Ruby Lal writes against received histories of "the harem," which portray it as a timeless, universal, den of eroticism entirely separate from the public world of politics. Her work is part of a larger feminist historiographical critique of the "public/private" dichotomy. In her book she examines the changes in the domestic world of the Mughals from the first peripatetic Emperor Babur to the establishment of a much more stable empire with Emperor Akbar. She shows that even when the harem comes to be institutionalized in Akbar's reign, which brings with it a much greater degree of invisibility of women, women continue to be active in the so-called public sphere. In particular she discusses the power wielded by Hamideh Banu Begum, Akbar's mother,and the Royal Women's Hajj organized by Gulbedan Banu Begum, his aunt. She argues that these women should not be marginalized as "exceptional" but rather that the represent the powerful roles occupied by elder royal women. ( )