Empire: World History - 140. Nur Jahan: The Light of the World

Episode Date: April 15, 2024

Nur Jahan was born on a roadside as her well-to-do parents fled from Safavid Persia for the tolerant court of the Mughal emperor. Her first marriage was respectable although unremarkable, but then her husband died and she entered the imperial harem. From here, she rose through the ranks and managed to charm one of the most powerful men in the world, the emperor Jahangir. Listen as William and Anita discuss the rise of one of the most powerful women in Indian history. **Empire Live** Empire live show tickets are ON SALE NOW!! Join Anita and William at the London Barbican 8 July 2024! Buy your tickets here or here. Twitter: @Empirepoduk Email: [e-mail] Goalhangerpodcasts.com Assistant Producer: Anouska Lewis Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes, reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mptopopuk.com. Welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnh. And me, William Droompool. Now, as part of our great empresses season, which is going down so well with all of you, thank you so much for listening. We're going to be discussing Nurja Ha, the great.

great mogul empress of the 17th century, wife of the emperor Jahangir. And boy, what a story this is, William, you love it. This is one of my favorite stories. I've obviously written about the moguls for many years now. And this is one of the most extraordinary stories in that whole extraordinary tale. And it features, as so often in this series, an extraordinary woman who rises from very unpromising background to have amazing amount of power in a period of history when you imagine that women are not powerful in the part of the world where you'd imagine women not to be powerful. It's a very strong idea out there that in the Islamic world, women are oppressed if they're in royal palaces. They're in harems, they're sexual objects, they're part of a sort of conveyor belt

of possible sexual pleasures for the ruler. The reality of the history, however, is completely different. The mogul history shows that women were extraordinarily powerful. And usually the power rests with the elderly grandmothers and the matrons at the back of the Zanana who are pulling all the strings and either plotting wars or reconciling warring nephews and grandchildren. But what's so extraordinary about the story of Nojahan, who we're talking about today, is that she is a woman at the height of her powers, at the height of her sexuality, and yet she becomes effectively the ruler of the richest and most productive land in the world. In the 17th century, Mughal India is producing about a third of the world's GDP.

It's an extraordinarily industrious, well-ordered, peaceful and rich society. And at the heart of it is this extraordinary woman, No Jahan. Let's unpack a little bit of why this is so extraordinary. So I think you're starting in the 17th century, but can we just have a brief look back over our shoulder at the late 16th century? And the man who almost sets the tone and atmosphere of what comes next for Nourjah and with Nourjah. And we're talking about Emperor Akbar. Now, if you've been brought up in the Indian tradition and, you know, Punjabis particularly, you know, in hymns, he often comes up in sort of these Hindu songs of devotion.

So there is one in particular where there's a pilgrimage that goes up a mountain. just on the border of Kashmir. And it is called Veshnudhavi, it's the pilgrimage of the mother. And there is a hymn that people sing on the way up, and it has a line in it, Nangiperi Akhbaraya, which is like, you know, even Akbar came barefoot to walk up this mountain in supplication. Right. So, I mean, I think the story goes that he wanted a son and he was desperate for his son,

so he did this pilgrimage. And the image that's conjured is of a man who, if not secular, has an interest and openness to other. religions in India? Is that the case? Yes, I mean, I wouldn't use the word secular, definitely not, because it wasn't that he was excluding religion from his kingdom or running it outside the religious context. On the contrary, he was absolutely fascinated by religion. But what is surprising, improbable and interesting is that he operated always on the grounds of reason. He said he wanted to bring different religions and traditions together in dialogue so that he could distinguish the marshy land

of tradition from the firm land of reason. And he wanted to see how these different religions operated independently of each other, what their basis for their claims were. And he wanted to examine this in a rational, reasonable, and intelligent manner. And he would not just rely on ideas of divine Revelation. He wanted people to demonstrate why their religious tradition was worthwhile and what the basis of its authority was. Yeah. Okay. I mean, that sort of show, don't tell, kind of school of thought. But also, I'm really interested in art during his time, as well, Akbar's time as emperor, because it is the commonly held belief that Islam is so austere. It will deal with calligraphy and the written word, but it doesn't like depictions, certainly of the human form, but even of

you know, living, breathing creatures. And yet, during Akbar's time, you have the most enormous strides in art and painting and sculpture. Well, I think you have to be very careful about this idea that Islam doesn't do the natural world or only does calligraphy and so on, because there are so many exceptions to that rule from the very beginning in the Umayyad caliphate at the very first years of Islam. You have these private palaces of the Umayyads in Jordan and in Jericho, which have not only human figures, but naked human figures. And throughout the different Arab and Persianate sultanates, you get frequent images of human beings. But it's under Akbar that this really takes off in Mughal India. And he mixes ideas from Persia. He brings in Persian artists,

mixes it with artists trained in various Indian traditions, such as the Jain traditions of Gujarat, and begins the whole world, of Mughal art, which will grow to be one of the great moments in world civilization. I mean, the gorgeous Mughal miniature tradition contains some of the most beautifully observed, most sensitive paintings ever produced. I like his justification. You know, it's the qualification of this, that, you know, what he is doing is not wrong.

By allowing this art to flourish, he says, there are many that hate painting. But such men I dislike, it appears to me as if a painter had quite a peculiar means of recognizing God. for a painter in sketching anything that has life and in devising its limbs, one after the other, must come to feel that he cannot bestow individuality upon his work and is thus forced to think of God, the giver of life. I mean, it's a beautiful defence of doing what man can do best, really, which is sort of, you know, to worship what is around him. And what's so wonderful about Akbar is that in almost every way he defies stereotypes of what many Western people think Islamic rulers are like. So, for example, we mentioned earlier this business of the harem.

Akbar did have over 300 partners or wives in his sonar, according to an estimate, but they were married for diplomatic connections, and both Akbar and Jahangir and Shahjah, the next generation, all practice extraordinary sexual restraint, and they are notably exurious. Jahangir, as we're going to hear in this poll, and the one that follows, was obsessed with his wife, No Jahan. And the same is true of Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal. They're two of the great, most successful marriages in Indian or Islamic history. So while these stereotypes of sort of, you know, sexual bonanzas continue to have a half-life in films and so on,

the historic reality is actually very different. And the same is true of religious tolerance. Over and over again, we have these ideas that Islam crushes dissent does not allow exploration of ideas. that are contrary to the Quran. But at a city called Fatipu-Sikri, which Akbar creates, he creates effectively a laboratory of religion where he brings together Sunni, Shia, Sufi, Vashnav, Shayvite, Jane, Jewish, Portuguese friars from Goa, all these different sorts of religious traditions are brought together to be discussed in this sort of multi-faith cosmopolitan an arena. It's the most extraordinary moment in history. And this at the same time, when in England,

Jesuits are being hung, drawn and quartered in the Tavern and hunted down in priestels in their posh houses in Yorkshire or pulled apart in and burnt at the stake in York. Yeah, I know. I mean, that's an incredibly savoring thought. So, to No, Johanna, who is not a product of this cosmopolitan, artistically colourful and rich city of Fatibu Seekri, the Mubour capital, Her parents, I believe, to come from Herat, which at the time was part of the Persian Empire, and were descended from noble families. Tell us a little bit more about where she comes from. What's her origin story? Well, one of the great cliches of Mughal India, because it was Persian-speaking,

but was not a native Persian-speaking country, is that Persians coming into India at this time, this very rich country with many opportunities, often find that they can skip hierarchies. The story was that even a salt seller can pass himself off as an omrah, as a great nobleman of the court. And the suspicion is that Noir Jahan's father, Giyaz, who was 22 at the time of Noor's birth, was himself from a relatively modest service background. He'd had to flee Safavid Persia when he may have fallen into debt or was out of favor with the Safavid court and had to escape the attention of the Safavid police. And he set off on the road from Kandahar towards Agra, looking for service, as many of his Persian

contemporaries did. And India offered Persians a kind of safe haven and tolerance for two or three hundred years presenting opportunities for them. And you find that many of the most famous figures in mogul history are often people from backgrounds. So, for example, as well as Noor Jahan coming from Persia, Safdajiang, whose tomb now occupies a great chunk of Delhi, and the area of Delhi is named after him. He was himself a Persian first-generation immigrant, that Mirjafa, who plays a very important role at the Battle of Plasie, was in fact from what was now Iraq, but was then part of Iran.

And so you find this long migration of Persian nobleman heading to make their fortune, like sort of Dick Whitting to come to London, the equivalent was to go to Fideloporzik Group. So, I mean, I read something quite recently, which, I mean, tell me whether this rings true, but I kind of love it, that Persians, no matter how much money they had in their pockets, they came to India for Safe Haven Short, but they always regarded themselves as better. And like, you know, you might not have two sort of repis to rub together, but there was a kind of a superiority complex because there were literate,

because they knew poetry, they may have known Ferdalzi. So there was always this sense of, you know, they were no. mobility in rags, just waiting for their fortune to catch up with them. And does that ring true? It does ring true. And while you do get Indian poets writing in Persian who are read elsewhere, for example, the Delhi poet Bedin is now regarded as one of the great poets in Central Asia, although he's from Delhi and is forgotten here,

nonetheless, there are far more cases of Indians who wrote Persian poetry and thought it was wonderful, but very few of them get read outside their own homeland. So Ghalib, for example, the most famous Udu poet, he thought his greatest achievement was in Persian. Really? But virtually no one today ever reads Ghalib's Persian poetry, no Persian's ever heard of Ghalib. No, but Ghalib's Urdu poetry is a thing of great beauty. I mean, late night and any party, you'll just have somebody doing great stanzas of Garlive. And it's quite thrilling when that happens.

Now, let's talk about Nourja Ha in particular, because she's born in the winter of 1577. It is not the most auspicious entry into the world because it's on a roadside. outside Kandahar, halfway literally through her parents fleeing to Mughal India from Safavid, Persia. So, I mean, that in itself is not the most auspicious way for a future empress of the world to meet the world. And her name wasn't Nora Jaham when she was born. What did her parents choose to call her, the baby by the roadside? She was originally called Mihairunisa, I mean son of women or radiance of women.

So, I mean, they're economic migrants in modern terms. but they arrive at a very good moment. Akbar is built this new capital at Fatipur-Sikri. It's coming up very, very fast. They're wonderful pictures of all the artisans making these beautiful buildings in a sort of Gujarati style. He's just conquered Gujarat, and a lot of Gujarati masons are now seeking work in the capital.

And again, one of the surprising things about Mughal India, if you believe the normal stereotypes about Islam and its treatment of women, is that well-born mogul women received a spectacular education. Most of them were literate. And Nojahan was well-versed in Persian literature. She could compose poetry. And this was a period when epic poems like the Shandameh were widely performed and widely known. But you also get Indian epics that develop on this fault line between the Hindu world and the Muslim world, like the story of Hamza, which is originally.

a story of one of the companions of the prophet, which goes into its own Indian edition, if you'd like, with thousands of shaggy dog stories being attached to it. And one of the very first masterpieces of mogul art produced in Fatibu's secret at the court of Agba at exactly the period Nojahan is growing up, is the illustrations of the tale of Hamza and Agba's having them produced on very large pieces of paper to be held up rather like a slideshow at the court in the evening to illustrate the stories which the bards are reciting and reading out. Well, when you have no telly, these are the things we resort to, which is no bad thing. What I love about her upbringing, from what I understand of it, is that, you know, whereas in Safavid,

Persia, a poet's loving father might be persecuted or looked at with suspicion, he finds a place in Fadipu, Secre, where it is okay to love poetry and to love art and to look at lovely pictures. And so his home becomes a bit of a Bloomsbury set type set up, where all the poets and musicians and artists sort of tend to congregate. So she would have had a really rich hinterland of comings and goings in the house, wouldn't she? Well, the court of Akbar was famous for its different stars of Potan, the great musician, and the legend of the different stars of the court who were entertained by Akbar and were the glories of his court.

And the court of Akbar becomes, for 200 years after this, something that people say, ah, it was like the court of Akbar that day. We had so many bright people doing their stuff, reciting their poetry. and this is a moment of great sort of courtly brilliance that is remembered in India as being a moment of sort of civilizational climax. And so Noor is educated at this time and she has instructions in not just literature, but ethics and morality. And she is clearly from the very beginning extremely intelligent, energetic, independent, and later on she becomes politically very savage. She's also athletic. She's famous in later life for her ability as a marksman and her ability to use a musket, exactly.

The very first English envoy to India, so Thomas Rowe talks about how she can shoot tigers from a hidden hauda and how she was one of the best shots in court. Well, I mean, it really flies against what usually was expected of girls because, you know, at the time, a guide for raising children had this to say about raising girls. they should be cultivated in gravity, continents and modesty. I think continents meant something different than it did today. But, you know, there is this idea that they should be somehow, well, I don't know, girdled up, contained somehow. But she certainly doesn't. There are lots of references to her beauty. I mean, apart from her athleticism, about her beauty, the wheatish complexion, as Indians like to put it,

to sort of a fair skin, aquiline nose, you know, that kind of thing is poured over. when spoken about nor Jaha? I don't know that any of these are necessarily authentic or true. Clearly, she was an attractive woman and she managed to completely obsess the emperor. Well, she can't have been ugly. Exactly. So there must have been some physical element in that. But whether we actually have authentic descriptions of her beauty, I know that later on, in my white mogul period,

when I'm researching the 18th century, that you have to have. female artists to go into the Xenana to paint. So there are such things as authentic representations of women, but they would have been done by female artists who were there, but were obviously less common than male artists. And also probably less prized, which is why we don't have so many of them or with the women's names attached. That's really interesting. Can I ask you one thing? I mean, if you are a beauty, let's just take it that she is beautiful, as you say, she snags an emperor, you know, an emperor becomes obsessed by her. But, you know, the normal proclivity of You've got a very pretty girl in the house is to marry her off as quickly as possible.

So what happens to Nur Jahar? What age does that pressure start to build up around this very clever, accomplished, athletic young woman? Well, it was the tradition at this period for women to marry often as young as 14 or 15. And what's fascinating about Nud Jahan is that she has already been married once when she enters Jahangir's life. she marries first of all another Persian exile, a military officer called Ali Kuli. How old is she when she marries? She's 17, which would have been, by that standard, relatively late. Getting on a bit.

Yeah. And he's found gainful employment at the Mughal Court. He was an older man and a fierce soldier, and Nojahan's marriage to Ali Kuli produces her only child in 1600 or 1601, a girl named Ludley. Lardly. Did you say Lardly? Lardly. So do you know, Lardly means, I mean, I don't know whether it's a coincidence, but Lardly, certainly in Hindustani or common vernacular, means the beloved one, the one who is loved. I love it. Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, it's like, they will say, oh, Bar-Baki-Lardlier, like she's beloved of her father. I wonder if that's where it's from. Anyway, sorry, carry on, interruption.

Anyway, so in the Mughal court, there was never any tradition that the elder son would naturally automatically inherit the throne, which means that every single. generation, there's a terrific fight for the throne and one, two or three brothers are killed or imprisoned. There is a terrible tradition in the mogul court that the defeated brothers get sent to the fort at Guadio, where they're fed poppy water, which is this way of sort of dulling their senses and basically turning them into opium addicts and they die young. Oh my God, what, just sort of basically getting them strung out and smack and leaving them to die? It was believed to be a relatively benign and to various other options such as blindings or... No, okay.

If that's what's on the menu, sure. Poppy water or blindings. I go for the boffy water. But this is exactly what happens in the early days of Jahangir's reign. He comes to power in 605 when his father Akbar dies. And only a year later in April 60606, Jihungia's son Kusro flees the Agra fort on the pretext of paying a visit to his grandfather's tomb. And he's got about 350 horsemen with him and they go on the rampage.

They loot and they burn. They attack traders, burn caravansarized. And Jhangia moves pretty quickly to put this rebellion down. He's not going to have this snowball into something bigger than it need be. And so he takes his army and goes straight into battle against his son, Kusro. And Kusro is no military leader. When the battle takes place, he's not at the front of his troops, and he is captured pretty quickly. And Kuskosro is hauled before the emperor in chains with his left foot and his left hand chained together,

which is an ancient tradition going right back to the time of Genghis Khan. And even after that happens, there is further ripples of rebellion which follows. And it's in one of these ripples that Nurjahan, then Mirunissa's husband, Ali Kuli, is killed. In 1607, a year after Kusra's rebellion has been crushed, Ali Kuli, the future Nurjaan, Mirunissa's husband is arrested and killed when he tries to resist. He pulls a sword. and there's a variety of different accounts of his death, but what is agreed anyway is that he dies fighting.

He goes down with a sword in his hand. So Amirannissa's husband is dead. And what happens in the case, not just a rebellion, but often when a leading nobleman dies anyway, not only do his possessions pass back into the hand of the emperor, who in the kind of political theory of the time owns everything and gives it to his men as an act of generosity, not only do his goods go back to the emperor, but even the dead man's family, and that includes his wife. So, Miranisa is sent off to Agra.

But first of all, she's allowed 40 days of mourning for her husband. But after that, she is sent off to an entirely new life in the Imperial Harim in the fort in Agra. We'll take a break at that point. See you after the break. Welcome back. So just before the break, we had young Nurja Ha, who has a daughter called Deary. Lovely. Love it so much.

Deary, yeah. So her daughter she has, but her husband she no longer has. and she has been co-opted into the harem of Jahangir. Just the mechanics of that, is that somebody who is on the lookout for, you know, bolstering a harim who sees a good-looking woman and says, you'll do. Or is it Jahangir lays eyes on her? How do you enter a harim? What happens here? I don't know the specific mechanism by which Nurjahan entered the harim at this point, but there is a whole system of admission.

Well, like spotters who see somebody in it or he'll like her. There's also the famous bazaar where women who want to improve their fortunes by associating themselves or whose fathers want their own careers enhanced by having a daughter potentially in line for the throne are given little stalls outside the fort in Agra where they're allowed to sell things to the emperor. The idea is to give the emperor a deck of the pretty, pretty girl. Hey, so that's like a beauty pageant, sort of like misses a nudge. sort of like Miss Zanana, 1604. That's really odd.

Good God. Okay. But what we need to do is to paint a picture of Jahangha himself, because he is another fascinating character, like all the moguls. One of the great joys of mogul history is that not only do we have very finely drawn artistic images of every single emperor, and we know exactly what each one look like in a way that we don't, for example, of the deadly seldom. You can't say what Ibrahim Lodi looked like.

There's no picture of it. But we know exactly what Babur, Humay, Jahangir, Shahjah, Arangzeb, each one of them. We know exactly what they look like as boys, as youths, as middle-aged men, an old age. And Jahangir, in addition to all this gorgeous portraiture, has a massive diary like Babo, the Tuzuki-Hungiri. And we get a picture of, again, a man who totally defies Western Strait. stereotypes of what an Islamic ruler is, because he is a man who is enormously curious and intelligent, observant of the world around him, a keen collector of its curiosities. He loves Venetian swords and globes and saffavid silks and jade pebbles and gnarwhal teeth. You know those

long sort of ivory-like... People thought they were unicorn horns for a while. Exactly. He loves those. And in his diary, the Tutsukkutja, Hungary, he talks about them. And he takes about them. And he It takes delight in simple pleasures provided by landscapes, which again is something which we don't imagine pre-modern people to do. He talks about the beauties of countryside, the animals, flowers and places and the personalities which fill them. In one memorable passage in the Tuzuk, as he crosses the river Baez on his way to Kabul in 1606, he records his happiness at seeing the pink and red oleander in full bloom, and he orders that his troops wear nosegays of flowers in the way. their helmets so that a wonderful moving flower bed was produced. And he encourages the greatest of all mogul painters of things botanic and or the theological Mansour to paint the individual

irises or the beautiful storks or whatever it is, or the turkey or the dodo, which comes to court as a curiosity. And as well as maintaining the empire and commissioning these great works of art, He takes an active interest in goat and cheetah breeding, medicine and astronomy. He's got an insatiable appetite for things like animal husbandry and the curiosity of the natural world. He wants to know how storks mate and how their chicks are reared. And he's captivated by the antics of monkeys and orangutans or watching black bud, gazelles and elephants. And he has a long passage in his time, which I love about working at the gestation period of elephants. long they're pregnant for. So he's rather like an 18th century gentleman. He is a G. Yes, but there's

another side to him. Again, let me, let me throw you what sort of popular culture has thrown up what I've grown up with, because he wasn't always Jahangir, you know, a master of the world. He was Prince Saleem. He was born Salim. And we have, you know, in culture and music, in film, in particular, the story of Prince Salim falling in love with a dancing girl called Anarkali. Are you aware of this? No, no, only am I aware of it. I researched one of my books in Anarkali's tomb. So tell the story. Because I'm writing about that area right now. So it's, so, so it is, I mean, it is a shocking story and it's beautifully done in, in an early Bollywood, black and white,

half black and white, but I'm a beautiful, beautiful film. Half black and white, half color. There's a film called Anarkali as well. So in this film, Prince Salim, Akbar's son and air and light of his life falls in love with a dancing girl called Anarkali, Lowborn, and he does not like it. And he tries to break up the relationship time and time again. But Salim, is a romantic. He is a new man, a Renaissance man. He loves beauty and he loves to love. And so he won't give her up. And so what Akbar does, who, you know, otherwise is sort of rather fondly remembered by a lot of people, but he does this terrible thing where he tells an archaily, leave my son. And she says, no, I love him. I love him. It's simple. And so he bricks her up alive in this tomb. And so,

you know, folklore goes, you can still hear her singing because she sings until the last brick is placed in the tomb in front of her. She's bricked up alive. And you've got all these other wonderful love songs in Mughaliyazam, Mohabbat Kjutti, and this sort of stuff. Is there any truth to the Anarchali story, first of all, with your researching, did it happen? Was it a thing? We don't know how much is true or not. This is the story's first recorded by an English traveller called William Fitch. But there seems to be some basis for it, because when you go to Lahore today, and I've actually worked inside it because it's the archives of Lahore. And I've researched both Return of a King and Las Bougal in there.

It's a wonderful place to work. And on Anarchli's tomb, because there is the little sepulchre, which sits on top of the grave, there is this quote that, could I behold the face of my beloved once more? I would thank God until the day of resurrection. So this is erected by Jahangir for this girl whose name we don't know, but in tradition is supposed to be Anarkli. And we don't know the whole story. Yes, there is some sort of forbidden romance, but I don't think she was walled up alive.

Okay, well, I'm glad. I'm glad for her sake, because that would have been awful. But now we've got this new beautiful young woman who's had a child, Nojah, who has been fast-streamed into the harem. Tell us what happens next. So, Maranisa is in this enormous harim with all these different women from different parts of India, probably speaking different languages, some of them Tibetan, some of them, Kashmiri, some of them Kabuli, some of them from the Deccan, and not all of them by any means are sexually involved with the emperor. Some are there because of treaties or diplomatic alliances.

Some are the old grannies, are the senior women from the old court of Akbar, and they actually rule the roots. They're the ones who are making marriage alliances and so on. So initially, presumably, Mirunisa is only mid-ranking because she has the prestige of her Persian background. We know that she's good-looking. We know that she's intelligent and highly educated. We know that she writes poetry. So she would never have been, you know, one of the junior members of the Harim. But over the first three years, between 1607 or 1608 when she arrives in Agra and 1611, when she finally gets it together with Jahang.

in that time she's rising up to the top of the Harim. And we are told it's not by any means certain. And Jahangir does not say this in his diary. But the story that's always told is that he meets her at this fancy bazaar, this thing that happens once here. It's an institution introduced by Humayan when the women of the Haram and also the wives of the nobles set up stalls like an ordinary bazaar selling bangles and textiles and God knows what. And the emperor actually goes shopping among them.

And they play haggling like fishwives flirting. And it's a jolly occasion. But clearly this is also an opportunity for the emperor to meet the women of the court. We often won't have any opportunity to see. And it's in March 1611 at Nooros, the new year, that he comes across Maronisa and pretty quickly decides to marry her. And Jhanga bestows on her the name Nurmahal, or Light of the Pals. palace. And from this moment, his infatuation only seems to grow. So she, I mean, she must have been pretty something because, I mean, let's remind people who may not have listened to the Ottoman

empire, but Haroes were inherently political, dangerous places for women. You had lots of wives, mothers of princes, other princes who may want to stake their claim if an emperor had numerous wives. It's intrigue, the sexual exploitation, although you say Johan Gio, like his father, was sexually restrained, but, you know, historically, it wasn't really a lovely place for a young girl to be, but to survive all that, to rise through all that, to have somebody notice your qualities like that. I mean, that speaks of quite steely stuff as well. So, I mean, we could assume that Nojahar was not just, you know, book smart, but street smart as well to survive all that. And I think you get the impression that Jahangir, who's clearly an intelligent, curious guy, finds in Nojahan,

someone who's not just attractive, but who has the qualities that makes him regard her as an equal. And from this point, it becomes one of the great romances of Indian history. Yeah, it's also, though, it's a story of a political blossoming for a woman as well. I think this is really interesting, that she spends the first few years of her second marriage, developing political alliances at court. She knows who's who, who are the right people to know, who are the important people, who you need their support. And that not only enhances her status within the harem, but also just, you know, she gets known throughout the realm.

She gets known, her name gets put about beyond the walls. I mean, one of the things she does is that she is kind to the poor. It's not just sort of like throwing out bread from the window, but she does things like providing dowries for orphaned girls, which is the difference between life and death for many. But she's also politically astute, and she early on develops an alliance with Prince Curram, who becomes, Shah Jahangya's son, the future builder the Taj Mahal. She singles him out as her ally in the next generation. And she makes every effort to fate him. And in turn, he extends her great respect. Because she's nice and a good stepmother. Yeah. And he has already become betrothed to

Mirunissa's niece, Arjuman Banu, who will become Mumtaz Mahal. The love of his life. Oh, fantastic. She does this canny thing. I don't know whether it's canny or it's just natural that if you are rising to the top, you take those around you with you. But her family certainly does benefit, doesn't it? From being on the wrong side of history for a while. She manages to rehabilitate them and they rise to power as well. What happens to Noor's father? So Noosfather, who becomes known as Itma Dudaolo, the pillars of the state, is named Chief Finance Minister and her brother Asafudal, who's buried in Lahore behind Jahangir's tomb between, fun enough, the tombs of Nojahan and Jhaangir, is named as chief steward of the imperial treasury and placed in charge of the mints and all construction

projects. So she's very savvy and clever in bringing in her family. So it isn't just that she is the chief wife, the whole family become the kind of the first family in association with the Mughal dynasty. She's supported. Good for her. It's dangerous to be, you know, rising to the top in febrile kingdoms and times of your. Now, tell me about how, and I love this about her, but she manages to make herself an integral part of the weighing of the emperor ceremony. I love this ceremony so much, and you're going to have to explain it because it's just marvellous. It is the only time, I suppose, that the common man is hoping for a really fat emperor. Tell us why. Tell us why this works. So I think, and I might be wrong about this,

but I think this is originally a Hindu custom. This is not a mogul custom. in origins. And the idea is that you weigh the emperor against jewels and gold. And so the heavier is, the more stuff there is on the other scale. And it is distributed to the poor and the needy. It's a fatten him up. I'll sneak him some toast. It also said that the number of goats equal to the emperor's age are gifted to the farmers. Right. It all sounds mildest. But she takes on the key ceremonial duties. That's the point. You know, organizing that means that means that you you are immediately linked to something that is charitable and is a feel-good kind of, you know, festival of giving, which is no shabby thing.

Does she become very quickly part of the inner circle, as well as sort of being outwardly linked to the throne and good things? Inwardly, does Jahangir talk to her, ask her her opinion, does she become an advisor of sorts? So she clearly does, and we know from the accounts of Sir Thomas Rowe, who's the English ambassador, that she's certainly regarded at court as the Eminels Gris, as the person who's pulling all the strings. And if you want a diplomatic alliance or you want a job or you want your family preferred, somehow you've got to get to No Jahan to get it done. And this becomes even more the case when Jahangir develops increasingly an alcohol problem.

And being Jahangir, he doesn't just have this generally in the background. he records it in his diary in enormous detail. And he leaves a very detailed account of his own addiction. Oh, like what? Like, I mean, what's he getting through? What does he admit to? And he says that when he was young, he would just have one cup of sweet wine, but that he records then how he starts getting into double and triple distilled liquors

and how he attempts to try and control this. So he's this sort of very self-aware figure. But it definitely becomes more and more of a problem. Self-aware, but very, very pissed. Listen to the intake at one stage in this daily intake diary that he creates, 20 cups of distilled spirit. I mean, that man's liver would have been the size of a canoe. But does it then fall to sort of Nujahar to try and control him, wean him off?

I mean, what role does she take? So she does try and control it. And there's also a senior role physician who succeeds in getting him to reduce only to six cups a day and to move to a mixture of two parts wine and one part spirit. But he also has, I think, a fair amount of opium. And he becomes more and more incapacitated. He also has respiratory issues like asthma. And as he becomes more incapacitated, No Jahan takes over the reins of power.

We see this reflected in a series of coins. where uniquely for the moguls, you have not only Jahangir's image, but also Nurjahans. Which is so revolutionary and such a big deal. Do people thank her for stepping in to the breach and helping with ruining? How do they react to being run by a woman? So we know from the, again, from the accounts of Thomas Rowe, that her power is known and presumably resent it because people, unless they have access to No Jahan, they can't get their work done. So it's not a secret. It's widely known in court that this woman is not just now the wife, the love and the obsession of Jahangir, but is the woman who is actually ruling the state increasingly.

And then in 1615, at this point when Jahangir's diary is full of all these incredible compliments about his amazing young wife, her name is changed and she becomes Nur Jahan. The light of the world. Well, do you know what? It's a good place to stop because I think in the next episode, we're going to talk about what she does, this amazing woman, Nurja Haa, who is now in the position of Empress of one of the most impressive empires of the day.

What does she do with all that newfound power? How do people tolerate it, take it? If you want to hear it right now and you can't wait, then just join our club. Just go to our club. A special member perk is that you get these little mini-series straight off. So do do that. And if not, join us next time. Until then, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnden. And goodbye from me, William Drupal.