Ira Mukhoty

My works of non-fiction, largely Mughal history

@lie_lowkey ☺️

Ages since a new ira mukhoty book came along, 2026 wouldn't mind one tbh @mukhoty 😄

@DalrympleWill @rentravailer @BloomsburyBooks Ooh earmarking this one for sure ✨

Bowled over by This Little World, the extraordinary new book from Nandini Das @rentravailer, soon to be published @BloomsburyBooks. It contains a wonderful gallery of precisely drawn yet constantly surprising Tudor and Stewart portraits, like an album of perfect Hilliard miniatures that dazzle us with their cosmopolitan attitudes and globalised lives. Taking us from English Jesuits in Goa to Italian renaissance scholars in Oxford via an English eunuch in Ottoman Constantinople and a Kentish Samurai in 17th century Edo, this is a perspective-altering take on a world we usually think of in far more domestic and provincial terms. Beautifully written and impeccably researched, Nandini Das has written another ground-breaking masterwork.

@iamrana @DalrympleWill I’ve never actually seen that one

@mukhoty @DalrympleWill check the baoli in the Qutub sahib dargah too

Follow the water Tracking down the water sources- baolis and wells- in Mehrauli that once made this area so forested and pleasant, a beloved retreat for the later Mughals

@DalrympleWill @tweeter_anita @EmpirePodUK @GoalhangerHQ ☺️

@mukhoty @tweeter_anita @EmpirePodUK @GoalhangerHQ We would be nothing without superstar guests like you!

A lovely birthday present... congratulations @tweeter_anita and all at @EmpirePodUK & @GoalhangerHQ

@MudassarTarar These are stunning! Thank you

@mukhoty Please see attached photos of a beautiful fountain in Diwan e Khas of Lahore fort. Such has been loot & plunder during post Mughal era that each and every precious gemstone was plucked out, and yet it remains a masterpiece.

The tasbih-khana, 200 years apart This intimate chamber in the Red Fort overlooking the Yamuna was favoured by the Mughal emperors for their private Darbars Today the canal is paved over, the marble is grubby, the curtains and screens removed Painting by Mazhar Ali K, 1840s

Do go listen to the terrific Neha Dixit, US friends

@DalrympleWill Woah many congratulations William!

"The Mark Lynton Prize for History, a $10,000 award for combining “literary grace, commitment to serious research & social concern,” administered by the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University, was given to William Dalrymple's “The Golden Road.” washingtonpost.com/national/2026/…

@sauban_mirza Good point!

@mukhoty Delhi or Dehli???

Delhi Darwaza, Shahjahanabad. The monumental gateway at the Qila that would have led to ‘Delhi’ ie purana Qila.

Dusk at jama masjid, Shahjahanabad

The enduring mystery of ‘Barber’s Tomb’ The only other tomb built within the Humayun’s tomb’s enclosure, the identity of the people buried here-a man and a woman-remains a mystery. It began to be called Nai ka gumbad or Barber’s tomb fairly recently

@peepalleaves Pradeep is an icon, I have an old edition 😊🌳

@mukhoty A similar book, also delightful to read during Delhi’s spring

Enjoying reading Wild Capital by Neha Sinha during Delhi’s fleeting, gaudy spring 🌷🦜

@nehaa_sinha So it is 😊

@mukhoty Thank you for reading, @mukhoty! I love the use of the word gaudy! Giddyingly gaudy it is.

Delhi poet Anand Ram Mukhlis wrote these 18th c lines about spring flowers If the architecture of His creation had not paid attention to the organisation of the album of spring Who would have arranged margin notes of larkspur for the text of the corn poppy field #nicolasroth

@authormadhulika @nilanjanaroy @HarperCollinsIN This looks wonderful

I know, even pretty much at the start of the year, that this is going to be one of the best books I'll read in 2026. Neha Sinha's 'Wild Capital': my review. madhulikareads.wordpress.com/2026/03/05/wil…

@rizwanfaiz_ Plundering began in the chaos of the late 18th c and intensified at 1857 and on

@mukhoty Who stole the original stonework?

Humayun’s tomb then and now On the right, a reconstruction of what the interior of the tiled, painted and gilded cenotaph chamber would have looked like in the 16th c, vs the bare space that exists today Reconstruction by Himanish Das in Ebba koch’s Planetary King