AUTHOB'S PREFACE ix local administration have their origin in probably pre- historic custom. But in the character and life of the rulers there is infinite variety, and it is round the lives of great men and a few great women, though such seldom emerge before the public gaze in the East that the chief interest of the Medieval Period centres. A history of the people is usually assumed, in the present day, to be more stimulating and instructive than the record of kings and courts; but even if true, this can only be understood of Western peoples, of peoples who strive to go forward, or at least change. In the East the people does not change, and there, far more than among progressive races, the " simple annals of the poor," however moving and pathetic, are indescribably trite and monotonous compared with the lives of those more fortunate beings to whom much has been given in opportunity, wealth, power, and knowledge. Such contrasted characters as those of Ala-ad-din, Mo- hammad Taghlak, Babar, Akbar, and Aurangzib may rival any that could be named in Europe in the same four centuries; and in the lives and policies, the wars and studies, the habits and ceremonies of such leaders the imagination finds ample scope for the realization of strangely vivid and dramatic situations,
