a silver rupee bearing Nur Jahan and Jahangir’s names.
A celebration for Prince Khurram’s military successes in the Deccan, hosted by Nur and captured by a court painter in miniature. Jahangir and Prince Khurram Entertained by Nur Jahan, Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery.
Nur Jahan: Portrait to Be Worn As a Jewel, seventeenth century, Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum.
Posthumous Portrait of Emperor Jahangir Under a Canopy, c. 1650. India, Mughal, © The Cleveland Museum of Art.
Mausoleum of I’timad ud-Daula, the garden tomb of Ghiyas and Asmat, commissioned by Nur. © Aga Khan Trust for Culture/Samuel Bourne (photographer).
Maqbara-i Jahangir, the Tomb of Jahangir, commissioned by Shah Jahan, but built from Nur’s designs, under her supervision. © Aga Khan Trust for Culture.
The Tomb of Nur Jahan at Shahdara. The design echoes Jahangir’s tomb, at around half the size. Photo © Guilhem Vellut.
A painting in the Indian and Persian tradition, Nur Jahan Holding a Portrait of Jahangir, c. 1627, © The Cleveland Museum of Art.
Mughal Queen Nur Jahan Playing Polo with Other Princesses. Painted by Ustad Haji Muhammad Sharif (1889–1978). The father of traditional miniature painting in Pakistan, Muhammad Sharif was a hereditary court painter from the Patiala family of Muslim painters.
Mughal Brave Queen Nur Jahan with Her Husband King Jahangir after Killing Tiger with Her Spear. Painted by Ustad Haji Muhammad Sharif (1889–1978).
Princess Nur Jahan and Attendants, eighteenth century, the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Film still from Noor Jehan, 1
967. Lavish legends of Nur were put on celluloid several times between 1923 and 1967, and most films had the title Noor Jahan. Courtesy: The Osian’s Archive & Library Collection.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Writing Empress has been a generative and demanding experience. For several years I have been absorbed in trying to understand the gist and consequences of Nur Jahan’s sovereignty. We know that she was powerful, yet we didn’t know just what that meant. As a historian, the prime irony for me is that the sources that declare Nur Jahan’s sovereignty are plentiful, yet no one invoked her as the “Great Mughal Empress.” To be able to delve into the politics of how she, as a co-sovereign, was wiped out of the historical and public imagination was the beginning; a great challenge lay in working out what my practice of engaging the plentiful archive would produce. An even bigger task was the form my writing needed to take in order to bring Nur Jahan to the center stage of world history.
This book is what it is because of the remarkable generosity of many individuals and institutions. Lynne Huffer, Leslie Harris, Gyan Pandey, Michael Fisher, Francis Robinson, Colin Johnson, and Narayana Rao read several drafts of this book—and gave sound advice. For suggestions on early drafts, I thank Mary Odem, Rosemary Magee, Laurie Patton, Wendy Doniger, Rita Gomes, Shalom Gold-man, and Stephen Dale. Allan Sealy, Lois Reitzes, Ralph Gilbert, and Leslee Paul read to see how the historical landscape of India and her history intertwined. Allan suggested that I hold off Jahangir. Thanks to Natasha Trethewey for her interest in my preoccupation with historical evidence. Azra Kidwai, Romila Thapar, Deepa Mehta, Salman Rushdie, Ela Bhatt, Mubarak Ali, Rudrangshu Mukherjee, William Dalrymple, Daren Wang, Namita Gokhale, Meru Gokhale, Shadab Bano, Nadia Maria el-Cheikh, David Page, Susan and Anish Mathai, Mimi Choudhury, Smita Murthy, Steven Hochman, Daniel Weiss, and Elizabeth Hornor have offered unstinting support. Chiki Sarkar first approached me to ask if I would write a “critical biography” of Nur Jahan: I hope she’ll find this book inviting. Allison Busch and Sheldon Pollock gave not only intellectual sustenance, but also their New York home on two occasions. Thanks to Audrey Truschke for the lead on Sanskrit sources, and to Anjali Arondekar, Barbara Ramusack, and Mrinalini Sinha for feminist solidarity.