From Refashioning Iran, p 16:
By anticipating a period of decline that paved the way for the British colonization, historians of Mughal India have searched predominantly for facts taht illustrate the backwardness and the disintegration of this empire. Mughal historiography in this respect has a plot structure similar to the late Ottoman history. In both cases, the dominant themese of “decline” and “disintegration” are based on a projection about the rise and progress of Europe. In a similar manner, historians of modern Iran inherited historiographical traditions that militate against the construction of historical narratives about the pre-Constitutional and/or pre-Pahlavi times as anything but an age of ignorance (bikhabari), stagnation and despotism. […] Inscribing the history of Europe on that of India and Iran, both indian and Iranian historians have deployed a regressive conception of time that constitutes their respective histories in terms of lacks and failures.