Maasir-I-Alamgiri- A History of the Emperor Aurangzeb-' Alamgir (Riegn 1656-1707 A.D.)

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The result was the Akbar-namah or 'Book of Akbar' of Abul Fazl (completed by other hands after that author's death). Then came the Emperor Jahangir, who dictated his own memoirs, known as the Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri, and therefore no official Jahangir-namali had to be written about him. This book, however, combines the literary characteristics of an autobiography with those of an official history, or in other words, it gives the Emperor's own reflections and feelings as well as an objective record of the events of his reign. Indeed, in this reign, the literary type of the Mughal official histories was determined for the future, as was exemplified by the Pddishdhndmah (Shah Jahan), the 'Alamgir-namah (of Aurangzib, completed by the Maasir-i-Alamgiri), the Bahadur Shah-namah (Shah Alam I) and later attempts like the Tarikh-i-Ahmad Shahi and the Tarikh-i- Alamgir Sani.

In all these works, or Namahs proper, the events are built upon a rigid skeleton of dates chronologically arranged; there is an accurate but tiresome assemblage of minute names of persons and places in the course of every month's narrative of occurrences, and the mechanical division of the book into a chapter for each regal year is followed: Such a collection of facts, if it is to be correct, requires a basis of written official records, and this basis was supplied by the waqai' or official reports of occurrences regularly sent from every province to the central Government of Delhi. By an order issued in the 24th year of his reign (1580), Akbar appointed in each province of? is empire a uniform set of officers, one of whom was the Waqai'- navis or Recorder of Events. (Akbar-namah, Bev. tr., iii. 413, also 559). Jahangir continued the system. As he writes, "It had been made a rule that the events of the subahs should be reported according to the boundaries of each, and news-writers from the Court had been appointed for this duty. This being the rule that my revered father had lay down. I also observe it, and information is thus acquired about the world and its inhabitants." (Tuzuk, Roger's tr. i. 247. see also Baharistan-i-Ghalib, Borah's tr. i. 209.) But the system of appointing secret news-writers to the provinces was really borrowed by the Indian Mughals from the 'Abbasid Khalifs who had borrowed it from the ancient Iranian empire. The different classes of these news-reporters and their method of work are fully described in my book, Mughal Administration, ch. IV. sec. 6.

When this State intelligence-department was fully developed with the expansion of the Mughal Empire under Shah Jahan and Aurangzib, (1627-1707), a huge collection of reports, written on small slips of paper and transmitted to the capital in bamboo cylinders (nalo) at regular weekly or fortnightly intervals’-carne to be formed in the archives at the capital. Besides these there was the akhbarat-i-darbar-i-mu'ala. or reports of everything that was done or said in public at the Court or camp where the Emperor was present in person. These were written daily,-sometimes twice a day, when (as usual) there were morning levees and evening Courts held by His Majesty. Such akhbarats or manuscript news-letters were sent to the vassal princes, provincial governors, and generals out on campaign by their paid agents at the imperial Court, and differed only in their place of origin from the letters coming in a contrary direction, namely the letters of the Government spies in the mufassil which supplemented the more open reports of the official weeper' - navis. On this accumulated mass of accurate, detailed, and absolutely contemporary records of OCCUITences, some Persian author, known for his mastery of polished courtier prose, was selected by the Emperor to work and write the Namah or official annals of his reign.

The book was read to· the Emperor and corrected under the royal direction before being passed for publication,-the term 'publication' here meant, the release of the book for being copied for presentation to the princes and high nobles. The Emperor, after one or two trial hearings, delegated the work of revision to his wazir.

Book's Contents and Sample Pages