Bakhtawar Khan Mohammad


Bakhtawar Khan Mohammad or simply Bakhtawar, was a Persian historian, poet, official and later also personal advisor of the king at the court of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb.

Early life

Like many Persian poets, traders and nobles in the Early modern period, Bakhtawar's family migrated from Persia to the Mughal Empire, where Persian-speaking people in particular were in great demand at the Mughal court and made up an important part of the nobility.

Literature

  • S. S. Alvi, “The Historians of Awrangzeb: A Comparative Study of Three Primary Sources,” Essays on Islamic Civilization, ed. D. P. Little, Leiden, 1976, pp. 57–73.
  • Bakhtāwar Khān, Mirʾāt al-ʿĀlam: History of Emperor Awrangzeb ʿĀlamgīr, ed. S. S. Alvi, I-II, Lahore, 1979.
  • H. M. Elliot, The History of India as Told by Its Own Historians, ed. J. Dowson, London, 1877, VIII, pp. 150–53.
  • Mostaʿed Khan, Maʾāṯer-e ʿālamgīrī, Eng. tr. Jadunath Sarkar, Calcutta, 1947, pp. 59, 61, 142, 155.
  • Moḥammad-Afżal Sarḵoš, Kalemāt al-šoʿarāʾ, Lahore, n.d., pp. 25–26. EI2 I, p. 954.
  • Rieu, Pers. Man. I, pp. 124–27; III, pp. 890–91, 975.
  • Storey, I, pp. 132–33, 517, 1012.