The Baburnama
Subtitle: memoirs of Babur, prince and emperor
By: translated, edited, and annotated by Wheeler M. Thackston ; introduction by Salman Rushdie
Contributors: Thackston, W. M. 1944-
Edition: Modern Library pbk. ed
Publisher: Modern Library
Published: 2002
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 554
Subjects: Babur, -- Emperor of Hindustan, -- 1483-1530; Mogul Empire; Mogul Empire -- Kings and rulers -- Biography
Genres: Biography
Work titles: Bāburnāmah.
Description: Both an official chronicle and a highly personal memoir, the Baburnama presents a vivid and extraordinarily detailed picture of life in Central Asia and India during the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. It is also the text most often quoted by historians and scholars of Mughal India. The prose of Zahiruddin Muhammad Babur, the first Mughal emperor, is described by its new translator Wheeler Thackston as frank, intimate, truthful, and unbiased.

It is all the more astonishing, therefore, that the Baburnama is also the first real autobiography in Islamic literature. Babur had no historical precedent for his narrative, yet even today it is a remarkably engrossing volume to read.

. The interests that Babur expressed so eloquently in the memoirs - his profound curiosity about the natural world and human personalities, for example - defined also the directions that artists were to take. Dr. Thackston's translation provides many new insights into a particularly stimulating period in the world's history.
Notes: Originally published: Washington, D.C. : Freer Gallery of Art : Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, 1996

Includes bibliographical references (p. [517]-524) and indexes