Bakhtawar Khan Mohammad or simply Bakhtawar, (Persian: بختاور خان محمد, born 1620 in Persia; died February 19, 1685, in Delhi) was a Persian historian, poet, official and later also personal advisor of the king at the court of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb.
Early life Like many Persian poets, traders and nobles in the Early modern period, Bakhtawar's family migrated from Persia to the Mughal Empire,* Bakhtāwar Khān, Mirʾāt al-ʿĀlam: History of Emperor Awrangzeb ʿĀlamgīr, ed. S. S. Alvi, I-II, Lahore, 1979. where Persian-speaking people in particular were in great demand at the Mughal court and made up an important part of the nobility.
See also Persians in the Mughal Empire
Literature
S. S. Alvi, “The Historians of Awrangzeb: A Comparative Study of Three Primary Sources,” Essays on Islamic Civilization, ed. D. P. Little, Leiden, 1976, pp. 57–73. Bakhtāwar Khān, Mirʾāt al-ʿĀlam: History of Emperor Awrangzeb ʿĀlamgīr, ed. S. S. Alvi, I-II, Lahore, 1979. H. M. Elliot, The History of India as Told by Its Own Historians, ed. J. Dowson, London, 1877, VIII, pp. 150–53. Mostaʿed Khan, Maʾāṯer-e ʿālamgīrī, Eng. tr. Jadunath Sarkar, Calcutta, 1947, pp. 59, 61, 142, 155. Moḥammad-Afżal Sarḵoš, Kalemāt al-šoʿarāʾ, Lahore, n.d., pp. 25–26. EI2 I, p. 954. Rieu, Pers. Man. I, pp. 124–27; III, pp. 890–91, 975. Storey, I, pp. 132–33, 517, 1012.
References