Pyrrhus Press specializes in bringing books long out of date back to life, allowing today’s readers access to yesterday’s treasures.
Stanley Lane-Poole’s History of India, From the Reign of Akbar the Great to the Fall of the Moghul Empire is yet another book of the great historian’s about India during the Middle Ages in the wake of the Muslim conquests. The editor’s introduction explains:
“When Akbar the Great, the contemporary of Queen Elizabeth, ascended the throne of India, it was with a heart inspired by the highest ideals ever held by a ruler of Islamitic blood, and the manner in which he lived up to these ideals made him the noblest monarch, after Asoka, that ever reigned over the land beyond the river Indus.
Akbar was followed by his son Jahangir, the Great Moghul, and he by Shah Jahan, the Magnificent, who was succeeded in turn by Aurangzib, the Puritan Emperor and last of the line of great Moghuls. Mohammedan India reached the culmination of its glory in the fortunes of this dynasty. The subsequent rise of the Marathas heralded a new era, and signs of the beginnings of European power in India were now at hand.
The interesting story of these events, as told by Professor Lane-Poole, has been supplemented by including in this volume two selections from native Mohammedan chroniclers found in that inexhaustible mine of material, Elliot’s “History of India as Told by Its Own Historians†in Professor Dowson’s edition, the indebtedness to which is acknowledged.â€
