A Mughal noble’s day would probably start – if he were disciplined enough – with rising more than hour before sunrise. After a bath, he was dressed by servants: a qaba,^1 a silken churidar pajama or shalwar, and turban. The pious ones then performed the dawn prayers and recited a section of the Qur’an. Breakfast followed – not too heavy; for the main meal was taken around noon.
The lord soon repaired to his diwan khana, an exterior audience hall spread with handsome carpets and cushions, where they attended to their matters and heard the wishes of supplicants – a miniature court, in effect. Conscientious nobles like I’timad ud-Daula passed day and night inspecting and writing accounts of their properties. Others could not stand this dull accounting and left it to their officials, such as Afzal Khan, who was completely dependent on his diwan^2 Diyanat Rai. Such that it was remarked after his death that when the angels Munkir and Nakir would put the noble to the question: Who is your Lord? Your prophet? Your religion? Afzal Khan would reply, “Ask Diyanat Rai; he will answer.”
The Mughal grandees were an urbane and sophisticated lot – those closer to the imperial centre anyway. Their residences were airy and spacious, graced by gardens and gently-playing fountains. Furniture was spare, confined mostly to bedsteads, chests, and stools. The valued articles amongst these were adorned with gold or silver. For sitting, mattresses were laid upon takhts3, spread with cool white sheets in summer and thick silken carpets in winter. Placed upon them were splendid kamkhwab^4 bolsters and costly silken and velvet pillows. In the heat of the afternoon, a noble retired to a cool underground chamber or to a khas khana^5, or perhaps to his harem. On hot nights, he might also go up to the roof in hopes of catching a breeze.
No noble dined alone. His dastarkhwan was laid for all the guests in his company. Some lords ate simply; others were accustomed to fabulously rich food. Many great ones had vast quantities of rice, dal, and kichri cooked daily in their kitchens, to be distributed amongst the poor.
When a noble went out, he was necessarily attended by a host of servants. Riding on well-fed horses was a select group of 200-500 soldiers, four or five of whom carried standards, accompanied by an elephant or two. Commoners were unceremoniously shunted aside by footmen – and beaten if they got in the way. Water-carriers accompanied the procession, the dust of the road made wet by sprinkling water over it. Sometimes a few attendants bore books and scribal implements. Others busily flapped peacock-tail fans, driving off flies and hot air. The noble himself reclined in a palanquin – the curtains drawn together or apart – chewing paan and spitting the red residue into pikdans held forth by waiting servants.
Leisure activities might involve playing polo, racing horses or dogs, flying pigeons; and all sorts of martial sports such as javelin-throwing, fencing, archery, and swimming. Especially popular were animal fights, where elephants, buffalo, rhinos, rams, deer, cocks, or dogs brawled while bets were placed by the onlookers. Those disinclined towards bodily exertion might play cards or chess, or listen to musicians, perhaps while smoking a huqqa. Other sedentary entertainment, more appropriate for families, was provided by picnics, acrobats, fireworks, and magicians.
Many grandees pursued interests of a more refined sort: take for instance Mukhlis Khan’s love of animal husbandry, Hakim Beg’s of horticulture, Qulij Khan’s of Islamic jurisprudence, and Isa Beg Tarkhan’s of song composition. Numerous others were great adepts of architecture, poetry, and literature, extending enthusiastic patronage to artists and scholars.
At night, a noble’s servants clothed him in fresh garments and – if it was summer – rubbed his body with essence of sandal and rose. A massage of the hands and feet followed while the lord amused himself with musicians and dancers, his wife sitting by him. Perfume and wine flowed freely, and if at the end he fancied any concubine (or indeed, his wife), he would summon her to his bed.
^1 A pleated tunic, tight at the top and flaring from the waist down.
^2 A title for a chief revenue official
^3 A low wooden platform
^4 A type of Indian brocade made of silk and gold/silver thread
^5 A cool chamber enclosed by mats of wetted fibrous roots and grass hanging on frames, that work on the same principle as our ACs
#Sources
Bernier, F. (1891). Travels in the Mogul Empire AD 1656-1668. A Revised and Improved Edition Based Upon Irving Brock's Translation by Archibald Constable.
Mubarak A. (2000). مغل دربار (Mughal Darbar).
Pearson, M. N. (1984). Recreation in Mughal India. The International Journal of the History of Sport, 1(3), 335-350.
Husain, A. (2007, January). THE ESTABLISHMENTS, HOUSEHOLDS, AND PRIVATE LIFE OF MUGHAL NOBLES. In Proceedings of the Indian History Congress (Vol. 68, pp. 377-388). Indian History Congress.
Ahmad, I. (2010, January). Sectional President's Address: CULTURAL INTERESTS AND CONTRIBUTIONS OF THE MUGHAL NOBILITY. In Proceedings of the Indian History Congress (Vol. 71, pp. 192-212). Indian History Congress.
Eraly, A. (2007). The Mughal world: Life in India's last golden age. Penguin Books India.
Faruqui, M. D. (2012). The princes of the Mughal empire, 1504–1719. Cambridge University Press.
It's been years since I've read it, but Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie's Montaillou goes into great detail on the daily social lives of people living in the village of Montaillou, Ariege, France, from 1294-1324. A Catholic inquisitor worked in the area during this time and took manic notes on his observations and interviews with locals for these 30 years which Ladurie then compiles as a description of different facets of the lives of the people of the town. These include the local "nobility," and I don't remember the details, but in this rather remote region at this time, the local lord's family wasn't much different from their neighboring serfs with the exception that they could hire a few servants to help with domestic chores and work. It also seemed like they were just as likely to get involved in petty rivalries and squabbles with their neighbors and risk running afoul of the church as anyone else.
My specialty actually lies in Ethiopia, and I can give you some quick anecdotes from there. From the 14th to 17th centuries, Ethiopian monarchs regularly forced their royal court to traverse the country with them (not unlike Anglo-Saxon or Ottonian kings). There was a rule that in theory at least, if the king commanded a vassal lord to court, he would have to follow the court at his own expense and if the king dispossessed him of his position while at court, anything left at home was forfeit to the next appointed lord. So, lords would supposedly often bring their entire households with them as they followed the royal court around the country. Because this could be a logistical nightmare, the emperors formalized this system, even writing a manual on how the camp should run and assigning numerous managerial staff to occupations like overseeing the settlement of camp attendants in their appropriate places, ranked by status from greatest to least around the king's central compound and organ and breaking camp.
While in attendance, nobles' status would have been indicated by their dress and equipment, though only the king was allowed certain privileges. His tent, like the church tents, were the only ones that could use white fabric, for example. When lords attended court before the king, they had to strip down to their waist to show humility and the king always sat and spoke from behind a gauzy curtain. The Ethiopian church has over 200 saint's days and feasts were a regular event at court during times of peace. There was a manual for these feasts too. Presumptively, the lords would have spent their night/morning in religious observances and would have attended either the royal church tent or attended apart from the lower classes during service. Once the fast was broken and the feast began, the nobles would eat heavily spiced foods (though not always meat, depending on the holy day) and drink tejj, a fermented honey drink. The soldiers, servants, clergy, peasants, etc... would also eat well, but the quality and quantity of their food would depend on status, and they would have drank fermented grains rather than honey wine. Most of the food was provided by the king, but this of course all came from taxation of his vassals, and I strongly suspect that just like similar systems (Anglo-Saxon England, Ottonian Germany), the king probably used such events as a means to drain the coffers of his vassals. In essence, all lands and properties belonged to the king, but his vassals managed them for him. While lords contested this system - frequently - pressures of hospitality or tax payments probably got them to cough up whatever the king demanded. Monastic churches were also de facto arms of the royal court and property and the kings likely called up a lot of expenditure from them as well.
Historical documents like some of the lives of the kings and the Life of Walatta Petros suggest that while the nobility may have had great status, they probably lived and worked closely with their vassals as well. Documents are of course biased, but they frequently depict lords surrounded by their soldiers and retainers and often interacting with a broad cross-section of society, especially non-nobles petitioning for things. They frequently butted heads with the clergy, especially monks and nuns, whose moral authority often allowed them to criticize the nobility with some impunity. In their interactions with the peasantry, however, the attitudes could range from dismissive, to aggressive, to paternal - as a literary point, such encounters often serve to illustrate what kind of character the noble-person was regarded as. Good leaders were kind and generous with their vassals; bad ones were violent or capricious.
If you're interested in learning more, look up any of the gadla of the Ethiopian kings and saints. Richard Pankhurst has an English translation of selections. Tadesse Tamrat's Church and State in Ethiopia also has a lot on the camps and Francisco Alvares (trans. by Beckingham and Huntingford) provides first-hand accounts of courtly life in the 1520s. The recent translation of the gadla of Walatta Petros, an Ethiopian nun and total diva, might also be insightful. She was a noblewoman of high rank who abandoned her family after they converted to Catholicism and became an Orthodox nun. There are some choice selections of her spats with her family and the king, though I wouldn't consider any of them "typical" of the times and of course the book is written to portray WP in a particular light relative to her contemporaries, so take it with a grain of salt.