A nobleman of the court of the Mughal emperor, Iradat Khan (c.1649 1716) experienced the rule of Aurangzeb (1618 1707) and observed at first hand the decline of the Mughal empire. This English translation of his memoirs was first published in 1786 by Jonathan Scott (1754 1829), a captain of the East India Company. He translated Khan's memoirs in order to educate the British about India's history and inform them about the Mughal empire. In these memoirs Khan relates anecdotes of his encounters with Aurangzeb and recounts the events following the emperor's death, including the rule of his son...

Serving in Bengal as a captain of the East India Company, Jonathan Scott (1753 1829) became a private Persian translator to Governor-General Warren Hastings in 1783. A gifted orientalist, he was elected a member of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1784, returned to England in 1785, and a year later published the first of his many translations, Memoirs of Eradut Khan (also reissued in the Cambridge Library Collection), shedding light on the Mughal empire in the seventeenth century. This two-volume work, published in 1794, narrates the fortunes of the Islamic kingdoms in southern India from the...

Serving in Bengal as a captain of the East India Company, Jonathan Scott (1753 1829) became a private Persian translator to Governor-General Warren Hastings in 1783. A gifted orientalist, he was elected a member of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1784, returned to England in 1785, and a year later published the first of his many translations, Memoirs of Eradut Khan (also reissued in the Cambridge Library Collection), shedding light on the Mughal empire in the seventeenth century. This two-volume work, published in 1794, narrates the fortunes of the Islamic kingdoms in southern India from the...