- Centuries before European newspapers, the Mughal empire ran a daily Persian "akhbarat" news network of scribes and agents sharing court reports, campaigns and gossip.
- Historian Munis D. Faruqui spent nearly 20 years in archives and found Aurangzeb was less austere than thought—his daughter Zinat-un-Nisa and the harem wielded real political clout.
- Huge, unindexed caches of these reports survive across India and Britain—difficult to mine but packed with untapped stories that could reshape Mughal history.
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