Mariam-uz-Zamani (lit. 'Mary/Compassionate of the Age'; 1545 - 19 May 1623) was the chief consort and favourite wife of the third Mughal emperor, Akbar, and the mother of his successor, Jahangir. She was the empress consort for forty-three years, making her the longest-serving Hindu empress of the Mughal Empire.

Born a Rajput princess of the Kachhwaha dynasty, she was the eldest daughter of Raja Bharmal of Amer and married Akbar in 1562 as part of a political alliance between the Mughal Empire and the Amer. Although widely known in popular culture as Jodha Bai, the name is regarded by modern historians as a historical misnomer and does not appear in contemporary Mughal chronicles.

As Akbar's chief consort and later Queen Mother, Mariam-uz-Zamani occupied one of the highest positions in the imperial harem and exercised considerable influence during the reigns of both Akbar and Jahangir. She was among the few Mughal women granted the exceptional privilege of issuing imperial Farman, and earliest recorded Mughal women to engage in overseas trade through her merchant fleets, which sailed across the Indian Ocean to Mecca.

Mariam-uz-Zamani was born in 1545 as the eldest daughter of Raja Bharmal of Amer and his chief consort, Rani Champavati, daughter of Rao Ganga of the Solanki clan. Her paternal grandparents were Raja Prithviraj Singh I and Apurva Devi, a daughter of Rao Lunkaran of Bikaner.

Her personal name is not recorded in contemporary Mughal sources. Later historical traditions and regional genealogies preserve several different names that have been attributed to her. An eighteenth-century genealogy of the Kachwaha clan refers to her as Harkhan Champavati. Other names appearing in later sources include Harkha Bai, Jiya Rani, Maanmati Bai, Harika Bai, Hira Kunwari, Heer Kunwari, Shahi Bai and Shahi Begum.

During Akbar's reign, a decree prohibited the public mention of the names of women in the imperial seraglio. To preserve their privacy and honour, women of the harem were instead referred to by honorific titles or epithets associated with their place of origin or the place where they entered the imperial household. This specific court etiquette is the reason why Mariam-uz-Zamani's actual name was never recorded in the history books of her time. In the Akbarnama, Abu'l-Fazl ibn Mubarak identifies her simply as the daughter of Raja Bharmal and the sister of Raja Bhagwant Das, while her son Jahangir consistently refers to her by her imperial title, Hazrat Mariam-uz-Zamani, in the Tuzk-e-Jahangiri.

The absence of her personal name in contemporary Mughal sources gave rise to later speculation regarding her historical identity. Modern historians attribute this omission to Mughal court conventions concerning the privacy of imperial women. Ira Mukhoty notes that the identities of royal women were protected under zenana customs, with honorific titles taking precedence over personal names, while Ruby Lal observes that titles such as Mariam-uz-Zamani functioned as the principal markers of identity and authority within the Mughal court.

In popular culture today, she is widely remembered by the misnomer "Jodha Bai". However, this specific name is completely absent from any Mughal-era historical records. Its earliest known association with Akbar's chief consort is traced to James Tod's nineteenth-century work, Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan. Modern historians generally regard this identification as erroneous, noting that the name suggests a princess from Jodhpur, whereas Mariam-uz-Zamani was a Kachhwaha princess of Amber. Historian Satish Chandra has pointed out that "Jodh Bai" properly referred to Jagat Gosain, the Rajput wife of Jahangir and daughter of Raja Udai Singh of Jodhpur.