The solution of many conundrums related to Khvandamir's general history Habib al-Siyar fi Akhbar Afrad al-Bashar: A case study

Abstract

Khvandamir's general history Habib al-Siyar fi Akhbar Afrad al-Bashar, finished for the first time in Iran in 1524 and later on revised by the author in India, has been regarded as the most important historiographical work of the late Timurid as well as the early Safavid and Mughal periods (16th century) by modern scholarship. As such, it has been mainly valued for historical information it contains on political, economic and social issues of these periods. This article proposes to consider the Habib al-Siyar as an historiographical narrative in its own right. In doing so, it tackles a number of questions directly related to the author's religio-political attitudes which have remained unanswered to date. I hope, in presenting two of the oldest extant manuscripts of this work, dating back to the 1520s and 1530s, to advance a study which high- lights and critically analyses the historiographical implications of Khvandamir's work, which the author wrote for a Shi'i Safavid audience in Iran and a couple of years later as a later edition, for a mostly Sunni Mughal audience in India.