Jahanara
Begum (1613-1683)
Jahanara was the daughter
of Emperor Shah Jahan and Mumtaz
Mahal and on her mother's death inherited her vast
fortune. This gifted princess, who had the unique distinction of being called
Begum are Shib (the Begam
par excellence), was possessed of a rare beauty combined with rich intellectual
talents and her influence on her father was unbounded.
Jahanara's life was mostly
spent in devoted service to her disconsolate father and ambitious brothers, but
she was not unmindful of the welfare of poor people and the larger portion of
her huge income was reserved for providing dowries to marriageable but poor
maidens and pensions and allowance to other needy persons. Like her brother Dara Shikoh, she had a deep
strain of mysticism in her character and imbibed from her early life, a
passionate and abiding love for the Chishti saints of
She also wrote biographical notices on the saint and his successors,
which were collected under the title of Munis al-Arwah (The Companion of the Souls) and became very popular.
Like several other Mughal princesses, Jahan Ara remained unmarried, but she was very fond of children
and had adopted Dara Shikoh's
daughter, Jahan Zib Begu, whom she married off with great pomp to Aurangzeb's son Prince Azam. Her
father's love for her and her filial devotion to him formed a remarkable
chapter In Mughal history.
When her brothers fell out, her sympathies were naturally with the
eldest one. Dara Shikoh and
she tried her utmost to dissuade Aurangzeb from
defying his father and ousting his elder brother from his rightful place. But
she failed and Aurangzeb succeeded in gaining the
throne and confining his aged father in the Agra Fort. Though he kindly gave Jahan Ara the honoric
title of Badshah Begum and a Jagir
(present of land) with an annual income of rupees seventeen lakhs, yet she
completely cut herself off from court life and shared the confinement of her
loving father with steadfast loyalty.
Shah Jahan died in 1666 A.D. and she followed
him to the grave sixteen years later at the age of seventy. She left property
worth three crores of rupees, all of which she
bequeathed to Khwaja Moinuddin's sanctuaries, but Aurangzeb
permitted only one crore to be spent according to her
desire, since he argued that legally a bequest could be made only up to
one-third of one's property. She was buried in the small, but beautiful
tomb-chamber made of polished white marble with delicately carved latticework,
which she had built herself in the sanctuary of Hazarat
Nizamudin Auliya in Delhi
and there she lies, one of the most beautiful and accomplished princesses of
yore, with the green grass covering her grave and many a visitor is moved by
the striking epitaph inscribed above the tomb entrance:
"Let naught but
green grass cover my grave;
For mortals poor' it’s a
grave-cover brave"
Jahanara, like her
father, was very fond of building edifices and laying out beautiful gardens.
The most remarkable among her buildings is the Jama Masjid of