In 1903, Mr. William Irvine, I.C.S. (retired), the historian of the Later Mughals, in his usual spirit of help to younger men engaged in research, lent me a work (numbered by him 252) from his private collection of Persian MSS. which was not known to exist in any other library of Europe or India and which no historian had yet used. It was the Ahkam-i-Alamgiri, attributed to the pen of Hamid-ud-din Khan (surnamed Nimchah-i-Alamgiri), whose life is given in the Masir-ul-umara, i. 605—611. But of this authorship there is no proof, and none of the three MSS. bears his name. Subse­quently Mr. Irvine sent me another and earlier MS. of the Ahkam, (No 340 of his library), of which No. 252 is only a copy. I made a transcript of the book, carefully collating the two MSS. In 1905, I discovered another fragment of this work bound up with some letters of Aurangzib, with the leaves put together in disorder, in the India Office Library Persian MS. 3388. In October 1907, I found at Rampur (Rohilkhand) a fourth copy, identical with Mr. Irvine's in extent and arrangement of matter, but more correct and supplying useful variants. The owner, Nawab Abdus Salam Khan Bahadur, retired Sub-Judge, Oudh, very kindly permitted me to take a copy of it. This gentleman possesses another MS. of the work, which he has named Sharah-i-dastkhat-i-Alamgiri. It is incomplete and covers a portion of the India Office MS. (the arrangement, however, being different). There is only one new anecdote in it, which I here print as § 51.

On the basis of these four MSS. (viz., Irvine No. 252 collated with 340, I. O. L. No. 3388, and the longer Rampur copy), I have edited the Persian text and made the following English translation of it. The division of the book and the arrangement of the anecdotes are my own. The passages printed in thick type are in Arabic in the original, and have been translated with the kind help of Prof. Abdul Hai of Patna College.