History as Frame

History as Frame

Historical records are frames. The person or people who compile the record decide what goes in or is left out. Historians consider many different records to produce a cohesive account of an episode or an era, but that account is still a frame. Information is excluded because it is deemed irrelevant, inaccurate, or incendiary—and historical accounts cannot include evidence that has not yet been discovered. New evidence can change an established account. Historical records also compress time. By definition, the record of history must be less comprehensive than all the actions, thoughts, emotions, and moments experienced by all the people it covers.

A historical account can be accurate while still reflecting its compiler's interests and assumptions. Asking what it leaves out helps us assess both the account and the perspective behind it. In her book Empress: The Astonishing Reign of Nur Jahan, Ruby Lal openly confronts the challenges in navigating frames to build an authentic understanding of a subject. Nur Jahan was "the twentieth and favorite wife" of Mughal emperor Jahangir. Married to him in 1611, she quickly rose to an unprecedented level of power for a woman in Mughal society, which is reflected in undisputed biographical details such as her issuing orders, designing gardens and buildings, and having coins struck in her name.[7] However, to access an impression of who this woman was beyond these details is challenging because of the way she is framed in the historical record.

There are a few accounts of her reign by her contemporaries. Lal notes, "Some commentators pronounced her cunning and conniving." Other accounts by European men visiting the region characterized her as "manipulative and mysterious" and "haughty and stubborn." Their accounts of her explain that it could only be the emperor's love that gave Nur Jahan her position and power. Consequently, she was regarded as doing anything necessary to keep that love. Lal argues, "Faced with the reality of a de facto woman sovereign, most official observers of Nur's achievements, instead of acknowledging that she'd earned her position on the strength of her talents, explained it in terms palatable (to them) and conceivable (to them): she was a gold-digger and a schemer."[8]

As the years progressed, Nur's romance with her husband, Jahangir, continued as the main frame of the narrative of her story. Outside of India, "narratives of the royal romance became more extravagant in nineteenth-century British colonial histories that were steeped in the orientalism of the day, embracing exoticized stereotypes of Asia." Inside the country, the way Nur is framed is equally simplistic. Depicted in many popular films and comics, her story is often reduced to only the romance between her and the emperor, with everything she did and achieved being accomplished due to love. Despite her being a real historical figure, "the narration of her bold military and political endeavors is sketchy and tepid," and "she is not discussed as a leader."[9] Even into the late twentieth century, "academics…leaned on love as the explanation for her extraordinary rise rather than attributing it to her talents."[10] Love became the frame through which Nur Jahan was considered and evaluated.

When we deal with frames, we must ask ourselves what has been left out. In the case of Nur Jahan, if love is the frame through which she has been consistently depicted, then it stands to reason that anything that doesn't fit that frame might have been omitted. For the early chroniclers, the love between Nur and Jahangir was not the right kind. It wasn't selfless. Instead, it bewitched the emperor into allowing Nur to have an unprecedented amount of power for a woman. Of course, this may be true. But it's always suspicious when all of the information that's been presented perfectly supports the position. Did it all fit together so neatly, or was there more?

Even for more contemporary histories, the elements that don't relate to love don't tend to make it into the frame. As Lal writes, "There is no palpable sense of the anger or playfulness we'd expect of a living woman…her raw ambition, her vulnerability as well as her strengths, or the very human way in which she fought to build and preserve her husband's and her own sovereign rights."[11]

Nur Jahan's relationship with her husband isn't the only element of her life where there seem to be additions made to suit the person telling her story. We all do this—whenever we tell a story, we leave out details that don't fit what we want to convey. One example of the distortions that frames introduce is in Nur Jahan's birth story:

Besides her parentage and her name, only one thing is certain about [Nur Jahan's] birth: She entered the world outside Kandahar in the winter of 1577, on the road to India. During her time as empress and after, in chronicles and legends, several key embellishments were added to the tale. By the eighteenth century, three fascinatingly different versions of her birth story had been published, each revealing a great deal about the teller and his times (the writers were all men), including prevailing attitudes about politics, gender, and religion.[12]

If we want to be accurate, then what fits inside the frame of Nur Jahan's birth is quite small: a couple of sentences. But, as is often the case, contents get enlarged in order to direct focus. Later writers of the birth story wanted their readers to get more than just those few facts. They wanted readers to focus on Nur's mysticism, divine being, and childhood struggles—or the intervention of fate, the notion of destiny, or whatever. In order to accomplish that, they had to augment what was in the frame.

In terms of Nur Jahan's overall legacy, there are some clear contradictions between how she was officially written about and what survives in historical artifacts. Lal explains, "The official historians of Jahangir's son's reign (Shah Jahan) deliberately wrote Nur Jahan's merits and accomplishments out of Mughal history."[13] She goes on to justify this statement by pointing out elements that could not be written out but that demonstrate Nur did have extraordinary accomplishments to her credit.

Nur was the only Mughal woman to appear on coins, many of which have been found and displayed in museums. Nur also appeared in formal paintings depicting her exercising the powers of state. And there are inscriptions she wrote on monuments that she designed.

Lal's account asks us to compare the written narrative with the surviving evidence. Coins, paintings, and inscriptions can reveal accomplishments that a familiar story leaves out.

Visual art also directs attention through framing. On Caspar David Friedrich: "When human beings appear in his work, it is usually with their backs to us: they are looking at nature and thus directing our gaze."[14]

On At the Café, by Édouard Manet: "We are positioned almost as if we, like the waitress quaffing beer, were at work—behind a marble bar with glassware and a tap handle partly visible to the right."[15]