Native influences.

[Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi]

The Delhi Walla knows of many Delhiwallas who first discovered the beauties of their city through William Dalrymple’s travel book City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi. There are also a few Delhiwallas who suffer from the idea of William Dalrymple as a Delhi author. After all, Mr Dalrymple is a foreign import from the land of our former colonisers.

Irrespective of your private opinions about the Scottish author–and let them be private for he, along with author Namita Gokhale, handpick authors for the prestigious Jaipur Literary Festival–the truth is that Djinns is one of the most important Delhi books. I present you a list of all the Indian authors, and their books, whom the author of Djinns looked for while writing his award-winning travelogue. These names appear in the book’s Select Bibliography section.

1. Abdu’l Malik Isami, Futuhu’s Salatin or The Shah Nama I Hind

2. Ahmad Ali, Twilight in Delhi

3. AM Hussain, The Rise and Fall of Muhammed bin Tughluq

4. BB Lal, Excavations at Hastinapura and Other Explorations in the Upper Ganga and Sutlej Basins 1950-52

5. Dargah Quli Khan, The Muraqqa e Delhi

6. DP Agrawal and Dilip K Chakrabarti, Essays in Indian Prehistory

7. HK Kaul, Historic Delhi

8. Inayat Khan, The Shah Jehan

9. Inder Malhotra, Indira Gandhi: A Personal Political Biography

10. Ishtiaq Husain Qureshi, The Administration of the Sultanate of Delhi

11. JP Joshi, The Mahabharatha and the Indian Archaeology

12. Kalika- Ranjan Qanungo, Dara Shukoh

13. Khaliq Ahmad Nizami, Some Aspects of Religion and Politics in India During the Thirteenth Century

14. Khushwant Singh, Delhi: A Portrait

15. KS Lal, The Twilight of the Sultanate

16. Maheshwar Dayal, Rediscovering Delhi: The Story of Shahjahanabad

17. Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad, India Wins Freedom

18. Mirza Kamran, The Mirza Nama, The Book of the Perfect Gentleman

19. Mozaffar Alam, The Crisis of Empire in Mughal North India: Awadh and the Punjab, 1707-48

20. Narayani Gupta, Delhi Between Two Empires 1803-1931

21. Nirad C Chaudhury, Thy Hand Great Anarch!

22. Pavan K Verma, Mansions at Dusk: The Havelis of Old Delhi, Ghalib: The Man, The Times

23. Percival Spear, Delhi: A Historical Sketch, Delhi: It’s Monuments and History, The Twilight of the Mughals: Studies in Late Mughal Delhi

24. Pranay Gupta, Mother India: A Political Biography of Indira Gandhi

25. Ralph Russel and Khurshid il-Islam, Three Mughal Poets

26. Saiyid Athar Abbas Rizwi, A History of Sufism in India

27. SBP Nigam, Nobility Under the Sultans of Delhi

28. Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan, Asar al- Sanadid

29. SK Sharma, Hijras: The Labelled Deviants

30. SP Gupta and KS Ramachandran, Mahabharata: Myth and Reality

31. Vettam Mani, Puranic Encyclopedia

32. Vyasa, The Mahabharata

33. Y.D. Sharma, Delhi and its Neighborhood

34. Zahiruddin Farukhi, Aurangzeb and his Times

35. Zia if Din Barni, Ta’rikh I Firuz Shahi

The firangi take

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.