Critically analyze Barani’s Tarikh-i-Firoz Shahi and identify the shortcomings in his account.

The work. Ziauddin Barani's Tarikh-i-Firoz Shahi, written around 1357, continues Minhaj-us-Siraj's Tabaqat-i-Nasiri and covers the period from Balban's accession in 1266 to the early years of Firoz Shah Tughlaq. Barani had been a courtier of Muhammad-bin-Tughlaq for seventeen years, and wrote after disgrace, imprisonment and impoverishment. His Fatawa-i-Jahandari states his political theory openly.

Why it is indispensable. It is the only detailed insider account of Alauddin Khalji's market regulations and of Muhammad-bin-Tughlaq's projects, written by a man who had access to the court.

The shortcomings.

• Method. He wrote from memory decades after the events, without access to records, so his chronology is unreliable and dates are frequently wrong.
• Purpose. He did not intend a chronicle. History for Barani is moral instruction for rulers, so events are selected and shaped to yield a lesson, and he composes speeches and dialogues that his characters cannot have delivered.
• Class prejudice. He writes explicitly for the ashraf, the high-born, holds that the low-born should be denied education and office, and treats the common people only as objects of state policy. His account of Alauddin's price controls therefore tells us about administration but almost nothing about those who lived under it.
• Religious prejudice. He advocates harsh discrimination against Hindus and hostility to non-Sunni Muslims, and his testimony on religious policy must be read as advocacy rather than description.
• Patronage bias. Writing to recover favour with Firoz Shah, he praises the reigning Sultan and is severe on Muhammad-bin-Tughlaq, whom he had himself served — the inconsistency is visible within the text.
• Omission. Agriculture, trade and the provinces are almost absent; the work is a history of Delhi and its court.

Verdict. Barani is a partisan, moralising and inaccurate historian who is nevertheless irreplaceable, because he is the only witness to much of what he describes. He must be used with his biases treated as evidence in themselves.