Twilight of the Sultanate c17.2

c17.2

To RECAPTURE a comprehensive picture of the social life of Medieval India from the writings of those times is rather a difficult task. Persian chroniclers excel in the narrative of political events; they callously neglect to refer to the life and activities of the common man. Hindu historical literature giving "the Hindu point of view" is conspicuous by its absence. Fortunately a number of itineraries of foreign travellers are available, and when read with the writings of the Indian historians give a tolerably satisfactory picture of the social life of India in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. The writings of Marco Polo, Amīr Khusru and Ibn Battūta in the preceding centuries provide a good back-drop to the accounts of Abdur Razzāq, Athnasius Nikitin, Nicolo Conti and many others in the fifteenth century. What their writings lack is made up by Bābur's faithful Memoirs, who writes in detail about the early years of the sixteenth century.