In What is Microhistory? Theory and Practice, a work that according to its two authors, Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon and István M. Szijártó, ‘should be read as a dialogue or a debate on microhistory’, SGM considers the breaking of metanarratives to be the goal of a microhistorian.

However, to not let ‘the grand narrative’ monopolise attention poses a great challenge for any historian (like me) working especially in the context of an empire. In the study of the Mughal empire, for instance, one is often blindsided by the grandeur of its rise and fall. It was in the year 1526 that Babur, the descendent of the famous conqueror Amir Timur, won a victory over the Delhi sultanate. Defeating the Lodi dynasty, he established an empire that ruled over the Indian subcontinent for more than three hundred years (1526–1857). Eventually, due to several debatable reasons—wars of succession, factionalism, foreign invasions, weak rulers, the rise of regional forces, etc.—the empire perished giving way to colonial rule in India.

***

At the heart of this essay is, therefore, this question: do sources of life narratives, such as letters, have value in providing actual flesh to the empire’s well-established, awe-inspiring skeleton?

***

Erla Hulda Halldórsdóttir argues that no doubt drawing broad generalizations from sources such as court records or memoirs can be problematic but among these problematic sources, one must include private letters as well. All historical sources have their limitations.

Even so, according to her, what distinguishes these letters is that they have a more personal and candid form than chronicles and memoirs, which are usually written long after the events they recount. Letters illustrate what takes place then and there. Once they are sent in the mail, there is no way that they can be changed or revised. This makes one agree with Liz Stanley as well who considers letters and photographs as having similar ‘temporal complexities’. In other words, they not only capture memories but also serve as a reflection of the time in which they were written. This is a characteristic that Stanley terms as ‘flies in the amber’ quality - something indicative of a bygone era that still exists in the present in the same or similar form; like an ancient insect preserved in amber.

Stanley asserts that, as far as research is concerned, some ‘documents of life’ are considered tricky. Consequently, they are either face neglect or are rendered marginal, with diaries receiving scant attention and letters even less. Highlighting how social scientists remain suspicious of the value of letters, though many insights can be gained from their study, Stanley enumerates various features that mark out epistolary as a distinct genre of writing.

First, as mentioned earlier, letters are comparable to photos in that they are always in the present tense, created at a specific moment in time. Second, letters involve a performance of self. Put another way, letters are representative of the particular writer, functioning as a proxy for them.

Third, letters possess a fragmented epistolary form, meaning they have an inherently incomplete quality. This is primarily because the temporal and spatial interruptions have a huge impact on the letters, so much so that, they always remain in some way unfinished. Stanley writes:

Any particular letter is a part of a sequence in a correspondence; consequently, there are always things not present in any one letter, with an incremental and fragmented emplotment existing across a series concerning what happened before. These ‘gaps’ concern things that need not be written and can be assumed, concerning contextual and cultural knowledge, about relationships and shared events, leading to letters that are often highly elliptical, with few or no clues even in a collection as to the meaning.

Therefore, often contextual and shared cultural knowledge, between the writer and the reader, makes one not mention certain things in detail, or these are written in one letter but not repeated in others. These details are usually indirectly spelt out, making the letters ambiguous and ‘unfinished’.

Fourth and final, letters typically anticipate a response, meaning that both the ‘after’ and the ‘before’ are usually considered in an exchange of correspondence.

Stanley also notes that a paradox lies at the core of epistolary matters since:

[T]he ‘real’ message of the letters is not quite what is written; letters ‘stand for’ the writer, but only in their absence; the writer is not the ‘actual person’ but an epistolary version or emanation of them; what they write about is not the world as it is but which is represented; and the moment of writing is conveyed to the reader but only after it has gone by.

Considering, thus, the very perplexing nature of letters, one is forced to ask: what then makes letters authoritative, not just as a genre of writing or literature, but as sources of history?

As Stanley explains, a collection of letters serves as a record of an individual when only one side of the correspondence remains, or as a shared epistolary life when both sides are preserved. Additionally, the collection also constitutes a narrative.

The importance of this narrative, in history in general and microhistory in particular. cannot be emphasised enough. Aren’t all acts of history-writing, also acts of narrativising? One can go as far as calling it ‘storytelling’. Nevertheless, what constitutes this narrative? According to its most basic definition, it comprises a chronological or sequential structure. And so among the various factors that are indispensable to the practice of microhistory, SGM includes the role of narrative.

The second factor that renders letters authoritative-ness as primary sources for historical reconstruction is that, letters are fragments of the past that remain, and what remains offers the only possible epistolary narrative, shaped by the passage of time and its uncertainties.

***

For my research, accordingly, Abdul Jalil’s letters, a collection of 22 letters written to his son, during the period extending from Aurangzeb’s reign (r. 1658–1707) to the reign of Muhammad Shah (r. 1719–48), thus, provide us an excellent opportunity to build a micro-narrative of the life a petty eighteenth-century official, providing an ant’s eye view and offering itself as a unique history of Mughal decline (for details read What is my book ‘The Sky Poured Down Candy’ about?)

***

Worth mentioning in this context is also that in the reconstruction of an epistolary life narrative, correspondence can often be considered a kind of dialogue or communication filled with an unrestricted flow of emotions. However, it is imperative that one should refrain from regarding letters simply as sentimentally satisfactory conversations on paper. As Halldórsdóttir writes,

There is a difference in time (the time that passes between writing and reception), the discursive styles on paper and in face-to-face conversation, and no facial expressions can be shown in a letter.

This is exactly what Sigfús Jónsson, the protagonist of her work Jakobína Jónsdóttir or Bína’s brother seemed to be aware of when he wrote to her in 1864 that he would spend his afternoon ‘talking’ to her. She quotes:

[B]ut when I sit down to write I feel how different it is, to let a stiff pen “make a speech” that cannot reach your eyes or ears until after so long a time, that it has become a fading echo, or if I could speak to you orally and hear you and see you near me.

Another of Bína’s cousins wrote previously in 1863:

[T]he pen is so stiff that it cannot show you what I want to say, and the paper is so cold that it cannot deliver you but so little of my thoughts and emotions, and then perhaps more eyes that yours can see it.

On the other hand, my protagonist, Abdul Jalil, in one of the letters to his son wrote the following verses:

Let there be at least a single line in the margin (of your letters),

For it is enough if I may become a line in your own handwriting.

Though the heart is parted, the eye still turns to you;

Though I am caged, my wings and feathers are beyond count.

The difference between an oral or a face-to-face conversation and written communication is, therefore, well-marked and so is Abdul Jalil’s restricted emotional engagement through written correspondence, embodied visibly in the expression of being caged.

***

Recognising, therefore, the significance of letters despite their limitations, one can safely conclude that—microhistory or not—letters provide a unique personal-everyday window through which all historians can glimpse the past, and it is in this that their value lies.