Ruby Lal

Ruby Lal is an author and professor of history in the Department of Middle East and South Asian Studies at Emory University.^[1]

She has written extensively about the lives of key women in early Islamic societies, especially during the Mughal Empire in South Asia.^[2]

Lal has been exposed to the history of the subcontinent at a young age. In an interview with the Christian Science Monitor, she said her mother would tell her stories about Nur Jahan, chief consort of Mughal emperor Jahangir.^[3]

Career and Education

Lal read for her D.Phil in Modern History at St Edmund Hall, the University of Oxford, graduating in 2000.^[4][5]

Lal is well known for her research and publication of a book about Nur Jahan in 2018.^[6][7] The biography was reviewed by the New York Times, The Guardian, and Los Angeles Review of Books.^[8][9][10]

Lal won the Georgia Author of the Year Award for her work about Nur Jahan.^[11]

She later wrote a book about Gulbadan Begum, the Mughal princess who traveled to Mecca and Medina. Her work about Gulbadan was covered by outlets like the Wall Street Journal. ^[12]

Published works

• Vagabond Princess: The Great Adventures of Gulbadan (2024)^[13]
• Empress: The Astonishing Reign of Nur Jahan (2018)^[7]
• Coming of Age in Nineteenth-Century India (2013) ^[14]
• Domesticity and Power in the Early Mughal World (2005)^[15]