Prologue: Standing in the Legend

Abstract This is the story of an immigrant girl from Kandahar, born on a caravan traveling from Tehran to India. Noble in lineage, her parents had fled misfortune in Persia but soon flourished again at the Mughal court of Akbar. Married early to a Turkish soldier, Mihrunnisa was widowed in 1607 and was taken in as a handmaiden by the imperial harem in Agra. After four years of obscurity, the woman who came to be Nur Jahan met Jahangir at a palace bazaar in the spring of 1611 and the two were married a few months later. She was in her midthirties, had already had one child, and was to be Jahangir’s last and most influential wife. Almost at once, Nur Jahan and her cohorts took control of the government as Jahangir bowed to the effects of alcohol and opium. She minted coins, traded with foreign merchants, managed promotions and finances at the court, orchestrated new developments in art and religion, and laid out many of the Mughal gardens we now know. Her power over the emperor and in government affairs was almost complete, but came at the cost of internal tensions. Midway through the reign, her stepson Shah Jahan went into open rebellion and her ruling coalition fell apart as the couple increasingly spent their months in Kashmir. By the time Jahangir died in 1627, splintering at the familial center was so substantial that she had no real chance for power in the next reign. Nur Jahan was exiled to Lahore where she lived in seclusion with her daughter until her death in 1645.