Shahjahan Namah
About this text
Introductory notes
Md. bin Md. Mahmood Jalālai Tabātabāi (d.1636) was a Persian scholar from Isfahan, who arrived in India in 1634, was the first chronicler of Shahjahan. This courtly chronicle only covers four years of the emperor Shahjahan’s reign, beginning with the fifth solar year of his reign to the end of the eighth. From references within the work it appears that Tabātabāi also wrote an account of the earlier years. Tabātabāi writes in a highly ornate style of native Persian. This fragmentary account is less used than the better known chronicles of Shahjahan, such as Qazwini’s. It appears that Qazwini’s Pādshahnāma was an important source for Tabātabāi, who replicates his predecessor’s narrative in some sections, such as the description of Kashmir.
1.
Wa ḥaqiqat-e- tangi-e- kār-e- mutaḥaṣṣenān be sabab-e- shiddat-e- z̤iq-e- ta‘ayyush ke az ṭul-e- muddat-e- muḥaṣirah wa qillat-e- ghallah wa kas̱rat-e- ‘usrat wa farṭ-e-woqu‘a-e-balāye qaḥṭ-o- ghalla nāshi shudah be mabālāt-o-taḥāshi eblāgh namoodah iẓhār-e- sāir-e- asrār-e- muzmerah wa afkār-e- mukhmerah be ‘amal mi ārad.
2.
The truth about the miseries faced by the besieged, due to lack of comfort because of the long period of siege, paucity of grain, extreme poverty and the calamity of the famine and epidemic, has been communicated honestly and without exaggeration describing all that is implied by action and thought.