The Man who Witnessed India’s History in the Making
Govindan Nair
A VENETIAN AT THE MUGHAL COURT: THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF NICOLO MANUCCI by Marco Moneta Vintage, 2021, 276 pp., 699.00
December 2022, volume 46, No 12

Aripper of a yarn that defies the imagination while bringing to light historical nuggets: this is the story of Nicolo Manucci, a semi-literate Italian teenager who ran away from home to become a renowned medical practitioner in Mughal India, a respected diplomat and a chronicler of the age.  Marco Moneta recounts Manucci’s colourful tale with a flair that reads almost like fiction, while providing the perspective that makes the book a useful historical record.  Elisabetta Ruscone’s translation retains the vibrancy that one visualizes in the original Italian version.

Nicolo Manucci’s monumental work, Storia do Mogor, purportedly a history of the Mughals from Timur to Aurangzeb, but more an account of Manucci’s own adventures, provides the fulcrum for Moneta’s work.

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