This study is not the first to be made of Reza Khan in recent years. As early as 1925 Imtiaz Muhammad Khan wrote two articles for the Calcutta Review, published by the University of Calcutta. These sketched the whole career of the Khan, but concentrated particularly upon his trial, in the author's view the ‘dominant feature of his life’. His study necessarily suffered from the limitations of space within which it was published, and contains some errors, but above all it suffered from not being broadly set against the political background of the period. The trial, however minutely described, cannot be understood except as part of a political campaign. Imtiaz Muhammad Khan's articles were soon followed by two other articles on Reza Khan and the Chitpur family, of which he was the founder, by Ameer Ali Midhut Jang, most probably of the Khan's family. These were published in Calcutta's Muslim Institute journal, the Muslim Review. Though less ably presented, Midhut Jang's articles have their merits too. Besides giving a genealogical table, beginning with Reza Khan and brought down to 1927, the author brought to light a portrait of the Khan, a photographic copy of an eighteenth-century original painting.

Dr N. Majumdar in her Justice and Police in Bengal, 1765–1793—a study of the nizamat in decline, published in 1960, also dealt with Reza Khan in a broader fashion. However, her interest was primarily in judicial and police administration, and particularly in the changes which took place after 1772.