When Jahangir had written his Memoirs for the first twelve years of his reign he made them into a volume, and had a number of copies made and distributed (Elliot, vi, 360). The first of these he gave to Shah Jahan, who was then in high favour. The present publication is a translation of the first volume of the Memoirs, but the translation of the whole Memoirs, together with the additions of Mu`tamad Khan and Muhammad Hadi, has been completed, and it is to be hoped that its publication will follow in due course.
Jahangir reigned for twenty-two years, but ill-health and sorrow made him give up the writing of his Memoirs in the seventeenth year of his reign (see Elliot, vi, 280). He then entrusted the task to Mu`tamad Khan, the author of the Iqbal-nama, who continued the Memoirs to the beginning of the nineteenth year. He then dropped writing the Memoirs in the name of the emperor, but he continued the narrative of the reign, to Jahangir's death, in his own work, the Iqbal-nama. Muhammad Hadi afterwards continued the Memoirs down to Jahangir's death, but his work is little more than an abridgment of the Iqbal-nama. Sayyid Ahmad's edition contains the continuations of the Memoirs by Mu`tamad and Muhammad Hadi, and also Muhammad Hadi's preface and introduction. But this preface and introduction have not been translated by Mr. Rogers, and I do not think that a translation is necessary. Muhammad Hadi is a late writer (see Elliot, vi, 392), his date being the first quarter of the eighteenth century, and his introduction seems to be almost wholly derived from the Ma'asir-i-Jahangiri of Kamgar Husaini (Elliot, vi, 257). It consists mainly of an account of Jahangir's life from his birth up to his accession.
It is perhaps unnecessary to say anything about the importance of Jahangir's Memoirs. They give a lively picture of India in the early decades of the seventeenth century, and are a valuable supplement to the Akbar-nama. I may be allowed, however, to end this preface with the following remarks which I contributed to the Indian Magazine for May, 1907:--
"The Royal authors of the East had more blood in them than those kings whose works have been catalogued by Horace Walpole. To find a parallel to them we must go back to Julius Cæsar, and even then the advantage is not upon the side of Europe. After all, the commentaries of the famous Roman are a little disappointing, and certainly the Memoirs of Babar and Jahangir are far more human and fuller of matter than the story of the Gallic Wars. All Muhammadans have a fancy for writing chronicles and autobiographies, and several Muhammadan kings have yielded to the common impulse. Central Asia has given us the Memoirs of Tamarlane, Babar, and Haidar, and the chronicle of Abu-l-ghazi; Persia has given us the Memoirs of Shah Tahmasp, and India the Memoirs of the Princess Gulbadan and Jahangir. In modern times we see the same impulse at work, for we have the biography of the late Ameer of Afghanistan and the diary of the Shah of Persia.