A Bibliography of Mughal India

Neither the original official records of the period nor the works of royal historiographer the Tuzuk-i-Nburi and the Tuzuk-i-Jandngiri the autobiographies of the founder of the Mughal Empire and his great granson form a class by themselves. [...] Climatic conditions the anarchy that followed the disintegration of the Mughal empire in the eighteenth century and the wars of different states with one another did not very much favour the preservation of official records of the Mughal peried in India. [...] They can be more justly described as the 'Minutes of the proceedings of the Mughal Emperor in Court.' The Mughal Emperors maintained a set of Clerks of the Court occupying a position very similar to that of the Clerks of the Privy Council in the Tudor times. [...] Now every sheet used bore at the head the words Akhabiirät-i-Darbär-Mit'alfi then would come down below the day of the week the date and the month of the regnal year of the sovereign. [...] If the Emperor read the prayers for the dead over a corpse the fact was recorded ; if he indulged in the pastime of changing the names of towns and forts it found a place in the records cf the Clerk of the Court.