4 ideas
In 1613 the Portuguese seized the Rahimi, a large pilgrim and cargo ship trading between Surat and the Red Sea. It was owned by Jahangir's mother, Mariam-uz-Zamani. Jahangir answered with state reprisals against the Portuguese, including action against Daman and restrictions on Jesuit activity, which helped open the way for the English at court. The episode shows that a harem woman's private commercial venture could redirect imperial foreign policy.
The Mughals carried a Timurid-Mongol tradition in which elder royal women held recognised authority as mediators and custodians of dynastic legitimacy. Babur's grandmother Aisan Daulat Begum and his sister Khanzada Begum negotiated between rival princes and brokered reconciliations. Because they stood outside the contest for the throne, they could hold together a family whose succession was not settled by primogeniture.
Under Shah Jahan, Jahanara held the title of Padshah Begum, first lady of the empire, and with it charge of the imperial household. Her father also granted her large personal revenues, including the customs of Surat, given after she recovered from severe burns. With that income she commissioned public works such as Delhi's Chandni Chowk and caravanserais, acting as a patron in her own right.
Read the zenana as an administrative household rather than a pleasure enclosure. Physical invisibility becomes a marker of rank that coexisted with issuing orders, holding land grants, minting coin and running trade, as Nur Jahan did when coins and farmans were issued in her name. The lens shifts attention from where the women were physically to what documents, revenues and decisions passed through them.