6Acknowledgements

The Crisis of Empire in Mughal North India:

Awadh and Punjab, 1707-48

Muzaffar Alam Print publication date: 2013 Print ISBN-13: 9780198077411 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: May 2013

DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198077411.001.0001

(p.ix) Acknowledgements

I HAVE HAD THE PRIVILEGE of receiving help from a wide circle of friends and critics. I acknowledge with gratitude the affection and encouragement received from Professor S. Nurul Hasan and Professor Satish Chandra. They suggested the theme, helped in locating sources in the early stages of research and were generous with their time for guidance through the long period of the writing of this book. Their advice together with Professor Irfan Habib’s critical comments on an earlier draft have been invaluable in its subsequent revisions.

I have profited over a long period and in no small measure from the kindness of my colleagues and fellow researchers at the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru Univerity. Professor B. D. Chattopadhyaya, Professor Harbans Mukhia and Professor Romila Thapar have given me useful suggestions to make improvements in the text and presentation. Professor Romila Thapar has been particularly helpful in resolving the problems which arose in the course of preparing the final draft. Dr N. Bhattacharya, Professor Bipan Chandra, Yogesh Sharma and Dr Majid Siddiqi have read part of an earlier draft. Professor S. Bhattacharya, Professor Satish Saberwal, Dr Madhavan Palat, Dr Chetan Singh, Dr Dilbagh Singh and Dr K. K. Trivedi have always been willing to advise me on many issues directly or indirectly relevant to this study. Amongst others, Professor Barun De and Professor Iqtidar Alam Khan have encouraged my early efforts. Dr C. A. Bayly, Gautam Bhadra, Dr Mike Fisher, Professor P. J. Marshall, Professor Burton Stein (p.x) and Dr Andre Wink have seen this work and commented on it. I thank them all for their valuable comments and for useful discussions, all of which have helped to make this a more balanced and coherent work than it would have otherwise been. But responsibility for any errors and the views expressed in this work remains mine alone.

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7Acknowledgements

It is my pleasure to recall my debt to my Aligarh teachers who taught me the intricacies of the medieval Indian system. The structure of this book has drawn a great deal on their writings and it is in the knowledge that even where I have disagreed with them the strength, if any, in my argument comes from the first lessons I had from them in research on Mughal history. Amongst the fellow researchers and colleagues, I am thankful in particular to Dr Iqbal Husain and Dr S. Z. H. Jafari for bringing to my notice some important documents; and to Dr I. H. Zilli for helping me in various ways during my research in Aligarh. My intellectual debt to the authors of the recent writings on the eighteenth century will be clear from the footnotes, and call for no special mention.

Professor Irfan Habib and Dr Chetan Singh have helped me in preparing the maps. Mr Faiz Habib and Mr Zahoor Ali Khan have drawn Maps 1 and 7. The other five maps have been drawn by Mr O. D. Tyagi. I have followed Irfan Habib’s Atlas in identifying in the maps the Mughal administrative divisions. Mr Gabar Singh prepared the typescripts. I must express my gratitude to them all.

Material in the early stages of research for this work was gathered from the Department of History Library and the Maulana Azad Library, Aligarh; the Uttar Pradesh Archives offices, Allahabad and Lucknow; the Asiatic Society of Bengal Library and the National Library, Calcutta; the Tagore Library, Lucknow; the Indian National Archives, New Delhi; the Khuda Bakhsh Oriental Public Library, Patna; the Raza Library, Rampur; and the Raghuvir Library, Sitamau. The School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University and the Indian Council of Historical Research financed my visits to these libraries. A Commonwealth Academic Staff Fellowship in 1981–2 gave me an opportunity to benefit from the rich oriental collections of the British Library, the India Office Library, the Royal Asiatic Society Library, London; the Bodleian Library, Oxford; and the Edinburgh (p.xi) University Library, Edinburgh. The Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, Paris provided material support for a month’s stay in Paris to enable me to consult eighteenth century Indo-Persian MSS in Bibliotheque Nationale. My thanks are due to these funding institutions for facilitating my work; to the staff of the libraries for allowing me to use their collections; and to Dr Raghuvir Sinh and the authorities of the Maulana Azad Library for lending certain MSS/ Rotographs to the Jawaharlal Nehru University Library for my use.

I should not fail to thank the Oxford University Press for careful editing and meticulous production.

Finally, I must record my sense of obligation to Rizwana, Adnan and Asiya. They have been an unfailing source of sustenance through the protracted stages of completion of this work.

New Delhi 1986

MUZAFFAR ALAM (p.xii)

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