Wheeler M. Thackston is Professor of the Practice of Persian and Other Near Eastern Languages, Emeritus, at Harvard University. He is the author of widely used grammars of Persian and Classical Arabic and the translator of the Bāburnāma, the Jahāngīrnāma, and the Akbarnāma.
Of all the great monarchs to have ruled over India—a land whose
history is richer and more turbulent than that of almost any
other—the one who most retains our modern-day attention is Akbar,
Mughal emperor from 1556 to 1605…[The History of Akbar] includes
accounts of his court and his governance, as well as of the wars,
alliances and intrigues of his time…Thackston’s translation is the
first complete rendition into English of Abu’l-Fazl’s Persian text
since Henry Beveridge, a British orientalist and imperial civil
servant, completed his version in 1921…Thackston’s English is
modern and…[his] translation…is impressively meticulous.
*Wall Street Journal*
At a time when Hindutva historians are eager to distort the history
of Muslim invasions in order to deepen religious cleavages and
consolidate vote banks, [Abu’l-Fazl's] elaboration of Akbar’s
legacy as a tolerant Muslim ruler of a non-Muslim majority is an
important reminder of how Indian society has evolved.
*India at LSE blog*
We can only welcome an undertaking like the Murty Classical Library
of India, which intends to inject fresh blood directly into the
circulatory system of the English language. Any intelligent reader
cannot fail to be favorably impressed in the presence of the
variegated offerings of the series’ first titles…The Murty
Classical Library offers a surprising array of texts that are in
any case capable of broadening the all-too-restricted horizons of
the average Western reader.
*New York Review of Books*
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