The History of Akbar Hardcover by Abu'l-Fazl

Product Details

• Publisher: Harvard University Press (2021-01-05)
• Language: English
• Paperback: 800 pages
• ISBN-13: 9780674244160
• Item Weight: 567.0 grams
• Dimensions: 0.0 x 0.0 x 0.0 cm

The exemplar of Indo-Persian history, at once a biography of Emperor Akbar and a chronicle of sixteenth-century Mughal India.

Akbarnāma, or The History of Akbar, by Abu’l-Fazl (d. 1602), is one of the most important works of Indo-Persian history and a touchstone of prose artistry. Marking a high point in a long, rich tradition of Persian historical writing, it served as a model for historians across the Persianate world. The work is at once a biography of the Mughal emperor Akbar (r. 1556–1605) that includes descriptions of political and martial feats and cultural achievements, and a chronicle of sixteenth-century India.

The seventh volume details the twenty-ninth to thirty-eighth years of Akbar’s reign, including accounts of the marriage of his son and heir Salim (Jahangir); conquests of Swat, Orissa, Kashmir, Sind, and the Saurashtra Peninsula; the pacification of Bengal; and the emperor’s visits to Kashmir, the Punjab, and Kabul.

The Persian text, presented in the Naskh script, is based on a careful reassessment of the primary sources.

About the Author

Wheeler M. Thackston is Professor of the Practice of Persian and Other Near Eastern Languages, Emeritus, at Harvard University. He is the author of widely used grammars of Persian and Classical Arabic and the translator of the Bāburnāma, the Jahāngīrnāma, and the Akbarnāma.