FORT William College (FWC), established in Calcutta (now Kolkata), was formally inaugurated on July 10, 1800. But the British officials recorded the date of its establishment as May 4, 1800, in the law passed to establish the FWC, just to mark the first death anniversary of Tipu Sultan, announcing in a subtle way that the fall of Mysore was a landmark victory which had paved way for a greater role for the British in the subcontinent.
The FWC, a brain child of Lord Wellesley, the then governor-general of British India, was planned as a centre of oriental studies facilitating the teaching of local languages to British officials. Dr Jameel Jalibi has noted in the third volume of his Tareekh-i-adab-i-Urdu that the FWC was established in an effort to strengthen the British rule by teaching the local languages to its young officers sent from Britain to India. Though it could not continue the way Wellesley had planned it, the FWC within a short time became a centre of research and publications on the local languages and literatures. It worked as a stimulus for the Urdu language and literature as well, and a large number of Urdu books were written and published at the FWC, many of them being translations from Persian and Arabic.
But while a large number of books written by the “munshis”, or the writers hired by the FWC, were published in the early years of the 19th century, many of them remained unpublished for certain reasons.
Dr Jalibi has mentioned the unpublished tomes whose manuscripts are housed in different libraries and museums in Europe and India but their names are generally not mentioned even in research works. Among them was Tareekh-i-Asham, a history of Assam (as in those days Assam was pronounced and spelt as Asham in Urdu).
Tareekh-i-Assam or Tareekh-i-Asham was a translation of the Persian work Fatahiyya-i-I’briya. Rendered into Urdu by Mir Bahadur Ali Hussaini in 1805, the original Persian work was penned in 1662-63 by Vali Ahmed Shahabuddin Talish, an official who accompanied the Mughal army that had invaded Assam during the reign of Aurangzeb Alamgeer.
According to Naseeruddin Hashmi, Tareekh-i-Asham’s manuscript is preserved at Paris’s Bibliotheque Nationale, the National Library of France. Dr Jalibi has mentioned that another manuscript is preserved at The Library of the Asiatic Society, Kolkata. The book was hitherto unpublished but with the efforts of Sajid Siddiq Nizami, a young scholar form Lahore, the 200-year-old- book is finally edited and published. Tareekh-i-Assam, published by Lahore’s Maghribi Pakistan Urdu Academy, has a foreword and a preface by Nizami giving the details about Mir Bahadur Ali Hussiani’s life, his works, and the translation named Tareekh-i-Asham. The young scholar has reckoned that Hussaini died between 1816 and 1838. He also disagrees with Jalibi who thought Hussaini was from Bihar province and proves that he was from Sawana, a small town near Thanesar in Northern India.
Scholars have given 1073 Hijri /1662 AD as the year of translation by Hussaini. But 1073 Hijri corresponds to 1662-63 AD and it is a common error found in most of Urdu research works to mention just one year instead of two. The dates in manuscripts are usually mentioned according to Hijri calendar which usually corresponds to two Gregorian calendar years so researchers should be careful in this regard unless the year and month are precisely described. Nizami is right when he mentions 1073 Hijri / 1663 AD because the manuscript clearly says that the work began in Ramazan and ended in Shawwal of 1073 Hijri. But he has mentioned the name of the book alternatively as Tareekh-i-mulk-i-Asham and Tareekh-i-Assam, while the facsimile of the manuscript appended at the end gives the name as Tareekh-i-Asham.
The translation has a foreword and two chapters. The author, Talish, was an eye witness to all the incidents as he accompanied Nawab Mir Sa’eed, the Mughal commander leading the army. The first chapter narrates the Cooch Behar (also spelt Koch Bihar) campaign to fight against Raja Narayan and the success of the Mughal troops. The second chapter describes the attack on Assam. The book not only describes the battles, strategies, the hardships and the harsh weather but also the political background. It gives details about the geography, economy, rivers, flowers, fruits and the rites and rituals of Assam in the 17th century.
The translation has some unfamiliar local words but they do not pose any problem as a glossary by the editor at the end explains these words. Also, a gazetteer at the end explains the geographical names and names of some historical personalities. This edited version of a 200-year-old book on history of Assam is indeed a scholarly work that makes a good reading too.
Published in Dawn, November 21st, 2016
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