Ferishtah. MOHAMMAD KASIM HINDU SHAH FIRISHTA

Ferishtah. MOHAMMAD KASIM HINDU SHAH FIRISHTA, or FERISHTAH, a celebrated Persian historian, was born about the middle of the 16th century, at Astrabad, on the Caspian Sea. At a very early age he went with his father to India, where we find him, when twelve years old, at Ahmednagar, in the Deccan. Here he afterwards became captain in the bodyguard of Murtaza Nizam Shah; and when this king was deposed by his own son, Ferishtah went to Bijapur (998 A.H., 1589 A.D.), where the reigning monarch received him with great honour. His death is supposed to have taken place shortly after the year 1612. His great work is the Tarikh-i-Firishtah, or History of the Mohammedan power in India, which he finished in 1018 A.H. (1609 A.D.). Twenty years were spent in its preparation, and the number of books used for and partly embodied in it amounts, according to Ferishtah himself, to thirty-five. It consists—besides a preamble or introduction on the Progress of Mohammedanism in India, and a final treatise on the geography and the climate of India—of twelve divisions, treating of the kings of Ghizni and Lahore, Delhi, the Deccan, Guzerat, Malwa, Candeish, Bengal and Behar, Multan, Sindh, Cashmere, Malabar, and of the saints of India. Written with an impartiality, simplicity, and clearness rare in an Eastern work, this history has become a standard work on the subject, into which it was the first to enter at length. Single portions of it were translated by Scott and others; but the whole work, edited first by Colonel Briggs (2 vols. fol. Bombay, 1831), was also translated by him (4 vols. Lond. 1832).