The Mughal Women History Forgot to Tell You About

When we talk about Mughal wealth, we picture emperors on jewelled thrones. But some of the most staggering fortunes in the empire belonged to women, and unlike a fairy-tale princess waiting for an allowance, these women had their own businesses, their own income, and their own official seals.

Nur Jahan, wife of Emperor Jahangir, was essentially the empire's first female CEO. She controlled the export of indigo and textiles to Persia and Europe. She earned 200,000 rupees a year, more than most provincial governors. She had coins minted with her name on them. And she could issue royal orders under her own seal, not her husband's.

Princess Jahanara, daughter of Shah Jahan, may have been even wealthier. She owned Chandni Chowk, the entire marketplace. If you have ever walked through old Delhi, you have walked through something a Mughal princess built 400 years ago. It is still one of the busiest markets in the city. She also built gardens in Kashmir and drew a personal income that rivalled senior imperial officials.

To put it in modern terms: these women did not just promote luxury products. They owned the products, the shops selling them, and the trade routes bringing them to India.

Here is the part that surprises most people. Mughal royal women held documented, official administrative authority. They issued nishans, formal government documents bearing royal seals, covering war strategy, succession politics, and military campaigns. These were not suggestions whispered in a husband's ear. They were legal orders carrying the same weight as commands from the emperor himself.

Royal women participated in the day-to-day functioning of state administration and handled long-term political and economic planning. They shaped foreign policy, governance, and internal imperial affairs, and scholars have the paperwork to prove it.

The most dramatic example is Nur Jahan. Emperor Jahangir struggled with serious addiction to alcohol and opium, and for significant stretches of his reign, Nur Jahan was effectively running the show. She made administrative appointments, promoted officials, held her own court where powerful nobles came to her for decisions, led military campaigns personally, and played rival princes against each other with calculated precision.

European travellers wrote home in genuine shock. One recorded that "the emperor does nothing without his wife's approval." Another noted she governed the empire while he drank. These were not hostile observers. They were simply describing what they saw.

When Jahangir died, Nur Jahan did not quietly retire. She backed a rival candidate for the throne and fought an actual military succession battle against Shah Jahan. She lost. But the fact that a queen could raise an army and contest succession at all tells you everything about the kind of power she had accumulated.

Other women shaped the empire in ways that are only now getting proper scholarly attention:

Maham Anaga, Akbar's foster mother, was a dominant political force during the early years of his reign, advising the greatest Mughal emperor on major decisions of state.

Hamida Banu Begum, Akbar's mother, served as his chief advisor on military strategy, diplomatic marriages, and policy. Senior nobles approached her first when they needed to influence him.

Mughal princesses were not educated as an afterthought. By the standards of their time, they received an extraordinary intellectual formation: Persian, Arabic, Turkish, and Hindi (most spoke three or four languages fluently by age ten), poetry and literature that they not only read but wrote, advanced calligraphy, music, mathematics, astronomy, history, and philosophy.

The results speak for themselves.

Gulbadan Begum, daughter of Babur, wrote Humayun-nama, a detailed historical account of her brother's reign that scholars still rely on today. While most male nobles of her era left no written work, she produced primary historical evidence.

Zebunissa, daughter of Aurangzeb, was described by contemporaries as the "literary wonder of the age." She established a literary salon, assembled a personal library of 4,000 books, and wrote poetry of genuine distinction. Her father imprisoned her for twenty years, not for any crime of immorality but for supporting the wrong brother in a succession dispute. She kept writing in prison. Her collected poems were published after her death and are still read today.

Jahanara Begum wrote treatises on Sufi philosophy and played a central role in spreading Sufi thought and promoting religious tolerance across the empire during one of its most contested periods.

While many European princesses of the same era were learning embroidery, these women were writing books, running astronomical observations, and managing international trade portfolios.

We all know Shah Jahan built the Taj Mahal. Fewer people know it was directly inspired by a tomb designed and supervised by a woman.

Haji Begum, widow of Humayun, oversaw the entire construction of Humayun's Tomb in Delhi. This was not interior decorating. It meant managing thousands of workers, navigating complex engineering challenges, importing materials from across the subcontinent, and spending years directing every detail of a major architectural project. The result was the first Mughal garden tomb, the design template that the Taj Mahal would later follow. You cannot visit the Taj Mahal without standing in the conceptual shadow of a woman's architectural vision.

Nur Jahan built her father's tomb (still visited today), several elaborate gardens, and mosques across the empire. Jahanara built portions of Chandni Chowk, mosques, and caravanserais for travellers. How many people alive today can say they built something 400 years ago that is still in daily use? These women could.

Cinema tends to reduce Mughal women to either passive prisoners or exotic figures in the background. The actual picture is more interesting and more complicated than either version.

The restrictions were real. Royal women lived in separate palace quarters called the zenana, wore veils in public, and travelled in covered palanquins. Their freedom was structurally constrained in ways that men's was not. This cannot be minimised.

But the reality inside those constraints was far more dynamic than the "locked in a tower" version suggests:

• They travelled extensively across the empire in elaborate moving tent camps
• They went hunting. Nur Jahan famously killed four tigers with six bullets, a queen on horseback, rifle in hand, in the forest
• They went on pilgrimages across the subcontinent
• They held their own courts, received nobles' wives, conducted political negotiations, and made business deals
• They appeared at public celebrations and had documented access to spaces of political consequence

This tradition had deep roots in their Timurid-Mongol heritage, where elite women held recognised political rights, served as regents, led tribes, and accompanied rulers to battlefields. It was not charity extended by indulgent husbands. It was a culture they brought with them.

Freedom also varied considerably by reign. Akbar's court was relatively liberal. Aurangzeb's was much stricter. And individual women, like Nur Jahan, pushed at boundaries regardless of whatever the official rules happened to be.

Were they free by modern standards? No. Were they locked in towers? Also no. The truth is far more interesting than either simplified version.

This would be a dishonest piece if it stopped at "look how powerful they were." Because the constraints were real and they mattered enormously.

No woman could ever become empress. Nur Jahan governed the Mughal Empire for years, made policy, commanded armies, and issued orders that shaped the lives of millions. When Jahangir died, she was given a pension and told to go write poetry. From running an empire to retirement, overnight, because her power had always been borrowed from a man who was now dead.

They were caught in succession wars they did not start. Zebunissa spent twenty years in prison because she expressed support for a brother. Not because she raised an army or committed treason. Because she took a side in a family dispute and her father decided that was unforgivable.

They had no choice in marriage. Royal daughters were married for political alliances. That was the entire calculus. Their preferences were not part of the equation.

And their power was always structurally dependent. A queen's authority flowed from her relationship to an emperor, whether husband, father, or son. When that man died or fell from favour, her authority evaporated with him. Nur Jahan is the clearest example, but she was far from alone.

They were businesswomen, politicians, architects, scholars, warriors, and poets. And they were also controlled, constrained, and ultimately at the mercy of a system that was not built for them.

The next time you see an image of a Mughal emperor on his throne, looking powerful, looking permanent, ask yourself who is not in the frame.

Maybe it is the queen who issued the official orders that morning. Maybe it is the princess who owns the marketplace outside the palace gates. Maybe it is the mother whose advice shaped every major decision he ever made. Maybe it is the wife managing the trade routes that fund everything in the painting.

They shaped the empire just as much as the emperors did. History just did not put their names in the chapter titles.

Now you know better.

Sources: This piece draws on recent scholarship including work by Leong (2024) on Mughal royal women's political rhetoric, Balabanlilar (2010) on Turco-Mongol traditions in the Mughal court, Pragya and Rashmi (2025) on Mughal women's political power, and Khan and Mir (2020) on the administrative authority of Mughal nishans, among others.