She is frozen in time as a Bollywood romance, draped in gold, her eyes soft with longing for Akbar. But the woman history has long called ‘Jodha Bai’ was never Jodha Bai at all, and the real story of who she was is far more compelling than any film.
Her name was Harkha Bai.
Born a Rajput princess of Amber, she married Emperor Akbar in 1562 in a political alliance brokered by her father, Raja Bharmal. The name ‘Jodha’ in fact belongs to Jagat Gosain — a princess of Jodhpur who married Jahangir, Harkha Bai’s own son.
The confusion, compounded by Hindi films and long-popular historical misreadings, has buried Harkha Bai under someone else’s identity for centuries. In truth, she was the longest-serving Rajput empress of the Mughal Empire, holding that position for 43 years.
After Akbar’s death, when Salim crowned himself Jahangir, he doubled her royal stipend and gave her command of 12,000 cavalrymen — a rank held by only four senior members of his court, and she was the only woman among them. (In the Mughal court, this was a mark of extraordinary authority. It gave her rank, income, status and a place among the empire’s most powerful figures.)
She could issue firmans (imperial orders), owned properties, ran trade operations, and had the right to a salary for overseeing the harem, which functioned as a miniature government of its own.
As historian Ira Mukhoty writes in Daughters of the Sun, once Harkha Bai gained power, “the capable, intelligent, shrewd woman used it to her full capacity and for the benefit of the empire.”
The empress who sailed the seas
Among the powerful women of the Mughal era, Harkha Bai stood apart as the most formidable maritime trader. At a time when half of all documented Mughal noble traders were women, she was the wealthiest and most adventurous among them. Her most prized possession was the Rahimi, the largest Indian ship sailing the seas at the time.
For more than a century, the Portuguese had controlled much of India’s western sea trade. But their hold was badly shaken by one decision: burning the ship of a woman whose power they had failed to understand. Photograph: (ASHA)
Built under her patronage, it carried up to 1,500 tonnes of goods and could accommodate as many passengers. Every year, it transported 600 to 700 pilgrims to Mecca, sailing from Surat through the Red Sea to the port of Mocha.
Think about what the Rahimi represented: a Rajput-born Hindu empress with a title meaning ‘Mary of the Age’, ferrying Muslim pilgrims to their holiest site through Christian-patrolled waters.
Few details capture the layered complexity of Mughal India as clearly as this. But this same journey also brought the Rahimi into waters controlled by the Portuguese.
The cartaz that crossed a line
The Portuguese had controlled India’s western sea lanes since Vasco da Gama’s arrival in 1498. By the time the Rahimi was seized, they had held that power for more than 115 years.
For any ship trying to sail through the Arabian Sea, this meant one thing: it needed Portuguese permission.
Every merchant vessel had to carry a cartaz, a sea pass issued by the Portuguese. Without it, a ship could be stopped, seized or attacked. The pass also carried the image of the Christian Virgin Mary, a detail that made the system even more uncomfortable for the Mughals.
For Harkha Bai, the insult was sharper. Her own royal title, Mariam-uz-Zamani, invoked Mary. Yet her ship had to carry a Portuguese pass bearing the same religious figure simply to move safely through the sea.
Still, in the interest of peace and trade, the Rahimi carried the cartaz.
Then, on 13 September 1613, the Portuguese governor D Jerónimo de Azevedo crossed a line he could not undo. Even though the Rahimi had a valid pass, he seized the ship near Surat, with 700 Hajj pilgrims on board, and had it taken to Goa.
This was no ordinary ship. It carried pilgrims, valuable cargo and the authority of one of the most powerful women in the Mughal Empire.
The cargo, worth approximately 100,000 pounds sterling, roughly half a billion rupees today, was looted. The ship was later set ablaze. Azevedo reportedly celebrated it as “worthy prey that was brought and for giving the Mughals a cause of sorrow.”
But he had badly misjudged both the empress and her son.
When Surat shut its doors
The Mughal court’s response was swift and unprecedented. Jahangir, whose autobiography the Jahangirnama mentions Europeans almost exclusively to note their defeats, acted with what historian E B Findly called the most severe response the Mughal government ever mounted against an act of piracy.
Harkha Bai rarely appears in films. Her name was buried under titles and later replaced in popular memory by another name: Jodha Bai Photograph: (Instagram/@shivgemsandjewels.mughalart)
He halted all shipping through Surat, paralysing what was among the most lucrative trading ports in the world. The Jesuit church in Agra, built during Akbar’s reign, was sealed.
Allowances to Portuguese priests across the empire were suspended. His agent Muqarrab Khan was dispatched to lay siege to the Portuguese town of Daman.
The Portuguese, who had controlled India’s western sea routes since 1498, scrambled. They offered Rs 3 lakh in compensation, but on the condition that the Mughals expel the English from Agra.
Jahangir refused.
The Rahimi incident changed the way Jahangir looked at the Portuguese.
The English East India Company had already defeated a Portuguese armada near Surat in 1612. After the attack on Harkha Bai’s ship, Jahangir began leaning more towards the English. Within a few years, they replaced the Portuguese as the strongest foreign presence at the Mughal court.
That shift would change India’s history in ways no one could fully see then.
The Portuguese withdrew to Goa, where they remained until India reclaimed it in 1961. Azevedo, the governor who had ordered the seizure of the Rahimi, was eventually called back to Lisbon and put on trial.
For more than a century, the Portuguese had controlled much of India’s western sea trade. But their hold was badly shaken by one decision: burning the ship of a woman whose power they had failed to understand.
Harkha Bai rarely appears in films. Her name was buried under titles and later replaced in popular memory by another name.
But the Rahimi and Jahangir’s response to its burning helped weaken Portuguese control over Mughal sea trade and opened the door for a new European power.
The women who came after her, including Nur Jahan and Jahanara Begum, carried forward her legacy of maritime trade. But Harkha Bai remains among the earliest and most powerful Mughal women to show how far a royal woman’s authority could travel, from the court to the sea.
