Mir Amman

Mir Amman was born in Delhi into a family of distinguished retainers at the Mughal Court, sometime in the second half of the 18th century. Forced to leave the city of his ancestors at the close of the century owing to the declining fortunes of the Mughal Empire, he found employment as a munshi at the British East India Company’s Fort William College in Calcutta. It was here that he translated Bāgh-o-Bahār (in AD 1803) and Husain Wāiz Kāshifī’s celebrated book on good manners, Akhalāq-e-Muhsinī, which was published much later under the title Ganj-e-Khoobī (Treasure House of Virtue).