76 
G. H. Raverty— Memoir of the Author 
[No. 1, 
Memoir of the Author of the Tabakat-i-N&siri. By Major 
G. H. Raverty, Bombay Army (Retired). 
Few materials exist for a notice of this author, and these are chiefly 
furnished by himself. 
The first mention he makes of his family is to the effect that “ the 
Imam, ’Abd-ul-Khalik, the Jurjani, having, in his early manhood, dreamt 
a dream on three successive occasions, urging him to proceed to Ghaznin 
and seek a wife, set out thither ; and, subsequently, obtained in marriage 
one of the forty daughters of Sultan Ibrahim of Ghaznin,” who was in the 
habit of bestowing his daughters, in marriage, upon reverend and pious 
Sayyids and ’Ulama, like other Musalman rulers have continued to do, 
down to recent times. 
By this wife, ’Abd-ul-Khalik had a son, whom he named Ibrahim, 
after his maternal grandfather, the Sultan; and he was our author’s great¬ 
grandfather. He was the father of the Maulana Minhaj-ud-Din ’Usman, 
who was the father of the Maulana Saraj-ud-Din Muhammad—who is 
called Ibrahim by some—who was known by the title of ’Ujiibat-uz- 
Zaman or “ the Wonder of the Age.” He was the father of the Maulana 
Minhaj-ud-Din # Abu-’Umar-i-’Usman, the author of the History entitled 
the Tabakat-i-Nasiri, who thence often brings in his father’s and grand¬ 
father’s name, styling himself Minbaj-i-Saraj-i-Minhaj, the two izafats 
being used to signify son of in place of the Arabic bin . 
Our author’s ancestors, on both sides, for several generations, appear 
to have been ecclesiastics of repute and men distinguished for learning. 
He states that he possessed, among the misdl or diplomas granted to his 
maternal ancestors by the Khalifahs, one from the Khalifah Mustazi 
B’illah, conferring the Kazi-ship of the fortress, or rather, fortified town, 
of Tulak, described in his work, together with that over the Kuhistan, and 
the Jibal—Highlands—of Hirat, upon his maternal grandfather, in con¬ 
formity with the diploma previously held by the latter’s father before him. 
His paternal grandfather also received an honorary dress from the same 
Pontiff; and our author says that he himself possessed the diploma which 
was sent along with it. 
In the oldest copies of the text, and in several of the more recent, our 
author almost invariably styles himself ‘the Jurjani’ as I have 
from the outset rendered it; but those MSS. noticed in the Preface to 
the Translation, which appear to have been copied from the same source as 
that from which the India Office Library MS. was taken, or from that copy 
* The title, Saraj-ud-Din, means “The Lamp, or the Luminary of the Faith, 
and Minhaj -ud-Din, “ The High-road, or the Way of the Faith.’' See “ Translation,” 
note 3 , page 1295. 
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