Nur Jahan, empress of Mughal India

420 Pages·1993·30.408 MB·English

by  Findly, Ellison Banks

Nur Jahan
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Nur Jahan
Empress of Mughal India
Ellison Banks Findly
New York Oxford
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
1993
Oxford University Press
Oxford New York Toronto
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and associated companies in
Berlin Ibadan
Copyright © 1993 by Oxford University Press, Inc.
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.,
200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016
Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Findly, Ellison Banks.
Nur Jahan, empress of Mughal India / Ellison Banks Findly.
p. em. Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-19-507488-2
1. Nur Jahan, Empress, consori of Jahangir,
Emperor of Hindustan. d. 1645.
2. Mogul Empire—Empresses—Biography.
I. Title. DS461.9.N8F56 1993
954.02'5'092—dc20 [B] 92-8697
246897531
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
for
Caroline and Ross
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Preface
After much consideration, I have decided to remove diacriticals from the text.
Two issues weighed heavily on this decision: first, there is a substantial amount
of quoted material with varying transliteration conventions that proved to be
distracting to read (the variant English forms already add a certain fragmenta-
tion); and second, since most current histories do not use all diacriticals, espe-
cially in the case of Persian, Urdu, and Sanskritic words, the decision which to
include and which not was somewhat arbitrary. Since this is not meant as a
specialized textual study but rather a documentation of the early emergence of
the Nur Jahan legend, omitting diacriticals seemed the best and most consistent
course.
In stabilizing transliteration conventions, I have for the most part followed
the Cambridge History of India (minus the diacriticals), leaving bibliographic
references as they are published when they are not a part of the regular narrative.
In passages quoted directly from a text, the spelling and grammar of the original
have been preserved, and geographic and place names, where possible, follow
currently preferred spellings. For the ease of the reader, finally, some names
have been run together (without hyphens) and others left to stand as separate
words (for example, Itimaduddaula and Nur Jahan).
Verb tenses, generally, are as follows: information from primary sources is in
the past tense, that from secondary sources is in the present tense. Such differen-
tiation highlights the many layers of an unfolding tradition.
Hartford, Conn. E. B. F.
April 1992
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Acknowledgments
To all those who have had some small hand in this work, I extend my thanks,
and especially
to Trinity College for an exploratory grant from its 1980's Fund from the
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in the spring of 1985, and to the National
Endowment for the Humanities for an NEH Fellowship for College Teachers in
1987-88;
to Robert Skelton, Betty Tyres, David James, Milo Beach, and Jim Wescoat
for their helpful expertise in the Indian arts;
to M. C. Joshi, Ali Sardar Jafri, K. A. Abbas, Pran Chopra, Balwant Gargi,
Kumkum Singh, and A. N. Khanna for their time, their efforts, and their great
wisdom in things Mughal; and to Bilkiz Alladin, Galib and Noshina Bachooali,
Ashok and Renu Bhandari, and Gian and Lalita Sachdev for their kind hospital-
ity and continuing generosity in the details of finding things;
to Wheeler Thackston and Syed N. Haq for translating selected passages;
to Pat Bunker, Linda McKinney, and Peter Knapp of the Trinity College
Library's reference department for tireless efforts on my behalf;
to Gay Weidlich, mid-wife to this project, whose expert eye, deft hand, and
gracious industry have lightened the task immeasurably;
to Craig, whose patience, commitment, and sense of humor have never
flagged;
and, finally, to Caroline and Ross, in whose laughter, energy, and affection
this work has flourished.