A Teardrop on the Cheek of Time: The Story of the Taj Mahal (12 page)

Akbar had paid great attention both to the aesthetics and to the governance of his vast harem of 5,000 women and his rules were faithfully observed by his successors. Traditionally the mother of the reigning emperor ruled the harem, followed by the emperor’s chief and secondary wives. Beneath them, the harem was administered by various departments overseen by
‘chaste women’ well salaried for their work. One of the most important was the harem accountant – a ‘clever and zealous writer’
– who controlled day-to-day expenditure and calculated each year’s budget. When a woman wished to make a purchase she applied to a ‘cash-keeper’, who submitted the request to the accountant for her approval. If the ordinary systems of household management failed, the female astrologers of the harem were consulted. When a valuable pearl disappeared from a harem apartment, an astrologer prophesied correctly, or so the story goes, that it would be found within three days by a pale-skinned woman who would place it in the emperor’s hand. At the bottom of the huge hierarchy of female officials, attendants and servants were the female scavengers employed to clean the underground tunnels into which the latrines emptied.

Thomas Coryat, for once not walking but riding
.

The seraglio in the Red Fort at Agra was spacious, airy and light, with terraces, gardens, avenues of trees, even swimming pools. Rooms and halls were richly furnished, with highly coloured and patterned silk carpets in summer and woollen ones in winter, layered on top of soft mattresses. No indoor floor was ever left bare. Swathes of silk of glowing colours and sensuous velvets were draped gracefully around windows and doors.

Products from the imperial perfumery established by Akbar scented the air. Incense distilled from ambergris, rose-water, aloe wood and sandalwood wafted seductively from bejewelled censers. Fragrant soaps and unguents helped the women cool and freshen their skin. There was also attar of roses invented by Mumtaz’s grandmother, Asmat Begum. Jahangir called it the discovery of his reign and described how: ‘When she was making rose-water, a scum formed on the surface of the dishes into which the hot rose-water was poured from the jugs. She collected this scum little by little … It is of such strength in perfume that if one drop be rubbed on the palm of the hand it scents a whole assembly and it appears as if many red rose-buds had bloomed at once. There is no other scent of equal excellence to it. It restores hearts that have gone, and brings back withered souls.’

Wives and concubines maintained their own households in interconnecting suites and apartments. A secret network of underground corridors and staircases provided not only ventilation but a means of checking on the activities of the inmates. The emperor could move swiftly and silently through the complex, appearing now here, now there, giving him the appearance of supernatural powers. A network of female spies, set up in Akbar’s time, also kept him informed. Discipline within the harem was strict and ruthless. A former concubine of Jahangir’s caught dallying with a eunuch was placed in a pit with her feet tied to a stake and earth rammed up to her armpits and left exposed to the sun without food or water. She died thirty-six hours later. The eunuch was
‘condemned to the elephant’
, victim of the fact that castration does not always destroy sexual desire.
*

There was no safer place for an emperor than the imperial harem, where he ate and slept as both master and guest. In many ways it was a return to the security of childhood, perhaps even of the womb. His drinking water was entrusted to a special servant who kept it sealed and all his food was tasted before it touched his lips. The same guards who prevented ardent young lovers from stealing into the harem were also a good line of defence against any would-be assassin. The inside of the harem was protected by tall, powerfully built women skilled with bow and arrow – Uzbek, Turkish and Abyssinian women were especially prized. Their reputation for ruthlessness reflected the terrible punishment they would suffer for neglecting their duties. They reported to the
khwajasara
, the senior official of the harem, and the most trusted of these amazons guarded the apartments of the emperor himself.

All gates were closed at sunset except the main gate, where torches burned through the night. Eunuchs guarded the immediate approach to the harem. Englishman Peter Mundy described how
‘great men … employ them in matters of greatest trust, of which the chiefest is to guard their women, their treasure …’
Some, as was often the case in China also, had themselves chosen emasculation as a means of advancement. Others had been gelded by force, sometimes on their parents’ instructions. A senior imperial eunuch of the period later refused to see the parents who had denied him
‘the greatest pleasures attainable in this world’
.

Beyond the eunuchs, on duty twenty-four hours a day was a detachment of Rajputs backed up by further detachments of guards and imperial troops. Entering the imperial harem was thus no easy matter. When the wife of a nobleman wished to pay a visit she had to apply to the harem officials and await a reply. Those granted admission were, if unknown to the guards, rigorously searched by the eunuchs,
‘with no respect being paid either to the position or rank of the person’
. Venetian traveller Niccolao Manucci complained that
‘the tongue and the hands of these baboons act together, being most licentious in examining everything, both goods and women, coming into the palace; they are foul in speech, and fond of silly stories’
. The examinations were ostensibly to ensure that no male disguised as a woman slipped inside. Several European doctors, who were allowed to enter the harem to tend women too sick to be brought to the outside gate, wrote of their experiences. François Bernier described how his head was first covered with a Kashmir shawl,
‘hanging like a large scarf down to my feet, and an eunuch led me by the hand, as if I had been a blind man’
.

Many accounts suggest that surgeons were asked to procure abortions. Jealous wives, anxious that concubines and slave girls should not usurp them in their husband’s affections, paid doctors well for such services. One account relates how a princess
‘in one month had caused miscarriages to eight women of [her husband’s] harem, as she would not permit any children but her own to survive’
.

Troupes of dancing girls, mimics and acrobats entertained the ladies of the harem, who chewed fragrant betel, told stories, played games and admired their reflections in tiny, pearl-ringed mirrors mounted on thumb rings. But they did not pass all their time in narcissistic idleness. Wealthy, well-educated, well-connected women of the imperial harem like Nur conducted successful businesses, using their male relations or specially appointed officials as intermediaries. They traded internally but also with the outside world, chartering ships, hiring captains and exporting Indian goods to Arabia and beyond. They financed their commercial activities from allowances and gifts, but also from estates settled on them and the award of perks like customs dues. They prudently reinvested their profits in further ventures, building up immense fortunes, but also spent lavishly on parties, feasts and festivals and the extravagant gift-giving so integral to court life. They endowed charitable institutions and commissioned new buildings. A Dutch traveller wrote of Nur that
‘she erects very expensive buildings in all directions –
sarais
, or halting places for travellers and merchants, and pleasure-gardens and palaces such as no one has ever made before’
. The women resented competition in commerce almost as much as in love.

On 30 March 1613, Mumtaz gave birth to a baby girl. This ‘early fruit of the garden of auspiciousness’ was named Princess Hur al-Nisa. However, Mumtaz’s life of courtly comfort, playing with her new daughter, was about to end. Jahangir was once again focusing on the military campaigns that Khusrau’s revolts had forced him to suspend and, in 1614, called on Khurram. His mission was to subdue the Rana of Mewar (Udaipur), the greatest of Rajasthan’s rulers, who, from a mountain stronghold, continued to defy the Moghuls.

Though pregnant once more, Mumtaz accompanied Khurram on the campaign and this was to be the pattern of their marriage. He steadfastly ignored the advice of his ancestor Babur never to take women on military campaigns. One of his chroniclers observed that
‘he never allowed that light of the imperial chamber to be separated from him whether at home or abroad’
. Throughout hardships, misfortune and, on occasion, real danger, she would remain at his side and twelve of their fourteen children would be conceived and born during their wanderings.

*
The word ‘alcohol’ is borrowed from Arabic, in which it originally meant ‘antimony powder’.

*
Anyone who compares the two buildings today would probably agree. Akbar’s tomb, which sits in a park that is home to rhesus monkeys and deer, seems ‘a pick and mix’ selection, juxtaposing Islamic and Hindu architectural features but achieving neither synthesis nor cohesion.

*
The Moghuls had adopted the Hindu custom of the wedding procession. From Akbar’s reign, with the marriage of Hindu brides into the imperial Moghul family, they had also borrowed the Hindu tradition of holding the marriage ceremony in the bride’s house.

*
London, with a population of about 300,000, was then Europe’s third largest city after Paris and Constantinople.

*
Jahangir also executed the Sikh guru Arjun Singh, who thus became one of Sikhdom’s most holy martyrs, though that was for his part in Khusrau’s rebellion rather than on religious grounds. In fact, all the guru had done was to bless the prince and mark his brow with saffron to bring him fortune.

*
Castration could be total removal of penis and testicles – meaning that a quill was needed for urination – or, more simply and hygienically, the removal of the testicles alone. The wife of a eunuch of the latter type told Victorian traveller Richard Burton that her husband could even be aroused to a kind of ejaculation, presumably a prostatic fluid, after a protracted period of erotic stimulation.