Munis D Faruqui

“Working through more than 6,500 pages in Kolkata's National Library”

“Munis D Faruqui, a historian at the University of California, Berkeley, spent almost two decades doing just that.”

“Beginning in 2007, he immersed himself in the Akhbarat-i Darbar-i Mualla (Newsletters of the Exalted Court), a vast collection preserved in archives across India and Britain.”

“Working through more than 6,500 pages in Kolkata's National Library, he followed princes, generals, courtiers, royal women, imperial eunuchs and many others through tens of thousands of entries.”

“Faruqui believes its ability to act on that information varied, but its reach affected - "sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse" - the lives of tens of millions of people.”

“"Many of the stories I had been telling myself since the 1990s [when I first heard about the akhbarat] required rethinking," Faruqui says.”

“Early in his career, he spent seven frustrating weeks wrestling with another vast Mughal archive before abandoning it.”

“The experience left him wary of sprawling, unindexed collections for nearly a decade.”

“"Dozens of books, if not more, can be written based on all the materials that are out there waiting for intrepid historians to come along and utilise them," he says.”