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In many ways, Ahmad Bashir’s book arouses great interest. That it was written by a Pakistani historian in the 1960s tells us a great deal about the liberal intellectual milieu then prevalent in the newly created nation. In that milieu historians like I.H. Qureshi and Moinul Haq were seeking legitimacy for the creation of Pakistan in medieval history and blaming emperor Akbar for the fall of Mughal Empire who, according to them had diluted the purity of Islam by inducing an interface between it and other religions, especially Hinduism – all denounced as kufr. Clearly Islam was the single entry point for them in all their endeavours at historical studies and the Mughal empire was a Muslim empire per se. If one needed to bend history to this end, so be it. Ahmad Bashir too sought his entry into the subject through Islam, or, more broadly, religion in general. One can sense an interesting, almost palpable tension in his work, tension between his loyalty to Islam and loyalty to the discipline of history, where evidence is treated as the supreme arbiter. In the end he yields to the discipline at every crucial moment. In that important sense, Bashir’s is a rebellious book, a challenge to the sort of history the state was patronising and its official historians were hurriedly writing. Again and again he is led by his evidence to be ‘fair’ to Akbar and give him credit for being ‘great’.
ISBN - 9788189833817
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