Heinrich Blochmann

He is also remembered for one of the first major English translations of Ain-i-Akbari, the 16th-century Persian language chronicle of Mughal emperor Akbar, published in 1873.

He was educated at the Kreuzschule and the University of Leipzig (1855), where he studied oriental languages under Heinrich Leberecht Fleischer, and then (1857) was in Paris.

He was befriended by William Nassau Lees, the principal of the Calcutta Madrasa (now Aliah University), and Blochmann obtained, at the age of 22, his first government appointment (1860) as assistant professor of Arabic and Persian there.

[2] Blochmann's major work was his translation of the Ain-i-Akbari of Abu'l-Fazl ibn Mubarak; the earlier version of Francis Gladwin was more in the way of a summary.

Blochmann's notes dealt with the Emperor Akbar and his court, and the administration of the Mughal Empire; and prefixed to the translation was a life of Abul-Fazl.