Zeb-un-Nissa (Makhfi)

Zeb-un-Nissa (1639–1702) was a Mughal princess, the eldest daughter of the emperor Aurangzeb, and is remembered as a learned woman, a patron of scholars and a poet in Persian. She wrote under the pen-name Makhfi, “the Hidden One”. The editors of the 1913 volume give her birth year as 1639. No authentic portrait of her is known; the image shown is a period miniature used for illustration.

The ghazals here come from The Diwan of Zeb-un-Nissa, rendered into English verse by Magan Lal and Jessie Duncan Westbrook (Wisdom of the East series, John Murray, London, 1913). The editors themselves acknowledge that the attribution of the Diwan to Zeb-un-Nissa is disputed. The translations turn on divine and mystical love, and the numbering of the ghazals follows that book.