This book discusses the origin and growth of Indo-Persian historiography with particular emphasis on India’s contribution to the literary heritage of the Persian world. It also evaluates the important changes that the writing of history underwent as it developed within the Indian environment. Besides a discussion of the methods employed by the Indo-Persian historians, the book focuses, for the first time, on an important contemporary work, Awfi’s Jawami’ul-Hikayat-wa-Livam’ul-Rivaayat as a source for the study of the history of the social and political developments in the Islamic world.
This enlarged edition also examines the poet ‘Isami’s Futuh-us-Salatin that chronicles the reign of the Sultans from the eleventh to fourteenth centuries, and is remarkable for the details of the political and social developments that took place in south India after its annexation to the Sultanate of Delhi. Besides introducing some of the previously unknown works of Zia uddin Barani, the author also focuses on the two versions of Barani’s famous Tarikh-i-Firuzshahi and the treatise,
Fatawa-iJahandari.
Indo-Persian Historiography to the Fourteenth Century is a pioneering work insofar as it attempts to study the social background and the religious and political ideals of each of the writers included in this book as well as analyse each work in the context of contemporary works and narratives produced in the neighbouring countries. It aims to fill an important gap in medieval Indo-Persian historiography as it assesses the history of history writing by immigrants and Indian scholars.