Gulbadan and Nur Jahan: The Role of Women in the Creation of the Mughal Court and Imperial Policy

Abstract

Using translated primary sources (principally Gulbadan Begum's biography of Humayun) and secondary sources, I analyze the position of women in the early Mughal court and how Akbar's new institutions altered their position. I propose that institutions cloistering and regulating imperial elite women paralleled those which regulated the nobility at large under the new land revenue system, and that early Timurid traditions of women's power within the court changed but did not diminish. I propose that the scale of the power of women in court was rather magnified and institutionalized.