Published in 2018
320 pages
Ira Mukhoty is the author of Daughters of the Sun: Empresses, Queens and Begums of the Mughal Empire and Heroines: Powerful Indian Women in Myth and History. Living in one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, she developed an interest in the evolution of mythology and history, the erasure of women from these histories, and the continuing relevance this has on the status of women in India. She writes rigorously researched narrative histories that are accessible to the lay reader. She lives in Gurgaon with her husband and two daughters.
What is this book about?
In 1526 a Timurid warrior-scholar rides into Delhi to build an empire. With him ride his wives, his sisters, his daughters, his aunts and his distant female relatives. Unhindered by a relatively recent conversion to Islam, these women will help found a culture of such magnificence and beauty that it will become a by-word for opulence in the world. These Mughal women of Hindustan—unmarried daughters, eccentric sisters, fiery milk-mothers and beautiful wives, will contribute to the great syncretic culture of the Mughals by writing biographies, building monuments, engaging in diplomacy, and patronizing the arts. And even as the zenana changes from the earlier nomadic, tented spaces to the later more sequestered grandeur within the high stone walls of mighty qilas, the influence of the women remains visible and unquestioned. This book looks at the lives of these Mughal women, and the enigma of their disappearance, except as objects of curiosity, from our collective memory.
