2025/02/13 by Saran, Richard
#Asian Languages and Cultures #FOS: Humanities #History #Humanities #Mughals #Rajasthan #Rajputs
paper · doi:10.7302/24385
In his book, The Formation of the Mughal Empire, Douglas Streusand remarked that "although Jodhpur is certainly a great fort, Abu al-Fazl's notice of its fall is so brief that the Mughals probably did not have to mount siege operations in order to take it." Streusand also pointed out that "[Abu al- Fazl's] entire presentation [the Akbar Nama] serves to glorify, justify, and explain the status of Akbar in accord with his view of himself." An inglorious siege with mixed results may not have fulfilled Abu al-Fazl's purpose. It is indisputable that a siege took place, but its history is relatively unknown. Most historians of Akbar's reign have relied solely on Persian chronicles to reconstruct events, while neglecting the Rajasthan sources which best describe what happened. In the following pages I have attempted to correct this imbalance. In addition to the relevant Persian sources, available in English translation, I have used seventeenth-century Rajasthani chronicles to reconstruct both the series of events leading up to the siege and the siege itself. It is my hope that whatever inadequacies one finds in these pages will be overwhelmed by the reader's discovery of what the RajasthanI sources might add to the political history of the Mughals in the time of their greatest ruler, Akbar.