Zeb-un-Nissa

Zeb-un-Nissa (15 February 1638 – 26 May 1702) was a Mughal princess, the eldest child of Emperor Aurangzeb and his chief consort Dilras Banu Begum ^{1 2}. She was a poet who wrote under the pen name Makhfi, "the Hidden One", and her writings were collected after her death as the Diwan-i-Makhfi ¹. The sources divide on her death year — the articles and Wikidata give 1702, while other sources noted in the English article give 1701 — and the record preserves both ^{1 3}.

Aurangzeb charged Hafiza Mariam with her education, and she memorised the Quran in three years, becoming a hafiza at the age of seven, an occasion her father marked with a feast, a public holiday and gifts of gold ^{1 4}. She then studied philosophy, mathematics, astronomy and literature with the Persian poet Ashraf Mazandarani, and became a mistress of Persian, Arabic and Urdu with a reputation in calligraphy ^{1 4}. Her library surpassed every other private collection of her time, and she employed scholars on liberal salaries to write works at her bidding and to copy manuscripts for her ¹. Under her patronage the scholar Safi-ud-din Ardabili translated a great Arabic commentary on the Quran into Persian and named it Zeb-ul-Tafasir after her ^{1 2}. She supported widows and orphans and each year sent pilgrims to Mecca and Medina at her own expense ¹.

Zeb-un-Nissa never married, though she was betrothed in childhood to her cousin Sulaiman Shikoh and had many suitors ¹. Her verse, in the Indian school of Persian poetry and under the influence of Hafez, is steeped in the Sufi language of divine love, and a later account links her fall to her Sufi sympathies ¹. That colouring is a matter of poetry and inclination; no source read attests an initiation, a discipleship or an order membership for her, and her faith is recorded accordingly ⁴. In 1681 her correspondence with her rebellious brother Muhammad Akbar was discovered, her wealth and pension were confiscated, and Aurangzeb imprisoned her in Salimgarh Fort at Delhi ¹. She remained a prisoner for twenty years and died there on 26 May 1702; in 1724 her scattered poems were gathered as the Diwan-i-Makhfi, four hundred and twenty-one ghazals and several ruba'is ^{1 2}.