The Muzaffar Jang mysteries consisting of four books—3 novels and 10 stories—take place in a span of a year. Beginning in 1656, the year Jama Masjid is completed, and if we are to go by Madhulika Liddle’s narrative, the area surrounding the Masjid is already teeming with sellers, buyers, eaters, listeners, dastangos, and general busybodies. Trade flourishes: there is couture from Kashmir and traders from Surat, comestibles from Kabul, jewellery, and art from across the seas; the markets of Chandni Chowk, bazar-e musaqaf and others are as busy as today.
A whiff of political churn is wafting in the air. Shah Jahan is falling sick. Rumours have taken Buraqian wings. Aurangzeb is made to feel slighted by the deal between Golconda’s Abdullah Qutb Shah and the philosopher-Prince, Dara Shukoh, even as he soars in mystical knowledge. Sarmad is seen in the nude propounding his search for truth to whosoever would listen. It is in this epoch that a young omrah of twenty-five first appears astride the prow of a boat belonging to his mallah friend. Tall, sinewy, unostentatiously dressed, Muzaffar Jang, is a coffee-guzzling devotee of the thirteenth century Persian poet Sa’adi who takes a plunge into sleuthing impelled by circumstances.