We all know of Jahangir the Mughal emperor, as well as his 12th wife Nur Jehan, and also of her elder brother Asaf Khan, all three of whom are buried in Lahore’s Shahdara near one another. Strangely, very few are aware of a fourth royal person buried next to Nur Jehan.

That fourth person is Empress Nur Jehan’s daughter Mehr-un-Nisa Khanum, who lies buried next to her mother within the tomb. Her story is a delightful one and needs reminding. She was the spoilt child of the entire Mughal family, which invited her name as ‘Ladli’. Later in life she was virtually imprisoned in a ‘haveli’ inside the old walled city. She was known among the population as ‘Ladli Begum’. There is also reference in a book of the house being called ‘Ladli de Haveli’.

She was born in 1605, when Nur Jehan was married to Sher Afghan, her first husband. Many stories even then earlier abounded of Nur Jehan and Shah Jehan, then emperor to be, having a secret love affair. But Akbar the Mughal Emperor blocked this marriage and got Nur Jehan married to Sher Afghan.

After Sher Afghan was killed in 1607, the little Mehrun Nisa Khanum was merely two years old. But then Jahangir summoned them to Agra to remain far away from the rivalry that grew out of the numerous killings surrounding the family. Once in Agra, we see Nur Jehan being placed as the ‘lady-in-waiting’ to the emperor’s wife, the dowager Empress Ruqaiya Sultan Begum. In 1611 Nur Jehan married Jahangir. In that position Nur Jehan tried her best to marry her daughter to Jahangir’s eldest son Khusrau Mirza, but Khusrau declined to marry her. Instead, her marriage proposal was passed on to Khurram Mirza, who also refused the offer as he disliked the growing influence of Nur Jehan over Jahangir.

Finally, on Jahangir’s insistence, Mehrun Nisa Khanum, better known as Ladli Begum, was married to Shehryar Mirza, the half-brother of princes Khusrau and Khurram. So it was in 1921 that we see Ladli Begum marry Shehryar Mirza. But then, as fate would have it, in 1627 the emperor Jahangir died, and Nur Jehan using her clout got her son-in-law to ascend the Mughal throne. At that time, it seemed that Mehrun Nisa alias Ladli Begum would be the new empress of the Mughal Empire. But things turned out very differently.

Here we see the forces of Asaf Khan, the father of Mumtaz Mahal, who wanted his son-in-law Shah Jehan to be the next emperor, take up arms for the purpose. From Agra his forces moved towards Lahore, and just outside Lahore, a fierce battle took place in which Asaf Khan decimated, one account says ruthlessly, the forces of Shahryar Mirza.

Shah Jehan, using Asaf Khan, ascended the throne in January 1628, and got Dawar Mirza, his brother Garshasp, Shahryar Mirza, Tahmuras Mirza and Hoshang Mirza all put to death by execution by Asaf Khan. This situation saw Nur Jehan and her daughter Mehrun Nisa being imprisoned for life with an annual pension of Rupees two lakh. Ladli Begum’s husband was beheaded inside the Lahore Fort and buried in Lahore. Where exactly is his grave one cannot pinpoint.

Mehrun Nisa Khanum married at the age of 16 and at the age of 22 was widowed. She had one daughter Arzani Begum, who one source says was first looked after by Aurangzeb’s wife, who later married her to the emperor. Not much is available about Arzani Begum. In Lahore, Nur Jehan, Mehrun Nisa and Arzani lived a fairly simple life. One source claims they were shifted to a ‘haveli’ facing the Lahore Fort. That house was later acquired by an Afghan king and was till recently declared a heritage site.

Nur Jahan died in 1645 and was buried in a mausoleum built by her close to her husband Jahangir’s mausoleum, which she had built from the funds she received from Emperor Shah Jahan. A few years later Ladli Begum was also buried beside her mother in that same mausoleum. In her lifetime she made sure that she was buried there. There are three different versions as to exactly where Ladli Begum was buried, with one source claiming it to be Allahabad. But the flow of history certainly brings it down to Lahore and the place where she wished to be buried, that is next to her mother.

The story of Mehrun Nisa, alias Ladli Begum, is one of being born in a rich family, of reaching royalty, and for just three months being the Empress of Mughal India, only to be widowed and to being imprisoned, ending up leading a simple austere life in a haveli inside Lahore’s Old City.

For a long time, the people of the old walled city used to narrate the stories of Ladli Begum, mostly of how she one day wore beautiful clothes to visit the bazaar, only to the next day appear in old used clothes. We also hear of stories where even for a simple item from a local shop, she would, depending on the shopkeeper’s condition, give him seven gold coins, with the instruction that no change was needed.

Such stories gave rise to numerous rumours, one being that she refused to eat for days on end, only to then order a massive lavish meal. Her name lent itself to make people believe such stories. We see that her life story was picked up by the Bengali writer Narayan Sanyal who wrote an exceptional novel titled ‘Ladli Begum’ in 1986, which won a top Indian literary award. The character of Ladli Begum has been used by other writers too, all of whom dwell on the ups and downs of her life.

Published in Dawn, October 2nd, 2023