In what is widely seen as a pioneering work, Ruby Lal explores Mughal domestic life and feminine actions vital to the Mughal Empire. Aligning with feminist interventions in Ottoman and Safavid histories, she remaps the traditional Orientalist pictures of the Mughal haram and reveals a complex society in which noble men and women negotiated their daily public-political affairs while on the road, and in inner chambers and outer courts.

RUBY LAL is an acclaimed historian of India and Professor of South Asian History at Emory University. Her recent biography, Empress: The Astonishing Reign of Nur Jahan (2018) was a Finalist in History for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and won the Georgia Author of the Year Award in Biography.

“Historians have . . . [been] in denial of the fact that gender played an important role in history as it does in life. Domesticity and Power breaches this denial by not just ‘visibilising’ royal women of Mughal India but showing how complex their relations were with men as well as between themselves” SALEEM KIDWAI

“After Lal’s persuasive exposé of the inextricable links between the male and female, the political and domestic . . . it should be impossible to write about Mughal politics without considering domestic factors and issues of gender”