The Begumi Dalan at Khwaja Mu‘in al-Din Chishti’s Dargah in Ajmer

Between 964/1556 and 987/1579, Emperor Akbar made 14 pilgrimages to the shrine (dargah) of Khwaja Mu‘in al-Din Chishti, at times travelling barefoot all the way from Agra to Ajmer, with the hope of being granted an heir. Upon the birth of Salim, later Emperor Jahangir, not only was a new political capital constructed around a Chishti site at Fatehpur, but Ajmer, situated on the western frontiers, also continued to receive imperial and sub-imperial attention in the form of architectural patronage aimed at developing it as a spiritual centre of the Mughal Empire. Across multiple generations, however, the tradition of constructing immediately around and extending upon the tomb chamber itself remained the prerogative of the emperors, with only one exception made for Shah Jahan’s daughter, Princess Jahan Ara, likely in the 1050s/1640s. Her act of matronage appears to have been inspired by the personal experience of undertaking a pilgrimage to the shrine in 1053/1643, which is described at length in the Munisu’l-arwah, a hagiography of the Khwaja that she subsequently authored. However, given the predominant focus of Mughal architectural historians on urban, imperial patronage of monumental citadels, mosques and tombs, Jahan Ara’s deliberately minimal yet critical intervention in the provincial dargah, with the introduction of what is only a portico, has received practically no academic attention. With parallel close readings and interpretations of Jahan Ara’s literary and architectural expressions, this article attempts to address this gap. It analyses the phenomenon of Jahan Ara Begum’s pilgrimage to and construction within the dargah as a counter-narrative to mainstream Mughal histories that have promoted the imagination of Mughal women as cloistered individuals devoid of agency. It also examines the making of a space that has sustained its gendering for nearly four centuries—as it continues even today to enable women pilgrims to claim sanctuary within a wider environment designed primarily for men—as a case study in the practice of feminism through religiosity and the demonstration of power through humility.