Evaluate the contents of the Tabaqat-i-Nasiri as a source of medieval history.

Answer:

The Tabaqat-i-Nasiri, written by Minhaj-us-Siraj Juzjani and completed in about 1260, is the earliest surviving general history of the Delhi Sultanate and remains an indispensable source for the Slave dynasty, being the work of a well-placed contemporary who held high office under the very Sultans he describes.

Nature and contents

• It is a general history in twenty-three tabaqat or sections, from the patriarchs to the author's own time.
• The later sections cover the Ghurids and the Delhi Sultans in detail.
• It was dedicated to Sultan Nasiruddin Mahmud, hence its title.
• It gives the fullest account of Iltutmish, Raziya and Balban's early career.
• It records the Mongol devastation of Central Asia and its refugees in India.

Its value

• The author was an eyewitness and held office as qazi and head of a madrasa.
• He had access to the court and to participants in the events described.
• It is the only detailed contemporary source for the first half-century of the Sultanate.
• Its account of Raziya is unusually informative about her abilities and her fall.

Its limitations

• As a court historian he wrote to please his patrons and eulogised them.
• His outlook is orthodox and hostile to non-Muslims and to heterodoxy.
• He is largely silent on economic, social and cultural conditions.
• He is uncritical about miracles and providential explanation.

Comparison with other sources

• Barani's Tarikh-i-Firoz Shahi covers the later period with greater analytical depth.
• Amir Khusrau's works supply cultural and literary detail Juzjani omits.
• Ibn Battuta provides an outsider's view of the fourteenth century.
• Juzjani remains unique for the first fifty years of the Sultanate.

The Tabaqat-i-Nasiri is therefore a source of the first importance for early Sultanate political history, and irreplaceable for the Slave dynasty. As historians caution, its courtly and orthodox standpoint must be discounted, and its silence on economy and society must be supplied from other kinds of evidence.