Mughal Weddings

The wedding of a Mughal emperor or prince was treated, in the court chronicles, as a moment in which the entire state was the bridegroom. Abu’l Fazl records that Akbar’s son Jahangir, on his marriage to the Kachhwaha princess of Amber in 1586, was carried in procession through Agra beneath a canopy of gold cloth, with the emperor himself leading the bridegroom’s horse (Akbarnama, trans. Beveridge, vol. III, p. 638). The principal ceremonial vocabulary that descended into the modern South Asian wedding — the mangni (betrothal), the tilak (engagement mark), the sagai (engagement), the mehndi (henna), the baraat (procession), the nikah (marriage contract), the rukhsati (departure of the bride), and the walima (banquet) — is older than the dynasty, but the Mughals codified it, funded it, and made it the inheritance of the regional courts of Hyderabad, Lucknow, and Murshidabad. Ruby Lal’s Domesticity and Power in the Early Mughal World (2005) is the indispensable modern treatment; the older work of the Lucknow scholar Abdus Subhan is still useful for the regional courts of the eighteenth century.

The sequence

The imperial wedding unfolded over several days, in a sequence that was not strictly fixed but typically included the following. The mangni (betrothal) was a relatively private affair, the formal exchange of the fatiha (opening prayer) and the engagement gifts between the families; in the case of a royal marriage, the mangni was the political moment, when the terms of the alliance were set. The tilak and the sagai were a closely related pair of ceremonies in which the groom was marked with vermilion and the engagement was publicly announced. The mehndi was a women’s event: the bride’s hands and feet were painted with henna, the women of the household and the mehfil sang, and a mehndi artist of note might be hired for the occasion. Akbar is reported in the Ain-i-Akbari to have paid a mehndi artist the then-substantial sum of a thousand rupees for the mehndi of one of his sons’ brides.

The baraat was the groom’s procession to the bride’s house (or, in the imperial case, the bride was brought to the palace). The procession was led by the naqqara (drum corps) and the shehnai (a double-reed wind instrument characteristic of the Mughal court), and included the farrash (ushers), the mir shikar (master of the hunt) in his ceremonial role, the mir bakhshi (master of ceremonies), and the principal nobles in sar-o-pa (head-to-toe robes of honour). The artillery was fired; the palace was illuminated. The nikah was performed at the imperial mosque by the sadr-us-sudur (chief religious officer) or his deputy, the mahr (dower) was set, and the marriage contract was witnessed by the principal nobles. The rukhsati was the formal departure of the bride, and was treated as an emotionally charged moment in the sources. The walima was the post-wedding banquet, hosted by the groom’s family, and was the most public of the ceremonies.

The role of the household

The Mughal wedding was not principally an affair of the couple. The wali (the bride’s guardian, typically the father or senior male relative), the qazi of the family, the mir bakhshi of the imperial household in royal cases, and a long list of senior relatives had formal roles. The bride and groom were, in the documentation, almost invisible. This is consistent with the broader pattern of early modern South Asian courts, in which marriage was a transaction between households rather than between individuals, and it is the single most important point at which the imperial wedding differs from the modern Western expectation of a personal ceremony. The imperial bawarchi khana (kitchen) was also a formal actor, and the standard repertoire of dishes — the biryani, the korma, the kebab, the mithai — was produced in substantial quantities for the wedding banquet.

Music and entertainment

The Mughal wedding was a mehfil (musical gathering) on a grand scale. The principal mehfil musicians of the imperial court — including members of the Seni, Kachhwaha, Rababi, and Kalawant gharanas (lineages of musical training) — were deployed at the wedding mehfil, and the qawwali devotional singing of the Sufi lodges was a parallel tradition. The tawaif (courtesan) tradition of the urban court culture of Delhi, Agra, Lucknow, and Lahore is more controversial: the tawaif performed at weddings, and the practice survived into the twentieth century, but it has been read very differently by modern historians and reformers.

The food

The wedding banquet was the single largest consumption event in the imperial calendar. The Ain-i-Akbari records that the wedding of Prince Salim (the future Jahangir) in 1586 required the slaughter of 100 cattle, 1,000 sheep, and a substantial number of fowl, and the preparation of rice in a quantity sufficient to feed several thousand guests over several days (trans. Blochmann, vol. I, pp. 67–68). The principal dishes were the biryani (then a relatively new court dish, of Persian–Central Asian origin), the korma (a Persian-derived braised meat), the kebab in its various regional forms, the mithai (sweets) of the imperial confectioners, and the sharbat (a sweetened, flower- or fruit-flavoured drink). The Hyderabadi biryani and the Lucknowi biryani of later centuries are direct descendants of this imperial tradition.

Clothing and gifts

The wedding costume of the bride and the groom was the single largest display of the textile and jewellery tradition of the period. The bride’s peshwaz (a long-skirted open-fronted gown), the lehenga and choli (the long full skirt and short fitted bodice of the later regional tradition), the odhni or dupatta (the long scarf draped over the head and shoulders), and the substantial personal ornaments of the imperial wardrobe (the sarpech headdress, the bazuband armlet, the haar necklace, the kamarband waist sash) were the standard. The groom’s jama (the long-sleeved full-skirted robe fitted at the waist), the pagri (turban), the patka (waist sash), and the sar-o-pa (head-to-foot dress of honour) of the principal male participants completed the ceremonial dress.

The gifts were also substantial. The mahr (dower) was a formal obligation of the marriage contract, and in the imperial case could be substantial. The jahez (trousseau) of the bride was a major transfer of household goods, textiles, and jewellery from the bride’s family to the new household. The nazar (gift-offering) of the senior nobles to the emperor or to the groom was a formal recognition of status and was reciprocated with the khil’at (robe of honour). The wedding of Prince Khurram (the future Shah Jahan) to Arjumand Banu Begum (Mumtaz Mahal) in 1612 was reported in the sources to have involved a jahez of several thousand pieces of jewellery and dozens of sets of textile (Lal, Domesticity and Power, pp. 78–82).

The famous royal weddings

The four most-discussed royal weddings of the period, in chronological order:

Akbar to Mariam-uz-Zamani (1562). The marriage of the Kachhwaha princess of Amber to Akbar is treated in detail above, on the Akbar page. It is the first of the political marriages of the dynasty and the template for the rest.
Jahangir to Nur Jahan (1611). The marriage of the emperor to Mihr-un-Nisa, the widow of the Afghan governor Sher Afghan, gave Nur Jahan the position of the most powerful woman of the early seventeenth century. The marriage is examined in Ruby Lal, Empress (2018), and on the Jahangir page.
Shah Jahan to Mumtaz Mahal (1612). The marriage of Prince Khurram to Arjumand Banu Begum, the niece of Nur Jahan, is the most famous of the imperial weddings in retrospect, on account of the construction of the Taj Mahal after Mumtaz’s death in 1631.
Aurangzeb to Dilras Banu Begum (1637). The marriage of the future emperor to the Safavid princess of Iran is examined on the Aurangzeb page. The marriage gave Aurangzeb his principal consort, Rabia-ud-Daurani (Bibi Aurangzeb), but the political importance of the match was limited.

The legacy in modern South Asia

The Mughal wedding tradition survived the dynasty itself. The Mughlai cuisine of contemporary Delhi, Lucknow, and Hyderabad is the direct culinary descendant of the imperial wedding banquet, and the biryani, the kebab, the korma, the gulab jamun, the jalebi, and the sheer khurma of the modern South Asian wedding table are recognisably the dishes of the imperial bawarchi khana. The Mughal wedding costume is the ancestor of the modern bridal lehenga, the jama of the groom, the mughal cut of the bride’s jewellery, and the mehndi ceremony of the bride’s hands. The modern custom of the walima banquet, the nikah contract, the rukhsati of the bride, and the elaborate mehndi night is, in its broad outlines, the imperial Mughal wedding translated into the contemporary idiom of the urban South Asian middle class.

For the broader context of Mughal cultural life, see the Mughal culture overview and the Mughal festivals and entertainment page. The food tradition of the wedding banquet is treated on the Mughal cuisine and Mughal sweets pages. The clothing tradition is treated on the Mughal costumes and personal adornment and Mughal jewelry pages. The principal royal weddings of the period are examined in the entries on Akbar, Jahangir, and Shah Jahan.

Sources

Ruby Lal, Domesticity and Power in the Early Mughal World (Cambridge University Press, 2005), chs. 1–2.
Ruby Lal, Empress: The Astonishing Reign of Nur Jahan (W. W. Norton, 2018), ch. 1.
Abu’l Fazl, Ain-i-Akbari, trans. H. Blochmann, vol. I (1873; reprint Low Price Publications, 1989), on the imperial kitchen and the wedding of Prince Salim.
Abu’l Fazl, Akbarnama, trans. Henry Beveridge, 3 vols. (1907–39; reprint), vol. III, on the wedding of Jahangir.
K.T. Achaya, A Historical Dictionary of Indian Food (Oxford University Press, 1998), on the dishes of the wedding banquet.
Ellison Banks Findly, Nur Jahan: Empress of Mughal India (Oxford University Press, 1993), ch. 1.