Nūr Jahān

Nūr Jahān (born 1577, Kandahār [now in Afghanistan]—died 1645, Lahore [now in Pakistan]) was the de facto ruler of India during the later years of the reign of her husband Jahāngīr, who was emperor from 1605 to 1627. She achieved unprecedented political power for a woman in Mughal India.

Mehr al-Nesāʾ was born in Kandahār to parents Mirzā Ghiyās Beg and Asmat Begum, Persians who fled Safavid Iran in hopes of finding prosperity and refuge under the Mughal emperor Akbar. The future empress’s childhood is clouded by legend, with conflicting folktales jostling to explain her rise to power. One oft-repeated legend claims that her parents, lacking food and water on their pilgrimage to India, attempted to abandon her in the desert. Overcome with grief for their lost child, they returned for her—only to find her sitting calmly and safely next to a dangerous snake. Also unsubstantiated is the claim that Mehr al-Nesāʾ was frequently seen with Jahāngīr at court in her youth, perhaps beginning their romantic relationship, though there is no documentation of the two meeting until 1611.

Apart from legend, little is known about Mehr al-Nesāʾ’s life prior to her marriage to the Iranian-born Mughal official Sher Afghan in 1594. The couple had one child, a daughter named Ladli Begum, and were married until Sher Afghan’s death in 1607. Sher Afghan was killed in an altercation with the Mughal governor of Bengal, who was seeking Sher Afghan’s arrest for his alleged involvement in a plot against Jahāngīr. Though Jahāngīr was marked as Akbar’s successor early on, he had grown tired of waiting for the throne and revolted in 1599 while Akbar was engaged in the Deccan; Sher Afghan, for his part, sided with Akbar. Jahāngīr finally became emperor after his father’s death in 1605.

Though Sher Afghan may have been considered a traitor, the custom of offering refuge to widows meant that Mehr al-Nesāʾ was welcomed into Jahāngīr’s court as a lady-in-waiting. The couple met and married; Mehr al-Nesāʾ became his 20th and final wife in 1611. She was renamed Nūr Jahān (“Light of the World”) and quickly became the emperor’s favourite.

In Jahāngīr’s court, being the favourite wife was no small privilege. Nūr Jahān’s father, now known as Iʿtimād al-Dawlah, and her brother, Āṣaf Khan, were granted prominent positions at court; together, the three formed a kind of “junta” that heavily influenced Jahāngīr in political matters. As Jahāngīr’s hard-partying ways were no secret (he was a heavy drinker and opium eater), many historians theorize that Nūr Jahān became the Mughal Empire’s de facto empress. Eventually she even minted coins in her name and issued royal decrees—two powers typically reserved for sovereigns, not wives.

Foreign visitors were not thrilled to find that any amount of political power had been surrendered to one of the emperor’s wives. Dutch East India Company officer Francisco Pelsaert wrote that Jahāngīr “surrendered himself to a crafty wife of humble lineage” who used the emperor to secure “a more than royal position.” British merchant Peter Mundy alleged that Nūr Jahān had been taken prisoner upon the death of her first husband but, unfortunately for Jahāngīr, “hee became her prisoner by marryeing her, for in his tyme shee in a manner ruled all in ruleing him.” European visitors were intensely focused on Nūr Jahān’s power and Jahāngīr’s substance use, perhaps none more so than Sir Thomas Roe, the first official English ambassador to the Mughal Empire. Roe frequently complained about life in India, disparaging the local people’s “barbarous” nature, their rejection of Christian faith, and Jahāngīr’s skill as a ruler. The “gentle” and “soft” Jahāngīr, according to Roe, had “yielded himself into the hands of a woman” to the point that he could no longer control his empire.

These barbs did not seem to phase Jahāngīr, and references to Nūr Jahān in his journals are complimentary, not critical. As Nūr Jahān herself left behind no known written records of a personal nature, Jahāngīr’s extensive diaries contain perhaps the only nonpolitical account of her life. Reflecting on an illness that left him bedridden, he wrote that her “remedies and experience were greater than any of the physicians’, especially since she treated me with affection and sympathy. She made me drink less and applied remedies that were suitable and efficacious.…I now relied on her affection.” In another entry, he complimented her hunting skills: “The elephant sensed the lion and wouldn’t keep still, and to shoot a gun from on top of an elephant without missing is a very difficult task.…[Nūr Jahān] hit it so well on the first shot that it died of the wound.”

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With little to no protest from Jahāngīr, Mughal politics were dominated by the clique of Nūr Jahān, her father and brother, and the emperor’s son and assumed successor, Prince Khurram, until 1622—at which point Khurram, eager to ensure his place as the next emperor, unsuccessfully rebelled against his father. The two reunited three years later, and, when Jahāngīr died in 1627, Khurram (soon to be known as Shah Jahān) proclaimed himself emperor with the support of Āṣaf Khan, Nūr Jahān’s brother.

Though her position was now perilous, Nūr Jahān was on the verge of completing what was arguably her biggest accomplishment from her time at court: the tomb of Iʿtimād al-Dawlah in Agra. Dedicated to her father, the tomb is an architectural masterpiece that likely inspired the Taj Mahal, which was begun by Shah Jahān in 1632. It was the first Mughal tomb to be built in white marble. Construction began in 1622 and was finally completed in 1628. Soon Shah Jahān would remove her from court and begin destroying many of the coins she had minted in her name. After her death in 1645, she was buried in Lahore, Pakistan, in a tomb near Jahāngīr’s far grander one.