Zeb-un-Nissa

Zeb-un-Nissa was the talented daughter of Aurangzeb. She was born in 1638. Her mother was Dilras Banu a Persian beauty. She was a great poet and wrote under the pen name of ,Makhfi’. She had a gargen at Lahore. She had great love for Lahore. Addressing the waterfall in the Shalimar Garden she sang:  

“O waterfall why are you lamenting,

            And what grief wrinkles your face?

            What was your pain, that all through the night

            You were striking your head on the rocks and crying?’

Some of her poems have been rendered into English and published in the “Wisdom of the East” series. In the introduction the editors carry a tale that the princess had a liaison with a Mughal noble Aqil. It is alleged that Aurangzeb surprised the lovers and Aqil Khan hid himself in a caulden of water. The water was heated under the orders of the emperor, and Aqil Khan was roasted alive. The story is a pure fiction. Aqil Khan was alive even after the death of Aurangzeb and he died a natural death.

  The editors also tell that Zeb-un-Nissa died in 1689 at Lahore and was buried at Nawankot, Lahore. Jadu Nath Sarkar has shown that Zeb-un-Nissa died at Delhi on 26th May 1702 and was buried in the garden of ‘Thirty Thousand Trees’ outside the Kabuli gate. When the railway line was laid out at Delhi her tomb was demolished, and the cofflin and the inscribed tombstone were shifted to Akbar’s mausoleum at Sikandara, Agra.