Book Review: Empress ( The Astonishing Reign of Nur Jahan)
Indira Gandhi — the famous, fearless, first Prime Minister of India. She set a benchmark — she fought and won a war, meddled with Punjab, and ended up being assassinated. She won elections that weren’t hers, brought in an emergency rule, and sidestepped the Constitution of India…yet, she held on her own against a clutch of male veterans and wannabes in the complicated Indian political spectrum.
But have we ever thought about who was the last woman sovereign before her? Almost 325 years ago, there was one called Nur Jahan aka Mehr-un-Nisa, the Empress of Jahangir, the fourth Great Mughal. She rose from the ranks, being the 20th wife of the Emperor, to being the co-sovereign, issuing edits and coins, building tombs; making political maneuvers; saving the king from a saboteur, killing games ( with muskets; riding on an elephant; composing poetry and even emerged as the power beside the throne (not not-behind). Like Indira Gandhi, Nur Jahan’s family played a big role in her rise and fall.
Ruby Lal, feminist historian and teaching professor at Emory University, embarks on a bold journey of taking up Nur Jahan’s case, supported by a galaxy of researchers, editors, and historians in bringing out her life and achievements. The challenge is that she is a historian, and hence had to build a narrative from authentic sources — literary, artistic, numismatic, travelogues, and other accounts.
As a fiction writer, I wonder how a historian would write a fictional scene — and Ruby Lal obliges; She narrates elaborate pieces of ‘how things would have happened’ — past uncertain tense — more hypothetical than imaginary. It is important to understand this nuanced difference because Ruby holds back the creative liberty that I would have used.
I felt that the book was a short read and there could have been a greater depth to the narrative, but I could also understand that is where the fine line between historical narrative ends and fiction begins.
The Mughal harem had a series of visible women — starting from Gulbadan Banu Begum, daughter of Babar and sister of Humayun, who wrote a memoir that covers Mughal women’s multifarious concerns and negotiations about childbirth, unfulfilled desires, anticipation, marriages, life and death, war and peace, rituals and celebrations. Nur Jahan was a sensitive consort, a skilled politician, and a talented woman — a poet, a warrior, and an architect among others. Then Arjumand, even though she was the muse that Shah Jahan (Khurram) was smitten with, has a huge legacy of love, reflected in the mausoleum that would be called the Taj Mahal. Finally, Jahanara, the daughter of Shah Jahan who became a Sufi Princess, ruled the harem through her life.
For an Iranian family to come and then become enmeshed with the Mughal regime is no mean feat. Admittedly, Ghayis, Nur’s father, and Asmat, her mother were people of some mettle, but to become the apple of the Emperor’s eye was not easy for Nur. She lost her husband, who was in the Emperor’s good books till he was not, and slaughtered. With a daughter, Ladli, who would marry the Emperor’s son — Shahryar, she staked her bets against the more deserving Khurram aka Shah Jahan, and then lost out, not only to the new heir, but to her brother Asaf Khan, and niece, Arjumand ( Mumtaz). But before that, Nur blossomed to be on her own — front and center of Jahangir’s regime. She fought and killed a tiger with a musket shot from atop her elephant, led a failed rescue of Jahangir by saboteur Mahabat Khan, wrote poetry, and built mosques. The enduring memoirs of the Emperor, Jahangir Nama, the artwork of those days, and a few coins are evidence of her glorious days.
Ruby Lal points out the patriarchial bias of the chroniclers — the nobles, the courtiers, and historians on tagging Nur Jahan as a scheming and conniving woman. Particularly, Thomas Roe, who was the first British emissary to visit a Mughal court. The act, in Persian, is called ‘Fitna’. Ruby traces the accusation of Fitna thrown upon Ayesha, Prophet Mohammed’s wife, who lost the battle of succession (The Battle of Camel) with Prophet Mohammed. Shah Jahan and Mahabat Khan held such views — women cannot be trusted with matters of government and sovereignty. Bhakkari, in his comprehensive non-official biography ‘Dhakiratul Khawanin’, points out that she drove a wedge between father and son, and lit the fire of sedition with her coterie.
Ruby confronts this bias with the same sources, pointing out that even Shah Jahan, her nemesis acknowledged her role in Jahangir’s reign.
‘whom it is needless to praise as she had already reached the pinnacle of fame…she gradually acquired unbounded influence over His Majesty’s mind that she seized the reigns of the government and abrogated to herself the supreme civil and financial administration, ruling with absolute authority till the conclusion of his reign.’
Nur Jahan left behind a legacy that nobody has matched to date after her, till Indira Gandhi came to power. Ruby Lal does well to pull together an authentic story that puts Nur Jahan on the pedestal that she deserves. I would recommend this read if you are a history buff, a feminist, or both.
~Ashok Subramanian © 2023
