Abdul Qadir Badauni’s Muntakhab-Ut-Tawarikh (History Of Islam In India From Subuktgin
To 1590)
URJA KAUSHIK, B.A. HISTORY HONS., 2ND YEAR, JMC
EARLY LIFE OF THE AUTHOR: MULLAH ABDUL QADIR BADAUNI
Born in Todah and brought up in Bhusawar, the city that he came to identify with
was Badaun. He came from a family connected with imperial office.
His education ranged from the traditional theological studies to rational sciences and
the arts, though its only the former that he mentioned in the Muntakhab.
From 1565 to 1574, he was in the service of a Mughal noble, Husain Khan, and in
1574 he joined the court of the Mughal emperor Akbar as an ‘imam’.
POSITION IN THE COURT: THE “STREET OF ILLUSORY EXISTENCE”
PIC: AKBAR IS PETITIONED BY A COURTIER
His entry into the Mughal Court coincided with Akbar’s struggle against the
supremacy of the Ulema.
His dissent against each and every opinion in the court made him valuable to Akbar
as an Imam, since his presence could help further dissent and weaken the Ulema.
His use to Akbar was only ‘negative’ and very limited in scope, since Akbar wanted to
create a new institutional framework with the Ulema under his subjugation.
BADAUNI’S TENDENCY FOR RELIGIOUS ‘OTHERNESS’
He considered the Shi’as as “heretics” and the Hindus as “Infidels”. His conception of
every entity in the third volume of the Muntakhab depended on ‘piety’ and
‘orthodoxy’.
However, his hatred did not extend to all the members of specific sects, for example:
He respected certain Hindus like Raja Man Singh, for whom he wrote the
chronogram, “A Hindu Wields the Sword of Islam”, and certain Shi’as like Khan-i-
Khanan Bairam Khan, Mir Murtaza Sharif Shirazi and Qazi Nurullah of Shustr.
PIC: RAJA MAN SINGH
AKBAR’S DESIGN AND BADAUNI’S “VERSE OF FLIGHT”
Akbar’s institutional framework was achieved through 2 ways: the establishment of
the Ibadat Khana and the institution of the Mahzar.
Badauni’s eyewitness accounts of the Ibadat Khana were very crucial, and the
Mahzar was recorded clearly only in the Muntakhab-ut-Tawarikh.
The changes in the court led to great dilemmas for Badauni, as he had to take up
practices like translating the scriptures of the ‘infidels’ and performing the sijdah.
PIC: AKBAR IN THE IBADAT KHANA
PIC:
IBADAT KHANA, FATEHPUR SIKRI
COMPOSTION AND STRUCTURE OF THE MUNTAKHAB-UT TAWARIKH:
Main agenda of the Muntakhab-ut Tawarikh: Recording the true version of events
for the benefit of the virtuous in posterity; Recording ‘the disintegration of Islam’ in
Akbar’s reign. The account, an unofficial history/memoir, comprises of three
volumes.
FIRST VOLUME: The first volume is strictly in the form of an official historical treatise
(tawarikh), with chronological records of accessions, successions, wars, rebellions,
expeditions of the Sultan, etc.
The narrative begins with Nasir-ud-din Subuktgin and ends with the reign of Mughal
Emperor Humayun.
Each chapter talks about the events in the reign of a specific Emperor, beginning
with his accession and ending with his dethronement or death.
SECOND VOLUME: It comprises a narrative of the first 40 years of Akbar’s reign in a
chronological manner, with mention of the year being made before the narration of
events.
The narrative follows the chronological order, breaking an event in between if it
exceeded one year, but completing it before taking up intermediate events if it
occurred in the same year.
He also tended to break the narration of events to give biographical notes of the
people involved in them.
PIC: MAHMUD OF GHAZNI
THIRD VOLUME: The volume, in the form of a Tazkira, contains short biographical
notes of the Mashaikhs and Ullemas of Akbar’s age and the physicians and poets of
Akbar’s court.
For the poets, he recounts both their life events and cites their work, sometimes
pointing out technical mistakes and making qualitative evaluations of their works.
Badauni’s tendency to digress into the by-lanes of history gives historians a great
deal of information beyond those related to the court.
BADAUNI’S CONCEPTION OF HISTORICAL CAUSATION:
Badauni viewed history not in a holistic manner, but as stories and biographies of
particular events and people.
For him, the people and the events hung in a vacuum and were not a culmination of
past events. He located the causation of the actions of people in human volition.
BARANI’S TARIKH-I-FIRUZSHAHI
Zia-ud-din Barani, who is often used as a source in the Muntakhab, used
rationalisation and scientific methods, while Badauni strongly despised the rational
sciences. For him, rational sciences and tradition were antagonistic to each other.
Unlike Barani, who offered alternative political institutions to the state of his day,
Badauni focusses on only demolishing what he saw as illegitimate and destructive.
LITERARY STYLE OF THE MUNTAKHAB-UT-TAWARIKH
The work cannot be placed under any specific literary style.
The long narrative is often interspersed with verses, which were many-a-times
irrelevant to the narrative.
The chronograms created by him help historians establish the dates of certain events
and learn about the contemporary views of events and people through his value
judgements.
The Muntakhab was written not for courtly patronisation, but to record the ‘truth’/
dissent which the author couldn’t express in open.
REFERENCES:
1. Mukhia H. (1976) ‘Historians and Historiography During the Reign of Akbar’ . New
Delhi: Vikas Publishing House PVT LTD. pp. 89-131 .
2. Khan M.R. (2009) ‘Treatment of ‘Others’ in Muntakhab- ul-Tawarikh of Abdul Qadir
Badauni’ . Blogspot: https://indianhistory4scholars.blogspot.com/2009/04/mughal-
historian-abdul-qadir-badauni.html
