Medieval Indian History

Notes:
Muhammad Ibn Ahmed Alberuni’s Book Tahqiq-i-Hind (the reality of Hindustan or Hindus) gives a graphic description of India as he had seen it. In this work, he describes the religious, literary, and scientific traditions of India. Alberuni was one of the great Muslim scholars and experts of the medieval period. He came to India with Mohammad Ghaznavi in 1017 and wrote about the conditions and society of India in his account namely Tahqiq-i-Hind.

Notes:
Futuhat-i-Firozshahi is a small brochure of thirty-two pages composed by Sultan Firuz Shah himself. The title of the book literally means victories of Firuz Shah. We know about Firuz Shah due to this brochure. He was 45 when he became the Sultan of Delhi in 1351. He ruled until 1388.

Notes:
Burhan-i-Ma’asir, named after Burhan Nizam Shah II of Nizam Shahi dynasty of the Muslim kingdom of Ahmadnagar, is written by Sayyid Ali Tabataba who came to India in 1580. Burhan-i-Ma’asir describes the events pertaining to the Bahmani kingdom and its subsequent break-up into five Muslim dynasties in South India.

Notes:
Waqi-at-i-Mushtaqi is the work of Shaikh Rizq Ullah Mushtaqui.

Abdul Qadir Badauni has composed the following –

1. Tarikh-i-Alfi – a general history compiled at the order of emperor Akbar by Abdul Qadir Badaui and others.
2. Muntakhab-ul-Tawarikh also called Tarikh-i-Badauni – his most celebrated work. It is a general history of India, from the time of the Ghaznavis down to the fortieth year of Akbar’s reign.

Notes:
Muhammad Saki Mustaid Khan was in the service of Aurangzeb for forty years. He was an eyewitness to many of the events recorded by him. Ma’ asir-i-Alamgiri was written after Aurangzeb’s death but is based on state papers. It is comparatively very brief as it deals with the history of fifty-one years in only 541 pages.

Notes:
Muntakhab-ul-Lubab of Tarikh-i-Khafi Khan, by Muhammad Hashim Khafi Khan, is a voluminous history from the Muhammad conquest of India to the fourteenth year of the reign of Mughal emperor Muhammad Shah (1719-18). The first of its three-volume is from the Muhammadan conquest to the end of the Lodi dynasty, the second provides a full account of the Mughals in India from the conquest of Babur to the reign of Muhammad Shah and the third contains an entire account of the reign of Aurangzeb. Khafi Khan’s history is more valuable for the reign of Shah Jahan as it is the work of a contemporary who was waqia-nawis at Agra and himself took part in the battle of Samugarh.

Notes:
Coins issued by most of the Rajput kings of medieval India were same in pattern i.e. included the name of the Ruler on one side and the picture of Goddess Laxmi on the other side. The text of the coins was written in Devnagiri script.

Notes:
Jahangir showed the legend in a couplet in the coins. In some of his coins, he added the name of his beloved wife Noorjahan. The most famous of his coins had images of Zodiac signs.

Notes:
The credit of establishing the Muslim rule in India goes to the Turks. The reason for their conquest of India lies in following
• They had assuming the leadership of Islam through conversion with more fanatical in their religious zeal
• Their sense of superiority of their race
• They had determination to propagate Islam
• They had believe in strength of their arms The Turks conquered a large part of western Asia and moving towards the east penetrated into India with Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni was the first to penetrate deep into India.

Notes:

• Rashidun Caliphate (632–661)
• Umayyad Caliphate (661–750)
• Abbasid Caliphate (750–1258)
• Ottoman Caliphate : They claimed Caliphate authority from 1517