A NOTE ON THE YEAR OF MĪRZĀ ḤAYDAR’S DEATH

Abstract

Abstract. It is generally received that Mīrzā Ḥaydar Dughlāt died in Kashmir in 958/1551. This dating is presumably based on the discription in a Persian chronicle composed at the third Mughal emperor Akbar’s court, the Ṭabaqāt-i Akbarī by Niẓām al-Dīn Aḥmad. In contrast, two Persian provincial histories from Kashmir, the Tārīkh-i Kashmīr by Sayyid ‘Alī and the Bahāristān-i Shāhī both provide earlier dates about his death, i.e., on 7 or 8, Dhū al-Qa‘da, 957/November 17 or 18, 1550. This paper reviews analyses by previous studies and investigates inscriptional and numismatic sources which have been less studied to date. A Persian monody carved on the gravestone of Mīrzā Ḥaydar’s tomb and coins issued in the 1550s support that he died in 957/1550. As far as we peruse the section on Mīrzā Ḥaydar’s rule over Kashmir in the Ṭabaqāt-i Akbarī, it is likely that its chronology is slid by one year from the historical events in AH 949 on whereby the misdating of Mīrzā Ḥaydar’s in this chronicle happened. The fact that the Akbarnāma by Abū al-Fażl also states that Mīrzā Ḥaydar died in 958/1551 is unresolved.