Studies in the field of social and cultural history of medieval India are rather few and far between. This book by Azhar Ansari is a valuable addition to the category of such studies that deal with the social and cultural life of the royalty and nobility, a section that significantly determined the direction of cultural development in all urban centres and set a number of cultural trends all over the subcontinent. It describes the daily life of the king and his seraglio in considerable detail. This book is a significant contribution in the study of the daily life in the female part of royalty about which much has yet not been studied. The chapter on hunting sums up considerable details of an aspect that has yet hardly been discussed in such details. The book discusses in detail the Mughals penchant for aesthetics and exhaustively narrates the various horticultural activities that the Mughals indulged in all over the subcontinent. Discussion about the various types of their dresses is another special feature of the book. So also is the study of their manners and customs practised in the court as well as in the residences.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Jaweed Ashraf
Professor Jaweed Ashraf was born in 1934 in a family of Malkhana Rajputs with both Hindu and Muslim relatives. Thus, from childhood he experienced an insider’s view of both cultures. He had his primary education in Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi, an institution that was born out of the freedom movement and where traditional Islamic learning was combined with modern education. He learnt Arabic and Persian, besides Urdu, Hindi and English in Jamia. Later he shifted to Lucknow Christian College where he started studying Biology and experienced Christian belief and way of life. He graduated with Geology, Geography and Botany from Aligarh Muslim University and also obtained his Master’s degree in Botany from there. In 1960 he went to join Timiryazev Agricultural Academy, Moscow, for his doctoral studies in physiological genetics. After completing his doctorate, from 1965 to 1972 he worked as a Junior Research Assistant in the USSR Academy of Sciences, first working in the Institute of Genetics in Moscow and then in the Botanical Institute, Leningrad. In 1972 he joined School of Life Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi as Associate Professor and finally retired from there in 1999. Since his retirement he has worked on projects of Indian Council of Historical Research and of Indian National Science Academy, editing and translating medieval manuscripts on Unani medicine, horticulture and other aspects of medieval Indian biological sciences. He knows a number of modern and classical languages and has extensively covered countries of Asia, Durope and the U.S.A. He has served on a numbr of committees appointed by Archaeological Survey of India and other departments of the government of India.
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