So Close and Yet Often so Far Away: The History of India as Told by Historians in Iran Around 1500

Abstract

ABSTRACT Khvandamir’s general history Habib al-Siyar (Beloved of Careers), one of the major historiographical narratives of the Persianate world, was composed for the founder of the Safavid dynasty in Iran, Shah Ismaʿil, in the 1520s. Some years later, the author ideologically reshaped his work at Babur’s Timurid-Mughal court in Agra. From the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, the book was widely copied across the Islamic lands and, judging by the number of extant manuscripts (c. 600), the Habib al-Siyar might be called a premodern bestseller. Interestingly, several chapters dealing with the history of India (Hindustan) were apparently added by the author later on and have not been included in the printed editions. Based on the examination of widely scattered manuscripts, this article examines the textual transmission of these chapters. Furthermore, it explores the question of how Khvandamir integrated information about India into the main narrative and which sources he relied on in order to situate the region within an overarching narrative of Islamic history. This approach gives further insights into the precise quality and quantity of knowledge about the Indian subcontinent available in Iran around 1500, as well as into copying processes of texts in premodern times.