Aurangzeb's akhbarat: The empire that ran on news reports

Key Points:

• Mughal India in the late 16th and 17th centuries had a sophisticated news network called akhbarat, consisting of brief Persian reports on court affairs, military campaigns, and gossip that circulated daily across the empire to connect imperial and provincial courts.
• Historian Munis D Faruqui spent nearly two decades studying these akhbarat, especially a vast collection from Aurangzeb's reign (1658-1707), revealing an almost continuous record of the empire's internal workings and offering fresh insights into Aurangzeb's rule and Mughal governance.
• The akhbarat demonstrate the Mughal state's advanced information system, showing its reach and influence over millions, with unexpected findings such as the significant political role of Aurangzeb’s daughter Zinat-un-Nisa and the lesser-than-expected religious hostility in court records.
• Despite their richness, these archives have been largely underutilized by historians due to their vast, unindexed nature, requiring patience and extensive effort to extract meaningful patterns and information.
• Faruqui emphasizes that the akhbarat are just one part of a much larger body of Mughal-era documents, suggesting that many more historical insights about the empire remain to be discovered by future researchers.