An Assessment of the Intricacies Surrounding the Visibility of Royal Mughal Women in Visual and Written Sources During Akbar’s Reign

Abstract

Royal Mughal women have played an immense role in consolidating the success and power of the Timurid-Mughal Empire. They have made significant contributions to, and influenced, several key sectors such as the Political, Commercial, and Architectural sectors, propagating the strength of the empire to great heights. They are, however, not well documented in archived sources, lending to a commonly assumed perspective of their invisibility in the empire, specifically during Emperor Akbar’s rule. This paper challenges this perceived narrative by analyzing and examining royal women’s inclusion and depiction in several primary sources, both written and visual, and evaluating the purpose and biases of such sources. This paper uses illustrations and paintings to understand the socio-cultural attitudes towards women as well as works by Akbar’s court historian Abul Fazl to understand the intricacies of documenting women to offer a new perspective on the visibility of women in the Timurid-Mughal Empire.