Women and the World: The Dynamic Infrastructure of Gender Segregation in the Mughal Empire

Abstract

This paper explores gender segregation in the Mughal Empire as an elaborate infrastructure and system coordinating spatial and temporal separation between men and women. In doing so, the paper seeks to go beyond a harem-focused approach to the study of women and gender segregation. Though it is well-known that Mughal women were not simply confined to the harem, the expansive and dynamic system of gender segregation, which extended to a variety of social spaces, living quarters, as also the royal court, gardens, shrines, mosques, markets, hunting grounds, has yet to be adequately theorized. This paper examines the movement of royal women in the city of Lahore across the seventeenth century to show the mobile nature of segregation, whose prime function was not to imprison, isolate or exclude royal women, but rather to elevate their status. In doing so, the paper examines royal women as agents of the court, whose movement in and influence upon the social, cultural, and economic world beyond shape court-society relations in meaningful ways.