Inayat Khan

Muhammad Tahir (1628 – 1671), known by his title Inayat Khan, was a historian of the Mughal Empire whose Shahjahannama chronicled the life and reign of Shah Jahan ^{1 2}. He is a different man from Hazrat Inayat Khan, the Sufi teacher of the twentieth century ³. The articles divide on his death year — 1671 in the leads, 1666 in the bodies — and the record preserves both ^{1 4}.

Inayat Khan was born in 1628, the year Shah Jahan came to the throne, and received a mansab in 1635 at the age of seven, as he informs us himself ¹. He was sent to join his father in Kashmir, became a darogha, and afterwards held an office in the Imperial Library ^{1 2}. His father Zafar Khan had been Jahangir's wazir and under Shah Jahan governed Kabul and then Kashmir, where he effected the conquest of Tibet, and later administered Thatta; he was celebrated as a poet, a patron of letters and a just ruler ¹. His maternal grandfather Saif Khan governed Agra ¹.

His history, the Shahjahannama, is an abridgement of the Badshahnama tradition, condensing the official history of Shah Jahan's reign ¹. Inayat Khan was a close friend of Shah Jahan; in retirement he settled in Kashmir, where he died — in 1666 by the bodies of the English and Arabic articles, in 1671 by their leads and by the Urdu article's account, which dates the death to 1081 AH ^{1 4}. His pen name was Ashna ⁴.