MOGUL INDIA OR STORIA DO MOGOR (1653-1708) VOL 04 (Hardbound-2022)

Mogul India or Storia Do Mogor (in four volumes) is a travelogue of a well-known Italian traveller Niccolao Manucci, translated in English and annotated by William Irvine, ICS. It provides a vivid eye-witness account of Mughal India. Written in a charming style, the book is truly a magnum opus of the celebrated author who visited India in 1656 and was associated with the Mughal Court for over half a century. He describes herein, besides other intimate details, an account of Hindu religion, manners, customs, and description of Muhammadan weddings, funerals, and their social norms. The book is a veritable mine of otherwise inaccessible data about a period of Indian history which everyone should know. Comprehensive in its groundwork and masterly and lucid in its details, Niccolao’s book, as presented in its English version by Irvine, ranks among the most authoritative sources at the disposal of the historian of the future.

A painstaking exploration of life as lived in an important period of Mughal history, the book includes facts carefully and ably translated and edited with historical footnotes which help in understanding them and their relation to the administrative, political, and social condition of the time. This work has been reproduced from the original artifact and remains as true to the original work as possible.

Niccolao Manucci (19th April, 1638, Venice, Italy—1717, Puducherry, India) was an Venetian writer, doctor, and traveller, who wrote a firsthand account of the Mughal Empire. In 1653, he was recruited as a servant and guide by Henry Bard, first Viscount Bellomont, envoy from Charles II of England to Abbas II of Persia and Shah Jahan. On first arriving in Surat in 1656, he joined the Mughal army under Dara Shikoh as an artilleryman. In his first decade in India and after Dara’s execution, he travelled to Patna, Bengal, Agra, and Delhi, eventually joining the service of Raja Jai Singh. In 1666, he left Mughal service, and attempted to try his luck in the Portuguese settlements of Bassein (present-day Vasai) and Goa. During this time, he had reinvented himself as a doctor with the help of books sent by his relatives as well as local vaids and hakims and attached himself to Mughal Princes as a ‘physician’. From 1682 to 1686, he see- sawed between the Mughals and the Portuguese before settling in Madras. He lived in India till his death and is one of the few firsthand European sources for Shah Jahan, Aurangzeb, Shivaji, Dara Shikoh, Shah Alam I, Jai Singh I, and Kirat Singh.