History of the Rise of the Mahomedan Power in India, Till the Year Ad 1612: Volume 4 4

The Persian chronicler Ferishta (1560-1620) composed his great work, published in this four-volume English translation in 1829, at the court of Bijapur - where he spent most of his life - under the patronage of King Ibrahim Adil Shah II. It covers Muslim India from around 975 to 1612 and is notable for its balance, despite Ferishta's close involvement with some of the events and people he records. Valuable additions to the text made by the translator, East India Company officer John Briggs (1785-1875), include genealogical tables and notes, as well as a comparative chronology of events in Europe and India. Volume 4 covers the kings of Gujarat, Malwa, Khandesh, Bengal and Bihar, Jaunpur, and Multan. There are also histories of Sindh and Kashmir. A comparative chronology of the minor kingdoms that eventually became part of the Mughal empire is included, and Briggs' appendices provide glossaries of names and places. This four-volume work, published in 1829, was the first major English translation of Persian chronicler Ferishta's monumental history of the Muslim presence in India. Notable as the most reliable of contemporary accounts of the Mughal empire, Ferishta's seventeenth-century work is a valuable source on life in India before British colonisation.