Nur Jahan

Nur Jahan (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 Jahangir, who was emperor from 1605 to 1627. She achieved unprecedented political power for a woman in Mughal India. (Read: 12 Extraordinary Women in the Mughal Empire.)

Early life

Mehr un-Nissa was born in Kandahār to Persian parents Mirza Ghiyas Beg and Asmat Begum 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 un-Nissa was frequently seen with Jahangir 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 un-Nissa’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 Jahangir. Though Jahangir 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. Jahangir finally became emperor after his father’s death in 1605.

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In the Mughal court

Sher Afghan may have been considered a traitor, but the custom of offering refuge to widows meant that Mehr un-Nissa was welcomed into Jahangir’s court as a lady-in-waiting. The couple met and married; Mehr un-Nissa became his 20th and final wife in 1611. She was renamed Nur Jahan (“Light of the World”) and quickly became the emperor’s favorite.

In Jahangir’s court, being the favorite wife was no small privilege. Nur Jahan’s father, now known as Itimad ud-Daulah, and her brother, Asaf Khan, were granted prominent positions at court; together, the three formed a kind of “junta” that heavily influenced Jahangir in political matters. As Jahangir’s hard-partying ways were no secret (he was a heavy drinker and opium eater), many historians theorize that Nur Jahan 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 Jahangir “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 Nur Jahan had been taken prisoner upon the death of her first husband but, unfortunately for Jahangir, “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 Nur Jahan’s power and Jahangir’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 Jahangir’s skill as a ruler. The “gentle” and “soft” Jahangir, 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 Jahangir, and references to Nur Jahan in his journals are complimentary, not critical. As Nur Jahan herself left behind no known written records of a personal nature, Jahangir’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.…[Nur Jahan] hit it so well on the first shot that it died of the wound.”

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With little to no protest from Jahangir, Mughal politics were dominated by the clique of Nur Jahan, 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 Jahangir died in 1627, Khurram (soon to be known as Shah Jahan) proclaimed himself emperor with the support of Asaf Khan, Nur Jahan’s brother.

Though her position was now perilous, Nur Jahan was on the verge of completing what was arguably her biggest accomplishment from her time at court: the tomb of Itimad ud-Daulah in Agra. Dedicated to her father, the tomb is an architectural masterpiece and one of the monuments that likely inspired the Taj Mahal, which was begun by Shah Jahan 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 Jahan 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 Jahangir’s far grander one.