FIRISHTA, MOHAMMAD KASIM HINDU SHAH, a celebrated Persian historian, b. towards the end of the 16th c. (1570?), at Astrabad, on the Caspian sea. At a very early age, he went with his father (Gholam Ali Hindu Shah) to India, where we find him, when 12 years old, at Ahmednuggur, in the Deccan, sharing the instruction which the latter gave to prince Miran Hussein Nizam Shah. He afterwards became captain in the body-guard of Murteza Nizam Shah; and when this king was deposed by his own son, F.'s former fellow-student—who, in his own turn, was deposed and murdered in less than a twelvemonth afterwards—F. went to Bijapore (998 it., 1589 A.D.), where Ibrahim Adil Shah II., the reigning monarch, received him with great honor. He also appears to have conferred a military rank upon him, as, soon after his arrival, F. is mentioned as taking part in an action against Jumal Khan, in which he was wounded and taken prisoner, but ere-long he made his escape. His death is supposed to have taken place shortly after the year 1612. His great work is the Tarikhi Hrishta, or History of the Mohammedan Power in India, which lie finished in 1018 H. (1609 A.D.). Twenty years were spent in its preparation, and the number of books used for, and partly embodied in it—special histories of certain periods and•provinces—aniounts, according to F. him
self (introduction), to 85; but 20 others besides these are quoted in the course of the work. It consists—besides a preamble or introduction on the Progress of anism in India, and a final treatise on the geography and the climate of India—of 12 divisions, treating of the kings of Ghizni and Lahore, Delhi, the Deccan, Guzerat, Mal wah, Candeish, Bengal and Behar, Mooltan, Schick, Cashmere, Malabar, and of the saints of India. Written with an impartiality, simplicity, and clearness rare in an eastern work, this history has become a standard work on the subject, into which it was the first to enter at length. Single portions of it have been translated by Dow, Scott, Stewart, Anderson, etc.; but the whole work, edited first by J. Briggs (Bombay, 1831, fol. 2 vols.), was also translated by him (London, 1832, 8vo, 4 vols.). A fuller account of F.'s life and writings, by the same, will be found in the second volume of the Transactions of the Asiatic society.