Empress
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Did these things actually happen? I can’t say for certain. For a feminist historian, the most useful thing about the legends is what they reveal about the cultural and political forces that made them necessary or influenced their details. Though not entirely factual, these legends and others are fact-adjacent; they tell us about what the public believed, what persisted, what people thought about the role and character of women. At the very least, they tell us what a man writing in eighteenth-century India thought about a remarkable seventeenth-century woman.
Writing the history of Nur Jahan has posed another challenge for me, aside from the question of the archive and the politics of claiming history. Often, I’ve had to roll up my sleeves and work out specifics that are treacherous. For instance: What was the precise character of political and economic events in the eastern provinces where Nur lived after her first wedding? There are no details in the record of her life per se, but we have enough indication of the tension between the capital and the provinces, and about Bengali life at the time, to fill in some blanks. Another example: The seventeenth-century names of many towns, rivers, and mountains are not to be found on the modern map. This has meant studying closely the landscape and geography of that region in order to establish the location of the particular villages and towns.
Regarding the travels of the Mughals: Medieval European monarchs left formal itineraries available to scholars; the Mughals did not. Charting the whereabouts of the Mughals is possible, especially for Emperor Jahan gir, who wrote copiously about his every move until 1624, though the task is time-consuming because his stream-of-consciousness journal can be confusing. In the matter of travel as in all other aspects of Mughal life, the record offers clues for the careful, crafty, and patient scholar. If God is in the details, then writing this book has meant reaching for the godly by constantly poring over the worldly.
NOTES
There is a great deal of fine writing on Mughal history and the wider Islamic world in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. I have opted not to give an exhaustive bibliography. The following notes provide details of archives and books that are central to the life and times of the Mughal empress Nur Jahan.
ONE: QUEEN OF QUEENS, AN INTRODUCTION
1.For detailed discussion of the royal hunt, and its use, especially in cavalry, Jos Gommans, Mughal Warfare: Indian Frontiers and High Roads to Empire, 1500–1700 (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), 110–11.
2.Augustin Hiriart about Jahangir’s court, cited in Ibid., 99.
3.Portrait of Nur Jahan, the Rampur Raza Library, India. Milo Cleveland Beach suggested the date of composition between 1612 and 1615 in The Grand Mogul: Imperial Painting in India, 1600–1660 (Williamstown, MA, 1978), 90. In the catalogue of the Rampur Raza Library, it is dated 1617, in English, as part of the exhibit where it was included. In the most recent edition by Milo C. Beach, Eberhard Fischer, and B. N. Goswamy (ed.), Masters of Indian Painting (Artibus Asiae Publishers, 2011), Nur’s portrait is entitled Portrait of Nur Jahan and the date ascribed is 1612–13. Sanam Ali Khan provided the details used above from the Rampur Raza Library conservation lab’s treatment records, letter dated November 24, 2013, 2–3.
4.On Mathura and its environs, scattered comments are found in Jahan gir’s memoir. For a fuller description of Mathura, F. S. Growse, Mathura: A District Memoir (1st ed, 1882; New Delhi: Asian Educational Services, 1993 repr.), especially 21, 27, 32–38, and chapter 4.
5.Alexander Rogers and Henry Beveridge (eds.), Tuzuk-i Jahangiri or Memoirs of Jahangir, 2 vols. (London: The Royal Asiatic Society, 1909), cited as Tuzuk; Tuzuk, 2:104–5. For the Persian edition, Muhammad Hashim (ed.), Jahangirnamah, Tuzuk-i Jahangiri (Tehran: Intisharat-i Bunyad-i Farhang-i Iran, 1980). For a more reader-friendly translation, W. M. Thackston, The Jahangirnama: Memoirs of Jahangir, Emperor of India (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). Thackston’s translation covers the eighteenth-century account of Muhammad Hadi. Hadi advanced Mu’tamad’s account, added a continuation from 1624, and brought his chronicle to the point of Jahangir’s death in 1627.
6.Mu’tamad Khan, The Iqbalnama-i Jahangiri (Calcutta: The Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1865); English translation of some sections of this text are available in H. M. Elliott and John Dowson, The History of India as Told by Its Own Historians, 6 vols. (Allahabad: Kitab Mahal Pvt. Ltd. 1964, 1st Indian ed.); Iqbalnama-i Jahangiri, 405. Among others who noted similar comments about Nur Jahan were Farid Bhakkari: Z. A. Desai (tr.), Nobility Under the Great Mughals: Based on Dhakhiratul Khawanin of Shaikh Farid Bhakkari, Parts 1–3 (New Delhi: Sundeep Prakashan, 2003), 14; Muhammad Hadi in the eighteenth century: Tatimma-i Vaqi’at-I Jahangiri, in Elliott and Dowson, The History of India, 6:398–99. And in an invaluable biographical dictionary of Mughal nobles compiled in alphabetical order, from the time of the first Mughal to the eighth decade of the eighteenth century: Desai. H. Beveridge (tr.) and Baini Prashad (compiled and annotated), Shah Nawaz Khan and Abdul Hayy, The Maathir-Ul-Umara, 3 vols. (Patna: Janaki Prakashan, 1979), 2:1077.
7.Iqbalnama-i Jahangiri, 405.
8.F. Hill Rivington, [Nur Jahan.] Grieve Not for Me. [Song.] From the Opera Nur Jahan. Words and Music by F. H. Rivington (London: Weekes & Co, 1925); T. B. Krishnaswami, Nur Jehan: a Play in Five Acts (Madras: Modern Print Works, 1918); Mirza Qalic Beg, Nur Jahan ‘ain Jahangir nataku: hikro tankhi nataku/joriyalu (Sakhar: Harīsinghu Penshinaru ain Tājir Kutub, 1900; historical drama in Sindhi); Guru Bhakta Simha, Nur Jahan (Ballia: n.p., 1935); Mathuraprasada, Nur Jahan Begam (Lucknow: n.p., 1905); Jogendra Singh, Nur Jahan: The Romance of an Indian Queen (London: James Nisbet, 1909); G. Devasher, The Otto of Roses. A Romance of Nur Jahan’s Times (Bombay: Orient Longmans, 1969); Hoticandu Mulicandu Gurbakhshaṇi, Nur Jahanu, Chapo biyo (Karachi: Tarachand Manghanmal, 1930); Jethanad Lalvani, Maharaṇi Nurjahan: Zabardast Tavarikhi Navil, 2nd ed. (Bombay: Bharat Jivan Navil Malha, 1964); Dwijendra Lal Roy, Nurajahaṃ: Naṭaka, 12th ed. (Bombay: Hindigrantha-Ratnakara Karyalaya, 1951); Saadat Hasan Manto, Nur Jahan: Sarur-i Jahan (Lahore: Makhtabah-yi Shiro Adab, 1975); Pa. Tavutsa, Nurjahan (Cennai: Tarul Islam Apis, 1927).
9.Muhammad Husain Azad, Darbar-i Akbari (Lahore. n.p., 1888), 187–88. The pigeon story is also found in: Abdul Latif Siddiqi, Sawanih-Umri Noor Jahan Begum, (Delhi: n.p., 1918), 9, 13. Other Urdu biographies that use the pigeon story include Khwaja Muhammad Shafi Dihlavi, Ishq-i Jahangir (Lahore: n.p., 1957, 1968). Nawab Imad Nawaz Jung of Hyderabad compiled a biography of Nur Jahan titled Hayat-i Noor Jahan. He describes the pigeon incident and the romantic meetings of Nur and Jahangir. This book is out of print. For further references to the pigeon legend, see Mohammad and Razia Shujauddin, The Life and Times of Noor Jahan (Lahore: The Caravan Book House, 1967), 4–11.
10.William Foster (ed.), The Embassy of Sir Thomas Roe to India, 1616–19 (Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, 1990, 1st Indian ed.), 89, 337.
11.Sir Richard Carnac Temple (ed.), The Travels of Peter Mundy in Europe and Asia (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1914), 2:206.
12.Alexander Dow, The History of Hindostan (London: J. Walker, 1812), 3:20–28; Mountstuart Elphinstone, The History of India: The Hindu and Mahometan Periods (London: John Murray, 1857, 4th ed.), 483–84; James Mill, The History of British India, ed. Horace Hayman Wilson, 2 vols. (London: James Madden, 1858, 5th ed.), 1: 303, 309, 313.
13.The most useful Mughal women’s biographical accounts, aimed at “bringing women to life,” were never thought of as serious mainstream histories. These biographies existed in a separate sphere, all its own. At best they came to be seen as mild correctives: there were women too, some of them quite talented! While these studies of Mughal women opened up a neglected area of investigation, the women biographers themselves excluded the possibility of raising new questions about the accepted boundaries of family and household, public and private spheres, gender relations and political power. Rekha Misra, Women in Mughal India 1526–1748 (New Delhi: Munshiram Monoharlal, 1967); Chandra Pant, Nur Jahan and Her Family (Allaha
bad: Dandewal Publishing, 1978); Renuka Nath, Notable Mughal and Hindu Women in the 16th and 17th Centuries A.D. (New Delhi: Inter-India Publications, 1990).
14.Ellison Banks Findly, Nur Jahan: Empress of Mughal India (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 89, 115, 126.
15.I spent a lot of time researching whether Ghiyas Beg and his family were Shi’a or Sunni, a question I was asked repeatedly. The problem is that the strict boundaries of religious identity that we ascribe to individuals in the modern world is not the way denizens of the premodern worlds lived. Their confessional identities were much more open than we imagine. There is quite a lot of information about Ghiyas Beg’s ancestors. The family can be traced back to the Timurid period, when they were part of the urban nobility of Rayy (Tehran close by), which was mostly Shi’ite. The choice of the names that the family members took suggests that they were “culturally” Shi’a with no clearly pronounced strong religious ties. My conversations with several scholars confirmed that even if the family started as Sunnis, they must have converted to Shi’ism under the Safavids, but there was no sign of fervent religiosity. Nur Jahan’s first husband, Ali Quli Khan Istalju, or Sher Afgan Khan, was in the service of Safavid king, Ismai’il II. His name, Ali, being from the Istalju tribe (one of the ten Qizilbash tribes that helped Safavids to power), and serving a king may be some, but not enough, evidence of being Shi’a. On the tomb of Nur Jahan’s parents that she built, we find verses from the Quran: from chapters 48 and 73. There is no allusion in these verses that they had anything to do with Shi’a polemical texts. Neither are the first three companions of the Prophet mentioned. Lack of reference to the caliphs says nothing about the confessional identity of the dweller of the tomb. I am grateful to Mohsen Ashtiany, Hossein Semei, Devin Stewart, and Yusuf Anal for conversations on this issue.
16.Embassy of Sir Thomas Roe, 89, 337.
TWO: MIRACLE GIRL
The Persian sources that I have consulted for the wider socio-cultural context and the birth of Nur Jahan are as follows: Annette Susannah Beveridge (tr.), Babur-nama (Memoirs of Babur) of Zahiru’d-din Muhammad Babur Padshah Ghazi (1921; reprint, Delhi, 1997); W. M. Thackston (tr. and ed.), Zahiruddin Muhammad Babur Mirza: Baburnama, Parts 1–3, Turkish transcription, Persian edition, and English translation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Dept. of Near Eastern Studies, 1993); Gulbadan Banu Begum, Ahval-i Humayun Badshah, British Library Ms. Or.166; Henry Beveridge (tr.), The Akbar Nama of Abu-l-Fazl, 3 vols. (1902–39; reprint Delhi: Low Price Publications, 1993); Maulawi Abdur-Rahim (ed.), Akbarnamah by Abu-l Fazl I Mubarak I ‘Allāmi, Persian text, 3 vols. (Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1873–1886); Henry Blochmann (ed.) and H. S. Jarrett (tr.), The Ain-i Akbari, 3 vols. (1873, 1894; reprint Calcutta: Royal Asiatic Society, 1993), Persian text, 3 vols. (Calcutta, 1872–1877); Kabiruddin Ahmad (ed.), Muhmmad Hashim Khafi Khan, Muntakhab-ul-Lubab, 2 vols. (Calcutta: Bibliotheca Indica, The Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1869).
1.Akbar Nama, 3:311–17; Shireen Moosvi, “Science and Superstition Under Akbar and Jahangir: The Observation of Astronomical Phenomenon,” in Irfan Habib (ed.), Akbar and His India (Delhi: OUP, 1997), 109–20; David A. J. Seargent, The Greatest Comets in History: Broom Stars and Celestial Scimitars (New York: Springer, 2009); Arthur Koestler, The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man’s Changing Vision of the Universe (New York: Penguin, 1990).
2.There is no historical record of the itinerary or the schedule that Asmat and Ghiyas followed in their passage from Persia to the land of the river Indus or Hind-Hindustan, as the northern region along the rivers Ganges and Brahmaputra, under the sway of the Mughals, was called then. But hints in the historical records provide clues and outlines of the likely route. The first Mughal (itinerant) king Babur, and later travelers, sketch evocatively the travel routes, geography, layout, flora and fauna, and pleasures and difficulties of voyages in these regions, which Ghiyas and Asmat were to navigate. Details of references follow below. For the part of the journey that would take Asmat and Ghiyas to the border of Persia, it was logical that they would first follow the popular (and the most direct) ancient route from Khurasan, along the southern slopes of the mountains that constituted the northern limit of the Iranian plateau.
3.Records mention the celebration of Ghiyas’s fortieth birthday in 1595. The translator of the Mughal gazetteer of Akbar’s reign mentions that a brother of Ghiyas Beg accompanied them as well. In the biographical notices of the grandees of Akbar’s empire, appended to the translation of the Ain-i Akbari, Jarrett notes that Jafar Beg arrived in India in 1578. No other source discusses this. Ain-i Akbari, 1:451. Rijal or the biographical literature of the seventeenth-century Mughal nobles, as well as court histories of this and later times give extensive details of Ghiyas Beg’s family background and the historical Iranian social and political milieu that may have driven him to India. A rare set of biographical sketches, striking for “non-official” facts, were put together by Shaikh Farid Bhakkari, a contemporary witness of the reign of Jahangir and Nur Jahan, and then of Shah Jahan. It is supposed to have been transcribed soon after its complication in 1650. The Maathir-Ul-Umara, an invaluable biographical dictionary of Mughal nobles compiled in alphabetical order, from the time of the first Mughal to the eighth decade of the eighteenth century. Compiled between 1741 and 1780, and drawn on Shaikh Farid above, the history of the production of this compilation is variegated and complex. The details are available in the Preface of the first volume of the translation, as well as in the introduction by Desai. H. Beveridge (tr.) and Baini Prashad (compiled and annotated), Shah Nawaz Khan and Abdul Hayy, The Maathir-Ul-Umara, 3 vols. (Patna: Janaki Prakashan, 1979); Amin Razi, Haft Iqlim (Aligarh: Qutbuddin Collections, MS. Persian 100/20). For references to Ghiyas Beg in the context of the discussion of Nur Jahan, see also, The Iqbalnama-i Jahangiri, and the Ain-i Akbari. Most modern histories refer to the context of Ghiyas Beg’s early career and family, as well as the later placement of various family members among Mughal ranks. Among others, Beni Prasad, History of Jahangir (Allahabad: The Indian Press Publications Private Ltd., 1962), especially chapter 7; Irfan Habib, “The Family of Nur Jahan During Jahangir’s Reign,” in Medieval India: A Miscellany (Delhi: I.M.H. Press for Aligarh Muslim University, 1969); 1:74–95.
4.Khafi Khan, Muntakhab-ul-Lubab, 1:263.
5.Isma’il was announced as a descendent of Twelver Imams. Twelver Shiism forms the principal branch of Shiite Islam, and describes the followers of the twelve imams they consider to be the only rightful successors of Prophet Muhammad. The Shi’a/Sunni distinction is indispensable to the story of Muslim societies and politics the world over. The Prophet Muhammad died in 632 without naming an heir. With his ascension, the question, what it meant to be a Muslim came to be tied to the grave issue of leadership. In the Sunni tradition, the caliph was a substitute for Muhammad, in whose selection skill or merits mattered most. For the Shi’a, a distinct genealogical connection, an imam chosen from among the Prophet’s descendants was most appropriate. Writings on Shi’a/Sunni differences are vast. For an excellent introduction: Jonathan Berky, The Formation of Islam: Religion and Society in the Near East, 600–1800 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 70–71, 86–87; Annemarie Schimmel, Islam: An Introduction (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992); For Safavid political history and its historical wider context: Peter Jackson (ed.), The Cambridge History of Iran: The Timurid and Safavid Periods, 6 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); Marshall G. S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization, 3 vols. (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1974); Kathryn Babayan, Mystics, Monarchs, and Messiahs: Cultural Landscapes of Early Modern Iran (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 202); Kathryn Babayan, “The Safavid Synthesis: From Qizilbash Islam to Imamite Shi’ism,” Iranian Studies 27, no. 1/4 (1994): 135–61; Stephen F. Dale, The Muslim Empires of the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); and more recently, A.
Azfar Moin, The Millennial Sovereign: Sacred Kingship and Sainthood in Islam (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012).
6.Kathryn Babayan, “The ‘Aqa’id al-Nisa: A Glimpse at Safavid Women in Local Isfahani Culture” in Gavin R. G. Hambly (ed.), Women in the Medieval Islamic World: Power, Patronage, and Piety (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), 359.
7.Karim Najafi Barzegar, Mughal-Iranian Relations During Sixteenth Century (Delhi: Indian Bibliographies Bureau, 2001), 170.
8.For details of migration to India and the wider political culture of the time: Ali Anooshahr, “Shirazi Scholars and the Political Culture of the Sixteenth-Century Indo-Persian World,” The Indian Economic and Social History Review 51, no. 3 (2014): 331–52; Masahi Haneda, “Emigration of Iranian Elites to India During the 16th–18th Centuries,” in Maria Szuppe (ed.), L’heritage timouride: Iran—Asie Centrale—Inde, XVe-XVIIIe siècles, special number of Cahiers d’Asie Centrale, 3–4, 1997, 129–40. Indian ports in Bengal in southwest India and Gujarat in western India were emporia for sea-borne trade between China, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East, as well as locations for the export of Indian raw materials and manufactured goods. Increasingly, the Portuguese, Dutch, French, and English were getting embroiled in the waters of the Indian subcontinent, which would bring a new dynamic to trade relations.