Instructive Memory: An Analysis of Auto/Biographical Writing in Early Mughal India

TitleInstructive Memory: An Analysis of Auto/Biographical Writing in Early Mughal India
Publication TypeJournal Article
Year of Publication2011
AuthorsTaymiya R. Zaman
JournalJournal of the Economic & Social History of the Orient
Volume54
Issue5
Pagination677-700
ISSN00224995
Abstract

This article analyzes three early Mughal auto/biographical texts written at the order of Akbar as forms of instructive memory, and contextualizes these texts within an existing body of writings about akhlāq literature and literary genres. In doing so, this article discusses how auto/biographical narratives in Mughal India were both collected and collective, and how the didactic undercurrents of these texts relied upon individuated notions of character and kingship presented through the figure of Humayun. By reading lived experience across genres that often contained elements of one another, this article places interconnected Mughal lives as central to textual renderings of the past.

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DOI10.1163/156852011X614019
Short TitleInstructive Memory