How does the Mughal empires emergence as a more settled resign is reflected in the organisation of

harem?

PAPER: Gender In Indian History, c.1500-1950

NAME: Urja Kaushik
COURSE: B.A. (Honors) History
ROLL NO.: 210436

Q. ) Discuss the notions of household and family amongst the Mughals, with special
emphasis on the harem.

Ans. The Mughal Empire, contemporaneous with the Ottoman and Safavid Empires, has been
clubbed with them within the category of a “patrimonial bureaucratic state” by scholars such
as Stephen Blake (2011). The “patrimonial-bureaucratic empire” as a model of pre-modern
state formation was first conceptualized by Max Weber, who defined a patrimonial ruler as
one who governed on the basis of a personal, traditional authority similar to the patriarch’s
authority over his household. Patrimonial states arose, according to Weber, when the rulers
extended their sway over extra-household subjects in areas beyond the patriarchal domain,
and exercised military and administrative power over the larger realm, conceived as a huge
household.
The patrimonial bureaucratic empire, of which the Mughal Empire is an example, was a
larger and more diffuse version of the patrimonial kingdom. While the officials of the
patrimonial bureaucratic empire were expected to exhibit personal qualifications such as
loyalty to the emperor, family and social position, they were neither dependents nor
bureaucrats, held positions that were loosely defined and imperfectly ordered, and received
salaries not from the emperor’s household but through land revenue assignments. Two early
Islamic philosophers, Nizam al-Mulk and Nasir al-Din Tusi held up the patrimonial ideal as a
guide for Islamic rulers. Nizam al-Mulk (1018-92), in his “Siyasat Namah” (Book of Kings)
wrote that, “A man’s magnanimity and generosity must be judged according to the excellence
of his household” and he referred to the reigning Seljuk sultan as the “head of the family of
the world”, with all kings within his power. Nasir al-din Tusi, in the “Akhlaq-i Nasiri”,
remarked that, “The father’s government of his household should be the model for the ruler’s
government of his state.”
Stephen Blake has included activities within the imperial household as a crucial aspect of the
functioning of the patrimonial bureaucratic empire, comprising marriage practices, succession,
and ritualism. According to Blake, the Mughal, Safavid and Ottoman empires shared a
common Turko-Mongolian conception of political sovereignty, wherein sovereignty resided
in the ruling family, in both male and female members.
In the realm of marriage practices, the Mughal rulers after Humayun (1530-56) became
influenced by the Indian custom of hypergamy, wherein the belief of wife-takers being
considered superior to wife-givers became the reason why many imperial daughters remained
either unwed or were married to foreign prices or cousins (considered socially equal). The
few examples of princesses’ marriages include Akbar marrying his daughter in 1585 to the
Uzbek ruler Shah Rukh, and Aurangzeb marrying two of his five daughters in the seventeenth
century to the sons of his brothers, Dara Shukoh and Murad Baksh. The Mughal emperors and
princes, on the other hand, often married the daughters of their imperial rivals, such as the
Rajput rulers of North India in order to cement political alliances and ensure the stability of
their sovereign rule.
Succession within the Mughal dynasty was governed by the Turko-Mongolian egalitarian
tradition of sovereignty, to which the Mughals remained more steadfastly attached than their
Safavid and Ottoman counterparts, who developed various strategies for limiting competition
amongst the male kinsmen for succession (including the execution of rival kinsmen upon
succession being given legal sanction). This resulted in rebellions being faced by Humayun
from his brothers which precipitated in his defeat by the Afghans, Akbar (1556-1605) from
his foster brother Adham Khan, his half-brother Mirza Hakim, and his son, the later Jahangir,
who himself was challenged by his two sons Khusrau and Khurram (the later Shah-Jahan,
1628-58). Shah Jahan was challenged by his two nephews and two cousins, whom he
executed, and was himself imprisoned in the War of Succession (1658-59) which saw his son,
Aurangzeb (1658-1707) emerge as the victor after having killed all three of his brothers.
Nevertheless, Aurangzeb gave each of his three sons important military and administrative
posts and, on his deathbed, drafted a will that (like Chingis Khan’s) divided the empire into
three equal parts, which nonetheless failed and was followed by a battle for succession in
which Bahadur Shah (1707–12) ascended to the throne, killing his two brothers in the process.

Within the realm of ritualism, all the three empires celebrated the major rituals of the Islamic
year comprising the Id-ul-Fitr (the three day festival celebrating the end of the month-long
Ramadan fast), Id-i Qurban (the celebration with the sacrifice of an animal during the month
of pilgrimage, recalling Abraham’s near sacrifice of Ishmael), and Id-i Maulid (the
celebration of the prophet Muhammad’s birthday), and also celebrated number of secular,
dynastic rituals as rites of political legitimacy and means of assimilating the diverse
population within the fold of the empire irrespective of religious affiliation. In the Mughal
Empire, this included the imperial birthday celebration. This celebration, introduced by Akbar
and combining rituals from the Islamic, Indo-Islamic and Indic strands, was celebrated twice
a year: On the lunar (according to the Islamic Hijri calendar) and solar (Ilahi calendar)
birthdays of the emperor, and included an elaborate weighing (“tuladan”) ceremony where the
emperor or prince was weighed on the scale against items both of luxury and utility to
incorporate the entire socioeconomic hierarchy of Mughal India.

THE MUGHAL HAREM

The mainstream image of the harem as an avenue comprising women solely for sexual and
reproductive utility to the Mughal emperor has been contested by Harbans Mukhia (2004),
who has argued that “harem” was a sacred word, denoting a place of worship, or the sanctum-
sanctorum where the committing of any sin was forbidden (haram) and was thus, atleast in
concept, a site for restraint rather than excesses in sexual and among other, filial relationships.
In the peripatetic lifestyle of early Mughal emperors Babur (1526-30) and Humayun, the
Mughal domestic world could not be exclusively defined by a fixed domain such as a harem,
the family, or private life, and its limits were necessarily more fluid and indefinable than in
the more settled times of Akbar and his successors, inspired by the Chinghizid-Timurid social
ethos. The “domestic” went hand-in-hand with “historical events” that make it difficult to
classify them as matters of state, or of private interest: For instance, the disappearance of
Humayun’s daughter Aqiqeh Begum and the capture of her mother Bega Begum in the Battle
of Chausa (1539), Khanzada Begum (Babur’s sister) offering advice on the matters of
declaration of kingship to Humayun and Kamran, etc. While early Mughal women were
highly homosocial in character, living mostly amongst other women, they often appear in
male narratives --- since the Mughal domestic world continuously negotiated with, and
revolved around, the presence of the monarch --- and are presented as being deeply invested
in the king’s construction of an imperial vision and as secondary players in the enhancement
of geneological connections. Thus, according to Ruby Lal (2005), atleast in the reigns of
Babur and Humayun and even to some extent, after them, the public and private spheres did
not exist in isolation from each other.
The harems of Babur and Humayun comprised about a dozen wives and a couple of
concubines as recorded in court chronicles. In the reign of Akbar, the number of occupants in
the harem increased significantly, with Portuguese Jesuit missionary, Father Monserrate
recording 300 wives in temporary marriages for political alliances, and court chronicler Abu’l
Fazl recording 5,000 women in Akbar’s harem with their own apartments and servants.
Mukhia (2004) emphasises that Abu’l Fazl’s figure was more of a hyperbolic, political
statement of the grandeur Akbar’s imperial presence, since the number of women in one’s
harem was perceived as one of the major symbols of the state’s power and granduer. Jahangir
(1605-27) was similarly said by English traveller Thomas Coryat and Beni Prasad (1930) to
have had 300 wives and concubines in his harem, though Shah Jahan (1628-58) had no more
than 4 wives, with his concubines also not running into hundreds as had happened with his
predecessor. Mukhia argues also, citing the examples of Rajput rulers such as Rai Puran Mal
of Kalinjar and Raja Man Singh, that it was not only Muslim rulers that possessed large
harems, but Hindu nobles and rulers too.
According to Mukhia, while the King was the only adult male who was allowed unhindered
access to the harem, it was his mother whose importance in the harem was universally
acknowledged, and multiple accounts by the likes of Abul Fazl and Thomas Coryat on
Babur’s dynamic with his senior female relations and Akbar’s with Maryam Makani (Hamida
Banu Begum), his mother, exemplify that the Chinghizi custom of paying obeisance to one’s
mother (“Buzurgdasht” or bestowed by ancestors) was steadfastly followed by the Mughal
rulers.

THE HAREM IN THE PERIPATETIC LIFESTYLES OF BABUR AND HUMAYUN

Babur’s new northern Indian outpost, which would become known as the Mughal Empire,
represented the last independent Timurid kingdom, both with respect to the similarities in the
public sphere of politics, and familial relations, including within the harem. In the Baburnama,
Babur refers to the harem as the “ahl va’ayal”, the term referring broadly to an entourage
covering several generations of mothers, grandmothers, great-grandmothers (on the maternal
and paternal sides), wives of his own and of his male kinsmen, children and servants.
Babur and Humayun maintained highly mobile courts 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 wars and their aftermath, they served as
companions and counselors living in close proximity to the center of power. According to
Lisa Balabanlilar (2010), when Gulbadan Begum 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.
According to Ruby Lal (2005), Babur’s conception of kinfolk has a strong genealogical
component, visible in words such as “khanivadeh” (similar to khandan, pertaining to an
illustrious family), ahl va’ayal, nasab (race, geneology, line of descent or origin) all of which
refer to the participation of a large kin setup comprising several generations, and the lineage
of several distinguished ancestors of the Timurid and Chinghizid lines. Babur’s domestic life
hinged on his Chinghizid-Timurid lineage, which can be seen in his pardoning two rebels,
Mirza Khan and Mirza Muhammad Husain Gurakan in the name of senior women of this
lineage, and his early marriages to Ayisha Sultan Begum, Masuma Sultan Begum, and
Zeynab Sultan Begum, all of whom were daughters of his paternal uncles from the Timurid
line. In the battle against the Uzbeks and later in Hindustan, he laid stress on the support of
the members of this multi-generational lineage: his aunts, great-grand aunts, and sisters; those
of the “nasl” of Timur and Chinghiz Khan were invited to share in the prosperity of
Hindustan, and he sent the valuable presents and curiosities of Hindustan back to the women
of his harem in Kabul.
The “ahl va’ayal” of Humayun, on the other hand, focused more on contemporary
relationships, including his mother, stepmothers, wives, kinsmen, servants and followers than
on the previous generations, though a simultaneous mention of the two continued in Gulbadan
Banu Begum’s Humayun Namah. Terms such as “ahl-i haram” and “Shabistan-i Iqbal” also
appeared more frequently, though Ruby Lal has reasoned that this was due to the tendency of
Akbari chronicles to use contemporary terminology for past reigns in order to draw a context
of sacred associations that went into the making of Akbar’s empire.

THE HEIRARCHY OF WOMEN AND POLITICS IN BABUR AND HUMAYUN’S

HAREM
The instability and conflict in the reigns of Babur and Humayun necessitated matrimonial ties
as a means for forming political alliances. For instance, the Uzbek challenge which threatened
Timurid rule in Transoxiana led to Babur’s marriage with Timurid princesses to strongly
articulate Timurid identity. Similarly, Babur’s marriage with Bibi Mubarika of the rival
Yusufzay clan was a means for him to strengthen his control over his last remaining
stronghold, Kabul, which was also facilitated by the Afghani Aghacha’s insistence post-
marriage for Babur to ‘pardon the offences’ of her clan. This instance, according to Ruby Lal,
also showed the Afghani Aghacha as a normative figure, performing the ideals of domesticity
for both her husband and father.
According to Lal, senior women, especially mothers, were the most ubiquitous figures in the
early Mughal chronicles, and the production or taking charge of a male son was the first step
in the wife’s ascendancy. Contemporary court chronicles further showcase that if the mother
of a royal son had high status, the mother to the heir to the throne was even more privileged.
Thus, even as Maham Begum’s taking charge of Mirza Hindal and Gulbadan Begum from
Dildar Begum may not have had much of an effect on her seniority in the harem, her position
as the mother of the next emperor, Humayun, may have been the reason for Gulbadan
Begum’s adulation for her in the Humayun Namah. Maham Begum’s importance is reflected
in the incident of Babur hurriedly leaving on foot to meet her when he heard of her arrival
from Kabul to Hindustan.
With birth of a potential heir being an important indicator for seniority, the senior women’s
responsibility also became encouraging younger women to produce children of the emperor
and endorsing birth. The importance of motherhood in the harem is indicated by the lists of
childless women and dead children in the Humayun Namah.
Other than motherhood, the status of the mother of the heir to the throne, age and experience
were also important factors, with the latter counting towards the seniority of Dildar Begum
(Babur’s wife) and Khanzadah Begum (his sister, who also played an important role in
establishing peace between the Uzbek leader Shaibani Khan and Timurid emperor Babur
through marrying the former). Thus, age and experience was a more important factor in
seniority in the harem than the favour of the emperor, and the senior women (mothers, aunts
and sisters) exercised considerable control over the younger women and men in the family.
Lisa Balabanlilar (2010) has argued that the descent of the woman was a more important
factor in the exercise of power in the harem than motherhood. Beatrice Manz (2003) 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". 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
(Balabanlilar, 2010).
While the emperor had one biological mother, he had several “mothers” in the harem, a
phenomenon understandable in the context of polygamy. Harbans Mukhia emphasises that
while “mothers” was a term often used by the emperors, princes and princesses for them,
implying an undifferentiated reverence for all, the differentiation and tension amongst women
at the highest levels of hierarchy in the harem is reflected in the different titles used for them:
“Begum” was reserved for the royal ladies, sometimes even princesses of the royal blood;
“Aghacha” or “agha” indicated a slightly inferior origin and status, regardless of whether she
was a rightful queen of the emperor or a concubine, and his fondness for her, for instance, the
title for Babur’s Afghan wife, the “Afghani Aghacha”. By the time of Aurangzeb, the Hindi
word Bai had replaced the Turkish Agha, as indicated by the court historian Saqi Mustaid
Khan’s mention of the 4 mothers of Aurangzeb’s children: one Begum, two Bais and the
fourth was Aurangabadi Mahal.
The Timurid fosterage system in the Mughal dynasty seems to have been a common custom
for elite women, most often the senior wives of the ruler, to take into their households the
children of sisters, daughters, and common wives (Manz, 2003).This is evident in Babur’s
politically erudite grandmother, Isan Daulat Khanim, raising three of her own daughters but
also fostering a half-sister of Babur, Yadgar Sultan Begum; Maham Begum raising Dildar
Begum’s children Hindal and Gulbadan Begum; and Akbar’s first wife Ruqaiyya Begum
raised Jahangir’s son, the future Shah Jahan. It has been suggested that fosterage was the
Timurid method for avoiding extreme cases of advocacy by mothers on the part of their royal
sons that could be destructive to the dynasty (Manz, 2003).
Ruby Lal writes that an important prerogative for senior women of the harem was the
organisation of royal feasts, a process in which even the emperor was not involved, and
factors such as who organised the feasts, who sat where, etc. further indicated seniority. For
instance, Gulbadan Begum mentions that in the feast organised by the emperor’s mother,
Maham Begum, Humayun asked all the begums and mirzas to bring gifts, of which a specific
part, the “hissiyeh murad” or “portion of pleasure” went to the Begums and the ashrafis out of
them were scattered in front of the beneficent seniors. This apportioning was in keeping with
the division of the important groups in the kingdom made by Khvandamir. Other ritualstic
aspects included the king and the senior lady reserving the right to sit on the special divan.

The political role played by women involved indirect intercessions for peace, for instance
Babur pardoning two rebels for the “sake of his aunts”; Khanzada Begum marrying Shaibani
Khan Uzbek to ensure the end of the siege of Samarqand and her return facilitated by Shah
Ismail Safavid cementing ties between the Safavids and Mughals; and more direct references
of Sultan Nigar Khanum, Babur’s maternal aunt, ushering in Mirza Sulaiman from
Badakhshan to Kabul in the face of Uzbek attack, which opened Badakhshan to be given to
Mirza Humayun. During Humayun’s reign, when the threat of Sher Shah coincided with
infighting amongst Humayun and his brothers Mirza Hindal and Kamran, he asked Khanzada
Begum to travel to Qandahar to advise the necessity of unity, and when Kamran tried to get
the khutba read in his name in Kabul, she advised against this to ensure the maintenance of
the sovereignty of the emperor. Later, to quell Hindal’s rebellion just prior to the Battle of
Chausa (1539), his mother Dildar Begum went to Alwar to escort him to Humayun so that the
sovereignty and the stability of the empire could be maintained, even at the expense of her
son’s ambitions, showing the universal acceptance of the importance of hierarchies of kinship
in rulership.

INSTITUTIONALISATION OF THE HAREM IN AKBAR’S TIME

Akbar’s reign saw a careful attention to the development and formalization of court practices,
as well as a process of reconstruction of the imperial image that also affected the imperial
harem. The physical structure of the new Mughal capital built at Fatehpur Sikri reflected the
increased control and institutionalization of the imperial project. The first official statute on
the imperial harem was issued in Abu’l Fazl’s “Ain-i-Akbari”, where women were officially
designated as “pardah-giyan” (the veiled ones) and in the process of establishing the emperor
as sovereign and masculine with the whole imperial setup revolving around him, the courtly
and domestic spaces came to be distinctly separated and the harem (“Shabistan-i- Iqbal”, or
the “fortunate place of sleep or dreams”) became compartmentalized to segregate women to
ensure “good order and propriety” (Lal, 2005). With the increased sanctification of the term
“harem” to mimic its meaning in early Islamic history as the Prophet’s household, the women
inhabitants also became more elevated and simultaneously, more invisibilised.
The harem at this time was meticulously guarded by placing the trustworthiest women in the
quarters, the eunuch guards outside the enclosure, the Rajputs standing guard beyond them
and guards of nobles and ahadis on all four sides of the complex. Abul Fazl carefully
enumerated the "sufficiently liberal" stipends and salaries of women at the Mughal court,
from servants to highborn elites, and described the "peculiar imperial stamp" with which the
harem grants were marked. A woman in the harem, to get anything she wanted within the
limits of her salary, had to apply to the cash-keepers (tahwildars) of the harem, with the
General Treasurer making the payments in cash. According to Ruby Lal (2005), the public
pronouncement of spatial living arrangements for every female inhabitant of the harem, the
ascription of the veiled status and the segregated allocation of women’s quarters served as
vital hallmarks of a grand empire in Abul Fazl’s conception. The imperial pride in structuring
his harem on similar lines as the ideal Prophet’s household is visible in Akbar’s letter to the
Shah of Persia (plausibly Shah Abbas).
The chronicles from Akbar’s reign increasingly used illustrious titles for the elder women in
the harem, with chastity and purity being an important part of such titles: Hamida Banu
Begum (Maryam Makani, Akbar’s mother) was referred to as the “veil of chastity” and “pillar
of chastity” in the Akbarnama; Maham Anga, Akbar’s wet-nurse and Haji Begum were called
the “cupola of chastity”, Akbar’s stepsister was “the chaste” Bakht-un-Nisa Begum, while the
aunt Gulbadan Begum, and the senior wife Salima Sultan Begum were “connections of the
noble family”.
Akbar’s wives, more specifically the mothers of his sons, were rendered completely invisible
from imperial records. For instance, while describing the festivities with the birth of Salim,
the future Jahangir, imperial records purposefully omitted the name of his mother, with the
only mention coming in an edict issued by Maryam-uz-Zamani with her identifier being the
‘mother of emperor Jahangir’. In imperial births, the emperor was the only one who was
glorified, not the mother, seen also in the births of Akbar’s daughters Khanum and Aram
Banu Begum and sons Shah Murad and Danyal. The identities of royal wives came to be
established, if at all, with reference to the place of their birth or location, or some other
indicator, for instance Fatehpuri Begum, Udaipuri Begum, etc. According to Harbans Mukhia
(2004), it appears that Akbar learnt this method of protecting women’s chastity from the
Rajputs, whose princesses, after marriage, did not have their personal names recorded in
Rajput sources, instead being identified by the name of their father or clan after their marriage
into another clan. From Akbar’s time, chastity got invested in the female body and came to be
perceived entirely in sexual terms, such that even the sight or thought of the female body was
considered the dilution of her own as well as her dynasty’s purity and sanctity. These changes
could be attributed to the growing influence of the Rajput ethos (comprising their investment
of family honour in their women’s bodies and their obsession with female sexual chastity) on
Akbar ever since his marriage in 1562 to the daughter of Raja Bhara Mal Kachhwaha of
Amber.
However, Balabanlilar cautions that as the spokesman and interpreter of the Mughal
imperium, Abu’l Fazl offered a highly idealized vision of the harem as he was anxious to
conflate Mughal rule, and Akbar in particular, with the sacral and miraculous. In reality, there
are several instances of the women of the harem taking on political roles, including not only
the emperor’s mothers, aunts and wives, but also his wet-nurses.
Abu’l Fazl has described the act of feeding as involving not only nourishing, but also
fostering in a manner appropriate to the chosen one, and the wet-nurses were supposed to be
even-tempered and spiritual-minded to be able to do so. Additionally, almost all the nurses
were closely tied to the family of Humayun, either directly or through their relatives, and as
kinship networks became extended in Akbar’s time to form extra-kin communities, milk, in
addition to blood and matrimony, became the raison d’etre for the creation of other intimate
relationships. Akbar’s wet-nurses like Maham Anga and Jiji Anga became politically
important not only by themselves, but also helped their relatives Adham Khan (Maham-
Anga’s son), Shams-al din Muhammad (“Atkah Khan”, Jiji Anga’s husband) and Aziz Koka
(“Khan-i Azam”, Jiji Anga’s son) gain influence in Akbar’s court.
When Adham Khan killed Atkah Khan and rebelled against Akbar with the conspiratorial
agreement of his mother and Akbar’s wet-nurse Maham Anga, the emperor in his anger over
the murder of his foster-father and the rebellion ordered for his execution, after which he
personally took the information to Maham Anga with appropriate reasoning, which was
accepted by her. When Akbar's son, Salim, the future emperor Jahangir, rebelled against him
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.
Ruby Lal (2005) has argued that while court chronicles like the “Akbarnama” have placed the
emperor at the centre of the empire and as the “force behind the order and discipline of the
empire, not excluding the sphere of domestic life”, certain instances involved the royal
women in the harem transgressing the boundaries set out for them, for instance, the
pilgrimage to Mecca of Gulbadan Banu Begum and other senior ladies of the harem in 1578.
This pilgrimage was taken of their own accord and by their own planning without the
interference of the emperor and the supervision of a male member of the royal family, and the
ladies returned to the harem after several years to celebrations of homecoming, even as
politically important women such as Hamida Banu Begum (who had once been given charge
of Delhi) and Bibi Fatima stayed back. Accoridng to Ruby Lal, Gulbadan’s Hajj was
organised not only as a spiritual journey, but also a political tactic supported by Akbar to
increase Muslim support for his rule during the time when the establishment of the Ibadat
Khana had led to increasing ideological tensions with the court theologians.
JAHANGIR’S HAREM POLITICS:
The influence of the women of the imperial harem in court politics remained prevalent even
during the reign of Jahangir, as is evidenced by the sequence of events that followed when
Jahangir’s son, Khusro rebelled against him in 1606. Jahangir considered a court favorite,
Mirza Aziz Koka, to have been the instigator of his son's mutiny. His execution seemed
imminent, yet the sources describe the intervention of respected Mughal women, with Salima
Sultan Begum calling out from behind the cloister to the emperor, urging him to visit the
harem to talk to the Begums who wished to intercede for Mirza Aziz Koka, lest they step out
to visit him themselves. Jahangir was thus constrained to go to the women's apartments and,
under their pressure, pardon Mirza Aziz Koka (Misra, 1967).
According to Lisa Balabanlilar, youth was no barrier to power in the Mughal court, and with
the death of the last of the elderly female Timurid relations in the Mughal household, young
women, comprising young wives, daughters, and sisters of the emperors Jahangir, Shah Jahan
and Aurangzeb, came to play critical roles in the imperial court and dynastic politics by the
virtue of being members of the imperial family. Their importance was magnified by the fact
that, since access to power no longer driven by marital status, age, or motherhood, powerful
Mughal women remained unwed by choice. Shah Jahan’s daughter, Jahanara, who was
referred to by her father as “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, and part of which had been left to her by her mother, Mumtaz Mahal,
who had also been heavily involved in international trade (Kozlowski, 2003). Between 1648
and 1650, she built a mansion in her father’s palace compound overlooking the Yamuna River,
a central market (Chandni Chowk) in the new capital city of Shahjahanabad, the paradise
canal and the city’s largest bathhouse and caravanserai, not only for the glorification of the
dynasty, but also for personal recognition.
In the War of Succession between Shah Jahan’s sons, Jahanara supported Dara Shukoh and
her sister, Raushanara supported Aurangzeb, both of them passing messages, agitating in the
court for their favourite, leading a faction and going into exile or achieving power at the
resolution of the conflict. After her father, Shah Jahan’s death, whom she had served in the
Agra Fort where he had been imprisoned by the new emperor, Aurangzeb, till 1666, Jahanara
was respectfully lodged by Aurangzeb in one of the finest mansions in Shahjahanabad.
These younger women were highly educated by scholarly female tutors operating in the
harem called “Atun Mama”, and made and patronised artistic productions themselves. For
instance, Jahanara wrote Sufi texts such as the “Risala-i-Sahibiya”, the biography of the Sufi
Shaykh Mu'in al-Din Chishti and his descendants, along with several volumes of poetry, and
patronised works on Sufism that included commentaries on Rumi’s “Mathnawi”. Gulbadan
Begum had composed the Humayun Namah on the urging of her nephew Akbar, and
Aurangzeb’s eldest daughter Zeb al-Nisa, tutored by the famous Persian poet Mulla Sa'id
Ashraf Mazandarani, was learned in poetry, astronomy, mathematics, and calligraphy, had
arranged for the translation of many religious classics, and patronised many scholars and
poets.
Jahangir’s wife Nur Jahan is an example of a childless wife with no significant lineage
obtaining seniority by virtue of her political and administrative acumen and admiration and
trust of her husband, who went on to grant her sovereign rights, after which she gave dictates
to the nobles, signed royal farmans with her seal and ordered coins to be minted recognising
herself and the emperor Jahangir. She built a series of private palaces for herself in various
parts of the empire and maintained a large number of ships, dealing regularly with English
merchants and becoming the protector of English goods, and organising the emperor’s rescue
when he was captured by a rebel in the final years of his reign.

Thus, even when contemporaneous empires like the Safavid Persia and Ottoman Turkey saw
reduction in the political role of women, with the harem being separated from the public
sphere of court politics, and power in the harem being determined only through factors such
as motherhood and descent, the women in the Mughal harem continued to continuously shift
between the porous spheres of the domestic and court politics, exercising power and
considerable influence in both. The invisiblisation of women to ensure modesty and chastity
from Akbar’s time did not censure a level of independence seen in the Hajj of Gulbadan
Begum and other senior ladies of the harem, influence in politics of succession and right to
intercede in times of conflict in the court purely by virtue of them being connected to the
imperial family. Having as much at stake as their brothers, fathers, husbands, and sons, first in
Central Asia and later in India, Timurid-Mughal elite women were participants and public
supporters of the imperial project, proving that the Mughal harem was much more than a
cloistered arena to satisfy the needs of sexuality and reproduction of the Emperor: It was also
an integral institution that influenced the politics of the court, decisions of the emperor and
thus, the administration of the empire.

REFERENCES:
1. Balabanlilar, Lisa. (2010). “The Begums of the Mystic Feast: Turco-Mongol Tradition in
the Mughal Harem”. Journal of Asian Studies vol. 69/1, pp.123– 147.
2. Blake, Stephen. (2011). “Returning the Household to the Patrimonial-Bureaucratic Empire:
Gender, Succession, and Ritual in the Mughal, Safavid and Ottoman Empires”. P.F. Bang and
C.A. Bayly, (Ed.), Tributary Empires in Global History. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp.
214-226.
3. Lal, Ruby. (2005). Domesticity and Power in the Early Mughal World. Cambridge:
Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization. (Ch. 5 and 7), pp. 103-139 &176-213.
4. Mukhia, Harbans. (2004). The Mughals of India. Oxford: Blackwell. (Ch. 3, “The World of
Mughal Family”), pp. 113-155.