NUR JAHAN
Kamal Lodaya

Based on the book {Empress} by Ruby Lal

Our history books tell us that the Mughal emperor Akbar died in Agra in 1605, and was succeeded by his 36-year old son Salim, who took the title of Nur-ud-din Jahangir (which means Light of the Faith, Conqueror of the World).
There are many details that do not make it to our history books. Every Mughal ruler had many sons, competing to become emperor. In this article we will talk about other people who were around Jahangir, particularly one of his many wives, Mehr-un-Nisa, the one he married last.
Mehr-un-Nisa was the daughter of Ghiyas Beg, a nobleman who supported Khusrau, Jahangir's son, who rebelled against him. For his actions, Ghiyas Beg had to pay a huge fine and the womenfolk of his family were placed in the Emperor's harem. Ruqaiya Begum (the queen mother) became very fond of Mehr.
In 1611, at the palace market for nobles called {Meena Bazaar} (whose proceeds would go to charity), Jahangir met Mehr-un-Nisa, when she was shopping with the Queen mother Ruqaiya Begum. She was a widow with a daughter called Ladli. He proposed to her and married her. This was a "love marriage", not an "arranged" one like all of Jahangir's earlier marriages. Jahangir gave Mehr the name Nur Mahal, meaning Light of the Palace. It is difficult to realize today that Jahangir did something pathbreaking for his times, marrying a 34-year old widow.

Queen to empress
Nur gifted clothes, jewels, horses, elephants and cash to the royal men and women. She gave plenty of money to the poor. She supported the weddings of 500 orphan girls. She arranged marriages of her {saheliyan} (companion women) under the age of 40 to soldiers and attendants of Jahangir. Older women were allowed to choose between marriage and remaining with her.
Her skill and her acts of generosity were admired by many, none more so than by the emperor. The most important court offices in finance, intelligence and defence went into the hands of Nur's father and brothers. By the 1620s, Nur's extended family was governing Lahore, Kashmir, Bengal, Odisha and Awadh. 
When the camp returned to Ajmer in 1616, Jahangir visited Nur's father's tent. Ghiyas presented Jahangir rare pearls and rubies, and elaborate dresses. Jahangir went back to his imperial tent and declared that Nur Mahal was now Nur Jahan, Light of the World.
On Ghiyas's advice, Jahangir's son Khurram was sent to deal with trouble in the Deccan. Jahangir's camp moved around leisurely. The story is that in 1617, Nur Jahan set out in a {howdah} on elephant back on a hunt in Malwa. Four tigers were driven by beaters into a small open area. The empress fired six shots and killed all four. That a woman could aim and shoot with such accuracy impressed Jahangir. He showered her with gold coins.
In October that year, Prince Khurram arrived back at the royal camp in Mandu. While the Deccan was not fully conquered, Jahangir considered the campaign a success. He gave several presents to his son and named him Shah Jahan, king of the world. This was a way of telling his court that Khurram was his choice to be the next emperor.
A week later Nur Jahan honoured him too. This told Shah Jahan that she approved of his choice as the crown prince. Three weeks later he displayed his gifts for the emperor and for his "mothers". Nur Jahan was given gifts worth 2 lakh rupees, all the other mothers were given 60,000 rupees. (Their yearly cash allowances would have been 3,000 rupees.) 

Nur Jahan as empress
In 1617 Nur Jahan gave her first royal order. The same year coins were minted with both Jahangir and Nur Jahan's names. Celebrated artist Abul Hasan Nadir uz-Zaman painted her loading a musket. She was a new kind of woman, and she got a new kind of portrait.
In 1618 Nur Jahan commissioned and designed the Nur Mahal Sarai in Jalandhar, between Agra and Lahore. In 1620 she commissioned the Patthar {masjid} in Srinagar, Kashmir, which Jahangir's camp used as a kind of summer capital. It was completed in 1623. In 1621 she developed the Aram Bagh of Mughal emperor Babar, Jahangir's great-grandfather, in Agra. When her father passed away on the road to Kashmir in 1622, she ordered construction of a grand tomb for her parents. Completed in 1628, the {Itmad-ud-daula} is called today the "Baby Taj" on account of its architectural sophistication.
After Jahangir died in 1627, Shah Jahan got his stepbrother Shahryar killed, since he did not want any rivals to his rule. He packed off Nur and her daughter Ladli (who was also Shahryar's widow) to Lahore with a yearly allowance of 2 lakh rupees. 
Nur and Ladli lived in Lahore for a couple of decades. Nur wrote Farsi poems under the name Makhfi ("veiled"). She was known to people there as a charitable and religious person, first constructing Jahangir's tomb (completed in 1637) and then her own in Shahdara Bagh, which would have been nearly complete when she died in 1645. Ladli was buried with her after her own death. The marble in these tombs was plundered for reconstruction of the Harmandir Sahib in Amritsar in the 18th century.
In all Nur's constructions one finds a distinctive open style, downplaying the central domes of major Mughal monuments in favour of artistic inlay work (called {parchinkari} in India). {Parchinkari} is a key feature in the Taj Mahal, built in Agra from 1632 to 1653 by Ustad Ahmad Lahori for Shah Jahan.

A feminist history
Tracing the life of someone other than an emperor is difficult for historians. Apart from the {Jahangirnama}, some paintings, {firmans} and coins, and the buildings she commissioned, they do not have many sources regarding Nur Jahan's life. Europeans who came to Jahangir's court have written about it. They thought Jahangir was a weak ruler because he gave so much power to a woman. To rival courtiers, such as the author of the {Shahjahannama} (a courtier of Shah Jahan), Nur Jahan appears as a scheming woman who took advantage of Jahangir's softness to concentrate power around her family.
Let us rethink Nur's story. Jahangir must have been amazed to find in Mehr someone who was witty and intelligent, but also learned and graceful. On a book which she must have bought before marrying Jahangir is found her writing, "Three {mohurs} the price of this treasure, Nawab Mehr-un-Nisa {begum}". Poems attributed to her are sophisticated, she could flirt with her poetry. Later she showed herself to be brave, resourceful and capable in administration and architecture. 
Mirza Ghiyas Beg was a noble in Akbar's court. Mehr grew up in Akbar's capital Fatehpur Sikri. Her mother Asmat and the other women would have been forbidden to enter the {mardana}, the men's area of the house. Perhaps they sat on rooftops and chatted, dried and oiled their hair, viewing the busy street from above. We do not know this, but we can guess from the way houses were constructed in Fatehpur Sikri and the fact that women in a family do this today in houses of this construction in much of North India.
After the month of Ramzan, Akbar celebrated Id ul-Fitr, distributing alms and gifts to break the fasts. One can imagine Mehr's father and brothers describing to the women these events. Every month, a day was set aside for an imperial {meena bazaar} which Akbar, his harem women and other noble women attended. It is not hard to imagine Mehr in the {bazaar} with Asmat, listening to merchants speaking Farsi, Pashto, Hindi and Braj {bhasha}.
Boys in noble families in Mughal India had tutors. Girls were only expected to learn and recite verses of the holy Koran. Conservative {maulvis} said well-bred girls and boys should keep away from frivolous poems with talk of love and wine. Ghiyas disagreed. His family in Persia had many poets. His {haveli} became a haven for poets. Perhaps Mehr listened to their recitals.
Mehr learned to write Farsi (Persian) and Arabic. Her father was a master calligrapher. She learned to speak Hindi. She would know the names of vegetables in the {bazaar}, the names of constellations in the sky. Her parents might have introduced her to Shirazi poets like Hafiz and Saadi, and the Sufi poet Rumi, recognized as having produced classics of Persian literature. She knew art, music and dance.
After her first marriage, Mehr lived in Burdwan in Bengal. Her husband Quli had a {jagir} (estate), but he had to be away when the governor or the emperor called. She would have come to understand how Bengal was ruled. Her husband, and before that her father, might have exposed her to the capricious tempers in the royal family, the relationship of Akbar with his son Salim and his grandsons. Quli himself had to deal a few times with Salim's unpredictability. When the opportunity presented itself, Nur Jahan showed to Jahangir the amazing abilities that her education had supplied her with. 
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Box: The Mughal camp
Jahangir led a roving life, more so than other Mughal emperors. His royal encampment was about 5 km long and possibly had 3 lakh people, royals, courtiers, soldiers and servants. All the nobles would have tents in the camp. The picture of his {darbar} is from the {Jahangirnama}, his autobiography, in which he wrote about all kinds of subjects. Apart from a statement of the marriage, there is no mention in it of his new wife until 1614. After that there are frequent references. From no other Mughal period do we have so much detail about a royal woman.
The biggest problem Nur faced was the emperor's drinking, and his addiction to drugs like opium. Akbar left behind a strong empire. After the battles against Khusrau and his supporters, Jahangir left wars to other commanders. He did his duties and enjoyed the rituals of kingship. He travelled throughout his kingdom, keeping a close watch on generals and ministers. He enjoyed studying his people, flora and fauna. 
Perhaps you may have read that Jahangir allowed the British to trade from the port of Surat, which was to later lead to the British empire on India. Why? Because they presented him with bulldogs, until then a breed not known in India. He was impressed with how they were not frightened by his elephants and would attack them.
Jahangir gathered statistics about animals, vegetables, minerals. He loved books, calligraphy, paintings and gems. He eagerly met learned men of all religions, ascetics, clerics, astrologers, poets. When his health began to decline, in 1621 Nur Jahan threw out his physician and slowly lessened his intake of wine.

Box 2: What is history?
History is so full of facts and dates. This article also has many facts and dates. Ruby Lal's book {Empress}, on which it is based, makes it more interesting because it tries to trace the life of someone other than an emperor. It is still difficult to figure out what the life of someone not close to the rulers would have been like. Historians have to use their imagination when such sources are not available, but they have to be careful to place themselves in the time that they are talking about, and use facts from that time. They have to declare what is factual, what are their sources and what is imagined. If all this is available, then it is possible to have different interpretations of historical events and figures. The book {Empress} gives a different interpretation of Nur Jahan, yet strongly based on the information available, than what was available from earlier historians.
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