The City as Archive: Women and Space in 16th – 18th Century Mughal India

[EN] A majority of historical perspectives on women and space in Mughal India are limited to the zenana (harem), a space oft represented as insular and quintessentially ‘feminine’. Coupled with the paucity of Mughal women’s voices in the archive, this stereotype has not only created a reductive narrative of their spatial experiences but has also pushed their architectural contributions to the margins. This paper briefly unpacks the conditions and limits of archival research in a context where colonial and patriarchal forces (amongst others) have made it difficult to weave a coherent narrative of their lives through conventional forms of archival evidence. It further frames the contemporary city of Lahore, Pakistan, as an ‘archive’, and explores it in a twofold manner: firstly, by identifying architectural traces that are associated with Mughal women’s patronage and are simultaneously marginalised within historical records, the built fabric and public consciousness; secondly, by rereading two such sites which reveal stories of women’s agency, mobility and inhabitation. Articulated as ‘corporeal presences’ of their patrons in the city, I argue that these sites harbour the capacity to tell the story otherwise. Ultimately, this paper suggests fresh ways of reading historic urban environments such that unheard voices, characters and stories may be brought to the fore, and women’s narratives invisibilized by the male, orientalist gaze may be unearthed.