"My name is Zeb-un-Nissa - I am the glory of womankind" | Zeb-un-Nissa - Part-3

This post is about a daughter of Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb, who was a Sufi at heart. Sharing her journey with all of you. This was a 3-series article. This is the final Part-3 of the same. 

Links of previous Parts.
Part-1 > I will NOT lift my Veil
Part-2 > Supplications nor Gold nor Force can Win Me

Continuing from Part-2 ~~~

In the last part, we saw the story of Zeb-un-Nissa and her lover - Aqeel Khan. According to it, the lover died because of Zeb-un-Nissa's honor. Though, as per the available Mughal documents(called Akhbarat), Aqeel Khan "lived for long". But, this clause "lived for long" is a bit confusing. Aurangzeb went to Lahore with his family in 1662. But, Zeb-un-Nissa was put into prison in 1681-82. Now, as per that tradition, Aqeel Khan came to Delhi "later", where he met his end. Could it be possible that, he "lived for long"after 1662(till 1681-82?) and came to Delhi "later" around 1682.?. The tale is a bit confused. 

Two contradicting thoughts come to my mind :

1. It does not appears to be the nature of Zeb-un-Nissa that she will allow some one to die for her sake. We have seen in Part-1 post{Link} that, Aurangzeb had given her the freedom to choose a groom, and she even rejected the Prince of Persia, who came from Iran.!!

2. But, from the poems of Zeb-un-Nissa we get a feeling of the tragic loss of a beloved. This makes one think, if she really loved some one whom she lost.?

" LIFE passes by, a caravan of shadows,

Leaving no track or voice upon its way;

Only the torch of beauty, where it flashes,

Spreads in the world disaster and dismay. "

" WHERE is the kindred soul that will join me in singing, like David,

Psalms to be borne by the wind up to the threshold of heaven?

All too cold are our sighs; they flutter helplessly earthward

When they should rise like fire, like flame that ascends to the sky.

Day after day goes down into night, and the vision of union

Comes like a dream in the night, doomed to be broken by dawn.

Oh to be free from the weeks and days and their weary succession,

Free as the wind to pass into the courts of the Friend. "

Zeb-un-Nissa was deeply religious, but she was a Sufi, and did not share her father’s cold and narrow orthodoxy. One day she was walking in the garden, and, moved by the beauty of the world around her, exclaimed, “Four things are necessary to make me happy—wine and flowers and a running stream and the face of the beloved.” This was a couplet, which she was to write. Again and again she recited the couplet; suddenly she came upon Aurangzeb, on a marble platform under a tree close by, wrapt in meditation. She was seized with fear, thinking he might have heard her profane words; but, as if she had not noticed him, she went on chanting as before, but with the second line changed, “Four things are necessary for happiness—prayers and fasting and tears and repentance!”

She passed away on 26th May or 6th June 1702, after seven days’ illness. 
Her place of burial is a bit disputed.
There are 2 possibilities given. 

a. 
Some say that she was buried in her garden at Nawakot, near Lahore, according to the instructions she left. The tomb is desolate now, although once it was made of fine marbles, and had over its dome a pinnacle of gold; it was ruined in the troubled times of the dissolution of the Mughal Empire. The great gate still stands, large enough for an elephant with a howdah to enter, and within the enclosure is a tower with four minarets, roofed with turquoise and straw-yellow tiles. But the garden that was in its time very splendid, being held second only to that of the Shalimar of Shah Jahan, has dis­appeared; and the walls rise up now from the waving fields of grain. This may be the tomb of her old instructress Miyabai.

Chauburgi

It is said she laid this garden in Lahore, though some sources dispute this claim. This garden, in Lahore, was called the Chauburgi, or four-towered, can still be traced by portions of the walls and gates remaining. Three of the turrets over the archway still stand, ornamented with tiles in patterns of cypress-trees and growing flowers, and the gateways have inscriptions in Arabic and Persian. One of these inscriptions tells that she presented the garden to her old instructress Miyabai. But the issue is that, this tomb bears an inscription which mentions the date of commission as 1646, when Zeb was only 7-8 years old..!! It is possible she might have renovated this garden later, but not constructed it.

b.
This one is MORE certain, and i believe this point. Till her death she was imprisoned in the prison of Salimgarh Fort in Old Delhi. After her death, she was buried in the garden of Thirty Thousand Trees near Kabuli Gate in Old Delhi. She was later transferred to the Mausoleum of her ancestor Akbar in Sikandra, when the British authorities destroyed this place in Delhi to make way for a railway station.


Her Writings

Thirty-five years after her death, what could be found of her scattered writings were collected. It contained 421 ghazals and more variety of literary writings. 


Her writings share the characteristics of other Sufi poetry - "the worship of God under the form of the Beautiful Beloved, who is adorable but tyrannical, who reduces the lover to abject despair, but at last bestows on him a gleam of hope when he is at the point of death".

She writes >
"
The Beloved is the Hunter of the Soul, chasing it like a deer through the jungle of world:-

I have no peace, the quarry I, a Hunter chases me,

It is Thy memory;

I turn to flee, but fall; for over me he casts his snare,

Thy perfumed hair.

Who can escape Thy prison? no mortal heart is free

From dreams of Thee.

"

"

The lover is the madman, who for his love is scorned and mocked by the unsympathetic world. The personified Power of Evil, the Enemy, lurks at the devotee’s elbow, ready to distract him from the contemplation of God.

"

As a poet, she was evidently acquainted, not only with the theories of Sufism, but with the prac­tices of the fakirs as well. The assembly of the devout, as in the Dargah at Ajmer today: how they greet the morning with floods of tears and deep sighs, how they beat their hearts of stone till the sparks of divine love fly out from them. 

The hatchet to strike the flinty heart is the symbol of the Sufi poet: one sees it in the portraits of Hafiz and others(for example - Rumi, with the exception of Rumi, I know none other who gets into the realm of words and possesses it from within, but i do like Zeb's poetry now). There is also the scoffing at the orthodox who meet within the mosque, and the glorification of the more advanced soul to whom all the uni­verse is the temple of God, nay even God himself —“Where I make my prayer—at that place is the Kiblah.”

"

But along with the above, the poems of Zeb-un-Nissa, in addition to what they share with other Sufi poetry, have a special Indian flavour of their own. She inherited the Akbar tradition of the unification of religions, and knew not only Islam, but Hin­duism and Zoroastrianism also. Her special triumph consists in that she weaves together the religious traditions and harmonizes them with Sufi practices. 

"

I list the following as a proof, in what i mentioned above. 

Please try to read her admiration of different religions.

This is what "A Sufi" really writes like. See Below.

In some of her poems she hails the sun as the symbol of deity.

Con­stantly she speaks of the mosque and the temple together or antithetically - saying that God is equally in both, or too great to be worshiped in either. She writes:-

"
No Muslim I,

But an idolater,

I bow before the image of my Love,

And worship her:

No Brahman I,

My sacred thread

I cast away, for round my neck I wear

Her plaited hair instead.

"

Sometimes she even combines the Hindu and Muslim idea. :

"

In the mosque I seek my "idol-shrine".

On the Day of Judgment(Qayamat) we should have had much difficulty in proving that we were true believers, had we not brought with us "our beloved Kafir idol" as a witness.

"

The glorification or adoration of the pir, or spiritual teacher, is also shown in her poems. In her poems, he is the intermediary between God and man, and is sometimes symbolized as the Morning Breeze, bringing from the enclosed garden the fragrance to those, less privileged, who can only stand without the gate.

She has the immortality she perhaps would have desired. 
In one of her verses she says: - "I am the daughter of a King, but I have taken the path of renunciation, and this is my glory, as my name Zeb-un-Nissa, being interpreted, means that I am the glory of womankind."

How hard to read, O Soul,

The riddle of life here and life beyond !

As hard as in the pearl to pierce a hole

Without the needle-point of diamond.

Chide not that 'mongst the flowers

The bulbul doth ecstatically sing;

His passion, yea and his delight, are ours,

Along the garden paths meandering.

We, by our pain made brave.

Seek not despair nor hope ; neither outlast

Their little day. We take but what Fate gave.

Not as Zuleikha, brooding o'er the past.

Careless ones, in vain

The treasure of your life has passed away.

Heedless that nothing of your years remain,

You talk like children of another day.

How vain the tears you weep !

Your sorrow fruitless, your remorse too late ;

The threshold with your lashes wherefore sweep,

When, Makhfi, see, the shrine is desolate ?

--- Zeb-un-Nissa / Makhfi

To me, she appears a champion of "Ganga-Jamuni Tehzeeb" of Dilli-Awadh-Lucknow-Ayodhya-Banaras-Allahabad , as she blends Islam & Hinduism with flawless innocence in her writings - one whom i can call a Sufi at heart. {Sufism-Finding God through Love}

Her name was "Zeb-un-Nissa -  The Glory of Womankind" .

This article has been posted under the Miscellaneous topics section.