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  But Gulbadan’s journey, and the fact that Hamideh stayed behind as a wise adviser, proved that, while Akbar wanted to render women invisible, that invisibility wasn’t complete or inviolable. A group of senior royal women decided that they were not going to be simply locked away in the harem of Fatehpur-Sikri, making a bold claim to self-expression and resourcefulness by insisting on traveling to Mecca, a culturally accepted journey. This hajj led by the emperor’s aunt—a rare event then and later—underlined the point that women had been, and would continue to be, active players in political decisions and the future of the empire, despite Akbar’s move to segregate them.

  Even in dealings with women from subordinate princely states, the emperor didn’t always get his way. For example, Pravin Ray, poet and courtesan of the raja of Orchcha, refused Akbar’s summons to come to the court and join his harem. She sent the following couplet in response: “Pay heed, wise emperor, to what Pravin Ray has to say. Only low caste people, crows, and dogs eat off the plates used by others.”3 Standing boldly in solidarity with his lover—the raja likewise had refused to surrender to Mughal authority.4

  Growing up in her father’s house, Mihr would hear about intrepid Gulbadan—though not about bold Pravin Ray—from the women around her: her mother, Asmat, and Asmat’s friends, who likely invoked the story of the hajj and of the imperial adviser Hamideh as inspiring examples of Mughal women’s imagination and leadership.

  An ardent inquirer, Akbar rejected religious orthodoxy and aimed to build a new philosophy, which he called “Universal Peace.” He was drawn to the ideas of the great Sufi thinker ‘Ibn al-Arabi (d. 1240), especially his opinion that a king who fulfilled the obligations of divine regency was a “Perfect Man.” Aspiring to perfection, Akbar, the self-styled Chosen One of God, felt called to initiate a policy of tolerance. He took part in Muslim rites and practices, sent money to Mecca, and swept the floor of the great mosque in Fatehpur-Sikri. He also admired the liberal philosophy of the Nuqtavis, a Persian Sufi sect; held the New Testament in high regard; embraced yogic practices; experimented with vegetarianism; and was so keen to understand the power that Hindus experienced in worshipping the sun that he memorized the 1,001 names of the sun in Sanskrit. Akbar’s chroniclers subtly linked him with traditions of the Hindu Rajputs, the cultural heritage of many of his wives. The ancient Rajputs traced their aristocratic lineages from the sun (suryavamshi) or the moon (chandravamshi). Kunti, one of the protagonists in the ancient epic Mahabharata, a famous version of which was illustrated in Akbar’s workshop, conceived a son immaculately through the rays of the sun. Rama, the great god-king of the epic Ramayana (also illustrated in Akbar’s atelier) belonged to the sun lineage. And some of Akbar’s Rajput subjects raised him to the same status.5

  Traditions regarding the sun and moon had entered Islam as part of various philosophical and occult systems. Akbar was aware of Persian Neo-Platonic philosophers known as Illuminists—chief among them the twelfth-century thinker Suhrawardi (d. 1192)—who believed that all life comes into existence through constant blinding illumination from God, the Light of Lights, revealed to man by a chain of dazzling angels. At their head was the angel Gabriel, identified with the spirit of Prophet Muhammad. All men possess a divine spark, said Suhrawardi, who recognized five levels of wisdom. Only those in the top three were the masters of their age. Among them were Suhrawardi himself, Plato, and, according to Akbar’s official historian, Akbar. The emperor also knew that the Illuminists who interested him had been influenced by the ancient Greek philosopher and mystic Hermes Trismegistus, who regarded the sun as a manifestation of divinity.6 Akbar’s interest in light and celestial bodies would be of particular importance for his successors, Emperor Jahangir and Empress Nur.

  The wise and accomplished Akbar is said to have been illiterate; his son Salim would mention this in his memoir when he became Emperor Jahangir. Was it true? Or was Akbar’s claim of illiteracy a way of putting himself on par with Prophet Muhammad, who also couldn’t read? In any case, records suggest that official documents, scriptures, poetry, and stories were read out loud to Akbar. One of the readers was the son of a storyteller to the Iranian monarch Tahmasp, Ghiyas Beg’s former employer and sovereign.7 Akbar loved tales from the Hamzanama, the chronicle of Hamzeh, the Prophet Muhammad’s uncle, who traveled the world to spread the doctrines of Islam.

  In Fatehpur-Sikri, there was tension between the open-minded emperor and the orthodox Sunni clergy. They were suspicious of Sufi mystics, who regularly entered a trance and had visions; they could be insulting to the Shi’a, and they sometimes disapproved of Akbar’s actions and interests. Clerics weren’t the only critics. The historian Abdal-Qadir Badauni, known as Badauni, served in the emperor’s court and wrote a rather huffy counternarrative to the Akbarnama. “Hindustan is a wide place,” Badauni observed, “where there is an open field for all manner of licentiousness, and no one interferes in another’s business, so that everyone can do as he pleases.…”8 He didn’t mean this as a compliment.

  Around the time that Ghiyas Beg was inducted into the Mughal court, Akbar assumed greater control of religious affairs. He issued a public edict declaring himself the supreme arbiter of religious matters in his realm, taking precedence over Muslim religious scholars and jurists. In disputed matters, according to the edict, the emperor would decide which opinion was authoritative and hence binding for all Muslims. The edict also declared that Akbar was the caliph, although modern scholars differ on whether he intended to be the supreme authority over Muslims only in his domain, or over Muslims globally, thus rejecting subordination to the Ottoman king who’d claimed the title of caliph since taking control of the holy cities of Islam in 1517.9

  Rumors spread that the emperor had turned against Islam. Reports traveled to Iran, Central Asia, Portugal, and Spain that Akbar had committed sacrilege by claiming to be the new Prophet. His true motivation was perhaps more spectacular. According to scriptural predictions, an Islamic messiah would one day inaugurate a new epoch of peace and prosperity. Akbar dreamed of being declared the awaited Mahdi, the Renewer, the messiah who would banish evil and usher in a just world order. Whichever philosophical basis for his sovereignty appealed to Akbar most—the “Perfect Man” of al-Arabi, the scriptural notion of the Mahdi, or the concept of divine light—all converged on the point that he was an agent of God who would maintain the “rhythm and balance of the cosmos.”10

  While Persian migrants of status like Ghiyas felt welcomed in Akbar’s court, the finer details of his control and the machinery of government were less immediately apparent.11 With time Asmat and Ghiyas would decipher the written and unwritten rules, exceptions to those rules, and possible avenues of advancement open to a newcomer. The factions and fissures in Akbar’s court were continuously shifting. The comfortable coexistence of Hindu rajas and the Mughals, of Hindavi and Persian, the Bible and the Quran, the orthodox and the heterodox—in sum, the diversity of beliefs and practices that made Akbar’s India a charmed place—was difficult to maintain. So was Akbar’s goal of completely confining the chaste secluded ladies of the harem.

  FIVE

  The Wak-Wak Tree

  The legendary island of Wak-Wak lay at the edge of the world, in a sea where fish danced. On it stood a talking tree, with the heads of humans and demons growing from its branches amidst leaves and flowers, and the heads of beasts sprouting from its roots—lions, tigers, dragons, cows, elephants, and mythical flying creatures called simurghs.

  The story of Wak-Wak, which first found popularity in Shahnama, the Book of Kings, an eleventh-century epic poem by the celebrated Iranian author Firdausi, would have been an important part of Mihr’s childhood, along with other fables, poems, and histories from the Islamic world. These works were the earliest components of her education—literary, moral, and practical—as she was growing up in her father’s haveli, his mansion, restricted to the women’s quarters, where no men could enter except Ghiyas, his sons, and the male servants of the house. The
re Asmat and Ghiyas would tell stories to Mihr and her siblings—her older brothers Asaf and Muhammad, her older sister Manija, and their younger siblings Khadija and Ibrahim, born in India.1 Along with the story of Wak-Wak, Ghiyas and Asmat may have shared the delights of the Tuti-Nama, a fourteenth-century Persian collection of tales told by a wise parrot to distract his mistress from having an affair while her merchant husband was away on business. Mihr might have thought that the clever bird was a bit like the sagacious storyteller Scheherazade in the Thousand and One Nights, with which her parents were also likely to have entertained and educated their children.

  As in any noble Muslim household, Asmat and her daughters were forbidden to enter the men’s area, the mardana. Female servants were also barred. The main entrance to the house was a large gate on the street that opened into a courtyard leading to the mardana. Behind this front row of rooms a verandah led to another courtyard, around which the rest of the household would be arranged, perhaps on two floors. The women’s sections would most likely have several private rooms on the upper floor and communal rooms, kitchens, and toilet facilities below. Off the courtyard, on the outskirts of the women’s area, were storerooms, stables, and servants’ quarters, with back doors opening onto the street.

  When men came to the house to discuss official matters or to socialize with Ghiyas, a male servant led them to a waiting room, and then to the curtained and carpeted reception hall of the mardana, where niches in the walls held vases of flowers. There Ghiyas Beg would greet his guests with Salaam ‘Alaikum, “peace be unto you,” and invite them to sit on mattresses cushioned with pillows. The guests responded Valaikum Salaam, “and upon you, peace.” Ghiyas and his social equals hailed one another in affectionate terms such as bhai (brother) or baba (father). He’d offer them betel leaf and a huqqa, a water pipe, and if a meeting extended into mealtime, an attendant would spread an embroidered safra on the floor and bring out food from the inner quarters. When Ghiyas met with men of lower status, probably in the waiting room or outside the haveli, they addressed him as the benefactor of the poor, or with the phrase “I eat your bread and salt.” A servant might say to Ghiyas, with deference, “I live by you.”2

  Women visitors to the haveli were ushered from a waiting room in the women’s area to one of the communal rooms by a female servant. In the women’s quarters, visits from friends were part of daily life shaped by a flurry of household activities. Under the watchful eye of Asmat, a female housekeeper would distribute foodstuffs to the cooks. Another servant inspected storerooms and checked the haveli accounts. Dai Dilaram, the wet nurse who perhaps helped deliver Mihr and still served the family, had her own ceaseless rounds as Asmat’s right hand—caring for the children, helping in the kitchen, reminding servants to dust the carpets, light torches in the evening, and water the pots of reeds set in windows to cool the inner quarters during blistering summers. She would feed the pet parrot, clean the silver fruit trays, and keep rose water ready so that guests could cool their hands and faces with a refreshing splash. When a servant arrived from the men’s area with a request for a snack or a meal, Dai Dilaram would hurry to instruct the cooks to prepare, at a moment’s notice, dressed rice, spiced and roast meats, a variety of lentils and bread. She might have taught the children chess and Persian backgammon.

  A reliable intermediary between the world indoors and the one outside, Dai Dilaram was responsible for buying food from local tradespeople.3 Women selling vegetables, fruit, fish, meat, spices, and cloth also came to the back doors of the haveli near the servants’ quarters. A servant might bring them something to eat as they waited inside the gate, where Dai Dilaram or another member of the staff would inspect their wares and make purchases. The tradeswomen would chat with the servants, relating news of the town, and picking up gossip about the lives of “big” people. They would sing songs and recite verses in Braj, the dialect of Hindavi spoken by locals in the region, impromptu performances that Mihr and her siblings would have understood and enjoyed.

  Ghiyas’s days were devoted to administrative matters—obligatory appearances at court, meetings with men petitioning for help or seeking guidance on issues of finance, and writing reports for senior Mughal officers. During his tenure as diwan, minister, in the revenue department, he brought into order accounts that had long been in arrears.

  Asmat spent most of her time in the women’s quarters with the children, overseeing household affairs, reading, or socializing with visitors. Sometimes she and the children might visit bazaars or riverside gardens with male family members or servants as chaperones. But rather than traveling public streets, elite girls and women often used rooftops as protected avenues of passage from one home to another. On these connecting terraces, they took a break from the confinement of the lower floors. Mihr, her mother, and her sisters likely gathered on the roof with friends to chat, dry or oil their hair, view the busy streets from above, or recite poetry while helpers hung up wet laundry and looked after grains and pickles drying in the sun.

  The haveli of Ghiyas may have been among the mansions on the half-mile-long main street of Fatehpur-Sikri, which was interrupted in the middle by the charsuq, the central market, with lanes going in four directions, each lined with shops and stalls. Five times a day, the exalting sound of the azan, the call to prayer, from the Jami mosque would drown out the tinkle of workmen’s tools; the grunts of cattle, sheep, and goats; and the conversations of passersby, shoppers, and merchants selling fireworks, fish, wood, soap, building materials, and more in the Mughal bazaar. These were the sounds Mihr would have heard from the roof of her home.

  It was here in the Fatehpur-Sikri haveli, bound by the distinct rhythms of the men’s and women’s quarters, that Mihr took her first steps; wrote the first letter of Persian script, alif, (literally, “commencement”); and learned Hindavi: the name of a vegetable or a constellation, the word for summer dust storms, jhakkhar, or Ram Ram, a common greeting invoking Ram, the popular Hindu deity.

  When Mihr was about eight years old, Akbar left Fatehpur-Sikri because of its inadequate water supply, shifting the Mughal capital to Lahore. Around then, Ghiyas moved the family to nearby Agra, another center of royal government that would later become the capital. For Mihr and her family, life in their new mansion and town would have been very similar to life in Fatehpur-Sikri. Mihr would remain in her father’s Agra haveli until her marriage.

  As Mihr and her sisters were growing up, festivals, ceremonies, and ritual observances would give them opportunities to interact, indirectly, with the world beyond their father’s house. After the month-long fast during the days of Ramazan, and the appearance of the moon of ‘Id, Muslims celebrated ‘Id ul-Fitr, the breaking of the fast. Emperor Akbar gave a feast, where “magical minstrels administered the medicine of wisdom” to courtiers who also watched archers on horseback and games of polo. Akbar distributed alms and gifts; as the official account of his reign puts it, “crowds of men obtained their wishes.”4 Mihr’s father and brothers would regale the girls with descriptions of the events.

  On the morning of ‘Id ul-Qurban, the Feast of Sacrifice, commemorating the Quranic story of Ibrahim’s readiness to sacrifice his son Isma’il at the command of God, Muslim men gathered at the place of prayer, the ‘Id-gah (literally “the place of rejoicing”), usually an open space outside a town or a village.5 Afterward, families held a big feast at home. Noble households gave new clothes and sheep or goats to the needy, ensuring that the poorest were able to offer sacrifice and rejoice. For Mihr and her siblings, the main message of this feast day would be the importance of faith—Ibrahim’s faith was tested at the command of God—and generosity, which would allow them to earn spiritual merit.

  In the month of Muharram, Shi’a Muslims observed a period of mourning to mark the martyrdom of Husain, son of Ali, the fourth caliph. Men carried imitation mausoleums in public processions. At the first sight of the moon of Muharram, people exchanged greetings as a new year began according to the Islamic lunar cale
ndar. Other major events included Shab-i Barat, the Night of Salvation, when people considered past sins and resolved to sin no more; the Prophet’s birth anniversary; and Nauruz, the Iranian spring festival. Though aristocratic women rarely attended most of these commemorations, they observed rituals in private. They gave alms to the poor, sent presents to family and friends, remembered deceased ancestors, and feasted. If Mihr didn’t participate publicly, these observances would connect her, even from indoors, with the greater world.

  As the children grew older, the boys were offered opportunities not given to the girls. For one thing, boys in Mughal India had tutors; girls didn’t. Family members, mainly the women of a household, took the initiative in pushing girls to learn, though sometimes fathers or grandfathers taught them arithmetic, and the art of writing. Ghiyas, a master calligrapher, might have demonstrated the beauty of good penmanship to both his sons and his daughters.

  There were no educational requirements or schools for aristocratic Muslim girls or those of other Indian communities. For Muslim girls, the emphasis was on memorizing verses from the Quran to be recited at ritual festivities and gatherings. The equivalent was true in elite Hindu families. A knowledge of certain scriptures was part of a girl’s education, along with singing devotional songs. But although the Hindu goddess Saraswati was the patron of learning, women were not to learn the Vedas or any other branch of the Shastras, ancient Hindu law books. No Hindu girls went to the pundits, the scholars, to study: if any of them did learn Sanskrit it was within the family. Mihr would know Hindu girls in her neighborhood who were raised, like her, to learn scriptures by heart and read moral tales that stressed responsibility and discipline, but suggested limited possibilities for women.

  Still, later in life, Nur would write poetry of a sophistication that showed she was not only highly literate but well read in the Persian literary tradition. As empress, she would often seek counsel from her father on urgent matters of governance, which suggests a longstanding close relationship between them. Perhaps it was Ghiyas who introduced her to Iranian masters such as the wise poet Hafiz, or the Anatolian mystic Rumi, whose rhyming couplets, composed between 1258 and 1273, were collected in the Masnawi, and told her the legend of the miraculous Baka flower, brought to Rumi’s wife by flying saints from India. Mentioned in the earliest Indian medical treatises and holding a prominent place in the Ayurvedic pharmacopoeia, the flower was used to heal diseases of the eye.6