Later Mughals (2 Volumes in One Bound)

William Irvine’s Later Mughals is an outstanding narrative of the period following the death of Aurangzeb in 1707. It covers the period from the time of Bahadur Shah I, who ascended the Mughal throne in 1707 and continued to rule till 1738, when Muhammad Shah became the emperor. The tumultuous period between the years 1738-39 when Nadir Shah invaded India and occupied Delhi after defeating Muhammad Shah has also been inducted in order to complete the survey of this important phase of Indian history. Planned on a grand scale, the present work is based entirely on the original Persian and other contemporary sources besides the mass of information gathered from the East India records of the Dutch, French and Portuguese governments as well as the Christian Missions of the East. The outcome of this painstaking research, Later Mughals, however, could be continued only up to 1739, even though Irvine had planned to cover the entire rule of the later Mughals. In the first of the two volumes, Irvine covers the period from Bahadur Shah, who ascended the Mughal throne in 1707, to the brief rule of Rafi-ud-darzat and Rafi-ud-daulah and the death of the latter in September 1719. The second volume deals with the period beginning with accession of Muhammad Shah to the throne; in the final chapters the events connected with the rise and progress of Nadir Shah and his departure from Delhi have been discussed. The array of details, culled from various sources, have been presented by William Irvine with objectivity and scholarship. It is thus a permanent source-book for the history of the later Mughal rulers. It embodies the varied information provided by the various contemporary sources which Irvine verified and supplemented by carefully sifting the information from the accounts of individual travellers and writers.