Roshanara Begum

Roshanara Begum (3 September 1617 – 11 September 1671) was a Mughal princess and poet, the third daughter of Emperor Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal ¹. In the war of succession she saved her brother Aurangzeb — and made herself, for a decade, the most powerful woman of the empire as Padshah Begum, before falling from favour into ordered seclusion ^{1 2}. The Urdu article gives her birth in Hijri form, 2 Ramadan 1026 AH, the same date the English article gives as 3 September 1617 ². Delhi remembers her in the Roshanara Bagh, the garden she designed and commissioned, where she is buried ¹.

As the succession crisis formed, Shah Jahan summoned Aurangzeb to Delhi — in truth, the English article relates, to capture and kill him ¹. Roshanara learned of the design and sent a messenger warning her brother to stay away ^{1 2}. The Urdu article likewise stresses that she warned Aurangzeb of every court intrigue against him, and that historians credit her vigilance with much of his success ². She pressed, too, for Dara Shikoh's execution, fearing his return to power ¹.

In 1658 Aurangzeb installed her as Padshah Begum in place of her elder sister and rival Jahanara ¹. She could issue nishans, held mansabdar rank, spoke in council from behind her screen, and in Aurangzeb's severe illness of 1662 she controlled access to him entirely, even taking his signet ring ¹. She patronised the building of a congregational mosque ¹. The Urdu article presents the other face of the record — a devout woman of sound belief who spent most of her wealth on the poor and the needy and never married ².

Complaints accumulated of wealth gathered by corrupt means and powers misused, and the libertine reputation of her household offended her strictly observant brother ¹. On his return from the Deccan in 1667/8 Aurangzeb stripped her of her powers, banished her from court and ordered her to live a pious life in seclusion in her garden palace outside the walled city ¹. There she lived until her death on 11 September 1671, and Aurangzeb had her interred in the Roshanara Bagh ^{1 3}.