Zeb-un-Nissa: her name means “the glory of womankind.”
There’s a reason why the historical record concerning Zeb-un-Nissa is contradictory and incomplete. Here’s what may be true about the woman:
Born in 1638, she was the eldest daughter of Aurungzebe, the last Moghul emperor wielding significant power in India. She was a direct descendant of Genghis Khan and Tamerlane (Timur Lenk), Mongol warriors who conquered most of Asia and Eastern Europe in the late 12th and early 13th centuries.
Persian was her mother tongue; she learned Arabic in four years. By the age of seven she was reciting the Koran by heart. Encouraged by her father, she studied mathematics, astronomy, and military strategy; she also began writing poetry at an early age.
As her father permitted, Zeb-un-Nissa gathered a circle of poets from India, Persia, and Kashmir around her and she gained fame as a poet. She excelled in a kind of literary contest called mushaira, answering another poet’s line with one of her own, using the same meter and rhyme.
Enjoying an unusual degree of freedom in the palace, Zeb-un-Nissa used her own fortune to support writers and scholars, often critiquing their work. She established a library and more than one scriptorium, employing expert calligraphers to copy manuscripts for her on paper of the finest quality.
As the empire’s leading lady, Zeb-un-Nissa took an active role in her father’s court. She advised the emperor on administrative appointments and served as his diplomatic representative. She frequently resolved disputes taking place between those belonging to the Sunni and Shiah sects of Islam.
Although she was a Sunni like her father, she did not share his orthodox beliefs and practices. In contrast, Zeb-un-Nissa identified herself with the mystical Sufi path of Islam. Versed in Islam and familiar with Hinduism, she asserted that God is gracious enough to be known through both religions and too great to be confined to either.
The woman had no luck in love. Her father poisoned one suitor, the son of a political rival. Another man, perhaps mistaking Zeb-un-Nissa for a servant, insulted her with a crude remark; she sent him packing. A third, meeting Zeb-un-Nissa in secret and surprised by the emperor’s unexpected visit, hid in a large vessel used for cooking. He perished when — without Zeb-un-Nissa’s objection — the emperor ordered servants to put the pot on the fire.
In 1681, Zeb-un-Nissa’s brother Akbar attempted to usurp their father’s position as emperor. Aurungzebe prevailed, Akbar fled to safety, and the emperor accused Zeb-un-Nissa of betrayal, based on her correspondence with her exiled brother. Although he reconciled with Akbar, the emperor imprisoned Zeb-un-Nissa in the fort at Salimgarh. He held her captive for the twenty years until her death in 1702.
Zeb-un-Nissa continued to write poetry through the years of her imprisonment. Following her death, her writings scattered. But by 1750, more than 400 of her poems had been collected and published in Persian. The Diwan of Zeb-un-Nissa presents fifty of these poems in English.
Because Zeb-un-Nissa was persona non grata at the emperor’s court, none of the record-keepers dared to chronicle her life. That’s why the historical record is so sketchy.
Yet the image remains: The Moghul Emperor imprisons his daughter in the fortress. The imperious mogul incarcerates the woman in the tower. Could there be a clearer image of patriarchal alienation from and subjugation of the feminine?
Zeb-un-Nissa’s God
The Diwan’s dedication reads “In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful.” The qualities of compassion and mercy inform Rahman and Rahim, two of the many Sufi names for God. Both words carry the sense of womb, the divine love that radiates from the center of being, the energy of creation: birth and re-birth.
Although Lal and Westbrook give “God” a masculine pronoun in most of the Diwan’s poems, they personify divine Love and Wisdom as womanly in two instances:
XII
I follow on where Wisdom’s feet have led,
And firmly hold,
The while this hard and thorny path I tread,
Her garment’s fold.
XLIX
… O breezes, free to stray,
Back to her garden find your way,
And greeting to my Love convey.
Westbrook’s introduction includes another poem of Zeb-un-Nissa’s with reference to the feminine divine:
No Muslim I,
But an idolater,
I bow before the image of my Love,
And worship her:
No Brahman I,
My sacred thread
I cast away, for round my neck I wear
Her plaited hair instead.
Dedicated to the Sufi path of devotion, Zeb-un-Nissa often addresses God as the Belovéd in her poems. She is the Lover who seeks union with Him. She plays the polarities of masculine and feminine, mosque and Hindu temple, sun and moon, long-billed songbird and rose to point to the consciousness that arises from and goes beyond the merging of dualities.
Zeb-un-Nissa’s sense of God is more complex than a simple sorting into “his” or “hers.” When God appears on the page in the English translation of her poems, we don’t know which word Zeb-un-Nissa has chosen to name the divine. If Zeb-un-Nissa has written Allah, she’s chosen a name that joins the sounds of yes and no, fullness and emptiness, into one word. Allah is the name that points to God as all-encompassing, a reality shimmering beyond our conceptions of “this” and “that.”
References
Disse, Dorothy. “Zeb-un-Nissa /Zebunnisa /Makhfi (1638-1702),”
Other Women’s Voices.
Douglas-Klotz, Neil. The Sufi Book of Life,
(New York: Penguin, 2005).
Krynicki, Annie Krieger. Captive Princess: Zebunissa, Daughter of Emperor Aurangzeb,
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).
Lal, Magan and Jessie Duncan Westbrook. The Diwan of Zeb-un-Nissa,
(New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, 1913).
