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Imperial wet nurses in the reign of Mughal Emperor Akbar
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 October 2022
Abstract
Mughal chronicles frequently refer to royal Mughal infants being entrusted to wet nurses for breastfeeding and nurturing. The women chosen for this purpose were invariably the wives of important Mughal officials. It was believed that the quality of milk the baby received determined its future disposition. Therefore, these nurses needed to possess desirable psychological qualities and moral temperaments. They were accorded a high status and usually established a lasting relationship with their charges. As a result, the children of the emperor developed a close association with their wet nurses and their families who, in turn, became the staunchest supporters of their wards. The success, influence, and prestige of these families depended on the political fortune of the royal child they had cared for. If the prince became an emperor, they gained immense power and prestige both in life and death. They were honoured with elaborate funerals and buried in imperial tombs. This article argues that the rationale behind the use of wet nurses by Mughal royalty during Emperor Akbar's reign was not simply a medical or physiological one, it was equally a political instrument for forging ties between prominent families and royalty.
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1 See Mahmoud Omidsalar and Theresa Omidsalar, ‘Daya’, in Encyclopaedia Iranica Online, https://iranicaonline.org/articles/daya (accessed 25 July 2022). Dayeh also means a nurse or foster-mother: see Richards, John, A Dictionary, Persian, Arabic, and English (London, 1852), s.v.Google Scholar ‘ﺪﺍﻴﻪ ’. For anakeh, see Gladwin, Francis, A Dictionary, Persian, Hindoostanee and English (Calcutta, 1809)Google Scholar and de Courteille, M. Pavet, Dictionnaire Turk-Oriental (Paris, 1870), s.v.Google Scholar ‘انکه ’. No detailed study of the term anakeh is yet available in English-language scholarship. It became an honorific title for women of high rank who nursed an imperial heir.
2 It was well-known custom in ancient civilisations like Egypt and Mesopotamia, and in Roman society. The literature on the history of wet nursing is vast and steadily growing. The classic work remains, however, Fildes, Valerie, Wet Nursing: A History from Antiquity to the Present (New York, 1988)Google Scholar.
3 See ibid., p. 34. A recent scholarly account of wet nursing in Europe is by Coles, Prophecy, The Shadow of the Second Mother: Nurses and Nannies in Theories of Infant Development (London, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, see especially pp. 9–26. In Arab culture, the employment of wet nurses was largely limited to the wealthier classes. Prominent Meccans, including the Quraysh, placed babies in the care of wet nurses of the nomadic tribes probably because of high child mortality caused by disease and malnutrition in Arab settlements. Sending a child to a healthier desert environment apparently increased its chances of survival. Prophet Muhammad was, as a baby, assigned to the wet nurse Halimah of the Hawazin tribe and lived in a pastoral environment for about two years. See Simons, G. L., Saudi Arabia: The Shape of a Client Feudalism (New York, 1998), p. 90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4 Many such examples can be found in Altorki, Soraya, ‘Milk-kinship in Arab society: an unexplored problem in the ethnography of marriage’, Ethnology 19.2 (1980), pp. 233–244CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Chahidi, Jane Khatib, ‘Milk kinship in Shi'ite Islamic Iran’, in The Anthropology of Breast-Feeding: Natural Law or Social Construct, (ed.) Maher, Vanessa (Oxford, 1992), pp. 109–132Google Scholar.
5 In many cultures across the globe and throughout history, the act of breastfeeding and the substance of breast milk forge kinship bonds that were equal to, and sometimes considered stronger than, blood relationships. The classic examples from the large region of Eurasia can be found in the scholarly articles by Parkes, Peter, ‘Milk kinship in Southeast Europe: alternative social structures and foster relations in the Caucasus and the Balkans’, Social Anthropology 12.3 (2004), pp. 341–358CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ‘Fosterage, kinship and legend: when milk was thicker than blood?’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 46.3 (2004), pp. 587–615; ‘Milk kinship in Islam: substance, structure, history’, Social Anthropology 13.3 (2005), pp. 307–329. See also Chapman, Cynthia R., ‘“Oh that you were like a brother to me, one who had nursed at my mother's breasts”: breast milk as a kinship-forging substance’, Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 12.7 (2012), pp. 1–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
6 In contrast to popular Orientalist conceptions of women of the harem, who were frequently depicted as powerless figures serving men, these gynocentric spaces offered women substantial power. For recent scholarship that challenges the Orientalist view and argues that women were active participants in the public space and an essential element in the everyday public life of the Mughal empire, see Lal, Ruby, Domesticity and Power in the Early Mughal World (Cambridge, 2005)Google Scholar; for the Ottoman harem, the Orientalist's view was demolished by Leslie Peirce, P., The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire (New York, 1993)Google Scholar. For a vibrant and dynamic understanding of this conception in global cultures, see Anne Walthall (ed.), Servants of the Dynasty: Palace Women in World History (Berkeley, 2008); Joan DelPlato and Julie Codell (eds), Orientalism, Eroticism and Modern Visuality in Global Cultures (New York, 2016).
7 For example, see the appointment of Shams al-Din Muhammad Ghaznawi's wife Jiji as infant Akbar's anakeh, in Maulawi Abd-ur- Rahim (ed.), Akbarnamah by Abu'l Fazl I Mubarak I Allami, 3 vols (Calcutta, 1873–1886), Vol. I, p. 44 (hereafter Akbarnamah). In place of their original name, these women often received a name suitable to their job and position―for example, ‘Jiji’ for Ghaznawi's wife.
8 This is the exact opposite of the royal mothers who are rarely shown suckling and interacting with their own children. See note 23 below.
9 The scholarly account of the Mughal princely households is by Faruqui, Munis D., The Princes of the Mughal Empire, 1504–1719 (Cambridge, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially Chapters 2 and 3.
10 Arabo-Islamic medical scholars, particularly in the medieval context, translated Western medical and philosophical classics into Arabic, including texts by Hippocrates (circa 460–circa 377 bce), Plato (circa 427–circa 347 bce), Aristotle (circa 384–circa 322 bce), Dioscorides (circa 40–circa 90 ce), Favorinus (circa 85–circa 155 ce), Soranus (circa 98–circa 138 ce), and Galen (circa 130– circa 210 ce), consequently, they acquired many Greco-Roman ideas in the fields of nursing and medicine. For an overview of this development, see Kamal, Hassan, Encyclopedia of Islamic Medicine: With a Greco-Roman Background (Cairo, 1975)Google Scholar.
11 See Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae 12.1.20, (trans.) John Carew Rolfe (Cambridge, 1960), pp. 358–359: ‘Just as the qualities of the father's “seed” are able to form likeness of the body and mind, so the qualities and properties of the milk have the same effect.’
12 The attitudes to wet nursing in the medieval period probably owed much to ancient medical literature by Soranus and Galen as well as to Latin translations by Gerard of Cremona (circa 1114–1187 ce) of Arabic texts by Ibn Sina or Avicenna (circa 980–1037 ce). Though there are wide divergences of opinion among medical authorities, virtually all believed that the wet nurse's characteristics would be transmitted to the baby. For discussion and references, see Giladi, Avner, ‘Breast-feeding in medieval Islamic thought: a preliminary study of legal and medical writings’, Journal of Family History 23.2 (1998), pp. 107–123CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
13 Commonly used phrase in Mughal contemporary sources. For instance, see Akbarnamah, Vol. 1, pp. 43–44.
14 For a few distinctive instances of dreams and miracles, see Akbarnamah, Vol. 1, pp. 14–15, 43–44, 187; Wheeler M. Thackston (ed. and trans.), The History of Akbar by Abu'l Fazl, 5 vols (Cambridge, 2015–2018), Vol. I, pp. 47–51, 147–149, 567 (hereafter The History of Akbar). For discussion and references of dreams and miracles in Islam, see Moin, A. Azfar, The Millennial Sovereign: Sacred Kingship and Sainthood in Islam (Delhi, 2017), Chapter 3Google Scholar.
15 For an overview of this ancient idea, see Giladi, Avner, Infants, Parents and Wet Nurses: Medieval Islamic Views on Breastfeeding and Their Social Implications (Boston, 1999), pp. 48–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
16 Though pre-modern authors made a theoretical distinction between midwife, wet nurse, and (dry) nurse, in practice, in the period under study, the functions of the latter two merged on some occasions. A close relationship was fostered not only by wet nursing, but also through close contact between nurses and their charges. The role of nurse, assigned to trusted women, was supervisory and continued for an unspecified period. Maham Anakeh, who was Akbar's nurse, served him from the time he was in the cradle until his ascension to the throne. Her family was extremely influential during the early years of his reign. Maham became ‘Superintendent of the Nurses’―one of the most prestigious positions given to a non-royal woman. At her death in 1562, Akbar joined the funeral procession for some distance out of Agra, and a tomb was built as part of the mourning (Akbarnamah, Vol. 2, p. 177; The History of Akbar, Vol. 3, p. 547). Maham's sons developed a special bond with the emperor and were notable officers of the court. Her younger son Adham Khan—who was about Akbar's age and a childhood playmate—was elevated to the rank (mansab) of panj-hazari or commander of 5,000 troops. His older brother, Muḥammad Baqi Khan, served Akbar faithfully until the end of his days. Abu'l Fazl opines, ‘His Majesty devoted great attention to the care of [Baqi Khan's] family’ after his death in 1584 (Akbarnamah, Vol. 3, p. 437). For Maham's position, also see note 23 below.
17 Akbarnamah, Vol. 1, p. 44; The History of Akbar, Vol. I, p. 149.
18 Akbarnamah, Vol. 1, p. 43; The History of Akbar, Vol. I, p. 147.
19 Akbarnamah, Vol. 1, p. 43; The History of Akbar, Vol. I, p. 147.
20 See Budin, Stephanie Lynn, Images of Woman and Child from the Bronze Age: Reconsidering Fertility, Maternity, and Gender in the Ancient World (Cambridge, 2011)Google Scholar; and Anne K. Capel and Glenn E. Markoe (eds), Mistress of the House, Mistress of Heaven: Women in Ancient Egypt (New York, 1997).
21 For instance, Akbarnamah, Vol. 1, p. 227; Henry Beveridge (trans.), The Akbarnama of Abu'l Fazl, 3 vols (Calcutta, 1897–1921), Vol. 1, p. 456 (hereafter The Akbarnama of Abu'l Fazl) records, ‘he who drew milk from the breasts of the divine favour and obtained nutriment from the celestial nurse would receive no determent from evil imaginations’.
22 Akbarnamah, Vol. 1, p. 44; The History of Akbar, Vol. I, p. 149. Abu'l Fazl employs the Arabic term ‘mashrab’ (plural masharib) or ‘the place from where one drinks’ to describe the source of a wet nurse's pious tradition and lineage. In Sufi text the term is usually used to depict the master (shaykh or murshid) as a mother who nurses his disciple (murid) with the ‘milk’ of knowledge and tradition.
23 Refer to the following paintings: ‘Ghazan Khan as a Baby with his Mother and Nurse’, Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, Ms. Suppl. Pers.1113, fol. 210, copy of Rashid al-Din's Jami al-Tawarikh (illustrated at Mughal studio); ‘The Infant Akbar Placed in the Care of his Nurses by his Mother Maryam Makani’, British Library, London, MS Or.12988, fol. 20v, copy of Akbarnamah. The iconographic evidence of the latter strongly emphasises that an imposing woman, seated next to Maryam Makani (the mother), in an overseeing position (unlike the wet nurse) is most likely Maham Anakeh―‘Superintendent of the Nurses’, cf. Maham Anakeh, sitting next to Akbar in the royal pavilion, in ‘Detail Showing Maham Anakeh, Akbar's foster mother’, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Acc. nos. 8 and 9/117 (double page), folio from the Akbarnamah. That Bibi Fatima was promoted to the post of ‘Superintendent of the Nurses’ after Maham's death (besides being head urdubegi) confirms the position Maham had held. For the image of midwives (as different from wet nurses and nurses), cf. ‘The Birth of Timur’, British Library, London, MS Or.12988, fol. 34v, copy of Akbarnamah. For Maham's position, also see Henry Beveridge, ‘Maham Angah’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland (1899), pp. 99–101; and Anthony Welch, ‘The emperor's grief: two Mughal tombs’, in Frontiers of Islamic Art and Architecture: Essays in Celebration of Oleg Garbar's Eightieth Birthday (Muqarnas 25) (Leiden, 2008), pp. 256–257.
24 The assumption being that Buddhist beliefs would be transmitted to the young princes. Cf. Bruno De Nicola, ‘The role of the domestic sphere in the Islamisation of the Mongols’, in Islamisation: Comparative Perspectives from History, (ed.) A. C. S. Peacock (Edinburgh, 2017), pp. 353–376. For the interaction between Buddhism and Islam among the Mongols, see Mostafa Vaziri, Buddhism in Iran: An Anthropological Approach to Traces and Influences (New York, 2012), especially pp. 111–134.
25 The Akbarnama of Abu'l Fazl, Vol. 1, pp. 129–133; the phrase is adapted from title of Chapter 9, p. 129.
26 Cf. Faruqui, The Princes of the Mughal Empire, p. 72.
27 Najm Al-Din Razi, Mirsad al-ibad (The Path of God's Bondsmen from Origin to Return), (trans.) Hamid Algar (New York, 1982), p. 224. I wish to thank Professor Chetan Singh for bringing this passage to my attention.
28 See Maulawi Abdur Rahim (ed.), Maasir-ul Umara by Shah Nawaz Khan (Calcutta, 1888–1891), Vol. 1, p. 798.
29 Nicolao Manucci, Mogul India or Storio do Mongor, (trans.) William Irvine (London, 1907), Vol. 2, p. 30.
30 The expression is taken from Abu'l Fazl's remarks in Akbarnamah, Vol. 1, p. 14; The Akbarnama of Abu'l Fazl, Vol. 1, p. 43.
31 For example, Hajji Kukeh, Akbar's milk sister, enjoyed many privileges, including the power to recommend cases for the award of revenue-free land grants. See Thackston, W. M. (trans.), Jahangirnama: Memoirs of Jahangir, Emperor of India (Oxford, 1999), p. 44Google Scholar (hereafter Jahangirnama).
32 ‘It was a great [honour] for a wife to give,’ says Ruby Lal, ‘the birth of a son.’ Giving birth to a first son was most important. The ensuing competition often resulted in each wife trying to cause the miscarriges of the pregnancies of the other wives around her. Lal, Domesticity and Power, p. 122; also see Mukherjee, Soma, Royal Mughal Ladies: and their Contribution (Delhi, 2001), p. 21Google Scholar.
33 After the onset of puberty, women were expected to give birth for all the years of their fecundity—perhaps 25—if their lives were not cut short by death in childbirth, the commonest cause of death for women of childbearing age. For the most detailed account of infant mortality in Mughal royalty, see Shireen Moosvi, People, Taxation and Trade in Mughal India (Delhi, 2008), Chapter 5. To get a sense of the ramifications of being infertile in the medieval Islamic world, see Sara Verskin, Barren Women: Religion and Medicine in the Medieval Middle East (Berlin/Boston, 2020), Part I. My thanks to an anonymous reviewer for referring me to this work.
34 The obverse was that the women who served as wet nurses had far fewer pregnancies.
35 This information is summarised from Moosvi, People, Taxation and Trade, Chapter 5.
36 See Sara F. Matthews Grieco, ‘Breastfeeding, wet nursing and infant mortality in Europe (1400–1800)’, in Historical Perspective on Breastfeeding (Florence, 1991), pp. 18–19; cf. the important analysis in Benedictow, Ole J., ‘On the origin and spread of the notion that breast-feeding women should abstain from sexual intercourse’, Scandinavian Journal of History 17 (1992), pp. 65–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
37 The husbands of the wet nurses, who usually appear to have offered no opposition, must have considered the ‘status’ that the family earned worth the sacrifice.
38 Muhammad Rawshan and Mustafa Musavi (eds), Jami al-Tawarikh by Rashid al-Din, 4 vols (Tehran, 1994), see Vol. 2, p. 1207; cf. Wheeler M. Thackston (trans.), Rashiduddin Fazlullah's Jami al-Tawarikh: Compendium of Chronicles, 3 vols (Boston, MA, 1998–1999), Vol. 3, p. 590.
39 A fifteenth-century treatise on prophetic medicine (Tibb Al-Nabiyy) notes: ‘A child is said to receive al-ghayla when the mother has intercourse while suckling him. When a woman is suckling and becomes pregnant, her milk too is said to receive al-ghayla. Such milk will throw down, that is will do harm and destroy, the infant.’ See Cyril Elgood (trans.), ‘Tibb Al-Nabiyy―Medicine of the Prophet’, Osiris 14 (1962), pp. 151–152.
40 Quoted in Grieco, ‘Breastfeeding, wet nursing and infant mortality’, p. 18.
41 Akbarnamah, Vol. 1, p. 14 (for quotation); The Akbarnama of Abu'l Fazl, Vol. 1, p. 43.
42 Akbarnamah, Vol.1, pp. 166–168; The Akbarnama of Abu'l Fazl, Vol. 1, pp. 356–358.
43 Annette Susannah Beveridge (trans.), Humayunnama of Gulbadan Banu Begum (London, 1902), p. 142, note 4 (hereafter Humayunnama); cf. Akbarnamah, Vol. 1, p. 44.
44 Akbarnamah, Vol. 1, p. 44. For ‘principal nurse’, see Beveridge, ‘Maham Angah’, pp. 99–101.
45 Akbarnamah, Vol. 1, p. 44. It was probably important that the anakeh satisfy the royal mother, who wielded a great deal of political power.
46 Akbarnamah, Vol. 1, pp. 43–45; The Akbarnama of Abu'l Fazl, Vol. 1, pp. 129–133.
47 A folio from the British Library Akbarnama, MS Or.12988, fol. 20v.
48 The translation of this passage is from The Akbarnama of Abu'l Fazl, Vol. I, pp. 130–131; cf. Akbarnamah, Vol. 1, p. 44.
49 She is wrongly referred to as the wife (instead of mother) of Nadim Kukeh in Akbarnamah and on a miniature ‘The Infant Akbar Placed in the Care of his Nurses …’. See Humayunnama, p. 122; cf. ‘Ahwal-i Humayun Padishah by Gulbadan Begam’, British Library, London, MS Or.166, fol. 26a.
50 She was Humayun's attendant from his childhood; see Humayunnama, p. 185, note 3; cf. Ahwal-i Humayun, fol. 71a.
51 One of the most faithful officers of Emperor Humayun; see The Akbarnama of Abu'l Fazl, Vol. I, pp. 130–131, note 6.
52 An important officer of the imperial household; see The Akbarnama of Abu'l Fazl, Vol. I, p. 131, note 1.
53 From an influential family; see The Akbarnama of Abu'l Fazl, Vol. I, p. 131, note 3.
54 A wife of Khwajah Maqsud of Herat. Maqsud was a trusted servant of Hamida Banu Begam, ‘a man of pure disposition and of integrity’; see The Akbarnama of Abu'l Fazl, Vol. I, p. 131, note 4; cf. p. 448.
55 Cf. Faruqui, The Princes of the Mughal Empire, pp. 143–147.
56 As John F. Richards points out: ‘Akbar's own connection with and incorporation of a leading family of the Chishtiyya was of some importance to [Akbar], in that he could assimilate and share the mystical qualities of that family’: J. F. Richards, ‘The formulation of imperial authority under Akbar and Jahangir’, in The Mughal State, 1526–1750, (eds) Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam (Delhi, 1998), p. 134; also see Alam, Muzaffar, ‘The Mughals, the Sufi shaikhs and the formation of the Akbari dispensation’, Modern Asian Studies 43.1 (2009), pp. 135–174CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
57 See biography of Aurangzeb's kukeh, in Rahim (ed.), Maasir-ul Umara, Vol. 1, pp. 798–813.
58 See Rawshan and Musavi (eds), Jami al-Tawarikh, Vol. 2, pp. 864–865.
59 See Akbarnamah, Vol. 1, p. 43. Infants’ palates were rubbed with pre-masticated dates (or with honey) and Allah's blessing invoked on them. This ritual is said to have come from the Prophet Muhammad, who would chew a date and place it into the mouth of a new-born child as a blessing. It should be noted that the person who performs tahnik was a righteous and pious person. This also serves to confirm the ‘pious’ standing of the Akbar's wet nurses. For discussion and references of this ritual in Islamic tradition, see Giladi, Avner, ‘Some notes on Tahnik in medieval Islam’, Journal of Near Eastern Studies 47.3 (1988), pp. 175–179CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
60 Even early medical authorities that urged maternal nursing advised full recuperation (generally until the post-partum flux had ceased and the mother had been ritually ‘cleansed’, usually one week following birth). See O. Temkin (trans.), Gynecology of Soranus of Ephesus (Baltimore, 1956), Book II, pp. 88–89. This notion was repeated in Muslim medical writings; see, for instance, Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Tuhfatul Mawdud bi-Ahkam al-Mawlud (Bombay, 1961), p. 137. In fact, most infants were denied this rich nourishment and were entrusted to a wet nurse's care until the mother began producing normal milk, usually one week after birth.
61 We find an example from Mongol Emperor Chinggis Khan's family (whose customs influenced those of the Mughals). A nurse, called Saruq (Naiman), was chosen to nurse Qublai (b. 1215), the son of Sorghaghtani and Tolui (Chinggis's daughter-in-law and son), when she was seven months’ pregnant. However, when the nurse's son was born and required more care from his mother, Qublai was entrusted to another woman of the Tangut people who went on to enjoy great influence on the life of the future emperor. See Rawshan and Musavi (eds), Jami al-Tawarikh, Vol. 2, pp. 864–865; John A. Boyle (trans.), The Successors of Genghis Khan (New York, 1971), p. 241.
62 Akbarnamah, Vol. 1, p. 44; The Akbarnama of Abu'l Fazl, Vol. 1, p. 131. W. H. Lowe's presumption that Akbar had three nurses is seemingly incorrect; see W. H. Lowe (trans.), Muntakhab-ut-Tawarikh of Abd al-Qadir Badauni (Delhi, 1973), Vol. 2, p. 49, note 4.
63 For an impressionistic example, see Akbarnamah, Vol. 1, p. 227; The Akbarnama of Abu'l Fazl, Vol. 1, p. 456. It should be noted that weaning babies after two years was common practice in many ancient and medieval societies. For a discussion of the literature on this practice, see Giladi, Infants, Parents and Wet Nurses, p. 63, notes 99–102; also see Aries, Philippe, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life, (trans.) Baldick, Robert (New York, 1962), p. 34Google Scholar.
64 Jahangirnama, p. 35.
65 See ibid., p. 62. Emperor Jahangir fondly remembered her in his autobiography.
66 Note that Mughals retained residual affiliations to pre-Islamic practice which does not fit comfortably with certain requirements and stipulations of Quranic law. The exact conditions of suckling (or al-rida'a) that would constitute an impediment to marriage remain ambiguous.
67 There also existed the notion of the ‘sire's milk’ (laban al-fahl). Muslim jurists and scholars such as Sarakhsi adopted the view that a wet nurse's husband should be regarded as the ‘milk father’ of his wife's nurselings. Just as semen was believed to be the cause of her pregnancy and childbirth, intercourse with her husband was seen as the source of the nurse's milk. See Muhammad ibn Sarakhsi, Ahmad, Kitab al-Mabsat (Cairo, 1906–1913), Vol. 30, pp. 293–294Google Scholar; for a useful discussion, see Mohammed Hocine Benkheira, ‘“The milk of the male”: kinship, maternity and breastfeeding in medieval Islam’, in Medieval and Renaissance Lactations: Images, Rhetorics, and Practices, (ed.) Jutta Gisela Sperling (Farnham, 2013), pp. 21–36.
68 The precise definition of a wet nurse's children remained ambiguous. All close relatives of the wet nurse who were of a sufficiently youthful age could have plausibly been called kukehltash. Cf. Dictionnaire Turk-Oriental, p. 473.
69 Mughal historians have ignored the ‘wet nurse’ relationships in much of such in-fighting. Wet nurses’ families used all means at their command to secure or protect the succession right of their charge. This is the subject of the author's ongoing research.
70 Humayunnama, p. 201; cf. Ahwal-i Humayun, fol. 82b.
71 See Khan, Motamad, Iqbalnamah-i Jahangiri, (eds) Abdul Hai and Ahmad Ali (Calcutta, 1865), pp. 230–231Google Scholar.
72 See Jahangirnama, p. 62.
73 See Saqi Musta'idd Khan, Maasir-i Alamgiri, (ed.) Agha Ahmad Ali and (trans.) Jadunath Sarkar (Calcutta, 1947), pp. 398–400; also see Manucci, Mogul India, Vol. 2, p. 466.
74 In Humayunnama (p. 122) Gulbadan Begam refers to her as ‘Fatima Sultan Anakeh, mother of Rushen Kukeh’. Jawhar Aftabchi states that Rushen Kukeh's mother was Humayun's wet nurse. See Jawhar Aftabchi, The Tezkereh al Vakiat or Private Memoirs of the Moghul Emperor Humayun, (trans.) Major Charles Stewart (London, 1832), p. 72. Rushen Kukeh, who shared his mother's milk with Humayun, established a lifelong companionship with the emperor. They also went through the latter's early adversities together.
75 Jahangirnama, p. 39.
76 The manipulation of such ties to create neighbourly alliances, or to evade the obligations of sexual seclusion (hijab), or even to prevent undesired preferential marriages in modern Saudi Arabia are documented in the article by Altorki, ‘Milk kinship in Arab society’, pp. 233–244; for Shi'ite Iran, see Chahidi, ‘Milk kinship in Shi'ite Islamic Iran’, pp. 109–132.
77 See Mahomed Kasim Ferishta, History of the Rise of the Mahomedan Power in India, Till the Year A.D. 1612, (trans.) John Briggs (Calcutta, 1909), Vol. 2, p. 212.
78 Mirza Muhammad Haidar Dughlat, The Tarikh-i Rashidi, (ed.) N. Elias and (trans.) E. Denison Ross (Delhi, 1974; reprint edition), p. 459.
79 Parkes, ‘Fosterage, kinship and legend’, pp. 587–615; cf. for symbolic breastfeeding in Islamic society and its nuances, see Giladi, Infants, Parents and Wet Nurses, p. 28.
80 Manucci, Mogul India, Vol. I, pp. 295–296. As we know, Rajrup later soured Nadira Begam's milk by delivering a military coup de grace to Dara Shikoh.
81 Akbarnamah, Vol. 1, p. 15; The Akbarnama of Abu'l Fazl, Vol. 1, p. 45.
82 Abu'l Fazl states that they were ‘elevated from the nadir of the dust to the zenith of heaven’. See Akbarnamah, Vol. 1, p. 14; The Akbarnama of Abu'l Fazl, Vol. 1, p. 43. For important members of Shams al-Din or Atakeh's family, see M. Hidayat Hosain (ed.), Tazkira-i Humayun wa Akbar by Bayazid Bayat (Calcutta, 1941), pp. 176–187.
83 Jahangirnama, p. 63.
84 Ibid., p. 431.
85 Khan, Iqbalnamah-i Jahangiri, pp. 230–231.
86 For his biography, see Shaikh Farid Bhakkari, Dhakhirat al-Khawanin, (ed.) S. Moinul Haq (Karachi, 1961), Vol. 1, pp. 80–99; Rahim (ed.), Maasir-ul Umara, Vol. 1, pp. 675–693.
87 Referring to a rank (or office), see Akbarnamah, Vol. 3, p. 803; The Akbarnama of Abu'l Fazl, Vol. 3, p. 1211.
88 Raja Man Singh, the son of Raja Bhagwan Das, was promoted to that standing too by marriage alliance. Bhagwan Das's sister was married to Emperor Akbar.
89 A good discussion of this family exists in Hussain, Afzal, Nobility under Akbar and Jahangir (Delhi, 1999), Chapter 2Google Scholar.
90 Akbarnamah, Vol. 2, p. 363; The Akbarnama of Abu'l Fazl, Vol. 2, pp. 528–529; Ahmad, Khwajah Nizamuddin, The Tabaqat-i Akbari, (trans.) Brajendranath De, 3 vols (Calcutta, 1936), see Vol. 2, pp. 364–365Google Scholar. The visit of the emperor to an officer's mansions while travelling in the region of their postings was a matter of extraordinary favour. For a pictorial depiction of Emperor Akbar being entertained by Aziz Kukeh at Dipalpur, see ‘Akbar and Azim Khan at Dipalpur’, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, MS. fol. IS.2/94-1896, a folio from the Akbarnama. Emperor Akbar is shown seated on a throne inside a tent.
91 Akbarnamah, Vol. 3, p. 749; The Akbarnama of Abu'l Fazl, Vol. 3, p. 1120.
92 See Rogers, Alexander and Beveridge, Henry (trans), Tuzuk-i Jahangiri (Calcutta, 1909), p. 80Google Scholar.
93 He probably did it according to Turco-Mongol norms; though he tried to ensure, says Abu'l Fazl, that, ‘none should share except Jiji's children, but his faithful servants followed suit’. See Akbarnamah, Vol. 3, p. 771; The Akbarnama of Abu'l Fazl, Vol. 3, p. 1153. The outpouring of grief also suggests that these women were known and loved by others beyond the harem walls.
94 Emperor Akbar insisted on performing many funerary rituals for her in person. See Akbarnamah, Vol. 3, p. 771; The Akbarnama of Abu'l Fazl, Vol. 3, p. 1153. Jiji Anakeh is wrongly recorded as Bica-jio (Pija-jan) in Akbarnama. Pija was the wife of Khwajah Maqsud of Herat and the mother of Saif Khan and Zain Khan Kukeh. On the death of Akbar's mother, see Akbarnamah, Vol. 3, pp. 930–931; The Akbarnama of Abu'l Fazl, Vol. 3, p. 1245.
95 Abu'l Fazl describes the event by a miracle that Akbar performed when he was about eight months old: see Akbarnamah, Vol. 1, pp. 186–187; The History of Akbar, Vol. I, pp. 567–571.
96 See Akbarnamah, Vol. 2, pp. 174–176; The Akbarnama of Abu'l Fazl, Vol. 2, pp. 269–273; Abdal Qadir Badauni, Muntakhab-ut-Tawarikh, (eds) W. N. Lees and Ahmad Ali, 3 vols (Calcutta, 1865), see Vol. 2, pp. 43–51. ‘Emperor ordered his servants (Farhat Khan and Sangram Hawasnak) to “tie the madman [Adham Kham] up” and throw him off the terrace. Surviving the first fall, the gravely injured Adham Kham was dragged up the stairs and again thrown down, head first, whereupon he died’: Akbarnamah, Vol. 2, p. 175; The History of Akbar, Vol. 3, p. 541. Comprehensively summarised and discussed by Lal, Domesticity and Power, pp. 196–200; also see Welch, ‘The emperor's grief’, pp. 256–257. For the portrayal of the death of Adham Kham, see ‘Akbar Orders the Punishment of his Foster Brother’, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, MS. fol. IS. 2/1896, Acc. no. 29/117, folio from the Akbarnamah.
97 Akbarnamah, Vol. 2, p. 177; The History of Akbar, Vol. 3, p. 547.
98 An excellent discussion on Atakeh Khan and Adham Khan's tombs can be found in Welch, ‘The emperor's grief’, pp. 255–274. This is how Welch puts it: ‘built at the same time, the tombs are dramatically different in form, location, decoration, and function. To place the tomb of Atakeh Khan at the auspicious site [in contrast to Adham Khan] was a signal honour. Adham Khan was not a martyr, and his monumental tomb is therefore deprived of pious context’ (p. 272).
99 Akbarnamah, Vol. 1, p. 222; The Akbarnama of Abu'l Fazl, Vol. 1, p. 448. Pija-Jan's other son, Saif Khan, died during the conquest of Gujarat: see The Akbarnama of Abu'l Fazl, Vol. 1, p. 131, note 4.
100 See, also, for his biography, Dhakhirat al-Khawanin, Vol. 1, p. 123; Rahim (ed.), Maasir-ul Umara, Vol. 2, pp. 362–370.
101 Three formal and two informal visits are recorded in Akbarnamah: September/October 1583 at Etawah (Vol. 3, p. 415/617) and December 1585 near Attock-Banaras, Panjab (Vol. 3, p. 476/717, informal); April 1592 in Panjab (Vol. 3, p. 613/937); September/October 1593 at Lahore (Vol. 3, p. 644/991, informal); January 1595 in Panjab (Vol. 3, p. 698/1044). (The pagination after the slash refers to the Beveridge's English translation.)
102 Akbarnamah, Vol. 3, p. 799; The Akbarnama of Abu'l Fazl, Vol. 3, p. 1197.
103 Akbarnamah, Vol. 3, p. 819; The Akbarnama of Abu'l Fazl, Vol. 3, p. 1229.
104 Akbarnamah, Vol. 3, pp. 192, 579, 656; The Akbarnama of Abu'l Fazl, Vol. 3, pp. 272, 878, 1006; also see Vol. 1, p. 131, note 3.
105 Some functions of the sadr-i anas are enumerated in the Inyat Khan's Shahjahannama, (ed. W. E. Begley and trans. Z. A. Desai) (Delhi, 1990), p. 572.
106 In Emperor Humayun's reign, the post of sadr-i anas was first held by Maham Begam, who was Babur's wife. After her death, Khanazada Begam (Padishah Begam), Babur's sister, occupied the position. In the early part of Akbar's reign, Humayun's nurse Bibi Fatima held the post of sadr-i anas in addition to being chief urdubegi (armed women retainer) in the zanana. During Jahangir's later reign, Nur Jahan's nurse Dai Dilaram was sadr-i anas.
107 See Jahangirnama, p. 44. Interestingly, the walls of the harem did not prevent these women from endowing religious foundations and undertaking other acts of charity―considered appropriate for persons of high rank.
108 Akbarnamah, Vol. 3, p. 656; The Akbarnama of Abu'l Fazl, Vol. 3, p. 1006.
109 For more details of this family, see Hussain, Nobility under Akbar and Jahangir, Chapter 6.
110 Tuzuk-i Jahangiri, p. 115; for his biography, see Rahim (ed.), Maasir-ul Umara, Vol. 3, pp. 66–68.
111 Tuzuk-i Jahangiri, pp. 84–85.
112 For more details, see Latif, Syed Muhammad, Lahore: Its History, Architectural Remains and Antiquities (Lahore, 1892), p. 163Google Scholar.
113 For Mir Malik Husain's biography, see Rahim (ed.), Maasir-ul Umara, Vol. 1, pp. 798–813.
114 I draw here on the inscription beneath his portrait in ‘Khan Jahan Bahadur Zafar Jang Kukeltash and his Father Mir Abu'l-Ma‘ali by Hunhar, Mughal, circa 1675–80’, http:// www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2014/art-imperial-india-l14502 (last accessed 15 March 2020).
115 The scene is explicitly described in Khan, Maasir-i Alamgiri, p. 237.
116 Rahim (ed.), Maasir-ul Umara, Vol. 1, p. 798.