Nur Jahan – the Sun Among Women

The Sun among Women

It is hard not to speak of Nur Jahan in superlatives. The 20th wife of Emperor Jehangir, she was by all accounts an unusual woman.

The original over-achiever, she became the de facto decision-maker for the Mughal Empire at the height of its power and glory. Trusted implicitly by her husband to run affairs of the state, her love story with Jehangir was also about a meeting of minds (she was a 34 year old widow when they met and fell in love).

The ultimate 17th century ‘Influencer’ and trendsetter, Nur Jahan started out as a Persian refugee, slowly becoming a sort of Coco Chanel of the harem, where she used her skills in dressmaking to become a sought after designer with the Mughal ladies. (She herself continued to dress quite simply).

With the ingenious use of shadow work on fine local muslin, she also had Persian embroiderers create the first Chikankari fabrics.

A talented architect with a deep sense of her legacy, she designed the mausoleums of her parents (Itimad ud Daula in Agra, a domeless gem of Indo-Persian architecture), Jehangir and even herself.

She spent her last years in relative isolation, in prayer, and in a kind of self-imposed austerity where she would compose poems in her native language, Persian.

The epitaph on her grave in Lahore reads “On the grave of this poor stranger, let there be neither lamp nor rose. Let neither butterfly’s wings burn, nor nightingale sing.”