On the anniversary of Humayun's succession to the Mughal throne (r. 1530–56), only four years after his father's conquest of northern India, the Mughal royal elite united for a magnificent gathering known as the “Mystic Feast” (tuy-i tilism) for its lavish setting within the octagonal Talismatic Palace (tilism-i nihad or ‘imarat-i tilism) on the banks of the Yamuna River in Agra (Gulbadan Reference Begim and Beveridge1972, Persian text, 31; Khwandamir Reference Khwandamir and Hosain1940, 140).Footnote ¹ The Mystic Feast was not only an affirmation of Mughal imperial power and a public display of grandeur but also, and perhaps even more importantly, a celebration of dynastic survival. The honored guests at the feast were the descendants of the Central Asian empire builders Timur (Tamerlane, his descendants being known as Timurids) and Chingis Khan. Only recently forced out of their homeland in Transoxiana by the invading Uzbek tribal confederation, they represented the last surviving remnants of the Timurid-Mongol ruling elite—royal princes and princesses of Mawarannahr and Khurasan, professional military men and a few stray adventurers, at least one historian, poets and artists, Sufi shaykhs, religious leaders, and serving women—for whom the successful conquest of northern India was a dramatic and welcome reversal of fortune.Footnote ²

Having defeated the Lodi kings of Delhi and Agra in 1526, Zahir al-Din Muhammad Babur (1487–1530/r. 1526–30 in India), the last independent Timurid prince, had opened wide the gates of his new capital, drawing the displaced royals and their retinues to India with promises of territory and wealth and the opportunity to reestablish themselves in a neo-Timurid court. Yet for these royal refugees, the sense of loss and exile was fresh and bitter, and the riches of India were not always viewed as adequate recompense. Babur wrote, “In this state of exile [gariplik] my heart has not been gladdened. No one can be comforted at all in exile [gurbet]” (Babur Reference Babur and Mano1995 [Mano], 148; Reference Babur and Thackston1993 [Thackston], 200–201).

Even as the Timurids in India celebrated their remarkable new success, their fervent identification with the Timurid cultural complex led them to attempt its replication at their new royal court. Their immediate successors in India continued the retention and development of those familiar, potent symbols of power and royalty that defined and oriented Timurid imperial identity and legitimacy—in a process that forever affected their ability as a dynasty to adopt and accept local customs or to derive new understandings of culture, family relationships, politics, religion, and law under the influence of their new frontiers. In order to understand the court culture of the Mughal dynasty in India, we must look to the source of its inspiration in Timurid Central Asia, recognizing that the particular cultural attributes that had developed over a hundred years of rule in Central Asia were neither lost nor abandoned in the migration of the Timurid elites into India.

Among the ancestral political, cultural, and aesthetic traditions they clung to, the Mughal dynasts remained loyal to Timurid ideas and understandings regarding the power and position of women within the imperial household. The particular rights and roles of the elite women of Timurid Central Asia—their political and cultural participation, literary and artistic production, and the access to power offered to young, even childless, women and their participation in dynastic survival and success—have been described by many scholars as unique to the Timurid-Mongol elites of Central Asia (see, e.g., Manz Reference Manz, Nashat and Beck2003; Soucek Reference Soucek and Hambly1998; Szuppe Reference Szuppe, Nashat and Beck2003). It is of great significance, therefore, that this first generation of refugee Timurids in northern India—those who formed the transition between imperial centers—included individual women whose independence and freedom of action affirmed continued dynastic loyalty to these gendered Timurid traditions.

The emperor's sister, Gulbadan Begim, writing of the Mystic Feast in her memoir, recorded the names of thirty-six of the ninety-six women who attended the accessional celebration; all were members of the extended royal family. Among the attendees, the clearly fascinated Gulbadan Begim's attention was drawn to a startlingly unconventional couple. She described the two women, Shad Begim and Mihrangaz Begim, writing, “They had a great friendship for one another, and they used to wear men's clothes and were adorned by various accomplishments, such as the making of thumb-rings and arrows, playing polo and shooting with the bow and arrow. They also played a great many musical instruments” (Gulbadan Reference Begim and Beveridge1972, Persian text, 33). Gulbadan Begim's undisguised interest in these women suggests to us that they did not represent a social norm. Composing her memoirs years after the Mystic Feast, our author remembered and dwelled on their idiosyncrasies, although she gave no other in her list of guests more than a brief mention of name and placement within the imperial household. Yet for all their conspicuous unconventionality, it is noteworthy that these uncommon women were not treated as eccentric social outcasts but were, as Gulbadan makes clear, honored guests at the imperial family's Mystic Feast. In fact, rather than represent a social-sexual aberration as a result of the wrenching political change and social transformation of early Timurid-Mughal empire building, these women, and their companions, all of whom had survived violence, displacement, exile, and loss, clearly demonstrate the continued relevance of the traditional Central Asian Timurid cultural accommodation of powerful women. As the Timurid-Mughal dynasty made the transition to empire in India, these refugee women, the guests at the Mystic Feast, would be important participants in the creation of the new Mughal royal court, articulating and enforcing a particularly Timurid view of gender, power, and family.

Of course, within a very short period of time, the inhabitants of the Mughal harem would come to include a large number of non-Muslim, non-Turco-Mongol, non-Timurid women. It is extremely difficult, perhaps impossible, to track the degree and trajectory of their influence within the royal household, yet careful mapping of the continuities between ancestral Central Asian and later Mughal court cultures suggests that the Mughal dynastic reverence for Timurid tradition continued to have a profound influence on the lives of generations of royal women in India. It is my contention that a close comparison of the rights and roles offered to Timurid women and to their Mughal descendants indicates a remarkable degree of dynastic continuity. Even through the stable and highly institutionalized years of the Mughal seventeenth century, at a time when the public roles of their contemporaries, Ottoman and Safavid dynastic women, were becoming increasingly limited and narrow, the dynasty's allegiance to Timurid culture and values remained central to their imperial institutions, and the walls of the royal harem of Mughal India remained, for the most part and for generations, porous and nuanced in the model of their Timurid ancestors.

Women in the Timurid world

Women of the Turco-Mongol nomadic cultural tradition led less circumscribed lives than their contemporaries in the Perso-Islamic world, for the most part as a natural requirement and result of their nomadic origins, and their public participation in important political and social institutions was not dramatically cut back with the Islamization of the tribes (Szuppe 2003). During Timur's reign, elite Central Asian women continued to retain the right to participate in tribal quriltays (governing councils), act as regents for their minor sons, and perform conspicuous roles in public ceremonies. The travel memoir of a Castilian envoy to Timur's court, Ruy Gonzales de Clavijo, confirms that at the time of his visit in 1404, the royal court had not developed a closed harem, and instead many court women lived in a series of unwalled gardens just outside the capital city of Samarqand. As with the amirs and princes of the court, and Timur himself, the women resided in pavilions of silk and embroidered tapestry, and “all of these enclosures aforesaid were occupied either by the wives of Timur, or by the wives of his grandsons, and these princes and princesses have their abode therein, as does also his Highness likewise, both summer and winter” (Clavijo Reference Clavijo and Strange1928, 243). In their luxurious garden encampments, and later in their own garden palaces, women of the Timurid court entertained their own guests, feasted and drank alcohol in mixed groups with men, and seem to have veiled with the thinnest of gauzes that allowed the observer to see their features clearly (Clavijo Reference Clavijo and Strange1928, 244–48; Manz Reference Manz, Nashat and Beck2003, 124). Timurid women were responsible for arranging major dynastic events, such as marriages and royal welcoming committees, and participated in diplomatic exchanges alongside amirs and princes.

The public position of Timurid women of the court may not have been attributable solely to nomadic tribal tradition but was perhaps also a response to the critical role that women played in the establishment of Timurid dynastic legitimacy (Manz Reference Manz, Nashat and Beck2003, 121). In post-Mongol Central Asia, only the royal lineage of Chingis Khan could hold legitimate power. Timur, who was not a descendant of Chingis Khan and had taken power by force, through military conquest, cautiously ruled through a Chinggisid puppet khan and married strategically into the Chinggisid family, taking for himself and his successors the regnal title of Guregen, son-in-law. In the interest of family legitimacy, he also found Chinggisid wives for his sons and grandsons, resulting in what has been described as an “in-law dynasty” (Manz Reference Manz, Nashat and Beck2003, 122). Even in successive generations, when the Timurid lineage had developed its own high polish of political charisma, the ability of a Timurid prince to seize power was not sufficient justification to retain it. When a new branch of the dynasty managed to wrest control, the successful claimant was careful to marry women of the Chinggisid line, as well as the Chinggisid descendants of his conquered Timurid rivals, in order to enhance the legitimacy of his rule (Manz Reference Manz, Nashat and Beck2003, 122).Footnote ³

Apart from the careful establishment of legitimacy through marriage into the Chinggisid line, the Timurids married into the families of their followers, in order to firm an alliance or guarantee political loyalty. As critical figures in the legitimization of power, even when married, a Timurid woman retained an independence of identity, which allowed her to express continued loyalty to her own individual lineage. Maternal lineages were reflected in the status of princes, and Timurid children were often given names from their matrilineal line, which could claim a permanent share of their loyalty and identity, as well as that of their mothers. It seems possible, therefore, that the social and dynastic role played by royal women in supplying and protecting the ruling family's political charisma may therefore have been a factor in the degree of authority and power held by elite Timurid women.

That this can be seen as a particularly Timurid inheritance is confirmed by a study of the conditions of Safavid women in the period of the Turcoman Qizilbash ascendancy, which affirms their similarly important public role, residence in a looser harem system, public use of the lightest of veils, and participation in the legitimation of the dynasty through strategic matrimonial alliances with tribal groups and the religious elite (Szuppe Reference Szuppe, Nashat and Beck2003). This has been attributed to the Safavid inheritance of Timurid traditions through descent from the Turkish Aqquyunlu tribes, whose women similarly enjoyed an important public role. The Aqquyunlu queen mother, Saray, acted in a diplomatic capacity for her ruler-son, Uzun Hasan, traveling to Cairo in 1466 to meet with Mamluk rulers to represent the political interests of the Aqquyunlu (Woods Reference Woods1999, 95). Not incidentally, matrimonial kinship ties to Uzun Hasan supplied the Safavid founder, Shah Ismail, with an enhanced degree of political legitimacy.

Of particular note, the eventual suppression of the independence of Safavid royal women occurred with the loss of Turcoman Qizilbash power and the increasingly conservative religious leanings of the Safavid family after the mid-sixteenth century (Szuppe Reference Szuppe, Nashat and Beck2003, 162). As Turco-Mongol cultural influences faded from the Safavid dynastic tradition and the empire grew more sedentary and conservative, women of the Safavid elite lost much of their social and political influence. In contrast, the Mughal dynasty of India, as direct descendants of the Timurids of Transoxiana, clung relentlessly to their inherited Turco-Mongol identity during their centuries in South Asia. The importance of their Timurid lineage in the establishment of Mughal dynastic identity and political legitimacy allowed them to reject the dilution of Timurid political and social traditions that had occurred in other contemporary Turco-Islamic empires, including those related to the position of dynastic women (Balabanlilar Reference Balabanlilar2007b).

Timurid Women at the Mystic Feast

One hundred years after Clavijo feasted and drank alcohol with Timur's wives and daughters-in-law, Babur, who would later found the Mughal Empire, wrote in astonishment at a woman's request to be allowed to join his drinking party. Babur wrote that he had never seen a woman drink before, and, out of curiosity, he agreed to invite her. The experience was not a success; the woman, Hulhul Anika, became aggressive, and Babur “got rid of her by pretending to be drunk” (Babur Reference Babur and Mano1995 [Mano], 392; 1993 [Thackston], 527). He did not repeat the experiment.

Babur's experience may reflect the reality of late Timurid courtly custom or, as seems more likely, the unstable conditions of his constant warring, but his descendants, the emperors of India, reverted to the earlier Timurid pattern—Humayun, Akbar, Jahangir, and Shah Jahan commonly included women of the imperial harem as companions in mixed hunting parties, in court banquets, and on military campaigns. Additionally, while Babur's writings may be interpreted to suggest shifts in the culture of an increasingly sedentarized Central Asian society, he confirms the continued dynastic importance of maternal lineage, citing, for example, Firoza Begim, the mother of Harat's famed Timurid ruler, Sultan Husayn Bayqara,Footnote ⁴ through whom Bayqara “was a grandson of Timur Beg's grandson Sultan-Husayn and of Miranshah Mirza, and thus he was noble on both sides—a king born [karimu'l tarafayn edi—asil padshah edi]” (Babur Reference Babur and Mano1995 [Mano], 253; 1993 [Thackston], 338). It was Bayqara's double line of descent from Timur that Babur, himself half-Timurid and half-Chinggisid, so admired, obviously unconcerned that this enhanced political legitimacy sprang in part from Sultan Husayn Bayqara's maternal lineage.

It is also interesting to note that Babur suggests a greater degree of royal charisma in the pure Timurid line, dismissing the superior qualities of a Chinggisid genealogy, and this in dramatic contrast to his Timurid ancestors and their loyal allegiance to Chinggisid royal bloodlines.Footnote ⁵ Furthermore, as with the earlier Timurids, princely loyalties were attached to both the maternal and paternal lines; Babur's mother was of Chinggisid descent, and it was this relationship that allowed Babur to turn to his Mongol uncles when he sought refuge with and military assistance from Mongol warriors. “In my mother's service,” wrote Babur, “were fifteen hundred to two thousand Mongols from the tribe” (Babur Reference Babur and Mano1995 [Mano], 96; 1993 [Thackston], 131–32).

The very structure of Babur's memoir reflects an extraordinary degree of public respect for the position of women in his own family and dynasty. The complex family history with which he opens his memoir defines his late Timurid dynastic lineage through an explanation of its female relationships. It is through a lengthy and detailed description of the marital alliances and childbearing history of the women in his extended family—daughters, wives, sisters, aunts, and concubines—that Babur explains his dynasty's convoluted internal politics.

He also makes it clear that the participation of respected women in Timurid dynastic councils had been maintained through the entire Timurid period; when Babur's position as ruler of Ferghana was threatened shortly after his father's death, his supporters met with his grandmother, Esan Dawlat Begim, in order to plot their response. “For strategy and tactics [ray ve tedbir],” Babur wrote admiringly, “there were few women like my grandmother Esan Dawlat Begim. She was very intelligent and a good planner. Most affairs were done by her council” (Babur Reference Babur and Mano1995 [Mano], 37; 1993 [Thackston], 49). His mother, Qutlugh Nigar Khanim, was his constant companion, traveling with him and suffering at his side when his fortunes were in decline. “She was with me,” he wrote,” through much of my vagabondage and the interregnum [qazaqliqlarda ve fatratlarda]” (Babur Reference Babur and Mano1995 [Mano], 16; 1993 [Thackston], 21).

Babur's choice of wives reflects the marriage patterns of earlier Timurids; marital considerations carefully weighed political alliance with rivals or with regional royalty of a more charismatic lineage. Himself a Sunni Muslim, Babur was married in 1506 to a Shi'i woman, Maham Begim, who was related to that paragon of Timurid royalty, Husayn Bayqara, ruler of Harat in the late Timurid period. In 1519, Babur married an Afghan of the Yusufzai tribe, Bibi Mubarika, whose remaining close ties to her family and tribe assisted her husband in developing better relations with troublesome regional competitors. In what is perhaps an apocryphal legend, Bibi Mubarika is described, because of her new status as Babur's wife, as the protector of her entire tribe, petitioning her husband to “[t]hink that the whole Yusufzai tribe is enfolded in my skirt, and pardon their offenses for my sake.” To this, Babur replied, “I forgive the Yusufzai all of their offenses in your presence, and cast them into your skirt. Hereafter I have no ill feeling to the Yusufzai” (Lal Reference Lal2005, 176).Footnote ⁶

Not only his wives and mother, but all of his female relations were dear to Babur. Upon having created a safe haven in India, Babur sent messengers to Kabul, carrying what seemed to the waiting family to be rich and exotic gifts of jewels and dancing girls, each carefully selected for a sister, daughter, aunt, cousin, and wife. Along with the gifts arrived a royal decree that they immediately set out to join Babur in Agra, where, only five years later, the surviving women of the Timurid dynasty would gather to celebrate Humayun's Mystic Feast. Hearing of the first arrivals from Kabul, while the long train of women, children, servants, guards, and warriors was still four miles out, Babur “did not wait for a horse to be saddled, but set out on foot” to meet his long anticipated family (Gulbadan Reference Begim and Beveridge1972, Persian text, 17).

All the Begims and Khanims Went

It was only after his third failed attempt to hold Timur's former capital, the city of Samarqand, against the Uzbek confederation led by Shibani Khan that Babur reluctantly turned south with a band of followers, won a decisive victory against the Afghan Lodi rulers at Panipat in 1526, and succeeded in creating what he and his contemporaries considered a new “Timurid” empire in northern India, ruled by the lineage and in the tradition of Tamerlane. Babur's new northern Indian outpost, which would become, however inaccurately, known as the Mughal (Persian, Mongol) Empire, represented the last independent Timurid kingdom. A Timurid refugee at Babur's court, in flight from the Uzbek invaders, wrote, “Babur is now, by the grace of god, seniormost among the progeny of Timur, and it is only becoming that he should so extend his patronage to all living Timurids, one of whom is the writer himself, that the lamp of the Timurid family may once again shine forth” (Dale Reference Dale1998, 44).

As the writer had surmised, illuminating the “lamp of the Timurid family” was Babur's obsession, and his dynastic ambition would play out as a compulsion to recreate the Timurid Empire in South Asia. “He ordered letters sent to every side, every quarter, every dominion,” wrote his daughter, Gulbadan Begim, “that everyone attached to us shall receive our patronage, and most particularly those that had given service to our father and grandfather and forefathers [peder ve aba ve ajaad-i ma]. … And those who are of the lineage of Sahib Qiran [Timur] or Chingis Khan, let them set out for our court. God has conferred upon us the kingdom of Hindustan, so let us see good fortune together” (1972, 13–14). In response to Babur's public declaration of responsibility for protection of the Timurids, Central Asian refugees flocked to his Indian court. “In short, all the begims and khanims [ladies of the Timurid and Chinggisid royal lineages] went, a total of ninety-six persons, and all were appointed property and a home and furnishings and gifts to their hearts’ content” (Gulbadan Reference Begim and Beveridge1972, Persian text, 13–14).

Just who were these refugee women? Gulbadan Begim's kinswomen who joined the Timurid community in Agra were those who had survived the trauma of flight and forced exile, captivity, and, often, forced marriage. Babur's beloved elder sister, Khanzada Begim, had been left behind as ransom to ensure the successful escape of Babur and his mother from Samarqand. She was forcibly married to the Uzbek leader, Shibani Khan, who divorced her after several years and gave her instead in marriage to a follower, Sayyid Hada, who died in 1510 at the Battle of Merv, during which the armies of Safavid Iran defeated the Uzbeks. A year later, Khanzada Begim, now age thirty-three, was returned to her brother's court by Shah Ismail, ruler of the Safavids and victor at the Battle of Merv (Gulbadan Reference Begim and Beveridge1972, 250–51).

Seven of Babur's paternal aunts made their difficult way to his court in India, including Gauhar Shad Begim, who was a celebrant at Humayun's accessional feast in Agra in 1531; Fakhr Jahan Begim, who was in India by 1526 and was present at Humayun's feast in Agra in 1531 along with her daughter, Kichak Begim; Khadija Sultan Begim, who as the wife of Sultan Husayn Bayqara had been enslaved by Shibani Khan upon the conquest of Harat, but somehow had managed an escape, for the sources position her in India with her sister Fakhr Jahan Begim in 1526; Badi al-Jamal Begim, who was in India during Babur's lifetime and was a guest at the Mystic Feast in 1531; Aq Begim Miranshahi, in India at Babur's invitation in 1528, and at Humayun's feast; and Bakht Sultan Begim, who came to India at Babur's request shortly after his conquest accompanied by her daughter, Afaq Begim, arriving in Agra in 1528. Also in India by 1531 was Agha Sultan Aghacha, a wife of Babur's father, ‘Umar Shaykh Mirza, and the mother of Babur's half sister, Yadgar Sultan Begim. Babur's eighth aunt, the daughter of ‘Abu Sa'id, Payanda Sultan Begim Miranshahi, rather than going to India, fled to Iraq at the time of the Uzbek invasion of Khurasan and “died there in distress” (Gulbadan Reference Begim and Beveridge1972, 271). The daughters of Babur's Chaghatay Mongol maternal uncles, Zainab Sultan Khanim and Muhibb Sultan Khanim, are also recorded as present at their nephew's court in India.

Afaq Begim, a wife of Sultan Husayn Bayqara, never made it to India, but died in Babur's refuge in Kabul in 1527 or 1528. Sultanum Begim Bayqara, eldest daughter of Sultan Husayn Bayqara, fled Harat for Khwarazm in 1507, eventually making her way to Kabul by 1519, where Babur showed her great respect and gave her the gift of a garden (the Bagh-i Khilwat or Garden of Retirement). She died at the Indus River while traveling to Babur's court in Agra in 1527. Another of Bayqara's daughters, Ayisha Sultan Begim Bayqara, had been, perhaps forcibly, married to two Uzbek nobles, by each of whom she had a son, who themselves would eventually join Babur's service in India. She was in India by 1531, and died at the Battle of Chausa in 1539. A few half sisters of Babur were noted in India by 1535—Mihr Banu Begim and Yadgar Sultan Begim, who had been a captive of the Uzbeks as a child. Even Babur's first wife, a daughter of Sultan Ahmad Mirza Miranshahi, seems to have been at the neo-Timurid court in India in 1535, although she had divorced Babur thirty-two years earlier, in 1503!

The pair of guests at the Mystic Feast who would so enthrall Gulbadan Begim were cousins, granddaughters of Harat's Sultan Husayn Bayqara. Shad Begim was the daughter of Bega Miranshahi and Haydar Bayqara, and at one time had been married to ‘Adil Shah. Mihrangaz Begim, the daughter of Muzaffar Husayn Mirza, had been forcibly married to ‘Ubaydullah Uzbeg when Harat was taken from the Timurids by the Uzbek conqueror, Shibani Khan, in June 1507 after which, according to an eyewitness, the remaining residents of the royal harem were returned to Harat and subsequently robbed of their jewels (Gulbadan Reference Begim and Beveridge1972, 262; Khwandamir Reference Khwandamir and Thackston1989, 232). There is no record of their arrival in India, only that they were members of the Timurid refugee elite who celebrated survival and sovereignty at the new Timurid-Mughal court in Agra.

Apart from women of royal lineage, family retainers are counted as among the earliest of refugee Timurids at Babur's court in Agra. Listed as honored guests at various royal banquets, their position within the family seems to reflect a high degree of respect for long years of loyal service and their willingness to immigrate to India among the Timurid exodus. Attending the Mystic Feast, honoring Humayun's accession to the Mughal throne on the anniversary of his father's death, was Bachaka Khalifa, a “head woman-servant” of Babur's household, one of only two women who escaped Samarqand with him and his mother as they fled the Uzbek invaders in 1501. She was killed in India at the Battle of Chausa in 1539. The second woman was an Atun Mama, or tutor for girls, referred to only by her title, who had been in the retinue of Babur's mother, Qutluq Nigar Khanim. Left behind in Samarqand at the time of the Uzbek conquest, she had traveled on foot to Pashgar to rejoin Babur in 1501 and seems to have remained with him thereafter.

These, then, were the individuals who found refuge in the vast, wealthy territory newly conquered by the last independent Timurid prince: a founding community of the refugee Timurid elite who had fled Transoxiana ahead of the invading Uzbeks, having suffered acute trauma and loss, and all were welcomed at the establishment of a new Timurid kingdom on the Indian subcontinent.

Timurid Traditions at the Mughal Court

It has been noted that throughout the reigns of Babur and his son, Humayun, “there seems to have been no distinction between the public and the private—in the sense of the physical separation of the court and the harem” (Lal Reference Lal2005, 29). The reason for this is quite obvious in the life histories of these rulers: both Babur and Humayun spent many years traveling with their respective retinues, more often in the role of warring chieftain than imperial emperor, either in search of conquest or in flight from invading Uzbeks, Afghans, or rapacious relatives. Humayun grew to adulthood during his father's empire-building years, a time of enormous vulnerability and instability. In the classic Turco-Mongol tradition, Humayun's young adulthood was spent as military commander and governor for his father, so that upon inheriting the throne, Humayun was an experienced Timurid military man and administrator. It is notable that during his reign, the public and political roles of Mughal women continued to follow the pattern of their Timurid ancestors.

In his early years on the throne, Humayun's paternal aunt, Khanzada Begim, in part because of the general recognition of her enormous sacrifices on behalf her brother Babur and the Timurid royal family, served as the principal lady of the court and was given the imperial title of Padshah Begim, or Lady King, affirming and sanctioning her powerful influence at the Mughal court. Just as senior women of the classic Timurid and Aqquyunlu courts played an international role, so, too, did they serve the Mughals as negotiators and ambassadors. The attempted reconciliation of Humayun and his brothers, who had rejected his sovereignty and claimed regional autonomy, required Khanzada to play the role of negotiator between the rival princely courts, although her intervention was ultimately unsuccessful. Even more dramatic was her journey from Sind to Qandahar to negotiate safe passage to Safavid territories for Humayun and his desperate band of refugees (Gulbadan Reference Begim and Beveridge1972, 34).

Far from inhabiting an “enclosed” or “domestic” space, women of the early Mughal period displayed consistent involvement, not only in issues of family and succession but also in the military and political concerns of the Timurid dynasts as they battled to hold their empire. Humayun's response to his military rout outside Kabul by the armies of his brother, Kamran Mirza, in 1549 was to request not just diplomatic but even military assistance from his cousin's wife, Haram Begim. “In a few days—a very short time—the begim [Haram] had given horses and arms to some thousands of men. She herself superintended and took thought [ihtimam u saman namuda] and came with the troops as far as the pass. From here she sent them forward and, while she went back, they went on and joined the Emperor” (Gulbadan Reference Begim and Beveridge1972, Persian text, 91).

Even in periods of political unrest, Humayun, like Babur and his Timurid ancestors, valued the companionship and advice of the women of his family; while under direct threat from Kamran Mirza and his brother's followers, Humayun included the royal women, “Bega Begim, Hamida Banu Begim, Mah Chuchak Begim, and many others,” on a pleasure jaunt that ended in an unsuccessful assassination attempt on the emperor (Gulbadan Reference Begim and Beveridge1972, Persian text, 92). His wife accompanied Humayun into flight so frenzied that their son, Akbar, was left behind, and into exile in Safavid Iran, where royal hunting expeditions included the Safavid Shah's armed and mounted sister. While Timurids fled in all directions from the advancing Afghan armies, Babur's widow remained behind in Agra to protect and guard the burial site of Babur from insult, after which a respectful Afghan leader, Shah Sur, graciously allowed her to accompany her husband's body to its permanent burial site in Kabul (Gulbadan Reference Begim and Beveridge1972, 216–17).

For only little more than a decade during either of their adult lives did Babur (during his Kabul years) and Humayun (immediately following his accession to the Mughal throne) enjoy the stability that might have allowed them to establish their own courtly traditions and imperial institutions. They lived peripatetic lives and maintained highly mobile courts, of dramatically shifting size and content in the pattern of their Turco-Mongol forebears, in which the position of dynastic women was not expected to be completely segregated or hierarchical. The women of the family lived lives of great vulnerability—although constantly at risk of being caught up in the frenzy of conquest and defeat, they served as companions and counselors, willing participants in the imperial project, living in close proximity to the center of power. When Gulbadan Begim used the word haraman to describe the women of Humayun's household, it is clear from the context that, far from describing the inhabitants of a separate and distinct physical space, she used the term solely to define an intimate family relationship.

The Imperial Court as an Institution

The nearly fifty-year reign of Humayun's son, Akbar (r. 1542–1605), marked a dramatic transition in the character of the Mughal court. This long period of relative stability allowed for the entrenchment of Mughal sovereignty in India and the independent development and refinement of those imperial institutions that had previously, more out of necessity than design, been piecemeal and ad hoc. A sophisticated system of taxation, the ranking and remuneration of imperial officers, the minting of coins, the structure of the military—all were creatively refined and formalized by Akbar and his counselors. Additionally, an entirely new Mughal capital was built by Akbar at Fatehpur Sikri, with its physical structures reflecting the increased control and institutionalization of the imperial project. In a period of such careful attention to the development and formalization of court practices, as well as the careful and self-conscious construction and presentation of the imperial image, it should come as no surprise that the imperial harem was the recipient of similar attentions. According to Abu'l Fazl, “The large number of women—a vexatious question even for great statesmen—furnished his majesty with an opportunity to display his wisdom. … His Majesty has made a large enclosure with fine buildings inside. Though there are more than five thousand women he has given to each a separate apartment. He has also divided them into sections, and keeps them attentive to their duties. … Thus, as in the imperial offices, everything here is also in proper order” (1977, 45–47). Abu'l Fazl carefully enumerated the “sufficiently liberal” stipends and salaries of women at the Mughal court, from servants to highborn elites, described the “peculiar, imperial stamp” with which the harem grants were marked, and mentioned the “sober and active” women who guarded the harem, the most trustworthy of which guarded the apartments of the emperor himself (1977, 47).

There is no question that the conditions and role of Mughal women changed during the increasingly regulated and ritualized reign of Akbar, but how deeply were these changes felt? How much did the now stabilizing imperial court move away from traditional Central Asian custom? As one might expect, the writings of Akbar's confidant and ideologue, Abu'l Fazl, seem to suggest that the formalization of imperial court practices led to the establishment of a more conservative and isolated harem system than the Timurid-Mughals had previously known, describing the construction of a new private, interior world of women at Fatehpur Sikri, from which the public world of politics and commerce was carefully excluded. It is important to note, however, that as the spokesman and interpreter of the Mughal imperium, Abu'l Fazl offered a highly idealized vision, not always accurate in its description of the Mughal realities, as he was anxious to conflate Mughal rule, and Akbar in particular, with the sacral and miraculous. In reality, actions by and for the women of the Mughal dynasty seem to argue against Abu'l Fazl's vision of a secluded interior women's space at the royal court.

For example, so public a role was taken by the women of Akbar's court that when Akbar's half brother, Muhammad Hakim Mirza, governor of the Mughal province of Kabul, rebelled against Akbar in 1581, both the emperor's mother and his sister were officially and publicly appointed governors of Mughal territories. Akbar left his mother, Hamida Begim, in charge at the capital while he dealt with matters in the north, and although Muhammad Hakim Mirza was eventually pardoned, it was Akbar's half sister, Bakht al-Nisa Begim, whom Akbar appointed governor of the critical Kabul province (Abu'l Fazl Reference Fazl and Beveridge1972, 3:536; Misra Reference Misra1967, 31).Footnote ⁷ It was also during the reign of Akbar, in November 1575, that a large number of Mughal women, a group of young and old, including a now elderly Gulbadan Begim (who organized and led the expedition) and her granddaughter, among various wives, aunts, and nieces of the emperor, made their famous pilgrimage to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. The emperor not only gave his permission, but fully funded the travel of all those who hoped to make the pilgrimage: “The sovereign poured into the lap of each the money that they wanted and so made the burden of their desires light” (Abu'l Fazl Reference Fazl and Beveridge1972, 3:205–6; Ahmad Reference Ahmad, Elliot and Dowson2001, 391–92). These intrepid women remained away from the royal court for seven years, making the hajj four times. Upon their return to India, the Mughal women were shipwrecked off the coast of Aden for a year, and still insisted on making a pilgrimage to the Chishti Sufi shrine at Ajmer before returning to Fatehpur Sikri in March 1582.

From the beginning of Akbar's reign, at a time when many have suggested that the Mughal court had become sedentary and rigid, elite women of the royal family participated and became wealthy in the international shipping trade; were recognized scholars and patrons of the arts; built luxurious garden palaces for their own use and endowed the construction of not only mosques but also markets, caravanserais, and magnificent formal gardens that changed the landscape of the capital cities of the empire; played a public political role; and arranged feasts and banquets to celebrate marriages, circumcisions, and the annual solar and lunar weighing ceremonies of Mughal princes. It is clear that the boundaries of the institutionalized Akbari Mughal harem remained like those of the Timurids, porous and neither entirely restraining nor hampering the public activities of elite Mughal women.

Perhaps part of the reason is that the Mughal royal court did not, as has been suggested, calcify and sedentarize in response to Akbar's innovations but in fact continued to retain a peripatetic character (Balabanlilar Reference Balabanlilar2009). Although the unstable and desperate days of Babur and Humayun were over, the new city of Fatehpur Sikri remained the imperial capital for only fourteen years, supplanted in its turn by Lahore, Agra, Shahjahanabad, and Aurangabad among other major cities of Mughal India.Footnote ⁸ While a physical space had been articulated and constructed within which to separate a domestic world, in reality, women of the Mughal elite continued to regularly cross out of that space and into the public forum. In the classic pattern of Timurid rule, the women of Akbar's court and that of his successors in many ways operated as full partners in the affairs of the dynasty. While not always prominent in the chronicles of the period, women of the imperial family regularly make appearances in significant roles “close to the ranks of their more prominent masculine contemporaries” (Kozlowski Reference Kozlowski and Hambly1998, 470).

Motherhood, Age, and Power

At the height of their imperial grandeur in India, the Mughal family remained notably loyal to the dynastic systems of their ancestors and continued to offer imperial recognition of an individual woman's genealogical pedigree. As Timurid custom had allowed young and/or childless noblewomen to develop influence and resources, so, too, did Mughal women remain relatively free of these limitations on female access to power. In contrast, their Ottoman contemporaries developed a unique set of imperial controls over dynastic marriage, sexuality, and motherhood. The dramatic differences that developed between these two Turkic dynasties are striking and instructional—while the Mughals continued to retain traditional Timurid systems, at the Ottoman court, female access to power became entirely removed from a woman's personal lineage, instead being inextricably linked to the birth of a male heir and the onset of postreproductive years.

The earliest Turkic writings confirm the importance of both parental genealogical lines in the establishment of royal lineage, but by the fourteenth century, the Ottoman court had become so cautious in managing the integrity and autonomy of the dynasty that a system of near-anonymous maternal concubinage had replaced wives as “bearers of the dynasty's progeny” (Peirce Reference Peirce1993, 16, 23). While strategic political marriages to women of noble birth continued to take place, after Osman and Orhan, virtually all Ottoman princes were born of concubine mothers. Already devoted to a policy of slave soldiers and administrators, the Ottoman system of slave mothers, to the absolute exclusion of reproduction through legal marriage, may have been driven by similar hopes of undiluted dynastic loyalty. Certainly the Ottoman policy was successful in that it prevented the development of divisive political roles among maternal relatives, as the princes’ maternal identity and lineage generally went unacknowledged at the Ottoman court.Footnote ⁹

Having entered the royal harem without lineage or pedigree, Ottoman imperial mothers achieved a retroactive status only as the mothers of sons and protectors of princely power. Still, real political maturity continued to be withheld from women of the Ottoman court until the complete cessation of childbearing. It was not, however, menopause that ended a woman's reproductive status but the birth of a son whose training and protection then became her sole charge and responsibility. The Ottoman policy of one mother/one son guaranteed princes a vital political alliance with the one person at court whose loyalties would always be personal and undiluted, his mother. As the custodians of imperial continuity, the mothers of royal sons could at times develop great influence and power, although their power was dramatically limited by public perception—support for a woman's public display of influence could disappear rapidly if her actions seemed to be motivated by the selfish desire for acquisition of personal power rather than simply for the support and protection of her son. Ottoman imperial manipulation of female political maturity extended to the princesses of the royal house, who were prevented from displaying public power and wealth until their own postsexual years; major public works seem to have been established only by widowed princesses (Peirce Reference Peirce1993, 23). Women of the Ottoman court were allowed access to power only through the suppression of a reproductive role and/or the birth of a son. “Women without sons were women without households and therefore women of no status” (Peirce Reference Peirce1993, 23).

In contrast, childless women of Timurid Central Asia were able to dramatically influence dynastic politics. Beatrice Manz has illustrated that the most powerful women of the Timurid period were often childless, and that “producing a son did not markedly enhance the position of a low status woman” (2003, 12). Many of the most important women of the period were childless; neither of Timur's Chinggisid wives, Saray Mulk Khanim or Tokel Khanim, had surviving children, and yet their power and influence were noted by foreign visitors to the court (Clavijo Reference Clavijo and Strange1928, 310). “Maternity was not in itself a path to power”; it was a woman's own personal pedigree that allowed her to develop a prestigious dynastic position.

The Timurid fosterage system has never been fully explained or explored, but it seems to have been a common custom for elite women, most often the wives of the ruler and high-ranking amirs, to take into their households the children of sisters, daughters, and common wives (Manz Reference Manz, Nashat and Beck2003, 11). The common practice of intrafamilial adoption at both the Timurid and Mughal courts does not seem to have had any impact on the adoptive mother's relative power or influence. For example, arrangements were made before his birth to have Timur's grandson, Ibrahim ibn Shahrukh, raised by one of Timur's wives, Tumen Agha, rather than by his natural mother; many of Timur's grandchildren were raised among Timur's wives. Timur's daughter-in-law, Gawarshad, wife of Shahrukh, raised her grandchildren: Ulugh Beg's son Abd al-Latif, daughter Hasiba Sultan Khanzada, and Baysunghur's son Ala al-Dawla. It has been pointed out that this practice brought grandchildren into the central imperial household, where they were raised and educated together under the close watch of the ruler (Manz Reference Manz, Nashat and Beck2003).

According to the sources, Sultan Husayn Bayqara's wife, Afaq, the daughter of ‘Abu Sa'id, who would be among the Timurid exiles who made their way to India, had no children but “reared and educated nine children of his [Sultan Husayn Bayqara] by her own foster-sister, Baba Agacha” (Gulbadan Reference Begim and Beveridge1972, 203). Habiba Sultan Khanish Dughlat, a Chaghatay cousin of Babur, married her cousin Sa'id and raised one of his children, Rashid, whose mother was a “tribeswomen” (Gulbadan Reference Begim and Beveridge1972, 235–36).Footnote ¹⁰ Babur's maternal grandmother, Isan Daulat Khanim, raised three of her own daughters and fostered a half-sister of Babur, Yadgar (Souvenir), who had been born after the death of her father (Gulbadan Reference Begim and Beveridge1972, 244–45).Footnote ¹¹

Babur's daughter, Gulbadan Begim, herself was taken at age two from her mother, Babur's wife Dildar Begim, to be raised by another of Babur's wives, Haram Begim. Gulbadan's full brother, Hindal, was taken into Haram Begim's household only three days after his birth. The arrangements for the adoption had been made long in advance and were reconfirmed by the adoptive mother in a letter to Babur, then campaigning in Swat. Maham wrote to request that Babur perform a “divination” to determine the sex of Dildar's as yet unborn child, although she confirmed that it did not matter whether it was boy or girl, she would take the baby either way (Gulbadan Reference Begim and Beveridge1972, Persian text, 9).

Still, Maham's fosterage of the children was most assuredly not an indictment of Dildar's parenting; she gave birth to three more of Babur's children and regained parenting rights to a still young Gulbadan when Maham died. Perhaps Babur's willingness to allow Maham to foster the children of her co-wife was driven by sympathy, as all of her children had died as babies but for one, the future emperor Humayun, but in any case, the custom of fostering was well established and commonly applied. In the later years among the Mughals, the custom of parentage seems to have grown out of favor, perhaps because of the increasingly linear succession patterns assumed by the dynasty in India, but it did not completely disappear; Hindal's daughter, Ruqaiya Begim, Akbar's first wife, who had no children of her own, raised Jahangir's son, the future emperor Shah Jahan.

It has been suggested that shared parentage or fosterage was the Timurid method for avoiding extreme cases of advocacy by mothers on the part of their royal sons, advocacy that could be destructive to the dynasty, examples of which can be seen in seventeenth-century Ottoman history (Manz Reference Manz, Nashat and Beck2003, 126). This may explain the origins of the custom, but it does not address the fosterage of so many female royal children and, of course, ignores the possibility of passionate advocacy on the part of a foster mother. Nor was the custom of fosterage devoted to removing children from less well-born or incompetent mothers; none of the sources record complaints against the mothers whose children were fostered elsewhere. For example, the lineages of both Maham Begim and Dildar Begim are obscure; as the lineage of royal-born wives was recorded, this suggests that both were low-born women. Most interestingly, while women without influence do not seem to have been able to adopt the children of others, those women who had influence did not necessarily find it enhanced by the fosterage of children from within the dynasty. As with so many ancestral legacies, the Mughal descendants of the Timurid dynasty continued investing women of the dynasty with personal prestige that was unconnected to childbearing. Neither marriage nor maternity, not even assuming the responsibility of parenting, seems to have played a critical role in establishing degrees of participation or power among women of the Mughal court.

Youth and Power

It is unsurprising that elderly women did not hesitate to intervene in family or political crises. When Akbar's son, Salim, the future emperor Jahangir, threw himself recklessly into rebellion in 1601, it was his mother and the elderly, widowed Gulbadan Begim who successfully intervened with Akbar, preventing him from imposing retribution on his son. When Jahangir's son, Khusraw, rebelled against his father in 1606, the entire harem seems to have become involved. The emperor considered a court favorite, Mirza Aziz Koka, to have been the instigator of his son's mutiny. Koka's execution seemed imminent, yet the sources describe the intervention of a veritable committee of Mughal women, with Salima Sultan calling out from behind a screen to the emperor, “Your majesty, all of the Begims are assembled in the zenana for the purpose of interceding for Mirza Aziz Koka. It would be better if you come there, otherwise they will come to you.” Jahangir was thus constrained to go to the women's apartments and, under their pressure, pardon the miscreant, Mirza Aziz Koka (Misra Reference Misra1967, 33).Footnote ¹²

Yet counter to the customs of other imperial dynasties of the period, youth created no barrier to power at the Mughal court in India. Particularly from the time when the last of the elderly female Timurid relations in the Mughal household had passed away, if not before, young Mughal women played critical political roles at the Indian court. During the reigns of the emperors Jahangir, Shah Jahan, and Aurangzeb, it was the young wives, daughters, and sisters of the emperor who intervened in dynastic politics; young or old, as members of the imperial family, their right to involve themselves politically was acknowledged and accepted.

Upon the death of his wife Mumtaz Mahal, Shah Jahan relied heavily on his eighteen-year-old unmarried daughter, Jahanara, to manage the imperial household. The degree of her influence and power at court was so great as to lead suspicious foreign observers to salaciously suggest an incestuous relationship between the emperor and his daughter, for how else could a young and unmarried woman gain such enormous influence at court? (Bernier Reference Bernier2005, 12). The French jewel merchant Jean-Baptiste Tavernier described her enormous personal wealth as a result of “improper relations with Shah Jahan” (Reference Tavernier and Ball2000, 275).

Jahanara, who was called by her father Sabihat al-Zaman (the Mistress of her Age) or Padshah Begim (Lady King), and more generally Begim Sahib (Great Lady), controlled vast personal financial resources, part of which she had accumulated through her own trade relationship with Dutch merchants, but most of which, totaling cash and goods valued at more than 10 million rupees, had been left to her by her mother, Mumtaz Mahal, who had also been heavily involved in international trade (Kozlowski 2003, 476). Jahanara used her personal wealth to change the landscape of her father's new capital city outside Delhi, just as the women of the fifteenth-century Timurid court had dramatically altered the skyline of Samarqand, directing the construction of monumental buildings and tombs in and around the capital city. The madrasa built in Samarqand by Timur's Mongol wife Saray Malik Khanim was reputed to have been so large as to throw her husband's new mosque construction into shadow, a fact that enraged him and cost the mosque's architect his life.

Between 1648 and 1650, Shah Jahan's eldest daughter built a mansion in her father's palace compound overlooking the Yamuna River. The central marketplace that she constructed, the Chandni Chowk, contained more than 1,500 shops. The Paradise Canal ran through its center, watering rows of shade trees (Blake Reference Blake and Hambly1998, 420). To the west of the Chandni Chowk, Jahanara built the city's largest bathhouse and a caravanserai that was considered “the most imposing structure in the city after [her father's newly built mosque] the Jami Masjid” (Bernier Reference Bernier2005, 230–99; Blake Reference Blake and Hambly1998, 421). Perhaps most remarkably, unlike the usually anonymous woman builders of the Ottoman and Safavid courts, the eighteenth-century Mughal princess Jahanara's intention was not solely the glorification of the dynasty but also personal recognition.Footnote ¹³ “I will build a serai, large and fine like no other in Hindustan. The wanderer who enters its courts will be restored in body and soul and my name will never be forgotten” (Blake Reference Blake and Hambly1998, 421).

In the most dramatic Mughal succession war, in a dynasty that indulged in regular bloody sibling conflict, the powerful sisters of rival brothers Dara Shikoh and Aurangzeb, Jahanara and Raushanara (who herself had built gardens in Shahjahanabad), contributed their public partisanship: each passed messages, agitated at court for her favorite, led a faction, and went into exile or achieved power at the resolution of the conflict. When Dara Shikoh was defeated and killed, his supporter and sister, Jahanara, joined their father Shah Jahan in prison in Agra fort, in a white marble palace upriver from the Taj Mahal. Upon the death of Shah Jahan in 1666, Jahanara returned to Shahjahanabad and was lodged by the respectful emperor Aurangzeb in one of the finest mansions in the city, during which time she composed her famed biography of the Sufi shaykh Mu'in al-Din Chishti.

Patrons and Artists

The power of Timurid Mughal women was, of course, not only political and dynastic; it can also be located in their role as participants in the arts and patrons of religious orders and shrines. Just as Timur's daughter-in-law, Gawarshad, wife of Shah Rukh, had been recognized as the primary patron of the Alid shrine at Mashhad, Jahanara was, at the instigation of her brother Dara Shikoh, indoctrinated into the Qadiriyyah Sufi order, composing the Risala-i-Sahibiya as an exploration of her Sufi leanings, as well as the aforementioned biography of the Sufi shaykh Mu'in al-Din Chishti and his descendants, along with several volumes of poetry. Under her patronage, a series of works on Sufism was produced that included commentaries on Rumi's Mathnawi. She wrote of a having a vision in which the Prophet and the first four Sunni caliphs (Abu Bakr, ‘Umar, ‘Uthman, and ‘Ali) sat together with her sponsor into the Qadiri order, to whom the Prophet asked, “Oh, Mullah Shah, for what reason have you enlightened this Timurid girl?” (Schimmel Reference Schimmel2004, 151). She was buried, at her own request, in the Delhi courtyard of the shrine of the famed Chishti Sufi shaykh Nizam al-Din Auliya.

Women of the royal family were well educated; scholarly female tutors referred to as Atun Mama were employed to teach not only comportment but also Persian, Arabic, theology, and history, as well as classic literature, such as the Gulistan of Sadi. The indomitable Gulbadan Begim, who was known to possess a large and valuable library, composed her memoir, the Humayunnama, at the urging of her nephew, Akbar. Aurangzeb's eldest daughter, Zeb al-Nisa Begim, was so accomplished a scholar that her father the emperor sent for the famous Persian poet Mulla Sa'id Ashraf Mazandarani to mentor and tutor her, and rewarded her with 30,000 gold pieces for committing the entire Qur'an to memory. She studied astronomy and mathematics, was a renowned calligrapher, arranged for the translation of many religious classics, and included many scholars and poets in her court. Poems ascribed to her include the lovely verse, “Were an artist to choose me for a model / How could he draw the form of a sigh?” (Schimmel Reference Schimmel2004, 154).

Perhaps the most famous of Mughal women was Nur Jahan, who married the fourth Mughal emperor Jahangir as a thirty-six-year-old widow with a young daughter. They had no children together, but Jahangir never married again and preferred the companionship of Nur Jahan to all others at the court. She displayed exceptional political and administrative acumen, quickly earning the admiration and trust of her husband. Jahangir went so far as to grant her the rights of sovereignty: “Sometimes she would sit in the balcony of her palace, while the nobles would present themselves and listen to her dictates” (Mu'tamid Khan Reference Khan, Elliot and Dowson2001, 405). Drums were beat at her advance, royal fermans were signed with her seal, and coins were struck bearing the inscription, “By order of the King Jahangir, gold has a hundred splendors added to it by receiving the impression of the name of Nur Jahan, the Queen Begim” (Mu'tamid Khan Reference Khan, Elliot and Dowson2001). Her independence of action is noteworthy—she built a series of private palaces for herself in various parts of the empire; her husband the emperor was extended a formal invitation to attend a feast at her private palace in 1617, and again in 1620, when she arranged a banquet to celebrate the creation of a private garden-palace, the Nur Sarai (Jahangir Reference Jahangir1980, 348). As had become traditional among Mughal women, Nur Jahan maintained a number of ships and dealt regularly with the English merchants, rather than the Portuguese, with whom the Mughal court was often on bad terms. She eventually became the protector of English goods (Foster Reference Foster1906, 148).Footnote ¹⁴

Among myriad other attributes, the queen was a skilled shot and regularly accompanied her husband on his favorite pastime, the hunt. On one occasion, she shot four tigers with six shots. Her delighted husband wrote, “Until now such marksmanship has not been seen—from atop an elephant and from inside a howdah. … As a reward for such marksmanship I scattered a thousand ashrafis over her head and gave her a pair of pearls and a diamond worth a lakh of rupees” (Jahangir Reference Jahangir1980, 214; Reference Jahangir and Thackston1999, 219). When, in the last years of his reign, Jahangir was captured by a rebellious nobleman, it was Nur Jahan, of all his court, who organized his rescue (Mu'tamid Khan Reference Khan, Elliot and Dowson2001, 430). Her reputation as a highly skilled hunter preceded her, and caused a “disruption and agitation [among her enemies] on account of the fiery shots of the queen's gun, which could overthrow even lions” (Shirazi Reference Shirazi and Siddiqi2003, 156).

Contemporaries expressed concern over the public political role played by their queen, for even by the standards of the Mughal dynasty, Nur Jahan was an exceptionally powerful woman. Some accused the emperor of having abdicated imperial authority to his wife, although other contemporary accounts make no such claim, and Jahangir's memoirs make it clear that he remained deeply involved in the political affairs of his realm until the last few years of his reign, when a lifetime of drinking and drug use had made him a near invalid. Nur Jahan served as co-regent to a king who perhaps did not so much neglect authority as delegate it to a trusted and talented partner.

Foreign observers, struck by the power and independence of young, even unmarried, Mughal women, explained it away with the suggestion that by the reign of Shah Jahan, Mughal despots were no longer allowing their daughters to marry. Francois Bernier, a French doctor who remained at the Mughal court from 1658 until 1667, justified Jahanara's support of her brother's claims to the throne by claiming that she had been coerced, bribed by his promise that, as the next emperor, he would permit her to marry. “This pledge was a remarkable one, the marriage of a Princess being of rare occurrence in Hindoustan, no man being considered worthy of royal alliance” (Bernier Reference Bernier2005, 12).

While this is clearly nonsense derived of ignorance, as there were indeed marriages in every generation, it is true that many of the most influential women of this period were royal sisters and daughters who remained permanently unmarried. Certainly the number of viable Mughal marriage partners was limited, particularly after Shah Jahan's act of accessional fratricide, but Mughal princesses had long intermarried with the Safavid and Uzbek nobility and with members of the religious elite, such as those of the Ahrari Naqshbandi order of Sufis, so it cannot have been a mere shortage of viable husbands that convinced so many Mughal women to remain unmarried. Rather, it may be reasonable to assume that because access to real power was readily available to elite women at the court regardless of age or marital status, these well-educated and influential women would have made the decision to reject marital alliances, which may have threatened their well-developed preexisting interests and loyalties. Perhaps, with access to power not driven by marital status, age, or motherhood, powerful Mughal women remained unwed by choice.