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Firishta
Firishta or Ferešte (Persian: فرشته), full name Muhammad Qasim Hindu Shah Astarabadi (Persian: محمدقاسم هندوشاہ استرابادی), was a Persian historian, who later settled in India and served the Deccan Sultans as their court historian. He was born in 1570 and died between 1611 and 1623.
Firishta was born c. 1570 at Astarabad on the shores of the Caspian Sea to Gholam Ali Hindu Shah. While Firishta was still a child, his father was summoned away from his native country to Ahmednagar, India, to teach Persian to the young prince Miran Husain Nizam Shah, with whom Firishta studied.
In 1587 Firishta was serving as the captain of guards of King Murtaza Nizam Shah I when Prince Miran overthrew his father and claimed the throne of Ahmednagar. At this time, the Sunni Deccani Muslims committed a general massacre of the foreign population, especially Shias of Iranian origin, of which Firishta was one of. However, Prince Miran spared the life of his former friend, who then left for Bijapur to enter the service of King Ibrahim Adil II in 1589.
Having been in military positions until then, Firishta was not immediately successful in Bijapur. Further exacerbating matters was the fact that Firishta was of Shia origin and therefore did not have much chance of attaining a high position in the dominantly Sunni courts of the Deccan sultanates. Ibrahim Adil Shah II of Bijapur had also begun following the policy of bringing Sunni Muslim Deccanis to power and ending Shia domination by dismissing them from their posts. In 1593 Ibrahim Shah II ultimately implored Firishta to write a history of India with equal emphasis on the history of Deccan dynasties as no work thus far had given equal treatment to all regions of the subcontinent.
The work was variously known as the Tārīkh-i Firishta (The History of Firishta) and the Gulshan-i Ibrāhīmī (The Rose-Garden of Ibrahim [Shah II]). In the introduction, a resume of the history of Hindustan prior to the times of the Muslim conquest is given, and also the victorious progress of Arabs through the East. The first ten books are each occupied with a history of the kings of one of the provinces; the eleventh book gives an account of the Muslims of Malabar; the twelfth a history of the Muslim saints of India; and the conclusion treats of the geography and climate of India.
Tārīkh-i Firishta consists primarily of the following chapter's (maqāla), with some, like "The Kings of Dakhin" having subchapters (rawza):
Contemporary scholars and historians variously write that the works of Firishta drew from Tabaqāt-i-Akbarī by Nizamuddin, Tarīkh-i-Rāshidī by Mirza Haidar[full citation needed] and Barani's Tārīkh.[full citation needed] At least one historian, Peter Jackson, explicitly states that Firishta relied upon the works of Barani and Sarhindi, and that his work cannot be relied upon as a first hand account of events, and that at places in the Tarīkh he is suspected of having relied upon legends and his own imagination.[full citation needed]
According to T. N. Devare, Firishta's account is the most widely quoted history of the Adil Shahi, but it is the only source for asserting the Ottoman origin of Yusuf Adil Shah, the founder of the Adil Shahi dynasty. Devare believes that to be a fabricated story. Other sources for Deccani history mentioned by Devare are those of Mir Rafiuddin Ibrahim-i Shirazi, or "Rafi'", Mir Ibrahim Lari-e Asadkhani, and Ibrahim Zubayri, the author of the Basatin as-Salatin (67, fn 2). Devare observed that the work is "a general history of India from the earliest period up to Firishta's time written at the behest of Ibrahim Adil Shah II and presented to him in 1015 AH/1606 CE. It seems, however, that it was supplemented by the author himself as it records events up to AH 1033 (1626 CE)" (Devare 272).[citation needed]
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Firishta
Firishta or Ferešte (Persian: فرشته), full name Muhammad Qasim Hindu Shah Astarabadi (Persian: محمدقاسم هندوشاہ استرابادی), was a Persian historian, who later settled in India and served the Deccan Sultans as their court historian. He was born in 1570 and died between 1611 and 1623.
Firishta was born c. 1570 at Astarabad on the shores of the Caspian Sea to Gholam Ali Hindu Shah. While Firishta was still a child, his father was summoned away from his native country to Ahmednagar, India, to teach Persian to the young prince Miran Husain Nizam Shah, with whom Firishta studied.
In 1587 Firishta was serving as the captain of guards of King Murtaza Nizam Shah I when Prince Miran overthrew his father and claimed the throne of Ahmednagar. At this time, the Sunni Deccani Muslims committed a general massacre of the foreign population, especially Shias of Iranian origin, of which Firishta was one of. However, Prince Miran spared the life of his former friend, who then left for Bijapur to enter the service of King Ibrahim Adil II in 1589.
Having been in military positions until then, Firishta was not immediately successful in Bijapur. Further exacerbating matters was the fact that Firishta was of Shia origin and therefore did not have much chance of attaining a high position in the dominantly Sunni courts of the Deccan sultanates. Ibrahim Adil Shah II of Bijapur had also begun following the policy of bringing Sunni Muslim Deccanis to power and ending Shia domination by dismissing them from their posts. In 1593 Ibrahim Shah II ultimately implored Firishta to write a history of India with equal emphasis on the history of Deccan dynasties as no work thus far had given equal treatment to all regions of the subcontinent.
The work was variously known as the Tārīkh-i Firishta (The History of Firishta) and the Gulshan-i Ibrāhīmī (The Rose-Garden of Ibrahim [Shah II]). In the introduction, a resume of the history of Hindustan prior to the times of the Muslim conquest is given, and also the victorious progress of Arabs through the East. The first ten books are each occupied with a history of the kings of one of the provinces; the eleventh book gives an account of the Muslims of Malabar; the twelfth a history of the Muslim saints of India; and the conclusion treats of the geography and climate of India.
Tārīkh-i Firishta consists primarily of the following chapter's (maqāla), with some, like "The Kings of Dakhin" having subchapters (rawza):
Contemporary scholars and historians variously write that the works of Firishta drew from Tabaqāt-i-Akbarī by Nizamuddin, Tarīkh-i-Rāshidī by Mirza Haidar[full citation needed] and Barani's Tārīkh.[full citation needed] At least one historian, Peter Jackson, explicitly states that Firishta relied upon the works of Barani and Sarhindi, and that his work cannot be relied upon as a first hand account of events, and that at places in the Tarīkh he is suspected of having relied upon legends and his own imagination.[full citation needed]
According to T. N. Devare, Firishta's account is the most widely quoted history of the Adil Shahi, but it is the only source for asserting the Ottoman origin of Yusuf Adil Shah, the founder of the Adil Shahi dynasty. Devare believes that to be a fabricated story. Other sources for Deccani history mentioned by Devare are those of Mir Rafiuddin Ibrahim-i Shirazi, or "Rafi'", Mir Ibrahim Lari-e Asadkhani, and Ibrahim Zubayri, the author of the Basatin as-Salatin (67, fn 2). Devare observed that the work is "a general history of India from the earliest period up to Firishta's time written at the behest of Ibrahim Adil Shah II and presented to him in 1015 AH/1606 CE. It seems, however, that it was supplemented by the author himself as it records events up to AH 1033 (1626 CE)" (Devare 272).[citation needed]