Anarkali
Finch reached Lahore in February 1611, 11 years after the supposed death of Anarkali, to sell indigo he had purchased at Bayana on behalf of the East India Company.
[7] ... is a faire monument for Don Sha his mother, one of the Akbar his wives, with whom it is said Sha Selim had to do ( her name was Immaeque Kelle, or Pomgranate kernell); upon notice of which the King [Akbar] caused her to be inclosed quicke within a wall in his moholl, where she died, and the King [Jahangir], in token of his love commands a sumptuous tomb to be built of stone in the midst of four square garden richly walled, with a gate and divers roomes over it.
The convexity of the tomb he hath willed to be wrought in workes of gold with a large faire jounter with roomes over—head... (sic) ~ William Finch.
[7][8] Edward Terry, who visited a few years after William Finch, wrote that Akbar had threatened to disinherit Jahangir for his relationship with Anarkali, the emperor's most-beloved wife, but on his death-bed he repealed the threat.
~ Majnun Salim Akbar According to Andrew Topsfield, in his book Paintings from Mughal India, (p. 171 n. 18) Robert Skelton has identified these verses as being from the 13th-century poet Saʿdī.
[13] According to art historian Ram Nath the Salim Anarkali love legend can not be entirely fabricated myth since nobody would have had the courage to inscribe his name in public as a Majnun (passionate lover) without his approval.
[3] Khalid says that the pomegranate garden is mentioned by Dara Shikoh, the grandson of Jahangir, in his work "Sakinat al-Auliya" as a location where the saint Mian Mir used to sit.
[15] According to Muhammed Baqir, the author of "Lahore Past and Present", Anarkali was originally just the name of the garden in which the tomb of Sahib-i-Jamal, one of the wife of Jahangir, was situated.
[3] According to Muhammed Baqir, the tomb of Anarkali belonged to a woman named Sahib-i Jamal, a wife of Salim, the mother of the prince's second son Sultan Parvez and a daughter of the noble Zain Khan Koka.
[17] According to Haroon Khalid, a chronicler named Noor Ahmad Chishti in his Tehqiqat–i–Chishti first published in 1849 notes Anarkali or Sharf-un-Nissa as Emperor Akbar's favorite concubine.
[3] The same had been mentioned by Finch ".. upon notice of which the King [Akabar] caused her to be inclosed quicke within a wall in his moholl, where shee dyed, .."[4] According to Lisa Balabanlilar, usually it is considered that Jahangir married at least 20 times.
[3] Basing his analysis on the above two accounts, Abraham Eraly, the author of The Last Spring: The Lives and Times of the Great Mughals, wrote there "seems to have been an oedipal conflict between Akbar and Salim".
[18] According to Subhash Parihar, the accounts of the British travellers, and consequently the presumption of Eraly, is unlikely because Prince Daniyal's mother died in 1596, which does not match the dates inscribed on the sarcophagus.
[19] Art historian Ram Nath gives credence to this theory saying for unknown reasons Nur Jahan's first marriage to Sher Afghan took place in 1599 when she was almost 22, quite late for a woman of that time[citation needed].
Nath points out that De Laet mentioned that a contemporary traveler Pelsaert said that Jahangir loved Nur Jahan even before her marriage to Sher Afghan but Akbar intervened otherwise.
Art historian R. Nath said Jahangir had no wife on record bearing the name or title Anarkali, to whom the emperor could have built a tomb and dedicated a couplet with a suffix Majnun.
It may be recalled that Mehrunissa (later Nurjahan Begum) was also married to Sher Afgan the same year and the young Prince was so dejected and disturbed on the failure of his two romances and annihilation of his tender feelings of love that he went as far as to defy Akbar.
[25][14] Reign: 3 November 1605 – 28 October 1627 Reign:1556 to 1605 Married to Salim on 18 June 1596 Anarkali has been the subject of a number of Indian, Bangladeshi and Pakistani books, plays and films.
[31] Schofield says in this case film producer seemingly twists the plot finding it difficult to reconcile an idealized national hero of modern times had been legendarily cruel enough to entomb a woman alive.
[30] In Pakistan, Anarkali was released in 1958 with Noor Jehan in the titular role, based on the Imtiaz Ali Taj play/script as adapted by Qamar Ajnalvi for Anwar Kamal Pasha's direction.
[33] In the 2013 Ekta Kapoor's television series Jodha Akbar, she was portrayed by Heena Parmar while Saniya Touqeer played young Anarkali.
