Source: Economist
Not just a pretty face
The brilliant career of Nur Jahan, empress of India
Chauvinism has reduced her to caricature. Ruby Lal’s biography brings her back to life
Empress: The Astonishing Reign of Nur Jahan. By Ruby Lal. W.W. Norton & Company; 336 pages; $27.95 and £19.99.
THAT India’s Mughal emperors could be devoted to their queens is no surprise. The Taj Mahal, their most famous monument, was a homage to the memory of Mumtaz Mahal, the emperor Shah Jahan’s most-mourned wife. Less well-known is that Mumtaz’s aunt (and Shah Jahan’s stepmother), Nur Jahan, was, for 16 years from 1611, in effect India’s co-ruler.
In fact, according to Ruby Lal’s biography, she became “prime minister as well as empress”. Uniquely for a Mughal woman, her name featured on coins. Not until Indira Gandhi became prime minister in 1966 would India again be ruled by a woman. (Queen Victoria was rather hands-off.)
Not that Nur Jahan has been forgotten. Hers is a household name in South Asia, and her story has been told in at least eight films, several plays and many historical romances. But she is famous for having won the heart of her husband, the emperor Jahangir, with her beauty, and for using her charm to promote her own interests and her allies’. She came to be seen, in Ms Lal’s words, as “a gold-digger and schemer”, the “besotted” Jahangir as a “drunk, stoned and oversexed despot”.
