The manuscript of Siraj al-tawarikh in four volumes, published in eleven volumes in English translation, amount to about two million words, written during a period of more than thirty years. In addition to the usual changes that the passage of time and increasing experience bring about in the prose of any writer, in the case of Fayz Muhammad, “Katib-i Hazarah”, there were other elements which contributed to the shaping of the aesthetics and stylistics of the later parts of his monumental work. Some of the more significant elements include the level of censorship of his works during different periods, his level of access to official documents, and the constant modifications of his job description. Such factors encouraged and sometimes even forced him to emphasize certain aspects and components of his writing skills and employ various linguistic registers to navigate through perilous periods while maintaining his readers’ interest, as well as a certain level of job security. After a general overview of Katib’s multi-disciplinary discursive capabilities, this paper focuses on the fourth volume of Siraj al-tawarikh and, within a comparative framework, highlights specific historical and biographical details which gradually transformed the linguistic register and atmosphere of the text. I will further argue that, in particular, the conditions that developed during the reign of Amir Habib Allah Khan encouraged and at times required Fayz Muhammad to veer from his usual evidence-based writing habits, and instead allocate a larger textual space to stories – or “petites histoires” – which, as New Historicists would put it, could puncture imposed, official grand narratives. It is precisely in these stories that Fayz Muhammad demonstrates his skillful usage of literary devices such as sarcasm and irony, especially when he composes anecdotes filled with tried-and-tested leitmotifs of sex and violence. A close reading of a number of such stories/anecdotes will not only identify the writer as a modern storyteller but will also unveil sites of resistance vis-à-vis the official discourses made manifest mainly in previous volumes of Siraj al-tawarikh.