Sawaneh-i Dehli: Delving into Dehli’s Enigmatic Past by Mirza A. Akhtar Gorgani
Sawaneh-i Dehli (सवानेह-ए देहली)
Mirza Ahmad Akhtar Gorgani
Translator: Dr Ather Farouqi
Roli Books (Published 2023)
“Sawaneh” is an Arabic word, meaning events. Sawaneh is also used in Urdu to mean biography – life events. This thin volume claims to be a biography of Delhi, rather of Dehli, as the city was called before the British started calling it Delhi.
The author Mirza Ahmad Akhtar Gorgani was a Mughal prince – eldest son of Shahzada Dara Bakht (aka Miran Shah) who himself was the eldest son of Zafar, and wali ahd (heir apparent) till he died in 1849. The translator has added a very useful note on the author’s life.
The author, Akhtar Gorgani, was seventeen in 1857. He was perhaps not living in the Fort when the uprising took place, but certainly receiving allowances from his grandfather. Nothing is known about what he did during or after the uprising. He must have left Delhi before the victorious British troops entered the city and exacted a severe retribution from the Mughals.
The translator believes Akhtar fled from Delhi in time and led a nomadic life, fleeing from one town to another, before he finally settled down at the small town of Kairana in today’s western UP. Kairana is close to Delhi, only about a hundred kilometers. It is unlikely that Akhtar would have dared to choose a place so close to Delhi to live if he were still in hiding. Perhaps he had made it up with the British and was lying low in full knowledge of the local authorities.
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That he was a royal prince became public knowledge only after his death. By the nineteenth century, the Mughal princes had grown too numerous and proportionately impoverished, still, the mystique of the Mughal Dynasty had survived the uprising.
We do not know where or when Akhtar studied ‘Hikmat’ but we know he made his living as a Hakeem. In his Note, the translator has quoted from an encyclopedic book on chief practitioners of Unani medicine. It seems Mirza Akhtar practiced as a Hakeem and had also written a few books on Unani medicine. He is particularly known for his treatise ‘Mujarrabat-i Sultani’, where he has reproduced the prescriptions suggested to the princes in the Qila Mua’alla.
I was much intrigued with the name ‘Gorgani’ used by the author and had tried to link it with Gorgan, a city in Iran or even Gorgan Khan the Armenian general of Mir Qasim, Nawab of Bengal. The translator has explained it in his Note; Gorgani, rather Gorkhani was a title for Amir Timur (Tamerlane), the great-great-grandfather of Babur, the founder of the Mughal dynasty. Mirza Akhtar has used it for himself, his father and even his grandfather even though Gorgani was never used by Bahadur Shah Zafar or by any other Mughal emperor.
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Frequently such books/manuscripts get copied without much diligence and often the copies lack textual accuracy. Akhtar’s book was last published by the Urdu Academy of Delhi in the 1980s. The translator was not satisfied with the text appearing in this edition and he managed to secure a facsimile of it first (1894) printing for translation!
He has not merely translated Akhtar, he has also critically edited his writing. Initially, when I was reading the book without referring to the end notes I was shocked by inaccuracies that were too glaring even for a layman like me. I was, I admit, disappointed till I checked the end notes the translator has given.
The book was written, as Mirza Akhtar states in his preface, to make his sons aware of the events and trends in brief. The first chapter gives a history of Dehli. The author refers to Hindu hagiography like “Dilli Mahatam”, and reminds the readers that the old fort was earlier called Inderpat, reminiscent of Indraprastha of the hoary past. And from Pandavas he jumps to Anangpal Tomar and Prithviraj Chauhan. Interestingly Mirza Akhtar notes that many historians believed Prithviraj had built the first story of Qutub (Qutb) Minar.
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He describes the two battles of Tarain and writes Prithviraj was captured on the banks of the river Saraswati. (Actually, he was captured at Sirsa. Its medieval name was Sarauti, said to be after the mythical river, as explained in the translator’s notes.)
Akhtar has devoted an entire chapter to Hindu Maharajas of Dehli, starting with “Shri Maharaja Jodhistar” (Yudhishthir), and has described numerous dynasties, and their periods all the way till the invasion of Ghori. He has not given any sources in this chapter and the names of the Maharajas appear mixed up. Though he has described the regnal periods of the dynasties in years and even days, I don’t think this chapter has any historical value and the translator has wisely left it unedited.
As a young boy, Akhtar must have attended the classes held in the Red Fort for the princes’ education. But he wrote Sawaneh decades after leaving Delhi and based it on what he could recall from his memory. It is full of mistakes – dates and, also assessment of some rulers. (He is quite dismissive about Alauddin Khalji as a good-for-nothing ruler, too fond of luxury!) Fortunately, Dr Farouqui has taken pains to correct the author’s mistakes in his notes.
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The book does not give any new information. It is full of errors. In tenor, it favors the British, is rather sycophantic. Still, it is an important work. It was written by an impoverished prince, in his old age, living on a dole of ten rupees a month from local British officers. It was expressly written for the purpose of informing his three sons of their elusive legacy; sons who lived in abject poverty.
The book evokes the same pathos that you feel when seeing the ruins of a great castle. I enjoyed it. But for the translator’s notes, it would have been full of errors, at times misleading and hardly deserving to be read.
