Akbar's wife Jodhabai was Portuguese, not Rajput princess: Indian author
Correia has made the claims in his book "Portuguese India and Mughal Relations 1510-1735".
PANAJI (Dunya News) - Portuguese-born Indian author has claimed that Mughal emperor Akbar’s wife Jodhabai was not a Hindu-Rajpoot princess but a Portuguese prisoner with whom he fell in love at first sight when she was presented in his court.
Goa-based author Luis de Assis Correia in his book “Portuguese India and Mughal Relations 1510-1735” has claimed that Akbar’s much loved Jodhabai was in fact a Portuguese woman, Dona Maria Mascarenhas.
The author maintains that she was captured along with her sister Juliana by Gujarat ruler while travelling in a Portuguese fleet along the Arabian Sea.
The 18-year-old Dona was the presented to a young Emperor Akbar as a gift by Sultan Bahadur Shah of Gujarat.
“When Dona Maria Mascarenhas arrived at Akbar’s Court, he fell in love with her. He was 18-years-old and he was already married. She was 17 and he said, ‘This young lady is for me’ and her sister Juliana, both of them were lodged in Akbar’s harem,” Correia told IANS on the sidelines of the book release function in Panaji.
“The Portuguese and the Catholics were loath to accept that one of their own was living in a Mughal court, in a harem. On the other hand, the Mughals could not accept that a firangi, a Christian, who fought the Mughals right from the Crusades, was the Emperor’s wife. This is why the myth of Jodhabai was created by British and Mughal chroniclers of that era,” Correia said, adding that writings of Akbar, as well as Jahangir do not acknowledge the existence of Jodhabai.
“It is indeed a mystery why Mughal chroniclers: (Abd al-Qadir) Badauni and Abu’l Fazal do not mention Jahangir’s mother by her name. Had Jahangir been born to a daughter of a great Rajput kingdom, surely he would want to boast the fact considering that the Mughals were eager to forge a strategic alliance with the Rajputs,” Correia argues in his book.
The 81-year-old writer, also quotes historian and Aligarh Muslim University professor Shireen Moosvi as saying “there is no mention of Jodhabai in Akbarnama or in any Mughal document of the period. Akbar did marry a princess of the Kachhava clan, the daughter of Bha Mal, but her name was not Jodhabai”.
