A Eunuch at the Threshold: Spatializations of Gender, Intimacy, and Access in the Mughal World

Although often mentioned in Mughal era chronicles and documentary and visual sources, scholarship to date on eunuchs in this period has focused almost entirely on their roles in relationship to the Imperial harem. Drawing on the rich work done on eunuchs in both the Byzantine and Islamicate context, this paper will examine how eunuchs figured in relation to male spaces during the high Mughal period from 1556 to 1707. I will be exploring the particular positions of physical proximity to elite men that eunuchs occupied and, consequently, the significant roles played by such eunuchs in elite social interactions. To this end, I will map out the inner spaces of the palace or camp, as well as the court, to examine how access, intimacy, and power were spatialized. Within this context, the deployment of eunuchs takes on an important role as marking and maintaining that hierarchized order. Such roles, however, also led to eunuchs emerging as central figures in negotiating relations and indeed conflicts between elite men, which in turn resulted in sources for the period reflecting this tension and contention in their representation of eunuchs. This paper will navigate the complex archival traces of eunuch roles in relation to male spaces and the various powers operating within them, through considering the depiction of eunuchs in a range of contexts, from shadowing the emperor in paintings of court scenes to standing guard outside the emperor’s tent to massaging the feet of a prince as he drifts off to sleep. In doing so, the important part played not only by elite, high-status eunuchs, but furthermore by low-status eunuchs, will become clear.