William Irvine (4 July 1840 – 3 November 1911) was an administrator of the Indian Civil Service and historian, known for works on the Moghul Empire.
Leaving a private school before he was fifteen, he served a short apprenticeship in business, and after spending some years as a clerk in the admiralty passed for the Indian Civil Service.
[1] Irvine's major work of scholarship was a 1907 translation and edition of a chronicle of the Venetian traveller Niccolao Manucci.
After François Bernier, Manucci was the main contemporary European authority for the history of India during the reign of Aurangzeb (1658–1707).
Over eight years, Irvine discovered a Berlin codex that gives a part of the text, and a Venice manuscript that supplies its entirety.
Upon returning to Britain, he began a history of the decline of the Mogul empire, planned as beginning from the death of Aurangzeb in 1707 to the capture of Delhi by Lord Lake in 1803.
His last significant publication was a life of Aurangzeb in the Indian Antiquary for 1911; a résumé appeared the same year in the Encyclopédie d'Islam.