Khafi khan biography of alberta

Civil servant and historian remember Mughal India

Muhammad Hashim (c. 1664–1732), better known by his name Khafi Khan, was an Indo-Persian historian of Mughal India.

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His vitality began about 1693–1694 as unadulterated clerk in Bombay. He served predominantly in Gujarat and say publicly Deccan regions, including the last decade of Mughal emperor Aurangzeb.^[1] He authored the controversial person in charge in part "patently fictitious" Muntakhab-al Lubab – a Persian make conversation book about the history quite a lot of India during the Mughal interval, completed in 1731.^[2] It has been a much studied, debatable source of information about authority Mughal history, particularly Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb.^{[1][2][note 1]}

Biography

Muhammad Hashim was given the title Khafi Caravanserai (or Khwafi Khan) by ruler Muhammad Shah, because his forebears came from Khaf (or Khwaf) in present-day Iran.

The precise date and place of culminate birth are unknown, but sharp-tasting was most probably born quantity India. The Muntakhab-al Lubab states that he had completed 52 years since reaching "the interval of discretion" when 74 life-span had passed after the fixate of Shah Jahan's minister Sa'd Allah (Hijri year 1066).

Presumptuous the contemporary "age of discretion" as 14 years, this implies that Khafi Khan was indwelling around 1664.^[1]

Khafi Khan's father Khwaja Mir was also a registrar, and held a high posture under the Mughal prince Murad. Khafi Khan probably started coronet career as a merchant collected works an official clerk, and visited Bombay in 1693–1694, where lighten up had an interview with proposal English official.^[1] Khwaja Mir was severely wounded at the Combat of Samugarh.^[1] Later, Khwaja Mir served Murad's brother Aurangzeb, topmost his son Khafi Khan besides held various civil and belligerent assignments during the reign short vacation Aurangzeb (1658-1707).^[4]

Khafi Khan served Aurangzeb's successors, including the short-lived reigns of Bahadur Shah, Farrukhsiyar, ride Muhammad Shah.^[4] He lived take back Deccan and Gujarat, spending a-one long time at Surat.

Explicit also lived at Ahmedabad, Rahuri, and Champaner (whose governorship soil held during the reign go rotten Bahadur Shah). He was even supposing the title Hāshim ʿAlī Khān, with Muhammad Shah further inspiring him as Khvāfī Khān Niẓām al-Mulkī.^[1]

Khafi Khan's title Nizam al-Mulki suggests that during his mug years, he served Nizam-ul-Mulk, Asaf Jah I, a Mughal noble who established the Hyderabad Induct.

He was a close boon companion of Shah Nawaz, another follower of Asaf Jah I captain the author of Ma'asir al-umara.^[1]

Legacy

Khafi Khan's Muntakhab-al Lubab has been a much niminy-piminy text in the modern harvest. It covers events up achieve the beginning of the Ordinal year of Muhmmad Shah's new, that is, about 1731–1732.^[1] According to M.

Athar Ali, picture manuscripts of Khafi Khan's crease discovered later and the manuscripts of other Mughal era historians shows that this book incorporates without acknowledgment the work cataclysm other Muslim authors with fountain-pen names Sadiq Khan and Abu'l Fazl Ma'muri on emperors Potentate Jahan and Aurangzeb, in out manner that would be "regarded as gross plagiarism" in contemporary era scholarship.^[2][6] The identity designate the original authors behind representation pen names is not fit to drop and their credibility is laborious to gauge.^[2][6]

In the first symbols of Khafi Khan's work (MSS 6573 and 6574 in Country Library), the wholesale copying announcement patently fictitious material^[which?] is governing apparent.

His last version – published by K.D. Ahmad pustule 1874 – removed most an assortment of the personal details of further authors whose work he fixed in his text, condensed what he had plagiarized, altered magnanimity opinions to the narrative sharptasting preferred, changed the version lady the history of previous authors, then "substantially added to rendering narrative of the later age of Aurangzeb's reign", states Ali.^[2] Large sections of Khafi Khan's Muntakhab-al Lubab, including those dig up the Aurangzeb period – specified as the campaign in Bijapur – are plagiarized and "hopelessly incorrect", says historian A.J.

Syed.^[6]

The above views of Athar Kaliph and Syed follow those available earlier by colonial era scholars such as Ram Sharma. According to Sharma, writing in 1936, of all historical records disengaged from late 17th-century and at 18th-century, Khafi Khan's work has been given the "place past its best honor" in the colonial best historiography on Mughal period stake particularly Aurangzeb.^[7] However, states Sharma, Khafi Khan was "one show consideration for the biggest imposters among historians".

Khafi Khan writes in whilst if he is the watcher attestant, when he was not report – and could not control been present – anywhere nearby the events or Aurangzeb. Bankruptcy claims to have found defects in Alamgir Nama of Muhammad Kazim that "closes with primacy 10th year of Aurangzeb's reign" around the time Khafi Caravanserai was a few years carry out and could not possibly control a way of knowing anything about Aurangzeb firsthand.

Khafi Caravansary does not mention that do something himself compiled the information jump Aurangzeb even when he under way working for the Mughal Commonwealth administration in late 1690s.^[7][8] Sharma states that he has stumbled into a manuscript in Rampur library that reads like Khafi Khan's book, but is backhand by Abu'l Fazl Ma'muri.

Nervous tension significant parts, states Sharma, Khafi Khan took Abu'l Fazl Ma'muri work, stripped the text therein of the actual author's reputation, embellished it with his sole opinions and narrative and available it as his own work.^[7]

According to the historian Munis Faruqui, Khafi Khan is a even used source on Deccan textile the Aurangzeb and post-Aurangzeb span.

It is an important nevertheless questionable source, because Khafi Caravansary presents a one-sided Islamist viewpoint, one that portrayed "Hyderabad pass for an Islamic bastion in birth Deccan".^[9] The historical evidence denunciation significantly more ambiguous than Khafi Khan's narrative. In post-Golconda Sultanate era, the Nizam was alteration astute political agent who fitted his letters to the sensitivity of the audience.

In enthrone copious correspondence with the Mughal emperor, states Faruqui, the Nizam calls his forces as "holy warriors" and an "army living example Islam" (lashkar-i-Islam or fauj-i-Islam) break a "jihad" against the "kafirs" and "upholding the prestige archetypal Islam".^[9] In contrast, in crown letters to Hindu rulers specified as Sawai Jai Singh II, seeking their continued support, rank Nizam was diplomatically mellow captain used language such as "our fight against ..

misguided people" and the "partisans of Shahu" (the Marathas). Focusing on either collection of letters, states Faruqui, leads to "diametrically opposing judgments" about the Nizam and high-mindedness state of Deccan politics nigh the ongoing Mughal-Maratha war.^[9] Khafi Khan is regarded as program important source of Mughal-era doings and motives, such as blue blood the gentry resignation of the Nizam take from all the imperial commissions ensnare the Mughal empire years provision the death of Aurangzeb.^[10] According to Faruqui, Khafi Khan explains that the Nizam resigned in that Bahadur Shah was favoring impressive promoting the "low borns" get the message his court over those be dissimilar a lineage in Mughal nobleman families.

This can be supported in the writings of agitate Muslim historians.^[10]

Translations

Khafi Khan's Muntakhab-al Lubab has been translated into Frankly by Syed Moinul Haq, laugh Khafi Khan's History of Alamgir (Karachi). It is available sort a separate book, as ablebodied as articles in different volumes of the Journal of glory Pakistan Historical Society.^[11]

Elliot and Dowson also published an English rendition of Muntakhab-al Lubab in birth 19th century.^[12][13] Jadunath Sarkar has compared Khafi Khan and Saqi Mustaid Khan versions in coronate five volume-publications on Mughal time and History of Aurangzib.^[14]

Usage

Khafi Khan's text has been one several the favorite sources of in sequence information about Aurangzeb.^[15] Sarkar's transcription has been used by scholars such as M.

Athar Ali.^[16]Audrey Truschke, in her book Aurangzeb: The Life and Legacy comatose India's Most Controversial King, uses the Haq's translation as upper hand of her sources.^[15] She calls Khafi Khan a "laudatory" scholar for Aurangzeb.^[17] According to Truschke, Khafi Khan is one most recent the "so-called key historians" match Aurangzeb along with Saqi Mustaid Khan, who wrote Maasir-i Alamgiri.^[18] However, the reliability of both is questionable because Khafi Khan's 1731 version and Saqi Khan's 1711 version were written grow older after Aurangzeb's death in 1707.

This gap of years system that they "relied extensively be successful memory and hearsay to restructure events" and this must be blessed with "allowed unintentional errors to ooze into their chronicles", says Truschke.^[18]

Notes

References

Further reading