1 Calmard, Jean, “Safavid-Persia in Indo-Persian Sources and in Timurid-Mughal Perception,” The Making of Indo-Persian Culture: Indian and French Studies, ed. by Alam, Muzaffar, Françoise ‘Nalini’ Delvoye and Gaborieau, Marc (New Delhi, 2000), 354Google Scholar; Juan R. I. Cole writes, “Among the Mughal elite the Iranis came to be the wealthiest faction, with the highest salaries, below only the Chaghatai ruling family of Timurids itself. They knew and took pride in the way Shah Tahmasp had provided Humayun, the second Mughal ruler, with the arms and material to make a second assault on India, thus in effect bearing responsibility for the establishment of the Mughal Empire as an ongoing concern as opposed to Babur's mere adventure. Given this debt, Mughal India would always be in some sense subsidiary to Iran, from whence much of Indian court culture, language, and arts would also derive,” Cole, Juan R. I., “The Imagined Embrace: Gender, Identity, and Iranian Ethnicity in Jahangiri Painting,” Safavid Iran and Her Neighbors, ed. by Mazzaoui, Michel (Salt Lake City, 2003), 50–51.Google Scholar

2 The details of ‘Urfī's life have been gathered together from various biographical dictionaries and chronicles. See Ahmad Gulchīn-Ma‘ānī, Kārvān-i Hind (Mashhad, 1990), 872–884Google Scholar; also Mohamad Walī-ul-Haqq Ansārī's introduction, Dīvān-i ‘Urfī Shīrāzī (Patna, 2000), 60–72.Google Scholar The latter's Urdu work is a more detailed study of the poet's life and poetry, ‘Urfī Shīrāzī (Lucknow, 1976).Google Scholar

3 ‘Abd al-Qādir Badā’ūnī, Muntakhab al-tavārīkh, ed. by Ahmad ‘Alī, Mawlavī and Subhānī, Tawfīq (Tehran, 2000–01), 3: 195.Google Scholar The English translation is by Sir Wolseley Haig (Calcutta, 1925), 3: 392–393.

4 Dāghistānī, Vāla, Tazkira-yi riyāz al-shu‘arā, ed. by Nājī, Muhsin Nasrābādī (Tehran, 2005), 3: 1438.Google Scholar

5 The various sources are mentioned and discussed in Ansārī, Dīvān-i ‘Urfī Shīrāzī, 80–81, n. 47. According to Ansari this story first surfaces in the unpublished chronicle by ‘Abd al-Rahmān Shahnavāz Khān, Mir’āt-i āftābnumā, but this work was completed in 1803–04, over half a century after Vāla's tazkira. See Ansārī, ‘Urfī Shīrāzī, 95–96. Regarding ‘Urfī's death and his age at the time, see 67–68.

6 For a discussion of the topic of same-sex love in Persian literature, chiefly but not exclusively found in the ghazal poetic form, see Shamīsā, Sīrūs, Shāhid-bāzī dar adabīyat-i fārsī (Tehran, 2002), 198–200Google Scholar, 227–229; also Kidwai, Saleem, “Introduction: Medieval Materials in the Perso-Urdu Tradition,” Same-Sex Love in India, ed. by Vanita, Ruth and Kidwai, Saleem (New York, 2001), 107–125.Google Scholar For one of the few exceptions of adult male love/sexual relationships in Persian literature, see Kugle, Scott, “Sultan Mahmud's Makeover: Colonial Homophobia and the Persian-Urdu Literary Tradition,” Queering India: Same-Sex Love and Eroticism in Indian Culture and Society, ed. by Vanita, Ruth (New York, 2002), 30–46Google Scholar, which discusses literary aspects of the relationship of the Ghaznavid ruler and the slave-general Ayāz.

7 Cole, “The Imagined Embrace,” 59. This essay is an innovative interpretation of the famous Mughal miniatures depicting Jahāngīr and the Safavid Shāh ‘Abbās I (r. 1587–1629), as not just a display of political might, but also a symbolic sexual dominance of the Mughal ruler over his rival.

8 Gulchīn-Ma‘ānī, Kārvān-i Hind, 873.

9 For a discussion of the nasīb and the roles of the poet/lover and ruler/beloved, see Meisami, Julie S., Medieval Persian Court Poetry (Princeton, 1987), 66–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 Andrews, Walter G. and Kalpakli, Mehmet, The Age of Beloveds: Love and the Beloved in Early-Modern in Ottoman and European Culture and Society (Durham, NC, 2005), 312.Google Scholar

11 Shiblī Nu‘mānī, Shi‘r al-‘ajam (Azamgarh, 1957–72), 3: 71. Shiblī's reading of classical Persian literature is remarkably in contrast to that of other Indian scholars of the time such as Āzād and Hālī who rejected the Persianate element as being “effete, slothful, and corrupt.” See Kugle, “Sultan Mahmud's Makeover,” 38–39. Ansārī criticizes Shiblī's view on this too but based on the dubious nature of the sources it is based on. See Ansārī, ‘Urfi Shīrāzī, 97.

12 ‘Urfī, Kullīyāt-i ‘Urfī Shīrāzī, ed. by Vajdī, Javāhirī (Tehran, 1990), 98.Google Scholar

13 Rypka, Jan, History of Iranian Literature (Dordrecht, 1969), 299.Google Scholar

14 The tomb of Anārkalī in Lahore is described thus: “Anarkali (the pomegranate blossom), by which name the Civil Station is called, was the title given to Nadira Begum, or Sharf-un-Nisa, one of the favourites of the harem of the Emperor Akbar. One day, while the Emperor was seated in an apartment lined with looking glasses, with the youthful Anarkali attending him, he saw from her reflection in the mirror that she returned Prince Salem [sic] (afterwards Jahangir) a smile. Suspecting her of a criminal intrigue with his son, the Emperor ordered her to be buried alive,” Muhammad Latif, Syad, Lahore: Its History, Architectural Remains and Antiquities, with an Account of its Modern Institutions, Inhabitants, their Trade, Customs, etc. (Lahore, 1892), 186.Google Scholar Recorded on the tomb are two Persian inscriptions: a Persian verse by Anārkalī's “royal paramour” Jahāngīr, tā qiyāmat shukr gūyam kirdagār-i khvīsh rā/āh gar man bāz bīnam rū-yi yār-i khvīsh rā (Ah! could I behold the face of my beloved once more, I would give thanks unto my God until the day of resurrection), and Majnūn Salīm-i Akbar (The profoundly enamored Salim, son of Akbar), 187. See also Désoulières, Alain, “Religious Culture and Folklore in the Urdu Historical Drama Anarkali Revisited by Indian Cinema,” Indian Literature and Popular Cinema: Recasting Classics, ed. by Pauwels, Heidi R. M. (London, 2007), 123–129.Google Scholar

15 Juan Cole discusses the relations of Jahāngīr and Nūr Jahān in “The Imagined Embrace,” 52 and 54; and the masculinization of the empress in Mughal art, 55.

16 Szuppe, Maria, “The ‘Jewels of Wonder’: Learned Ladies and Princess Politicians in the Provinces of Early Safavid Iran, Women in the Medieval Islamic World: Power, Patronae, and Piety, ed. by Hambly, Gavin R. G. (New York, 1998), 327.Google Scholar See also Kathryn Babayan for a case of female friendship in the Safavid period, “‘In Spirit We Ate Each Other's Sorrow’: Female Companionship in Seventeenth-Century Safavi Iran,” Islamicate Sexualities: Translations across Temporal Geographies of Desire, ed. by Babayan, Kathryn and Najmabadi, Afsaneh (Cambridge, 2008), 239–274.Google Scholar Babayan's approach to the poem by a traveling widow is an enlightening one in the context of retrieving attitudes towards friendship and sexuality in this period, “In situating the ways in which gender and sexuality figure in the writing of the window's mourning, I encapsulate the social history of elite women in early modern Isfahan and reflect on the relations between social and cultural structures and historical processes,” 240.

17 For a survey of Mughal women and literature, see Mukherjee, Soma, Royal Mughal Ladies and Their Contributions (New Delhi, 2001), 163–192.Google Scholar See also “Appendix” in Ishaque, M., Four Eminent Poetesses of Iran, with a Brief Survey of Iranian and Indian Poetesses of Neo-Persian (Calcutta, 1950), 45–95.Google Scholar

18 There are several poems by Ashraf dedicated to the princess; the best known are two qasīdas in which he asks permission to go back to Iran, 91–100, the other poems are on 178–189, in Dīvān-i ash‘ār-i Ashraf Māzandarānī, ed. by Husayn Sayyidān, Muhammad (Tehran, 1994).Google Scholar

19 Dīvān-i Zīb al-Nisā (Makhfī), ed. by Siddīqiyān, Mahīndukht and Abū Tālib Mīr-‘Ābidīnī (Tehran, 2002), 10.Google Scholar The problem of the takhallus “Makhfī” as one shared by other poets is discussed on pp. 15–16 of the introduction. The fact that some of the poets with this takhallus were male has some implications for attempting to identify a feminine voice in the poems and reading them with a pre-determined agenda. The question of whether a takhallus can be masculine or feminine is an intriguing one but it has not been studied.

20 ‘Āqil Khān served under the Emperor Awrangzīb and also wrote a chronicle of the first five years of his reign, Vaqi‘āt-i ‘Ālamgīrī. An adherent of the Shattari Sufi order, he was a poet of note, authoring the Persian version of Jāyasī's romances Padmāvat and Manohar u Madhūmālatī, Hadi, Nabi, Dictionary of Indo-Persian Dictionary (New Delhi, 1995), 512–513Google Scholar; Storey, C. A., Persian Literature: A Bio-bibliographical Survey (London, 1970), 1: pt. 1, 584–585.Google Scholar

21 It is possible that the two had known each other, but the historical evidence for this is very slim, Sarkar, Jadunath, “Zeb-un-nissa's Love Affairs,” The Modern Review, 19, no. 1 (1916): 33–36.Google Scholar

22 Hasan, Hadi, Mughal Poetry: Its Cultural and Historical Value (Madras, 1952), 80Google Scholar; The Diwan of Zeb-un-Nissa: The First Fifty Ghazals Rendered from the Persian by Lal, Magan and Duncan Westbrook, Jessie (New York, 1913), 15.Google Scholar I have not found this line by Sa‘dī in modern editions of his works.

23 ‘Alī Akbar Mushīr-Salīmī, Zanān-i sukhanvar, az yik-hazār sāl-i pīsh tā imrūz kih bi-zabān-i pārsī sukhan gufta-and (Tehran, 1957), 2: 160.Google Scholar

24 This last verse response by the princess is also given in connection with the poet Nāsir ‘Alī (d. 1697), Diwan of Zeb-un-Nissa, by Lal and Westbrook, 11–12.

25 Diwan of Zeb-un-Nissa, by Lal and Westbrook, 15. I have not been able to find the original Persian text of this anecdote.

26 Diwan of Zeb-un-Nissa, by Lal and Westbrook, 15–17.

27 Mushīr-Salīmī, Zanān-i sukhanvar, 163.

28 Another version of this anecdote involves the guardian of a shrine, Mushīr-Salīmī, Zanān-i sukhanvar, 2: 160.

29 In this respect, see the introduction of Lal and Westbrook, Diwan of Zeb-un-Nissa, 20–23; also, the well researched but romanticized biography of the princess by Krieger Krynicki, Annie, Captive Princess Zebunissa, Daughter of Emperor Aurangzeb, translated from French by Hamid, Enjum (Karachi, 2005), 171–173Google Scholar, passim.

30 Dīvan-i Zīb al-Nisā, 10; Diwan of Zeb-un-Nissa, by Lal and Westbrook, 10. The authors of this book have translated several of the anecdotes into English without identifying the sources, which would chiefly have been Urdu biographical dictionaries of women poets authored in the nineteenth century. I have included most of the anecdotes here in order to show as broad a range as possible. My thanks to Prof. C. M. Naim who first narrated this anecdote to me.

31 Diwan of Zeb-un-Nissa, by Lal and Westbrook, 10–11. I have not been able to find the original Persian text of this anecdote.

32 Mushīr-Salīmī, Zanān-i sukhanvar, 2: 164; ‘Abd al-Bari ‘Āsi, Tazkirat al-khavātīn, ed. by Kesrī Dās, Bābū (Lucknow, 1930), 223.Google Scholar Mushīr-Salīmī also attributes this anecdote to Kalīm-i Kāshānī (d. 1650) who was poet-laureate to Shāh Jahān but with a slightly different second hemistich, gū’ī rasīda bar lab-i zīb al-nisā'yam. See Mushīr-Salīmī, Zanān-i sukhanvar, 2: 157–158. However, Kalīm was active when the princess was still a child.

33 Mushīr-Salīmī, Zanān-i sukhanvar, 2: 163.

34 ‘Āsi, Tazkirat al-khavātīn, 221.

35 Mushīr-Salīmī, Zanān-i sukhanvar, 2: 164; Lal and Westbrook, Diwan of Zeb-un-Nissa, 12.

36 Lal and Westbrook, Diwan of Zeb-un-Nissa, 18.

37 Samsām al-Dawla Shāhnavāz Khān, Ma’āsir al-umarā, ed. by Mirza Ashraf Ali, Maulvi (Calcutta, 1888–91), 2: 823Google Scholar; Ouseley, Sir Gore, Biographical Notices of Persian Poets, with critical and explanatory notes (London, 1846), 167–169.Google Scholar

38 François Bernier, Travels in the Mogul Empire, A.D. 1656–1608, trans. by Brock, Irving and Archibald Constable, ed. by Smith, V. A. (London, 1916), 12–13.Google Scholar

39 Bernier, Travels in the Mogul Empire, 12.

40 Mukhia, Harbans, The Mughals of India (Cambridge, MA, 2004), 143.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

41 Mukhia, The Mughals of India, 145.

42 Nu‘mānī, Shiblī, Khutūt-i Shiblī ba-nām-i muhtarmah Zahrā Begum sāhiba Faizī va ‘Atīya Begum sāhiba Faizī (Bhopal, 1930), 73, 79.Google Scholar Shiblī's attitude towards the conventions of the Persian poetic tradition are discussed in Sharma, Sunil, “Atiya Begum and the Mystery of the Beloved's Identity in Shibli Numani's Persian Ghazals,” Poetry's Voice, Society's Norms: Forms of Interaction Between Middle Eastern Writers and Their Societies, ed. by Pflitsch, Andreas and Winckler, Barbara (Wiesbaden, 2006), 110–112.Google Scholar Shiblī himself published an Urdu pamphlet on the princesses’ life entitled Savānih-i Zīb al-Nisā Begum (Aurangabad, 1934)Google Scholar in which he writes at the end that the numerous false stories made popular about Zībunnisā were embellished by Europeans, 13–14. Shiblī also narrates a risqué anecdote involving the princess and her tutor Ashraf but then dismisses it as false, 11.

43 Dīn, Muhammad, Hayāt-i Zebunnisā: jismen is mashhu’r shā‘ira kī zindagī ke mukammal hālāt darj hain (Lahore, 1900).Google Scholar I have not been able to locate a copy of Munshī Ahmad al-Dīn's work.

44 Rajeev Kinra, “Secretary-poets in Mughal India and the Ethos of Persian: The Case of Chandar Bhān Brahman” (Unpublished dissertation, University of Chicago, 2008), 375.