History-the summarised experience of mankind, has been called a corpus of ascertained facts. Documents are a major source of facts. Unlike books of history which may conceal certain design, documents are spontaneous record of an official decision. They reflect the policies, the attitudes and thinking of those whose seals they bear.
The utter negligence that the successors to the Mughal rules-the British-displayed towards the Mughal archives led to the disintegration and ultimate withering away of most of the documents of the Mughal period. Years of sustained and concerted efforts by individuals and groups may now lead to only a partial retrieval of such vital source material of the medieval India.
The documents brought together here are fruits of such an effort by a senior scholar. They have been sought out and collected through painstaking search in court records, private collection, khanquahs, muths and ancient temples. As seminal facts they would serve as reliable primary date for a better and more accurate understanding of the medieval period of Indian history.