This remarkable work covers one of the most important and turbulent periods in Indian history. A period which saw a surge in Islamic atrocities under Aurangzeb, which lasted for fifty long years, and which, by the time of Aurangzeb’s death, left the country devastated.
Even though he imposed jizya as per the Quranic directive, his treasury was emptied by the 27 years ghazat (holy war) with the Marathas. His sons were ‘emperors in waiting’ for at least two decades, and by the time Bahadur Shah I took the throne in 1707, he was 64 years old (b. 1643 CE).
Masir-i-Alamgiri covers most of these details, except the ones which present Aurangzeb in a ‘bad light’, which is obvious, considering the viewpoints of the author Saqi Mustaid Khan, and his patrons, Bahadur Shah I (1707-1712 CE) and Inaytullah Khan. However, Aurangzeb’s temple destructions and forced conversions to Islam are covered in cheerful details because they were never considered unbecoming for an Islamic emperor. On the contrary, as per Islamic ideology, they were and are still considered a ‘noble deed’. In this sense, the Masir-i-Alamgiri presents Aurangzeb exactly as he was, sans the myth of modern secularism.
Inaytullah Khan, the brain behind Masir-i-Alamgiri
He was one of Aurangzeb’s favourite officers and is mentioned as ‘murid-e khas-e-Alamgir’, meaning his special disciple. Masir-i-Alamgiri refers to him as the Wazir’s Head Diwan (Sadr-e-Diwan-e-Wazarat) and he is described with the epithets, ‘of noble disposition’ (Pak tinat), ‘of radiant conscience’ (Roshan zamir) and others (MAP p. 68).
Initially, his rank was a mere 1500 Zat, but he was especially loved by Aurangzeb for his epistolary skills and administrative knowledge.
He was related to Sayyid Jamal Nishapuri and his forefathers had moved to Kashmir. Born to Mirza Shukrullah and Hafiza Begum, with the latter being appointed as a teacher of Quran and Persian literary works by Aurangzeb, for his daughter Zebunnisa.
Inayatullah climbed up the ranks and in October 1688, was appointed as the Head Steward (Khan-e-saman) for Aurangzeb's other daughter, Zinatunnisa. He became the Head Paymaster (Diwan-e-watan) in July 1692 and in April 1701 was given the additional charge of Head of crown lands (Diwan-e-khalsa). In between, he was also appointed as the Chief of chiefs (Sadr-us-Sadr) of the Empire in March 1698. (MU Vol. 1, pp. 680-682).
Masir-i-Alamgiri refers to him many times. His closeness to Aurangzeb is underscored by a couple of incidents.
—When Aurangzeb’s camp was at Pune, there was an altercation between a eunuch (khoja) from Wazir Asad Khan’s camp and Inayatullah’s servant. When this was brought to Aurangzeb’s notice, he asked the Wazir to apologize to Inaytullah Khan (MAE pp. 282-283).
—In later years, Aurangzeb allowed Inaytullah Khan to stand within the golden barricade, an honour reserved for the choicest courtiers (MAE p. 307).
After Aurangzeb’s death, his son Bahadur Shah I appointed Inayatullah Khan as the Head Steward (Khan-e-saman), Head of Crown Lands and Head Paymaster (Diwan-e-khalsa wa tan) and also the Governor (Subehdar) of Kashmir.
In February 1721 he was granted a rank of 7000 Zat and was given a temporary responsibility of Wazir’s office, till Nizam-ul-mulk returned from Deccan. He died in 1727 CE after a long and distinguished career serving various Mughal Emperors. (MU Vol. 1, pp. 680-682).
Inaytullah Khan compiled two collections of Aurangzeb’s letters. In one of the prefaces, he mentions that he did that ‘to give a sense of direction to the world’. This collection is known as the ‘Kalimat-i-Taiyibat’ (delightful words), and was completed around the same time as Masir-i-Alamgiri, in 1709-10 CE.
His second collection is called ‘Ahkam-i-Alamgiri’ (orders of Aurangzeb), which is untranslated but shares its name with another collection by Hamiduddin Khan and that is translated by Jadunath Sarkar as Anecdotes of Aurangzeb.
It is this Inayatullah Khan, who was instrumental in giving us the Masir-i-Alamgiri. After Aurangzeb’s death in 1707 CE, Inayatullah asked Saqi Mustaid Khan to author this official memoir (MAE p. 44).
Muhammad Saqi Mustaid Khan
He was brought up by Bakhtawar Khan, one of the favourite officers of Aurangzeb, who passed away in February 1685. Saqi rose in the ranks under Bakhtawar’s guidance, working as a munshi (secretary or clerk) and Diwan (Head Accountant).
Importantly, Saqi assisted Bakhtawar in penning the historical work known as Mirat-ul-Alam (mirror of the world), which Aurangzeb asked him to make public after Bakhtawar Khan’s death. This would have given him the necessary experience to compile works like the Masir-i-Alamgiri.
After the death of Bakhtawar Khan, Saqi was granted a mansab in the imperial service, while holding various posts like Mushrif, Munshi and Waqia-navis, the last one literally involving recording of daily events, which can be used later to compile a document like the Masir-i-Alamgiri (MAE pp. v-vi).
He writes, “I, Muhammad Saqi, the author of this history, was the diwan and munshi of Bakhtawar Khan, and used to show to the Emperor for correction, the drafts of secret orders written by him. The Emperor kindly took me into his service and immediately made me news-writer of Thursdays” (MAE p. 155, MAP pp. 253-254).
This tells us that Saqi Mustaid Khan worked under Aurangzeb for 22 years and closely interacted with him, as is evident from the many accounts mentioned in Masir-i-Alamgiri. Considering all this, a more contemporary and capable author for Aurangzeb’s memoirs can hardly be thought of.
How Masir-i-Alamgiri was born
Mughals had a practice of writing official histories, like the Babur-namah, Humayun-namah, Akbar-namah, Tuzuk-e Jahangiri and the Padshah-namah of Shah Jahan.
Similarly, Alamgir-namah was started when Aurangzeb claimed the throne after eliminating his brothers and imprisoning his father. It continued to be written for ten years after which he gave an order to stop further writing. That is why, only a partial official history was written during his lifetime.
Interestingly, this is mentioned in Masir-i-Alamgiri. The words used while ending the narration of the first ten years are “tamām shud intikhāb da sāla”, which means, “Here ends the extract of ten years” (MAP p. 65).
This begs a question, extracts from which source? And the answer is, extract from none other than the Alamgir-namah, which he mentions in the short preface to the eleventh year of Aurangzeb’s reign. This tells us that, for the first ten years, Masir-i-Alamgiri is an extract from the official biography Alamgir-namah. The words used hereafter are also important.
Saqi Mustaid Khan says that it was Inayatullah Khan who urged him to take up this history writing by saying that, “Basā hal-e chahal sāl-e sādrāt wa wāradāt-e guftār wa kirdār-e an hazrat dar pardah ikhtifā mānda wa kār-nāma-e jahāndārī wa bārnāma-e Ālamgīrī ba-qaid-e tadvīn na-yāmad” (MAP p. 68). Which means, “Many of Aurangzeb’s sayings and acts from the past forty years are still under the wraps and the memoirs of his reign and his edicts are not yet compiled”. This explains why the author has quoted Aurangzeb many times and has shared their personal interactions in this work. It is evident that Inaytullah says forty instead of fifty years, because he knew about Alamgir-namah.
In response Saqi Mustaid Khan, in typical Mughal humility, initially says that he does not consider himself to be capable enough to handle such a big task. However, he says further, “Ifrād-e waqāi huzūr wa sūbajāt farāham ayad tā hal ain aqdat tahrīr ba-āsanī girayad” (MAP p. 69). Which means, “If the news-letters from central and provincial offices are collected, it will be easier to write this memoir”.
This tells us that Saqi Mustaid Khan clearly knew about the art of history writing and also gives us an idea about the sources used for compiling this document. It is also supported by Sarkar’s description of how these historical accounts or the namahs were compiled (MAE p. iv).
Thereafter, on Inaytullah’s insistence, Saqi agreed to pen this official memoir and mentions the completion date, which falls around 1710 CE, just three years after Aurangzeb’s death.
So it is puzzling, as to why authors like Audrey Truschke belittle and obfuscate the importance of this rich source of Indian history which covers almost 50 long and turbulent years. Let’s take a look.
Audrey Truschke’s take on Masir-i-Alamgiri
Jadunath Sarkar says about Masir-i-Alamgiri that, “... in many places it reads like a dry list of official postings and promotions as in our government gazettes. But its other portions give valuable, sometimes interesting information, especially the few that embody the author's personal observations and reflections on events or character-sketches” (MAE p. vi).
Another historian of great repute, Setumadhavrao Pagadi, who has translated extracts from it to Marathi says that, “There is no doubt that Māsir-i Ālamgīrī provides us hundreds of details about the Maratha-Mughal conflict and helps us understand the Maratha war of independence. Anyone will have to agree that Māsir-i Ālamgīrī holds the topmost position amongst all historical sources” (SPS Vol. 3, p. 386).
Now let’s look at five quotes from Audrey Truschke:
1. “For example, the Māsir-i Ālamgīrī of Saqi Mustaid Khan, a Persian-language chronicle written shortly after Aurangzeb’s death, characterized the 1670 destruction of Mathura’s Keshava Deva Temple as ‘a rare and impossible event that came into being seemingly from nowhere’” (AMM p. 106). This is a clever wordplay employed by Truschke. The whole sentence is thus, “Alhamdullillah alā dīn-e Islām ke dar ahad-e maimanat mahd-e khāna-barāndāz-e shirk wa taghiyān chunīn amr-e shigarf-e mumtana al-waqu' az makman-e adm ba-arsa-e zahur āmad” (MAP p. 96). Which translates to, “Praised be the august God of the faith of Islam, that in the auspicious reign of this destroyer of infidelity and turbulence, such a wonderful and seemingly impossible work was successfully accomplished” (MAE p. 60).
Truschke has translated the word ‘shigarf’ as ‘rare’ while here it actually means ‘wonderful’, ‘excellent’ or ‘glorious’. ‘Rare’ can be considered here, but the context is not about the rarity of temple destruction as Truschke claims, but the rarity of destroying such a magnificent temple, simply because they were very few. Truschke attempts this clever wordplay, when the sentence itself indicates that the Islamic aim of destroying temples was accomplished through this act. This is nothing short of ultra-selective history writing.
2. “The Māsir-i Ālamgīrī, overall, presented Aurangzeb’s reign through the lens of Islamic conquest, sometimes changing facts to suit the author’s tastes” (AMM p. 108). Here, Truschke makes a tall claim that Saqi Mustaid Khan has changed facts to suit his tastes, but provides no evidence whatsoever. More importantly, history writing is about presenting the viewpoint of the past and not about superimposing a modern viewpoint on it. So if Islamic conquest was the viewpoint of that era, it must be presented exactly as it was. That is the basic expectation from an honest historian, ‘honest’ being the operative word.
3. “The Māsir-i Ālamgīrī has a noted tendency to exaggerate the number of temples demolished by Aurangzeb” (AMM p. 108). Again an unsubstantiated tall claim. That the many temple destructions mentioned in Masir-i-Alamgiri are supported by other sources too is probably irrelevant for Truschke. For example, the destruction of Kashi Vishwanath temple is mentioned by Jedhe Shakavali, a contemporary and reliable source of Maratha history.
4. “Many of the so-called key historians of Aurangzeb’s rule, such as Khafi Khan (Muntakhab al-Lubab) and Saqi Mustaid Khan (Māsir-i Ālamgīrī), wrote after Aurangzeb’s death and relied extensively on memory and hearsay to reconstruct events that occured decades earlier” (AMM p. 142). This is by far the most outrageous claim, which places Saqi Mustaid Khan and Khafi Khan on the same pedestal. Khafi Khan was undoubtedly writing his work many years after Aurangzeb. But Saqi Mustaid Khan was as contemporary to Aurangzeb as anyone can be.
We have seen that Saqi Mustaid Khan was literally brought up in Mughal service by his patron Bakhtawar Khan and after his death in February 1685, he was employed under Aurangzeb till 1707 – which is 22 years. He observed Aurangzeb from close quarters, which is evident from some narrations given in Masir-i-Alamgiri.
So for the most part, Masir-i-Alamgiri is almost an eye-witness account, but Truschke says that the author ‘relied extensively on memory and hearsay’. Nothing can be farther from the truth, considering the simple fact that Masir-i-Alamgiri contains more than 1,000 dates spanning 50 years, most of them accurate, as Pagadi mentions above. Such utterly frivolous claims begs the question whether Truschke has even read the Masir-i-Alamgiri in its entirety!
5. “I cite Sarkar’s translation of the Māsir-i Ālamgīrī, but readers should be aware that Sarkar’s rendering is incomplete and contains errors” (AMM p. 147). This is another futile attempt of belittling an honest and by far, an excellent translation.
In the preface, Jadunath Sarkar says that, “Not a single fact or date has been omitted by me but the prolix wording of some sentences has been replaced by a plain recital of their substance, and many trite reflections and moralizations (which are conventional in Persian historical literature at the beginning of a chapter or section) have been omitted altogether; also, verses and long laudatory phrases. But every significant epithet has been preserved. I have inserted the page numbers of the Persian original in the body of my translation, so that any curious reader can easily satisfy himself that this is a complete reproduction in English of the historical matter of the original text” (MAE p. vi).
After having used both, Sarkar's translation and the Persian text published in 1871, for my Marathi translation, I can say that Sarkar’s statement is made in all honesty and humility. There are indeed a few gaps but those are exceptions which barely cause a dent in his incredible work.
The reference which Truschke cites to support this claim is a PhD dissertation. It talks, rather rants, about Sarkar’s overall viewpoint, than presenting the lacunae in his translation. It also makes many absurd claims like, “The early Mughal rulers governed with tolerance, especially in regards to their Hindu subjects” (MMW p. 11) or that Masir-i-Alamgiri is a ‘controversial source’, without any shred of evidence. In short, it reads like a highly opinionated work than a scholarly one, especially when it blames Sarkar by saying, “it was Sarkar’s condescending attitude towards his Muslim colleague and his arrogant conviction that he had delivered an error-free translation which irritated me from the outset of my work with Māsir-i Ālamgīrī” (MMW pp. 20-21).
That such rants pass off as ‘scholarly work’ and are quoted by a supposedly ‘renowned’ professor of history in a worldwide publication, tells us a lot about current scholarship, or the lack of it.
There is no doubt that as a person, Aurangzeb had many great qualities, as would any other Emperor of his stature and long reign. But it is also clear that his objective and official policies were inline with the pan-Islamic aim of global domination. This is clearly spelled out in many places by the Masir-i-Alamgiri, and maybe that is the reason why Truschke says that it ‘must be cited with extreme caution’ (AMM p. 108). This warning sounds very similar to a sign that says, ‘Caution 440 Volts’.
One such ‘shocking’ instance can be when Saqi Mustaid Khan quotes Aurangzeb at the battle of Vasantgad in Deccan, when he declared that, “My object in this journey is nothing except holy war (ghazā), so please God (Allah) and His Prophet. Next morning I shall mount my horse to conduct the assault and raise my banner to slay the infidels” (MAE p. 249).
This was a few days before 25 November, 1699, when the fort was taken by Mughals and renamed as ‘Kilid-e fath’, meaning ‘Key of victory’.
This was not a ‘secular’ victory that was being celebrated, but the victory of Islam over infidels. This message can be seen only if, and when, we stop superimposing the myth of secularism on medieval history, and start understanding the chronicler’s viewpoint, as it was presented.
It was back in 2017, after reading Audrey Truschke's book, Aurangzeb, the Man and the Myth, that I decided to translate Masir-i-Alamgiri in Marathi. So in a way, I am thankful to her 'scholarly' work, which unfortunately but clearly misinterprets and misrepresents history, albeit in a very fluent and seemingly erudite manner.
So I leave this simple question for the reader – in order to understand Aurangzeb’s goals, principles and policies, will you believe Saqi Mustaid Khan, who spent his whole life in Mughal service, worked closely under Aurangzeb for 22 years and clearly knew the art of history writing as it was then known, or will you believe Audrey Truschke, who was born about 250 plus years after Aurangzeb’s death, who makes unsubstantiated and blatantly false claims as shown above, and casts aspersions on Saqi Mustaid Khan, Jadunath Sarkar or anybody else, who do not conform to her ‘secular’ narrative?
References and abbreviations used above -
AMM – Aurangzeb, the man and the myth, Audrey Truschke, 2017
MAE – Māsir-i Ālamgīrī, English translation by Jadunath Sarkar, 1947
MAP – Māsir-i Ālamgīrī, Persian text published by Asiatic society of Bengal, Bibliotheca India Series, 1871
MMW – A Mughal munshi at work, Tilmann Kulke, European University Institute, PhD dissertation, 2016.
MU – Masir-ul-Umara, Beveridge and Beni Prasad, published by Asiatic Society of Bengal, Bibliotheca Indica Series, 1941
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Rohit Sahasrabudhe is an Indologist and history enthusiast. His translated works include, ‘Māsir-i Ālamgīrī’ (Marathi), ‘Mughal Administration’ (Marathi) and ‘Political letters of Shah Waliullah Dehlavi’ (Marathi and English).
