Short answers, pulled from the story.
Irfan Habib, born on the 12th of August 1931, is an Indian historian specialising in ancient and medieval India, particularly the economic history of the Mughal Empire. He is Professor Emeritus at Aligarh Muslim University and is known for his Marxist approach to historiography and for major works including The Agrarian System of Mughal India, 1556-1707 and An Atlas of the Mughal Empire.
The Agrarian System of Mughal India, 1556-1707, first published in 1963 by Asia Publishing House and revised by Oxford University Press in 1999, is widely regarded as Habib's landmark work. It examines land tenure, taxation, and peasant conditions across the Mughal period using Persian administrative records.
Habib received the Jawaharlal Nehru Fellowship in 1968, the Watumull Prize of the American Historical Association in 1982 jointly with Tapan Raychaudhuri, and the Padma Bhushan from the Government of India in 2005. He also received an Honorary Doctor of Letters from the University of Calicut in 2010, the Yash Bharti Award from the Government of Uttar Pradesh in 2016, and was appointed an Honorary Fellow of New College, Oxford in 2021.
A People's History of India is a multi-volume series published by the Aligarh Historians Society and Tulika Books that traces Indian history from prehistory through the national independence movement. Habib serves as general editor of the series and has authored or co-authored numerous individual volumes, covering topics from the Indus Civilisation to the economy under early British rule.
In 1998, Habib led historians at the Indian History Congress in passing a resolution against the alleged saffronisation of history, opposing Hindu nationalist influences on Indian school curricula. In 2023, in an interview with Al Jazeera, he criticised textbook revisions that reduced material on Muslim rule and Muslim contributions to the freedom struggle, arguing they reflected political rather than scholarly intent.
Habib's father, Mohammad Habib, was a historian associated with the Indian independence movement. His maternal grandfather, Abbas Tyabji, was Chief Justice of the High Court of Baroda State and a follower of Mahatma Gandhi. His paternal grandfather, Mohammad Naseem, was a barrister and member of the Indian National Congress.