THE history of the reign of Jahangir now reprinted was published in 1788. Its author
Francis Gladwin had a considerable reputation in his day as an accomplished Persian scholar and translator. Between 1783 and 1786 he published a valuable translation of Abul Fazl's famous

Ain-i-Akbari. The success of the translation encouraged him to persevere in his researches in the history of the successors of Akbar. He planned a large work which was "to attempt a
delineation of the most material changes that happened in the constitution of Hindustan during the reign of Jehangir, Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb ". He apparently wrote out the bulk, if not the whole, of this work, to judge from the reference to the later parts of it in the preface to the first volume of the large history, which alone was published.