'Ibrat Namah
About this text
Introductory notes
Mirzā Muhammad Rustam Hārisī (b. 1687) came from Jalalabad, in southern Afghanistan. He was a nobleman of relatively small standing in Aurangzeb’s court, and witness to the decline of the Mughal empire from the last decade of Aurangzeb’s reign to the death of Farrukh Siyar. In his invocation, he describes his ‘Ibrat Nāmah as “tazkirah-i-Ahwāl-Khud ba Tarz-i-Roznāmchah [an account of events concerning himself in the mode of a diary]”. The manuscript consists of memoirs of the author's first-hand experience of events in Punjab and northern India from 1703, and of Aurangzeb’s later Deccan campaigns to the year of Farrukh Siyar’s assassination in 1719.
1.
Shab-e- jum‘a bist-o- hashtum ramaz̤ān sanah-e maẕkur (1127) hijri bārān shuru‘a shudah tā ākhir-e roz-e- yakshanbeh salkh-e- māh-e- maẕkur ‘alal itteṣal jhari bood emārāt-e- bisyār dar shahr uftād wa shab-e- doshanbeh ke shab-e- Eid bood bārān istād ammā hawā abr bood … wa az shab-e- yakshanbeh haftum shawwal sanah-e- maẕkur bāz bārān shuru‘a tā yak pahr roz mandeh az seh shanbeh nahum māh-e- maẕkur be hamān minwāl –e- sābiq ‘alal itteṣal–e- sābiq jhari bood, emārāt-e- bisyār ke az bārān-e- sābiq sālim māndeh bood darin bārān uftād.
2.
In the night of Friday, twenty eighth of Ramaz̤ān 1127A.H. the rain started and continued till Sunday, the last and 30th day of the above mentioned month without any break. Many buildings in the town collapsed. In the night of Monday, the eve of the Eid, the rain stopped. But the weather remained cloudy….. And from Sunday night, the seventh of Shawwāl of the same year the rain started again and continued without break like before till Tuesday afternoon, the ninth of the said month. Many buildings which had remained intact during the previous rain, collapsed in this rain.