ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the manner in which the initiation and ascension of the Mughal princess Jahān Ārā Begam (1023-92/1614-81) within the Sufi Qādiriyya order emboldened the reconfi guration of her spirituality and imperial status in the context of eleventh/seventeenth-century Muslim India. Sufi sm enjoined Jahān Ārā to artfully negotiate and modify both prevailing social and religious gender constructions as well as modes of empowerment and representation. Through her Sufi treatises and sacred commissions, Jahān Ārā’s acts of patronage and visible piety index the growth of her authority and reify her offi cial and spiritual personas. This study relies on two Sufi treatises authored by her in Persian: the Muʾnis al-arvāḥ1 (“Confi dant of Spirits”) (1049/1639) and the Risāla-i ṣāḥibiyya2 (“Message of the Madame”) (1050/1640); the latter includes thirty-nine pages of passionate narratives detailing her motivations to seek an alternative Islamic space and voice. The quest to satiate her spiritual longings through the Qādiriyya ultimately linked her to the Timurid legacy and reclaimed the Sufi -sovereign pattern of legitimacy. Within the context of her experience, and particularly in the Risāla-i ṣāḥibiyya, Jahān Ārā evokes Sufi ideology and its dialectical relationship with dominant Islamic discourses alongside the social and religious ambiguities and practices that have transpired between sharia and ṭarīqa modalities.
