had painted since their last separation.  In a few days their marriage was celebrated with great magnificence;[11] and from that hour the Emperor resigned the reins of government almost entirely into her hands; and, till his death, under the name first of Nur Mahall, ‘Light of the Palace’, and afterwards of Nur Jahan, ’Light of the World ’, she ruled the destinies of this great empire.  Her father was now raised from the station of high treasurer to that of prime minister.  Her two brothers obtained the titles of Asaf Jah and Itikad Khan; and the relations of the family poured in from Tartary in search of employment, as soon as they heard of their success.[12] Nur Jahan had by Sher Afgan, as I have stated, one daughter; but she had never any child by the Emperor Jahangir.[13]

Asaf Jah became prime minister on the death of his father; and, in spite of his sister, he managed to secure the crown to Shah Jahan, the third son of Jahangir, who had married his daughter, the lady over whose remains the Taj was afterwards built.  Jahangir’s eldest son, Khusru, had his eyes put out by his father’s orders for repeated rebellions, to which he had been instigated by a desire to revenge his mother’s murder, and by the ambition of her brother, the Hindoo prince, Man Singh,[14] who wished to see his own nephew on the throne, and by his wife’s father, the prime minister of Akbar, Khan Azam.[15] Nur Jahan had invited the mother of Khusru, the sister of Raja Man Singh, to look with her down a well in the courtyard of her apartments by moonlight, and as she did so she threw her in.  As soon as she saw that she had ceased to struggle she gave the alarm, and pretended that she had fallen in by accident.[16]

By the murder of the mother of the heir-apparent she expected to secure the throne to a creature of her own.  Khusru was treated with great kindness by his father, after he had been barbarously deprived of sight;[17] but when his brother, Shah Jahan, was appointed to the government of Southern India, he pretended great solicitude about the comforts of his poor blind brother, which he thought would not be attended to at court, and took him with him to his government in the Deccan, where he got him assassinated, as the only sure mode of securing the throne to himself.[18] Parwiz, the second son, died a natural death;[19] so also did his only son; and so also Daniyal, the fourth son of the Emperor.[20] Nur Jahan’s daughter by Sher Afgan had married Shahryar, a young son of the Emperor by a concubine; and, just before his death he (the Emperor), at the instigation of Nur Jahan, named this son as his successor in his will.  He was placed upon the throne, and put in possession of the treasury, and at the head of a respectable army;[21] but the Empress’s brother, Asaf, designed the throne for his own son-in-law, Shah Jahan; and, as soon as the Emperor died, he put up a puppet to amuse the people till he could come up with his army from the Deccan—­Bulaki, the eldest son