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Firishta or Ferešte (), full name Muhammad Qasim Hindu Shah Astarabadi (), was a Persians historian, who later settled in India and served the Deccan Sultans as their court historian. He was born in 1570 and died between 1611 and 1623.
In 1587 Firishta was serving as the captain of guards of King Murtaza Nizam Shah I when Prince Miran overthrew his father and claimed the throne of Ahmednagar. At this time, the Sunni Deccani people committed a general massacre of the foreign population, especially Shias of Iranian origin,Muzaffar Alam, Sanjay Subrahmanyam (2025). 9780231158114, Columbia University Press. . ISBN 9780231158114 of which Firishta was one of. However, Prince Miran spared the life of his former friend, who then left for Bijapur to enter the service of King Ibrahim Adil II in 1589.
Having been in military positions until then, Firishta was not immediately successful in Bijapur. Further exacerbating matters was the fact that Firishta was of Shia origin and therefore did not have much chance of attaining a high position in the dominantly Sunni courts of the Deccan sultanates. Ibrahim Adil Shah II of Bijapur had also begun following the policy of bringing Sunni Muslim Deccanis to power and ending Shia domination by dismissing them from their posts. (2002). 9788126901234, Atlantic Publishers & Dist. ISBN 9788126901234 (2025). 9780865439801, Africa World Press. ISBN 9780865439801 In 1593 Ibrahim Shah II ultimately implored Firishta to write a history of India with equal emphasis on the history of Deccan dynasties as no work thus far had given equal treatment to all regions of the subcontinent.
Tārīkh-i Firishta consists primarily of the following chapter's ( maqāla), with some, like "The Kings of Dakhin" having subchapters ( rawza):
Contemporary scholars and historians variously write that the works of Firishta drew from Tabaqāt-i-Akbarī by Nizamuddin, Tarīkh-i-Rāshidī by Mirza Haidar and Barani's Tārīkh. At least one historian, Peter Jackson, explicitly states that Firishta relied upon the works of Barani and Sarhindi, and that his work cannot be relied upon as a first hand account of events, and that at places in the Tarīkh he is suspected of having relied upon legends and his own imagination.
On the other hand, Tārīkh-i Firishta is said to be independent and reliable on the topic of north Indian politics of the period, ostensibly that of Emperor Jahangir where Firishta's accounts are held credible because of his affiliation with the south Indian kingdom of Adil Shahi.
Despite his fabricated story of Yusuf's Ottoman Empire origin, Firishta's account continues to be a very popular story and has found wide acceptance in Bijapur today.
In 1768, when the East India Company officer and Orientalist Alexander Dow translated Firishta's text into English language, it came to be seen as an authoritative source of historical information by the English.
Firishta's work still maintains a high place and is considered reliable in many respects. Several portions of it have been translated into English; but the best as well as the most complete translation is that published by General J. Briggs under the title of The History of the Rise of the Mahomedan Power in India (London, 1829, 4 vols. 8vo). Several additions were made by Briggs to the original work of Firishta, but he omitted the whole of the twelfth book, and various other passages which had been omitted in the copy from which he translated.
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