Indian Antiquary Vol 36

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 14

10
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[JANUARY, 1907.
AHMAD SHAH, ABDALI, AND THE INDIAN WAZIR, IMAD-UL-MULK (1756-7). (Contributed by William Irvine, late of the Bengal Civil Service.)
THE following narrative is taken from a Persian manuscript, being the third of four works bound together in a small quarto volume which I bought at Quaritch's some ten or twelve years ago. The other tracts are:- -(1) Inshae Miram, copied Safar 1198 H. (Dec. 1783); (2) Inshäe 'Abdullah, copied at Lakhnau, Rafi' I., 1198 H. (Feb. 1784); (3) the present narrative; (4) a fragment of Mhd. Ahsan, Matani Yab Khan (Ijad), Samanawi's Farrukh-namah. This fragment carries on this rare work to some date in 1128 H. (1716), that is, much farther than either B. Museum MS. Oriental, No. 25 (Rieu, 273), or the twenty-five folios of it in the Münich MS., No. 265 (Joseph Aumer, 'Catalogue,' 1866, p. 97).
The volume has on the flyleaf a list of contents in English, in an 18th century handwriting which I have seen elsewhere; I think it is that of Jonathan Scott, Polier, or W. Francklin. Some one has noted that the initials "W. O." on the same flyleaf are those of Sir Williamh Ouseley, presumably a former owner. The book was No. 387 in the bookseller, W. Straker's Catalogue of 1836, and in 1839 it belonged to Dr. John Lee of 5 Doctors' Commons, by whom it was lent to B. Dorn, when his History of the Afghans' was in preparation for the Oriental Translation Fund.
The account of Ahmad Shah Abdali's incursion into India in 1757, as here presented, is one of three notable contributions to Indian history of the 18th century, for which we are indebted to the initiative of Captain Jonathan Scott; and so far as I recollect, not one of them is referred to in the article devoted to him in the "Dictionary of National Biography." The other two works are:(1) Hadiqat-ul-aqälim, by Shekh Murtaza Husain, Bilgrami, surnamed Allahyar Säni, H. M. Elliot's "accurate Moortuza Hosain"; (2) Shahadat-i-Farrukhsiyar wa Julus-i-Muḥammad Shah, by Mirza Muhammad Bakhsh, Ashob.
Samin is the author of Sharaif-i-ugmani, a history of Bilgram Shekh families written as a counterblast to Ghulam 'Ali, Azad's Ma,ägir-ul-kiräm fi tarikh-i Bilgram, a panegyric of the Saiyid families there. He pours fine scorn on Azad, who was a Samdhant, tho' gh he calls himself a Bilgrami; that is, his mother was of Bilgram, but his father Muhammad Nuh was of Samdhan, an obscure village on the other side of the Ganges, between Farrukhabad and Qannauj. In the Shara,if (my copy, page 255) we find that Ghulam Hasan, poetically Samin, Sadiqi, Farshūri, Bilgrami, was the son of Shekh Ghulam Husain, son of Qasi Faizullah of Bilgram (now in the Hardoi district). He was born about 1129 H. (1716-17) and had a brother called Muhammad Sadiq (poetically Sukhanwar). He traces his descent in the 37th degree from Abi Bakr, Sadiq; and for 25 generations his ancestors had been gāzis of Bilgram. Up to 1179 H. (1765-6) Samin had three sons and two daughters. The present narrative shows that he was alive in 1197 H. (1782-3). I have found no record of his death.
I think the story here given is of great historical value, as it furnishes us with a first-hand account of actual events. The doings of Ahmad Shah in India, except those leading up to the crowning victory of Panipat in January 1761, are elsewhere recorded for the most part in a vague, confused manner. Many points are cleared up by Samin's story, and it helps to do for Ahmad Shah's Indian record, what Dr. Oskar Mann has done so brilliantly for his non-Indian conquests, in a series of articles in the Z. D. M. G. for 1898. The intercalated narrative of 'Imad-ul-mulk's marriage troubles is new and curious; and it throws further light on the character of Mu'in-ul-mulk's widow, the disagreeable traits in which are largely depicted in Ghulam 'Ali Khan's Muqaddamah and the autobiography of her husband's house-slave, Mirza Tahmasp, Miskin.