'Malfuzat' an important source for constructing history is _________.
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 1
The correct answer is Option (1) → A record of conversations of Sufi saints.
Option (1) A record of conversations of Sufi saints. — Correct. Malfuzat literally means “uttered”: these are records of the conversations of sufi saints, such as the Fawa’id-al-Fu’ad, a collection of the conversations of Shaikh Nizamuddin Auliya.
Option (2) A record of agrarian tax. — Incorrect. Malfuzat are sufi texts; they do not record land revenue.
Option (3) A record of kings announcement. — Incorrect. They record what a sufi shaikh said, not the orders of a king.
Option (4) A collection of letters written by sufi saints. — Incorrect. Letters written by sufi masters to their disciples and associates form a different genre, the maktubat; malfuzat are spoken words, not letters.
NCERT (2026-27): “9. Reconstructing Histories of Religious Traditions … 2. Malfuzat (literally, ‘uttered’; conversations of sufi saints) – An early text on malfuzat is the Fawa’id-al-Fu’ad , a collection of conversations of Shaikh Nizamuddin Auliya, compiled by Amir Hasan Sijzi Dehlavi, a noted Persian poet. Source 9 contains an excerpt from this text. Malfuzats were compiled by different sufi silsilas with the permission of the shaikhs ; these had obvious didactic purposes. Several examples have been found from different parts of the subcontinent, including the Deccan. They were compiled over several centuries.…” |