Book Review – Sangin Beg: Sair-ul-Manazil

Translated by Nausheen Jaffery, edited by Swapna Liddle, New Delhi: Tulika Books, 2017, 172 pages, Rs 650

The publication in 2017 of the English translation of Sair-ul-Manazil by Tulika Books is part of a journey that began 197 years ago. The book written in 1821 in Persian by Mirza Sangin Beg, a gentleman who we know very little about, was translated 160 years later into Urdu by Dr Sharif Husain Qasimi in 1981, and translated into English another 16 years later by young historian Nausheen Jaffery in 1997. Another 20 years were to pass before the translation was vetted, Arabic and Persian inscriptions included in the Urdu text, then translated into English and compared, checked and rechecked, before the manuscript was finally got ready for printing.