Both an official chronicle and the highly personal memoir of the emperor Babur (1483 1530), "The Baburnama" presents a vivid and extraordinarily detailed picture of life in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India during the late-fifteenth and early-sixteenth centuries. Babur s honest and intimate chronicle is the first autobiography in Islamic literature, written at a time when there was no historical precedent for a personal narrative now in a sparkling new translation by Islamic scholar Wheeler Thackston. This Modern Library Paperback Classics edition includes notes, indices, maps, and illustrations.".