محسن الملک کا تصورِ تاریخ نگاری

Abstract

The Muslim contact with the West in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, did not only subjugate the Muslim world to the Western political power, but to a larger extent, to the new scientific outlook of the West towards knowledge and education. For the Muslims of subcontinent the Western approach to knowledge and education became even a greater challenge, because their fellow countrymen, the Hindus, accepted the western education earlier , hence leaving them (the Muslims) far behind. One of the concern for the Muslims, especially the thinkers of Aligarh, was the history. What was bothering the Muslim thinkers more, was the Western attack on the Prophet of Islam, which of course carried their personal biases. In such a situation some of the Muslim thinkers of Aligarh movement took this very seriously and started to challenge not only the standards of medieval Muslim historians but also the western writers. One such personalities was Mohsin ul-Mulk. His study of Islamic history introduced him to the thoughts of Ibn Khaldun's history whose approach he found to be very progressive and one that could meet easily the challenge of writing history keeping in consideration the standards of western scientific approach. The present article is an attempt to show how Mohsin ul-Mulk was successful in his efforts to bring to light the history writing approach of a medieval Muslim scholar and to prove how relevant it was in present times and why.