Empress succeeds in its mission to impress upon the reader the remarkable character and achievements of Nur Jahan ... According to Lal, Nur has been unfairly blamed for the civil strife that accompanied the latter part of her rule with Jahangir and given little of the credit she deserves. Empress remedies these slanders and oversights while telling an engrossing tale of female power.
Despite the spare record she has to work with, Lal paints richly detailed scenes from Nur’s life ... Lal ably guides the reader through the rich drama and intrigue of Nur’s later life with Jahangir ... While filled with particulars, Empress can, at times, feel disjointed as Lal breezes over some of the larger developments and changes in Nur’s life. While she dwells extensively on the milieu of the harem, she spends little time explaining what led Jahangir to elevate Nur above his other wives ... Lal is clearly constrained by the paucity of the material she has to work with. But she seems too reluctant to draw inferences and make analytical deductions. She might not be able to say definitely what transpired between Nur and Jahangir or Nur and Shah Jahan, but she could tell readers what she thinks is the most credible and plausible account. Still, Lal has done a service to readers interested in the Mughal period and the many forgotten or poorly remembered women of Indian history. She has helped shine a little light on an enigmatic character many think they know but few actually understand.
Ms. Lal’s meticulous book seeks to show that history has been unfair to Nur Jahan, a woman of many talents and remarkable force of character ... In filling in the details of Nur Jahan’s life, Ms Lal has not only written a revisionist feminist biography; she has also provided a vivid picture of the Mughal court, with its luxuries, beauties, intrigues and horrors. Moreover, at a time when India’s Hindu-nationalist government chooses to emphasize one strain in the country’s history, she offers a reminder of the diversity of Indian tradition.
Right away, Lal takes on previous commentators, both from Nur’s day and those of subsequent eras, who seemingly could not handle the prowess of a strong woman ... As a feminist historian, Lal writes that her goal is to foreground the stories of women and girls largely missing from the histories of pre-colonial South Asia ... Refreshingly, there is no linear 'first this, then this' narrative. Lal instead paints rich multisensory tapestries, beginning with the story of Nur’s birth and her caravan as a baby to the lands of the Mughal court, and then the pluralistic milieus into which Nur married ... Big chunks of Empress come to us in the form of contextualized history, mingled with speculation ... we get the impression that this is Lal’s mission...to illuminate and serve Nur Jahan’s life, to place her in the light rather than chart every known detail in a linear fashion. In other words, Lal releases Nur from the condescending ways in which previous commentators have trivialized, belittled, and diminished her accomplishments.
To Peter Mundy, an English East India Co. merchant, Nur was 'hautie and stomakefull.' Others targeted her dominant Persian coterie. The reasons for contemporary mistrust can be well imagined, and we should be grateful to Ms. Lal for attempting to set the record straight. In glorifying Nur’s virtues, however, she overshoots the mark. A doggedly fault-finding biography is dull indeed; the reverse can be equally trying ... Ms. Lal recalls ... 'Still vivid are the glint in my mother’s eye as she spoke [of Nur], and the spark ignited in me by Nur’s accomplishments and allure.' The activating spark is priceless; it isn’t necessarily history.
Men everywhere, it seems, were threatened by the rise and reign of women, their racism and misogyny tied together in knots. It is the disentanglement of some of these that Ruby Lal attempts in Empress, a luminous biography ... What Lal presents is the story of a woman from the imperial harem without the usual obsession with the harem as a realm of cheap erotic associations. It is a captivating account, its depth of detail recreating a world whose constraints of lineage would seem to preclude the advance of an unknown, self-made, widowed queen ... Lal’s book is an act of feminist historiography. Beyond its excavation of the achievements of a queen deliberately 'effaced from the record,' it usefully portrays Nur Jahan as an imperfect character, though an exceptionally courageous one. In a world and time in which a woman’s power depended on the men she could manipulate, Nur Jahan deployed charm, wit and threat in the service of her own influence.
Lal's...examination of Jahan's life attempts to look beyond slanted historical opinions, legends, and fiction to form a more balanced viewpoint of her life. And while that resulting portrait still contains gaps—little record remains, for example, of Jahan's early life, and none of exactly how she rose so quickly and so high from the ranks of Jahangir's other wives—the author makes use of the absences to explore the upbringing of girls and the responsibilities of royal wives in the Mughal empire in general ... An excellent choice for popular history readers interested in women rulers.
Lal, a history professor at Emory, goes far beyond the fables to demonstrate that Nur Jahan was a force to be reckoned with ... Closely researched and vividly written, this telling finds that the truth is as fantastic and fascinating as myth.
The author’s descriptions of Agra are superb, and her detailed explanations of Nur’s upbringing reflect her long study, deep understanding, and modern take on a little-explored subject. When the emperor was kidnapped by his son’s ally, it was Nur who led an army to attempt his rescue. She must be held as one of history’s great independent, powerful women. A page-turning, eye-opening biography that shatters our impressions of India as established by the British Raj.
