Genre Matters: What Tazkiras Can Say that Court Chronicles Cannot — Contrast tazkira “elasticity” with formal chronicles to explain how female power becomes narratable

Abstract

This paper ponders upon the Persian literary genre of the tazkira and its influence on the narrative potential of female power and authority within Mughal historiography. The study speculates that the genre itself dictates historical visibility by looking at the inflexible, patriarchal symmetry of court chronicles like the Akbarnama, Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri, and Padshahnama with the fluid, memory-driven structure of tazkiras. The chronicles praise divine kingship and marginalize women as political actors, on the contrary the tazkira’s hybrid structure assimilating anecdote, poetry, and moral contemplation establishes an archive where emotion, domesticity, and artistry are politicized. The paper illustrates how Nur Jahan's patronage, ritual intelligence, and aesthetic judgment manifest as forms of "soft sovereignty" through meticulous analyses of texts such as Shaikh Farid Bhakkari's Zakhirat-ul-Khawanin and Iqbālnāma-i-Jahāngīrī. Her writing about architecture and ceremonies turns beauty, kindness, and good taste into tools for ruling. The study concludes that the narrative elasticity of the tazkira allows for the feminine to be inscribed in history not as an exception, but as an epistemic presence. By broadening the definition of the political, tazkiras demonstrate that affect, intimacy, and memory are as essential to imperial power as conquest or edict.