Climate of Conquest: War, Environment, and Empire in Mughal North India 9780199495559, 0199495556, 9780199098231, 0199098239

Table of contents :
00_Prelims_i-xlii
03_Chapter 02_54-112
05_Chapter 04_168-222
06_Chapter 05_223-271
07_Conclusion_272-282
08_Bibliography_283-309
09_Index_310-323
10_About the Author_324-326

Citation preview

Climate of Conquest

Climate of Conquest War, Environment, and Empire in Mughal North India

Pratyay Nath

1

1 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries. Published in India by Oxford University Press 2/11 Ground Floor, Ansari Road, Daryaganj, New Delhi 110 002, India © Oxford University Press 2019 The moral rights of the author have been asserted. First Edition published in 2019 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. ISBN-13 (print edition): 978-0-19-949555-9 ISBN-10 (print edition): 0-19-949555-6 ISBN-13 (eBook): 978-0-19-909823-1 ISBN-10 (eBook): 0-19-909823-9 Typeset in ScalaPro 10/13 by Tranistics Data Technologies, Kolkata 700 091 Printed in India by Gopsons Papers Ltd., Noida 201 301

For my parents, my first teachers— Sanghamitra Nath & Late Subhendu Bikas Nath

MAPS

1.1 The Arid Zone of Afro-Eurasia

6

1.2 The Punjab Basin 12 1.3 The Upper Ganga Basin and the Western Part of Middle Ganga Basin 18 1.4 The Eastern Part of the Middle Ganga Basin 19 1.5 Central India 1.6 Western India

23 29

2.1 The Ganga–Brahmaputra Delta

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2.2 The Brahmaputra Basin in Assam 2.3 The Lower Indus Basin

70

75

2.4 Kashmir and the Western Himalayas 2.5 Qandahar

92

2.6 Balkh and Badakhshan

100

84

ABBREVIATIONS

AA

AB AD

AG

AJ

Abul Fazl, Ā’īn-i Akbarī, ed. H. Blochmann, 3 vols (Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1869–72); Abul Fazl, The Ā’īn-i Akbarī, by Abu ’l-Faẓl ‘Allāmī, trans. H. Blochmann (Vol. 1) and H.S. Jarrett (Vols 2 and 3), 3 vols (Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1948–9). Ahom Buranji, ed. Surya Kumar Bhuyan (Guwahati: Department of Historical and Antiquarian Studies, 2010). Ahom Buranji, (1648–1681 AD), ed. Sharat Kumar Datta (Guwahati: Department of Historical and Antiquarian Studies, 2010). Ahom-Buranji, from the Earliest Time to the End of Ahom Rule, ed. and trans. Golap Chandra Barua (Guwahati: Department of Historical and Antiquarian Studies, 1985). Jani Muhammad Asad, Akhlāq-i Jalālī, ed. Hafiz Shabir Ahmad Haidari (Delhi: Urdu Book Review, 2007); Jani Muhammad Asad, Practical Philosophy of the Muhammadan People, Exhibited in its Professed Connection with the European, so as to Render either an Introduction to the Other; Being a Translation of the Akhlak-i Jalaly, the Most Esteemed Ethical Work of Middle Asia from the Persian of Fakir Jany Muhammad Asaad, trans. W.F. Thompson, (London: The Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland, 1839).

xii AK AN

AS BG

BL

BN

DB

FA FI

HN

IJ

KB

Abbreviations

Muhammad Kazim, ‘Ālamgīr-nāma, ed. Maulvi Khadim Husain (Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1868). Abul Fazl, Akbar-nāma, ed. Maulawi Abdur Rahim, 3 vols (Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1876); Abul Fazl, The Akbarnama of Abu’l Fazl, trans. Henry Beveridge, 3 vols (Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1904). Muhammad Salih Kambu, ‘Amal-i Ṣāliḥ, ed. Ghulam Yazdani, 3 vols (Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1923). Mirza Nathan, Bahāristān-i Ghā’ibī, transcribed copy of the original Persian manuscript preserved in Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, JS 60–2, Jadunath Sarkar Collection, National Library, Kolkata; Mirza Nathan, Bahāristān-i Ghaybī: A History of the Mughal Wars in Assam, Cooch Behar, Bengal, Bihar and Orissa during the Reigns of Jahangir and Shah Jahan, trans. M.I. Borah, 2 vols (Guwahati: Department of History and Antiquarian Studies, 1992). Abdul Hamid Lahori, Bādshāh-nāma, ed. Maulawis Kabiruddin and Abdul Rahim, 2 vols (Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1867–8). Zahiruddin Muhammad Babur, Bāburnāma: Memoirs of Bābur, trans. Annette Susannah Beveridge, 2 vols (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt. Ltd, 1998). Surya Kumar Bhuyan, ed. Deodhai Ahom Buranji (Guwahati: Department of Historical and Antiquarian Studies, 2001). Ishwardas Nagar, Futuhat-i Alamgiri, trans. and ed. Tasneem Ahmad (Delhi: Idarah-i Adabiyat-i Delli, 1978). Shihabuddin Talish, Fathiyyah-i Ibriyyah, trans. Jadunath Sarkar, in Jadunath Sarkar, Studies in Aurangzib’s Reign (Calcutta: Orient Longman, 1989), 115–47. Gulbadan Begum, The History of Humāyūn or HumāyūnNāma, trans. A.S. Beveridge (Delhi: Low Price Publications, 2006). Motamad Khan, Iqbālnāma-i Jahāngīrī, ed. Maulawis Abd al-Haii and Ahmad Ali (Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1865). Surya Kumar Bhuyan, ed. Kamrupar Buranji (Guwahati: Department of Historical and Antiquarian Studies, 1987).

Abbreviations

MT

MA

MJ

MK ML

MM

NT

SN

TA

xiii

Abdul Qadir Badaoni, Muntakhabu-t-Tawārīkh by ‘Abdu-lQādir ibn-i-Mulūk Shāh known as al-Badāoni, trans. W.H. Lowe and B.P. Ambashthya, 3 vols (Delhi: Renaissance Publishing House, 1986). Abul Fazl, Mukātabāt-i-‘Allāmī (Inshā’i Abu’l Faẓl), Daftar I, ed. and trans. Mansura Haidar (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt. Ltd, 1998). Muhammad Baqir Najm-i Sani, Mau‘iẓah-i Jahāngīrī of Muhammad Baqir Najm-i Sani: An Indo-Persian Mirror for Princes, trans. Sajida Sultana Alvi (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989). Khwaja Kamgar Husaini Ghairat Khan, Ma’ās̤ir-i Jahāngīrī, ed. Azra Alavi (Bombay: Asian Publishing House, 1978). Khafi Khan, Muntakhabu ’l-Lubāb, ed. Maulawi Kabir al-Din Ahmad, 2 vols (Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1874); Khafi Khan, Aurangzeb in Muntakhab al-Lubab, trans. Anees Jahan Syed (Bombay: Somaiya Publications Pvt. Ltd, 1977). Saqi Mustaid Khan, Ma’ās̤ir-i ‘Ālamgīrī, ed. Maulavi Agha Ahmad Ali (Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1871); Saqi Mustaid Khan, Maāsir-i-‘Ālamgiri: A History of the Emperor Aurangzib ‘Ālamgir (Reign 1658–1707 A.D.) of Sāqi Must‘ad Khan, trans. Jadunath Sarkar (Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1947). Nasiruddin Tusi, Akhlāq-i Nāṣirī, ed. Mojtaba Minavi and Ali Riza Haidari (Tehran: Shirka Sahami Intisharat-i Khwarizmi, 1976); Nasiruddin Tusi, The Nasirean Ethics, trans. G.M. Wickens (London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd, 1964). Inayat Khan, Mulakhkhaṣ-i Shāhjahān-nāma, ed. Jameelur-Rehman (New Delhi: Embassy of Islamic Republic of Iran, 2009); Shah Jahan Nama of ‘Inayat Khan: An Abridged History of the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan, Compiled by His Royal Librarian, trans. A.R. Fuller, ed. W.E. Begley and Z.A. Desai (Delhi, Oxford, and New York: Oxford University Press, 1990). Khwajah Nizamuddin Ahmad, T̤abaqāt-i Akbarī, ed. Brajendranath De, 3 vols (Calcutta: Asiatic Society

xiv

TB TF

TJ

TQ

TV

TS

TT

Abbreviations

of Bengal, 1931); The Ṭabaqāt-i Akbarī of Khwājah Niẓāmuddīn Aḥmad, trans. Brajendranath De, ed. Baini Prasad, 3 vols (Delhi: Low Price Publication, 1992). Zain Khan, T̤abaqāt-i Bāburī, trans. Sayed Hasan Askari (Delhi: Idarah-i Adabiyat-i Delli, 1982). Muhammad Qasim Firishta, History of the Rise of the Mahomedan Power in India till the Year A.D. 1612 or Tarikh-i Firishta, trans. John Briggs, 4 vols (London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1829). Nuruddin Jahangir, Tūzak-i Jahāngīrī, ed. Syed Ahmed Khan, 2 vols (Ghazipur: Private Press, 1863); Nuruddin Jahangir, Tuzuk-i Jahangiri or the Memoirs of Jahangir, trans. Alexander Rogers, ed. Henry Beveridge, 2 vols (Delhi: Low Price Publications, 2006). Muhammad Arif Qandahari, Ta’rīkh-i Akbarī, ed. Haji Syed Muinuddin Nadwi, Syed Azhar Ali, and Imtiaz Ali Arshi (Rampur: Hindustan Printing Works, 1962); Ta’rīkh-i Akbarī, trans. Tasneem Ahmad (Delhi: Pragati Publications, 1993). Jouher, Tezkereh al Vakiat or Private Memoirs of the Moghul Emperor Humayun, trans. Charles Stewart (London: Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland, 1832). Mir Masum, History of the Arghuns and Tarkhans of Sind (1507–1593), an Annotated Translation of the Relevant Parts of Mir Ma‘sum’s Ta’rikh-i-Sind, trans. Mahmudul Hasan Siddiqi (Sind: University of Sind, 1972). Shihabuddin Talish, Tarikh-i Aasham, trans. Mazhar Asif, complied by Akdas Ali Mir (Guwahati: Department of Historical and Antiquarian Studies, 2009).

NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION

I have transliterated the Persian and Arabic words used in this book according to F. Steingass, A Comprehensive Persian–English Dictionary (New Delhi: Manohar, [1892] 2007). I have transliterated Bengali words according to the romanization guidelines of the American Library Association, Library of Congress, USA. I have not used diacritical marks in the names of people and places for the ease of reading.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book is based on my doctoral thesis submitted to Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi, in 2015. It contains the fruits of my thoughts—developed over more than a decade—about an empire that first captured my interest during my undergraduate days in Kolkata. Yet, the book is still far from a finished product; I would rather like to see it as a work in progress. It is not entirely original either; it contains the knowledge produced by generations of historians who have researched this field before me. The arguments of many of them are radically different from mine. Yet, each one of them has contributed to my understanding of the empire and enabled me to say a few new things about it. Hence, in many ways, this book is merely the continuation of this long-standing collective intellectual journey to get to know one of the most complex and intriguing empires of the world better. The list of people who have contributed directly and indirectly to the intellectual journey that has produced this book is very long. Unfortunately, the lack of space will allow me to name only a few of them. Partha Pratim Roy, my physics teacher at South Point High School, Kolkata, inspired me to study history in the first place. He changed the course of my life forever at a stage when I was all set to devote myself to the study of chemistry. I learnt the basics of the discipline from Subhas Ranjan Chakraborty and Rajat Kanta Ray during the heady

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Acknowledgements

days at Presidency College, Kolkata. At the University of Calcutta, West Bengal, the classes of and discussions with Amit Dey, Suchandra Ghosh, and Shireen Maswood inspired me to proceed toward the blissful world of academic research. Kaushik Roy opened the doors of his personal library and taught me military history with great patience and rigour. He also pushed me to study South Asian history using global comparative frameworks. At JNU, Rajat Datta supervised my research over seven long years. During this time, he shaped my academic growth through his constant support, insightful comments, and understated encouragement. Over and above the most valuable lessons in the history of early modern South Asia, I also learnt from him the virtues of a strict work regime and steadfast punctuality, and the necessity of respecting deadlines. The academic discussions with Neeladri Bhattacharya, Kunal Chakraborty, Pius Malekandathil, the late MSS Pandian, and late Nandita Prasad Sahai at the Centre for Historical Studies, JNU, gave direction to the trajectories of my analytical thinking. Collectively, JNU indulged my interest in the history of war, but also taught me the value of connecting it with wider questions and debates about state, society, economy, and culture. Chetan Singh and Farhat Hasan evaluated my work repeatedly during my research years and gave me important suggestions about how to improve its quality. Their feedback as well as their own research has fundamentally shaped my understanding of the Mughal Empire. Ravi Ahuja and Lakshmi Subramanian read several of my papers and gave me valuable comments on my arguments about military labour and imperial frontiers. The third and fourth chapters of this book have benefitted especially from their suggestions. Raziuddin Aquil, Ranabir Chakravarti, Mahesh Rangarajan, and Tanika Sarkar served as constant sources of education and encouragement over the years. In the course of the research undertaken for this book, I have moved on from being a student to a faculty member. I am grateful to my colleagues at Ashoka University, Haryana, and Miranda House, University of Delhi, for helping me through this shift both emotionally and intellectually. Srimanjari, Radhika Chadha, Bharati Jagannathan, and Snigdha Singh helped me learn the ropes of teaching in the initial phase of my career. My present colleagues, especially Sanjukta Datta, Nayanjot Lahiri, Pratap Bhanu Mehta,

Acknowledgements

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Rudrangshu Mukherjee, Mahesh Rangarajan, Malabika Sarkar, Vanita Shastri, Upinder Singh, and Aparna Vaidik, have extended unfailing support and encouragement. I have also constantly learnt from my students. Their curiosity, comments, and criticism in the classroom have compelled me to engage with my own research material in greater depth and sharpen my arguments. I owe a lot to each one of them. A research fellowship of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) enabled me to spend a very productive year (2013–14) conducting research at the Centre for Modern Indian Studies (CeMIS), GeorgAugust Universität, Göttingen, Germany. The library and general staff of the CeMIS; Departmental Special Assistance library of the CHS, JNU; the Central Library of JNU; the Asiatic Society, Kolkata; the National Library, Kolkata; the Indian Council of Historical Research, New Delhi; the Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen, Germany; and Bereichsbibliothek Kulturwissenschaften, Göttingen, allowed me to access their resources. My present employers at Ashoka University have provided constant support to facilitate my research. Atiq ur-Rahman taught me Persian at Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture, Kolkata. Zohra Khatun, Muhammad Amir Khan, and Zeyaul Haque helped me continue that education in JNU. I gratefully acknowledge the valuable contribution of all these people and institutions towards my research over the years. The team at Oxford University Press has been a constant source of support and encouragement during the last three years. Irfan Habib gave me his permission to use his An Atlas of the Mughal Empire for creating the maps of this book. Pravin Mishra designed all of these maps. Four anonymous reviewers of Oxford University Press read my manuscript and gave me their valuable feedback. I am forever grateful to all these people. Without the contribution of each one of them, this book would not have materialized. I have also been extremely lucky to have enjoyed the constant support and encouragement of some incredible friends. Akash Bhattacharya, Gaurav Churiwala Garg, Kashshaf Ghani, Anwesha Ghosh, Sushmita Pati, and Kaustubh Mani Sengupta took time out to read portions of my work and give me their valuable feedback. Anirban Bandyopadhyay, Ritajyoti Bandyopadhyay, Atig Ghosh, Rohan Deb Roy, Anwesha Sengupta, and Santanu Sengupta have

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shared my intellectual journey at various stages and inspired me constantly. Sambuddha Bishee, Piya Chakraborty, Sandip Chatterjee, Sebanti Chatterjee, Swargajyoti Gohain, Preeti Gulati, Jeena Sarah Jacob, Imroze Khan, Kanupriya Sharma, and Tulsi Srinivasan have showered me with love, care, and indulgence over the years. Collectively, they have seen me through many good and bad times. Their combined contribution to my personal life and my academic growth is enormous. I am eternally grateful to each one of them. This book is dedicated to my parents. My father, late Subhendu Bikas Nath—author, chemist, and teacher—honed my mind and thought throughout my childhood and teenage years with unending patience, love, and encouragement. I wish he had witnessed the publication of this book. My mother, Sanghamitra Nath—teacher and vocalist—taught me life’s most valuable lessons through her personal example. She continues to be my favourite teacher and greatest inspiration. My brother, Pratyush Nath, a mathematician, has been my greatest supporter and my harshest critic since our most fondly remembered childhood. I have no words to express my gratitude toward them. Finally, I am forever indebted to my partner, Maria-Daniela Pomohaci, a fellow researcher of South Asian history, for her unfailing love, friendship, and intellectual support through the years.

INTRODUCTION

To those who seek an empire, the best dress is a coat of mail, and the best crown is a helmet, the most pleasant lodging is the battlefield, the tastiest wine is the enemies’ blood, and the charming beloved is the sword. (t̤ālibān-i mulk rā khūb-tarīn libās-hā zirih ast wa bihtarīn tāj-hā-i khūd wa khẉush-tarīn manzil-hā ma‘ar ki ḥarb wa zībā-tarīn sharāb-hā khūn-i khaṣm wa khūb-tarīn maḥbūbān shamshīr) Muhammad Baqir Najm-i Sani, Mau‘iẓah-i Jahāngīrī 1 A prince, therefore, must not have any other object nor any other thought, nor must he adopt anything as his art but war, its institutions, its discipline; because that is the only art befitting one who commands … The most important reason why you lose it [the throne] is by neglecting this art, while the way to acquire it is to be well-versed in this art. Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince2

1

These lines are followed up by a couplet: ‘Only that person who kisses the lip of the sword/Can embrace in a leap the bride of dominion (‘arūs-i mulk kasī dar kinār gīrad chust/kasī bos bar lab-i shamshīr āb-dār zanad).’ (MJ, 48,151.) 2 Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. Peter Bondanella (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 50.

Climate of Conquest: War, Environment, and Empire in Mughal North India. Pratyay Nath, Oxford University Press (2019). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199495559.001.0001

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The Mughals fought ceaselessly. Even a cursory glance at the political timeline of the empire makes this evident. Be it campaigns for territorial expansion, counter-insurgency operations against those who resisted imperial authority, or expeditions to suppress rebellions within the official ranks—military conflict was a constant preoccupation of the Mughal state throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The administrative organization of the empire reflected this clearly. Almost a century back, Jadunath Sarkar, the doyen of Mughal studies, observed that the imperial government was ‘military in its origin, and though in time it became rooted to the soil it retained its military character to the last’.3 More recently, John Richards has made a similar point. He has called the empire a ‘war state’ and that the Mughals ‘needed little excuse to attack their neighbours’.4 The rich historiography of the bureaucratic machinery responsible for assessing and extracting agrarian revenue—the most important fiscal resource of the empire—bears out the military nature of Mughal administration. The works of Irfan Habib, Shireen Moosvi, Ahsan Jan Qaisar, and others show that this machinery meticulously appropriated the bulk of the agrarian surplus from a large part of South Asia throughout the regnal period of Akbar through Aurangzeb. It then concentrated this resource in the hands of the manṣabdārs—imperially appointed military officers of the state.5 Since the primary social 3

Jadunath Sarkar, Mughal Administration (Calcutta: M.C. Sarkar & Sons, 1920), 10–11. 4 John F. Richards, The Unending Frontier: An Environmental History of the Early Modern World (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 2003), 26. 5 Irfan Habib’s analysis of the administrative and bureaucratic processes and offices through which a substantial portion of the agrarian surplus of South Asia flowed into the Mughal coffers remains by far the most important work on Mughal agrarian economy. (Irfan Habib, The Agrarian System of Mughal India, 1556–1707 [New Delhi: Oxford University Press, (1963) 2005].) Ahsan Jan Qaisar has shown how the majority of this surplus production ended up with the top tiers of the imperial aristocracy, who also formed the military elite of the empire. (Shireen Moosvi, The Economy of the Mughal Empire c. 1595: A Statistical Study [New Delhi: Oxford University Press, (1987) 2015]; Ahsan Jan Qaisar, ‘Distribution of the Revenue Resources of the Mughal Empire among the Nobility’, in The Mughal State, 1526–1750, eds.

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production of most of this class was to fight for the empire, much of the financial resources ended up being spent on the upkeep of troops and the making of wars. M. Athar Ali, Satish Chandra, and others have highlighted how these imperial aristocrats increasingly vied with each other to capture for themselves as much of this agrarian resource as possible.6 Collectively, these historians argue that this increasing financial appetite of the military aristocracy ultimately wrecked the empire from within in two ways. First, it led to the over-exploitation of the peasantry, pushing them to the point of large-scale rebellions.7 Second, it facilitated the destruction of the financial structure of the empire and the degeneration of the imperial officialdom into rampant factionalism.8 The regular bouts of war also meant that beyond actual military performance at the front and the overall military priorities of the administrative structure, the empire was perpetually busy attending to the unending organizational minutiae of making war. At all times, it had to manage the maintenance, repair, and construction of fortifications; the procurement, training, and deployment of diverse types of war-animals; the production, storage, and shipping of various kinds of weaponry; the recruitment and payment of enormous numbers of soldiers as well as their transportation from the centres of mobilization to the theatres of war; and so on. Consequently, war was not something alien—some abnormality that happened away from the regular dynamics of the empire’s daily life. It was in fact, a social, cultural, and economic reality that comprised a fundamental part of the quotidian life of the state. It not only moulded the behaviour of the empire in times of open conflict—which in any case were extremely frequent—but also fundamentally shaped its very nature,

Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, [New Delhi: Oxford University Press, (2001) 2005], 252–8.) 6 M. Athar Ali, The Mughal Nobility under Aurangzeb (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, [1966] 2001); Satish Chandra, Parties and Politics at the Mughal Court, 1707–1740 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, [1959] 2003). 7 Habib, Agrarian System, 364–405. 8 Ali, The Mughal Nobility under Aurangzeb; Chandra, Parties and Politics; Satish Chandra, Medieval India: Society, Jagirdari Crisis and the Village (Delhi: Macmillan, 1982).

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priorities, and concerns even in times of peace. The evocative lines of Muhammad Baqir Najm-i Sani—the author of a Mughal normative text from 1612—in the epigraph reflect that the political philosophy of the empire also appreciated and normalized the importance of military violence in the sustenance of royal authority.9 In spite of this centrality of war in the life of the empire, research on Mughal warfare has remained rather limited in its scope. Scholarly work has largely focused on three areas—big battles,10 military technology,11 and army organization.12 The two recent works that have broken 9

The other epigraph—from Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Prince (1532)— points to the shared histories of such a worldview in the early modern world. 10 See B.P. Ambashthya, Decisive Battles of Ser Sah (Delhi: Janaki Prakashan, 1977); Kaushik Roy, India's Historic Battles: From Alexander the Great to Kargil (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2004), 54–79; Jadunath Sarkar, Military History of India (Delhi: Orient Longmans, 1970). 11 The most important contributions in this area have come from Iqtidar Alam Khan. See Iqtidar Alam Khan, ‘Early Use of Cannon and Musket in India, A.D. 1442–1526,’ Journal of Economic and Social History of the Orient 24, no. 2 (1984), 146–64; Iqtidar Alam Khan, ‘Firearms in Central Asia and Iran during the Fifteenth Century and the Origins and Nature of Firearms brought by Babur,’ Proceedings of the Indian History Congress (Calcutta, 1995), 435–446; Iqtidar Alam Khan, ‘Origin and Development of Gunpowder Technology in India, A.D. 1250–1500,’ The Indian Historical Review 4, no. 1 (1977), 20–9; Iqtidar Alam Khan, Gunpowder and Firearms: Warfare in Medieval India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004). Also see Irfan Habib, ‘Akbar and Technology,’ Social Scientist 20, no. 9–10 (1992), 3–15; Iqbal Ghani Khan, ‘Metallurgy in Medieval India—The Case of Iron Cannons,’ Proceedings of the Indian History Congress (Annamalainagar, 1984); G.N. Pant, Mughal Weapons in the Baburnama (Delhi: Agam Kala Prakashan, 1989); Murray B. Emeneau, ‘The Composite Bow in India,’ Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 97, no. 1 (1953), 77–87. 12 Works on Mughal army organization include Abdul Aziz, The Mansabdari System and the Mughal Army (Delhi: Idarah-i Adabiyat-i Delli, [1945] 1972); William Irvine, The Army of the Indian Moghuls (Delhi: Low Price Publications, [1903] 2004); Kaushik Roy, ‘From the Mamluks to the Mansabdars: A Social History of Military Service in South Asia, c. 1500 to c. 1650,’ in Fighting for a Living: A Comparative History of Military Labour 1500–2000, ed. Erik-Jan Zürcher (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2013), 81–114. For a comprehensive analysis of Mughal military techniques

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this monotony and raised a number of new questions have come from Jos Gommans and Andrew de la Garza. Their work has widened the scope of analysis of Mughal warfare substantially by throwing valuable light on several new themes. Gommans studies Mughal war-making in relation with the South Asian environment. In his work, he opens up several new topics including the nature of the military frontier, the importance of military logistics, the military labour market, importance of war within the wider dynamics of empire-formation, and so on.13 De la Garza’s research focuses on the sixteenth century and explores issues of military tactics, strategy, recruitment, training, and logistics.14 Collectively, this existing corpus of literature on Mughal warfare highlights the role of two major factors in the rise of Mughal military power in South Asia—gunpowder weaponry and cavalry.15 However, barring Gommans, the rest of the scholars mentioned earlier have focused primarily on purely military matters. They have seldom found it worthwhile to relate their arguments to the broader questions about the nature of Mughal state-formation and against the backdrop of changing military practices of early modern South Asia, see Kaushik Roy, Warfare in Pre-British India—1500 BCE to 1740 CE (London and New York: Routledge, 2015), 113–55. 13 Jos Gommans, Mughal Warfare: Indian Frontiers and High Roads to Empire, 1500–1700 (London and New York: Routledge, 2002). 14 Andrew de la Garza, ‘The Mughal Battlefield: Personnel, Technology, and Tactics in the Early Empire, 1500–1605,’ The Journal of Military History 78, no. 3 (2014), 927–60; Andrew de la Garza, The Mughal Empire at War: Babur, Akbar and the Indian Military Revolution, 1500–1605 (London and New York: Routledge, 2016). 15 For an emphasis on the role of firearms, see especially Marshall G.S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization, Vol. III: The Gunpowder Empires and Modern Times (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, [1974] 1977), 59–98; William H. McNeill, The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Forces, and Society since A.D. 1000 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 95. For arguments foregrounding the importance of the cavalry, see Habib, Agrarian System, 364; Jos Gommans, ‘Warhorse and Post-Nomadic Empire in Asia, c. 1000–1800,’ Journal of Global History 2, no. 1 (2007), 1–21; Gommans, Mughal Warfare. I return to this issue in the first two chapters.

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empire-building. At the same time, the bulk of the scholarship on the latter issues has tended to treat wars as moments of rupture rather than as an integral part of the imperial being. As such, they have concentrated more on the economic, political, or cultural processes leading to and affected by this rupture, rather than study the actual dynamics of military conflict.16 The result of these complimentary historiographical tendencies has been a widening gap between the scholarship on Mughal warfare on the one hand, and that on the remaining aspects of the imperial experience on the other. It is this gap my research seeks to address. The present book offers a fresh interpretation of Mughal stateformation and empire-building by using warfare as the point of entry. I look into four spheres of the imperial experience. First, I explore the world of Mughal military campaigns. The discussion indicates that the course and dynamics of these military campaigns were profoundly shaped by the natural environment of South Asia. Second, I unravel how the empire negotiated the environment and harnessed its resources in the process of supplying its military campaigns, mobilizing human and animal labour, and producing military infrastructure. Third, I study the making of two major military frontiers of the empire—the Afghan region and the Bengal–Assam region. I unravel how environmental factors as well as the empire’s ability to accommodate local chieftains within its own imperial project shaped the formation, defense, and expansion of these frontiers. Finally, I investigate the relationship between war-making and imperial ideology. I emphasize that the Mughal court foregrounded the idea of justice as the ultimate logic of imperial rule and the legitimizer of military violence. In turn, this allowed them to deploy cosmopolitan

16

The literature pertaining to the Mughal invasion of Balkh–Badakhshan (1646–7) is a case in point. See, for instance, M. Athar Ali, ‘The Objectives behind the Mughal Expedition into Balkh and Badakhshan, 1646–47,’ in Mughal India: Studies in Polity, Ideas, Society, and Culture, ed. M. Athar Ali, (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008), 327–33; Richard Foltz, ‘The Mughal Occupation of Balkh 1646–1647’, Journal of Islamic Studies 7, no. 1 (1996), 49–61. Both of these fine pieces of scholarship focus squarely on the political and diplomatic processes that went into the making of this war and choose not to delve much into its military aspects.

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armies to fight a variety of adversaries over the period under focus. Through the study of these four main themes over the five chapters of this book, I argue that looking at the Mughal Empire through the lens of war allows us to appreciate its nature as a dynamic, flexible, adaptive, and accommodative entity. The location of the environment in this entire discussion is an important one. In recent years, several historians have highlighted the important role environment played in the rise and fall of early modern empires in different parts of the world.17 However, the environmental dimensions of the Mughal imperial experience have gone relatively unexplored till now. Among the notable works, Chetan Singh’s study of the empire’s expansion as a process of constant dialogue between the agrarian and nomadic realms—with the Mughal state pushing the agenda of the former—is one.18 Richard Eaton has explored the social, cultural, and environmental dimensions of Mughal conquest and control of the Bengal Delta in the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries.19 Several historians have studied the engagement of Mughal kingship with the natural environment at two main sites— hunting and painting.20 These works have highlighted the numerous 17

Recent works that study the relationship between environment, stateformation, and empire-building in the early modern world include Alan Mikhail, Nature and Empire in Ottoman Egypt: An Environmental History (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Alan Mikhail, The Animal in Ottoman Egypt (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014); Alan Mikhail, Under Osman’s Tree: The Ottoman Empire, Egypt and Environmental History (Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 2017); Sam White, The Climate of Rebellion in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011); John T. Wing, Roots of Empire: Forests and State Power in Early Modern Spain, c. 1500–1750 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2015). For a detailed analytical overview, see Richards, The Unending Frontier. 18 Chetan Singh, ‘Conformity and Conflict: Tribes and the ‘Agrarian System’ of Mughal India,’ Indian Economic and Social History Review 23, no. 3 (1988), 319–40. 19 Richard M. Eaton, The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204–1760 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, [1993] 2000). 20 Chavada Divyabhanusinh, ‘The Great Mughals Go Hunting Lions,’ in Environmental Issues in India: A Reader, ed. Mahesh Rangarajan (New Delhi: Dorling Kindersley [India] Pvt. Ltd, 2009), 49–69; Ebba Koch, Dara Shikoh

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ways in which the processes of Mughal empire-building interacted with the environment. Like its contemporaries, the Mughal Empire also shaped and got shaped by the natural environment of the region where it unfolded. Warfare was one of the most important sites where this complex relationship played out. I will argue in this book that Mughal warfare transpired through constant negotiations with the environment—through the procurement and use of various animals, bridging rivers, cutting down forests to create roads, and so on. At the same time, terrain, ecology, and climate of the different theatres of war also profoundly influenced various facets of military campaigns. Taken together, the unceasing interplay among war, environment, and empire is something that deeply moulded the Mughal imperial project. This is something this book brings out using diverse registers such as strategy, logistics, and frontier.

Hunting Neel-Gais: Hunt and Landscape in Mughal Painting, Occasional Papers 1 (Washington DC: Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, 1998); Mahesh Rangarajan, India’s Wildlife History: An Introduction (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2001), 11–21; Som Prakash Verma, Flora and Fauna in Mughal Art (Mumbai: Marg Publications, 1999). Other important works— not only about the Mughal Empire but on early modern South Asia in general—include Abhimanyu Singh Arha, ‘Hoofprint of Empire: An Environmental History of Fodder in Mughal India (1650–1850),’ Studies in History 32, no. 2 (2016), 186–208; Meena Bhargava, State, Society and Ecology: Gorakhpur in Transition, 1750–1830 (New Delhi: Primus Books, 2014); Frontiers of Environment: Issues in Medieval and Early Modern India, ed. Meena Bhargava (New Delhi: Orient Blackswan, 2017); Jos Gommans, ‘The Silent Frontier of South Asia, c.1200–1800’, Journal of World History 9, no. 1 (1998), 1–23.; Sumit Guha, Environment and Ethnicity in India, 1200–1991 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Tanuja Kothiyal, Nomadic Narratives: A History of Mobility and Identity in the Great Indian Desert (Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 2016); Mayank Kumar, Monsoon Ecologies: Irrigation, Agriculture and Settlement Patterns in Rajasthan during the Pre-colonial Period (Delhi: Manohar, 2013); Murari Kumar Jha, ‘Migration, Settlement, and State Formation in the Ganga Plain: A Historical Geographic Perspective,’ Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 57, no. 4 (2014), 587–627; Thomas B. Trautmann, Elephants and Kings: An Environmental History (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2015).

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In using war as an analytical category to study state and empire, my research draws upon the work of two historians in particular— Douglas Streusand and Jos Gommans. Streusand’s first book studies the foundation of the Mughal Empire under Akbar. It assesses the role war played in the process.21 His research identifies the main factors that contributed to Mughal military success in South Asia. Moving away from the explanations foregrounding the role of either firearms or cavalry, Streusand highlights the importance of the Mughal ability to simultaneously deploy handguns, artillery, heavy cavalry, and mounted archers in pitched battles. This lent them what he calls a ‘definite but limited margin of military superiority’ over their adversaries.22 He continues that another factor that went in their favour was their ability to take forts, although through lengthy and painstaking sieges.23 According to Streusand, it was this peculiar nature of military superiority—definite, but limited—that lent a certain specificity to the process of Mughal territorial expansion in comparison with other early modern empires.24 In his more recent work, he has developed these arguments further while locating the Mughal case within a broader history of early modern Islamic empires.25 Streusand’s explanation of Mughal military success in terms of its ‘limited military superiority’ is a very sophisticated one. It is especially valuable for understanding the course of the early Mughal victories under Akbar in the Indo-Gangetic Basin and the forested highlands of central and western India. However, as the Mughal armies started venturing into more distant and diverse regions since the 1570s, the dynamics of military campaigns became increasingly complex. Here, we need new insights to explain imperial military triumphs and failures. This is something I have attempted in this book. 21 Douglas E. Streusand, The Formation of the Mughal Empire (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989). 22 Streusand, Formation, 69. 23 Streusand, Formation, 66–7; Douglas E. Streusand, Islamic Gunpowder Empires: Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2011), 256–7. 24 Streusand, Formation, 51–69. In his recent comparative study of the Mughal, Safavid, and Ottoman Empires, Streusand has developed this idea further. (Streusand, Islamic Gunpowder Empires, 254–64.) 25 Streusand, Islamic Gunpowder Empires.

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More recently, Jos Gommans has written the most comprehensive and provocative survey of Mughal warfare in recent times.26 His work analyses the Mughal Empire through the analytical category of postnomadism. He locates the factors behind Mughal military success in the empire’s sustained ability to import, maintain, and deploy firstgrade warhorses. He also points out that the empire was located at the frontier of nomadic and sedentary societies and displayed a remarkable capability to harness the best military and economic resources of both the worlds.27 The importance of his work also lies in the fact that by introducing the category of post-nomadism into Mughal studies, Gommans has linked up the latter with ongoing research on the interaction between nomadic and sedentary societies in other parts of the world.28 This has also liberated the Mughal Empire from the older triad of Asiatic Islamic empires, whereby the Mughals would usually be compared only with the Ottomans and the Safavids.29 The category of post-nomadism broadens the horizon for writing comparative histories by enabling us to juxtapose the South Asian dynasty with 26

Gommans, Mughal Warfare. Gommans’ work is particularly valuable for raising several new questions in the context of the historiography of early modern South Asia, including, but not limited to, the influence of ecology on warfare, military logistics, and the political functions of royal mobility. Also see Gommans, ‘Warhorse and Post-Nomadic Empire’. 27 Gommans, ‘Warhorse and Post-Nomadic Empire,’ 21; Gommans, Mughal Warfare, 39–64. 28 Important recent works in this field include Reuven Amitai and Michal Biran, eds., Mongols, Turks, and Others: Eurasian Nomads and the Sedentary World (Leiden: Brill, 2005); Thomas J. Barfield, The Perilous Frontier: Nomadic Empires and China (Massachusetts and Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989); Anatoly M. Khazanov and Andre Wink, eds., Nomads in the Sedentary World (Surrey: Curzon Press, 2001). 29 The triad of the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals was originally conceptualized by early modern European travellers, who were completely in awe of the domains of the three great Asiatic Muslim emperors—the Sultan, the Sufi, and the Turk respectively. In recent times, several historians have used this triad to write comparative histories of these empires. See, for example, Stephen P. Blake, Time in Early Modern Islam: Calendar, Ceremony, and Chronology in the Safavid, Mughal, and Ottoman Empires (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Stephen Dale, The Muslim Empires of the

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empires from similar backgrounds, including those of the Ottomans, Muscovites, and the Qing.30 My engagement with Gommans’ work is a variegated one. I borrow several analytical concepts from him. For instance, I find his understanding of the Eurasian geographical structure in terms of arid and humid zones, the idea of the inner frontier of South Asia, and the emphasis on the constant interactions between war and environment extremely useful. At the same time, I feel that some of the concepts— such as post-nomadism—that he uses could be nuanced further in view of new evidence. Gommans does not allow much scope for evolution within his framework of post-nomadism. For instance, he argues that one way in which the legacy of their distant nomadic military heritage continued into their South Asian empire right down to the eighteenth century was the sustained centrality of the warhorse as the main driving force of Mughal warfare.31 However, while this was the case for the flat open plains of the Indo-Gangetic Basin, various other factors were responsible for their military success in other parts. Among the rivers of Bengal, for example, equestrian mobility was highly restricted and other agents such as war-boats and elephants took the front seat. In this way, the historical contingencies of building an empire in South Asia meant that Mughal post-nomadism operated as a highly dynamic condition, and not a static one. Finally, there are some arguments of Gommans that I find problematic. For instance, he argues that Mughal state-formation relied far more on alliancebuilding than on warfare. According to him, big military triumphs played the role of trump cards in the dominant game of political negotiations.32 In this book, I argue that while forming alliance was

Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals (New York: Cambridge University Press, [2010] 2014); Streusand, Islamic Gunpowder Empires; Hodgson, The Venture of Islam, Vol. III. 30 Gommans is the first historian to compare the Mughal Empire with the Qing Empire using the category of post-nomadism. (Gommans, ‘Warhorse and Post-Nomadic Empire’.) 31 Gommans, ‘Warhorse and Post-Nomadic Empire’. 32 Jos Gommans, ‘Warhorse and Gunpowder in India, c. 1000–1850,’ in War in the Early Modern World, 1450–1815, ed. Jeremy Black (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), 105–28, see 109.

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indeed a crucial part of empire-building, on the basis of contemporary evidence it is difficult to establish that it was more important than warfare. Instead, I argue that war and diplomacy were complimentary processes that contributed equally to the rise of Mughal power. In the last few years, several historians have used trans-regional frameworks to study Mughal war-making practices. Kaushik Roy and Peter Lorge have done this in terms of the larger framework of military histories of early modern Asia. Both have invoked the Military Revolution hypothesis while analysing the Mughal military experience and have related the latter to historical tendencies of the early modern world.33 In doing so, they have connected the Mughal case to the global historiographical debate on the Military Revolution. Over the last several decades, this debate has been central to the scholarly understanding of a military early modernity. The Military Revolution hypothesis was propounded by Michael Roberts in 1955.34 In later years, it has been developed further by Geoffrey Parker, Christopher Duffy, and others. The hypothesis conceptualizes the transformations in the field of warfare in early modern western Europe in terms of one big revolution that spanned over decades, even centuries.35 Over the last sixty years, these propositions have elicited a diversity of responses. Several historians such as Michael Paul, Brian Davies, 33

Peter Lorge, The Asian Military Revolution: From Gunpowder to the Bomb (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 112–32; Kaushik Roy, Military Transition in Early Modern Asia, 1400–1750: Cavalry, Guns, Government and Ships (London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014). Jos Gommans has also contributed to this debate and argued that South Asia experienced a Military Revolution only in the eighteenth century comprising a Europeanization of the armies of the various states that rose following the decline of the Mughal Empire. See Gommans, ‘Warhorse and Gunpowder in India.’ 34 Michael Roberts, The Military Revolution, 1560–1660 (Belfast: Marjory Boyd, 1956). 35 Christopher Duffy, Siege Warfare: The Fortress in the Early Modern World, 1494–1660 (London: Routledge, 1979); Geoffrey Parker, ‘The “Military Revolution”, 1560–1660—A Myth?,’ The Journal of Modern History 48, no. 2 (1976), 195–214; Geoffrey Parker, The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

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and Günhan Börekçi, have investigated the nature of military change in this period for various non-European empires using the analytical framework of the Military Revolution.36 Many of them have discovered similar Military Revolutions in other parts of the world.37 Others such as John Lynn, Clifford Rogers, and David Parrott have contested the validity of the very idea of such a revolution in Europe.38 Jeremy Black—especially in his recent works—has strongly argued in favour of moving beyond this Eurocentric framework altogether and using new categories to write histories of early modern warfare.39 Instead of using any unifying concept such as the Military Revolution, he has called for the mapping of ‘variations, both chronological and geographical, alongside similarities’, and the ‘causes, nature and consequences of these variations’ in the history of early modern warfare.40 He suggests that such an approach will be able to incorporate some of the concerns thrown up by the cultural turn in social sciences, without

36

Günhan Börekçi, ‘A Contribution to the Military Revolution Debate: The Janissaries use of Volley Fire during the Long Ottoman–Habsburg War of 1593–1606 and the Problem of Origins,’ Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 59, no. 4 (2006), 407–38; Brian Davies, Empire and Military Revolution in Eastern Europe: Russia’s Turkish Wars in the Eighteenth Century (London and New York: Continuum, 2011); Michael C. Paul, ‘The Military Revolution in Russia, 1550–1682,’ The Journal of Military History 68, no. 1 (2004), 9–45. 37 See, for example, Paul, ‘Military Revolution in Russia’; Matthew Stavros, ‘Military Revolution in Early Modern Japan,’ Japanese Studies 33, no. 3 (2013), 243–61. 38 John A. Lynn, ‘The Trace Italienne and the Growth of Armies: The French Case,’ Journal of Military History 55, no. 3 (1991), 297–330; David A. Parrott, ‘Strategy and Tactics in the Thirty Years’ War: The “Military Revolution”’, Militiirgeschichtliche Mitteilungen 2 (1985), 7–25; Clifford J. Rogers, ‘The Military Revolutions of the Hundred Years’ War,’ Journal of Military History 57, no. 2 (1993), 241–78. Also see Jeremy Black, A Military Revolution? Military Change and European Society, 1550–1800 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991). 39 Jeremy Black, Beyond the Military Revolution: War in the Seventeenth Century World (Hampshire and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 199. 40 Jeremy Black, War and the Cultural Turn (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2011), 45.

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slipping into the culturalist trap of associating different polities with different ‘ways of war’.41 Black’s intervention breaks new ground in the historiography of early modern warfare. In the present book, I respond to his new scholarly agenda. Instead of asking whether or not the Mughal Empire experienced a military revolution or looking to identify a Mughal way of war, I study Mughal warfare through the lens of diversity and heterogeneity. I argue, especially in the first two chapters, that Mughal military techniques varied widely across the time and space, especially in terms of the deployment of technology, use of war-animals, and military strategy. I show that a number of factors contributed to this variation, including the natural environment, the nature of adversaries, and the distance from the main imperial bases of military mobilization. In other words, I look at Mughal war-making and its relationship with empire-building not in terms of universal and timeless structures. Rather, I find them to be a dynamic set of practices, something that constantly evolved and changed in response to the realities unfolding around it. In doing so, I connect with some of the recent tendencies within the historiography of the Mughal state. In 1992, Sanjay Subrahmanyam pointed out that the dominant way in which historians had studied this entity till then was through the lens of structures and systems. Pointing out the limitations of this approach, he gave a call for a radical revision of our collective understanding of Mughal history. He underlined the necessity of looking at the empire in terms of ceaseless negotiations and constantly unfolding processes, instead of mature structures frozen in time.42 Similar arguments were made by Subrahmanyam and Muzaffar Alam in the introduction of a collection of essays on the Mughal state that they co-edited.43 More recently, two scholars have followed them up on this endeavour. Focusing on Gujarat, Farhat Hasan argues that Mughal empire-building in the region was a complex and multilateral process. Here, imperial power 41

Also see Black, Beyond the Military Revolution, 188–9, 196. Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘The Mughal State—Structure of Process? Reflections on Recent Western Historiography,’ Indian Economic and Social History Review 29, no. 3 (1992), 291–321. 43 Alam and Subrahmanyam, eds., The Mughal State, 6, 17–18. 42

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had to constantly negotiate local factors and political processes. It could convert military conquest into administrative control only by taking into account the interests of various local groups and by co-sharing its sovereignty with them. In turn, this made imperial expansion a highly accommodative, participatory, and dynamic phenomenon.44 Munis Faruqui, on the other hand, analyses how the empire repeatedly created and recreated itself through its numerous wars of succession, where the different political loyalties and patronage networks would be tested, altered, and reaffirmed.45 More specifically, he investigates how the households of imperial princes functioned as the focal points of the constant politics of alliance-building involving various social, political, military, and religious groups. My own understanding of the Mughal Empire, as presented in this book, has convergences with the main arguments of Hasan and Faruqui. Like them, I too find the Mughal state as what Faruqui calls ‘a dynamic and continuously evolving entity’.46 Let me briefly lay down some basic premises of this book at this point. I begin with the title; there are several reasons behind it.47 First, one of the central arguments of this book is that the dynamics of Mughal war-making and empire-building was profoundly shaped by the natural environment of South Asia. The environment comprises 44

Farhat Hasan, State and Locality in Mughal India: Power Relations in Western India, c. 1572–1730 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 45 Munis D. Faruqui, The Princes of the Mughal Empire, 1504–1719 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). 46 Faruqui, Princes of the Mughal Empire, 6. Azfar Moin makes a similar point about the flexible, adaptive, and inclusive nature of the Mughal state in his study of the fashioning of Timurid imperial ideology, especially between Timur and Akbar. He shows that this political ideology developed through constant interaction with and borrowing from myths, beliefs, traditions, and lived experiences of the various subject populations. (A. Azfar Moin, The Millennial Sovereign: Sacred Kingship and Sainthood in Islam [New York: Columbia University Press, 2012.]) 47 In part, the title is inspired by that of Sam White’s fascinating recent study of the impact of the Little Ice Age on the society and economy of the Ottoman Empire. In this book, I draw upon White’s analysis in focusing on the relationship between the natural environment and the building of the Mughal Empire in early modern North India. White, Climate of Rebellion.

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of different factors and I have pointed out repeatedly that climate was one of the most important among them. Climatic factors, including rainfall, snowfall, low temperatures, and heavy showers, profoundly shaped the conduct of warfare in regions as diverse as Assam, Bengal, Sindh, Kashmir, Qandahar, and Balkh. The title of the book refers to this very important role played by climate in moulding the processes of Mughal war-making. However, even more than this specific use, the term signifies the wide range of environmental factors in general. Apart from climate, several other forces played very important roles in influencing the course of military expansion. They included terrain, ecology, and so on. In this second instance, the reference to climate is meant to remind the reader about this enduring and intricate relationship between environmental factors, in general, and Mughal territorial conquest. Finally, I have used the word figuratively as well, to refer to the ideological paradigm of war at the Mughal court. This encompasses the realm of military culture, legitimization of war, narratives of military conflict, military ethics, and so on.48 Next, it is important to understand the meaning of the term ‘early modern’, that I use throughout this book. The great amount of scholarly output in the last few years has firmly established the usefulness of this new periodization.49 John Richards, Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Rosalind O’Hanlon, and Sheldon Pollock have discussed from various perspectives the merits of using this fresh category for writing South Asian history from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries.50 In this collective imagination, early modernity 48

The inspiration for this figurative use of the term ‘climate’ comes from W.H. Auden’s description of Sigmund Freud in the following words: ‘to us he is no more a person/now but a whole climate of opinion/under whom we conduct our different lives’. I am thankful to Ritajyoti Bandyopadhyay for attracting my attention to this poem. (Source: https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/memory-sigmund-freud, accessed on 3 March 2018. Emphasis mine.) 49 For an example of a voice of dissent, see Jack Gladstone, ‘The Problem of the “Early Modern” World,’ Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 41, no. 3 (1998), 249–84. 50 John F. Richards, ‘Early Modern India and World History,’ Journal of World History 8, no. 2 (1997), 197–209; Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘Connected Histories: Notes towards a Reconfiguration of Early Modern Eurasia,’ Modern

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is seen as a global form of modernity, which is at once diverse and regionally specific as well as shared through certain broad global tendencies. Richards delineates the latter in terms of the forging of maritime routes across the world, the advent of a true global economy, the rise of large and stable polities, the steady increase of world population, intensified use of land for primary production, and the dissemination of new technologies.51 Subrahmanyam highlights cultural and ideological trends such as the vocal articulation of the idea of universal sovereignty, increased appropriation of the legends of conquerors such as Alexander, and the circulation of eschatological belief and motifs across the world.52 O’Hanlon points towards the tendency of big states and empires across the globe to promote the circulation and migration of elite personnel—bureaucrats, ambassadors, military professionals, artisans, and men of letters. She argues that, during this period this was accompanied by the rise of a scribal culture, the emergence of new scribal elites, and the emergence of transformative discourses in various intellectual and technological fields. With this, occurred a disenchantment about and distancing from earlier forms of knowledge. There was also a strong emergence of vernacular languages and cultures, in turn bolstering the process of the rise of strong regional identities. Artistic genres produced a distinct and self-conscious voice of the individual, be it in fiction, autobiographies, or travelogues. Helped by the large-scale adoption of new technologies such as print and paper, these fostered the growth of thriving public spheres.53 Based on recent scholarship across the world, it is possible to add more points to this already long list. This may include a growing engagement with firearms, increasing preoccupation with cartography to aid increasingly intrusive and bureaucratic states govern and project their power beyond their immediate realms, vigorous pursuit and circulation of ‘exotic’ items as a part of an expanding gift-economy, increasing politicization of the oceanic space and the Asian Studies 31, no. 3 (1997), 735–62; Rosalind O’Hanlon, ‘Contested Conjunctures: Brahman Communities and “Early Modernity” in India,’ The American Historical Review 118, no. 3 (2013), 765–87. 51 Richards, ‘Early Modern India and World History’. 52 Subrahmanyam, ‘Connected Histories,’ 737–9, 746–54. 53 O’Hanlon, ‘Contested Conjunctures,’ 771, 786–7.

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rise of European naval power therein, and the development of a new strategic consciousness among empires and nation states. It is this complex, dynamic, and transforming world the term ‘early modern’ signifies in this book. Spatially, I have focused on the part of South Asia that lies to the north of the Narmada river and the Vindhya hills—the traditional divides between the northern and southern parts of the subcontinent. For the sake of convenience as well as simplicity of terminology, I call this entire landmass ‘North India’. Technically, it comprises the various western, northern, and eastern federal states of the modern republic of India—Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Odisha, and Assam. It also includes the modern republics of Pakistan and Bangladesh. South of this landmass, Mughal armies fought a protracted and difficult war of expansion over more than a century since the 1590s. However, owing to my interest primarily in the imperial experience in the northern half of South Asian subcontinent, I consciously leave these wars in South India out of this book. I primarily focus on the period between the 1550s and the 1680s. The 1550s marked the return of the second Mughal emperor, Nasiruddin Muhammad Humayun (r. 1530–40, 1555–56) to North India with Safavid reinforcements to reclaim the empire that he lost to the Afghans in 1540. He occupied Delhi in 1555. Following his sudden demise the very next year, his son Jalaluddin Muhammad Akbar (r. 1556–1605) succeeded him. He began the process of the Mughal reconquest of North India. This is the juncture at which the timeframe of this book commences. At the other end, the 1680s marked the decisive shift of Mughal power away from North India. In 1681, the sixth emperor, Muhiuddin Aurangzeb Alamgir (r. 1658–1707) journeyed to the Deccan to personally direct the ongoing military operations there. He never returned to North India. The empire also lost Kamrup in the Brahmaputra Basin in 1682, marking the end of its prolonged north-eastward expansionist drive. In the following decades, various regional powers—including the Jats, Satnamis, and Sikhs—took advantage of the absence of the emperor in North India and increasingly undermined Mughal political authority here. In a sense, hence, the 1680s marked the beginning

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of the demise of imperial power in this region. This is when this study ends. As for primary sources, this book is based on literary texts from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. These are of three main types—imperial autobiographies and dynastic chronicles; accounts by European travellers who visited South Asia during this period; and vernacular texts mainly in Bengali and Assamese, which provide an alternate window into the dynamics of Mughal campaigns in eastern India. Most of these texts have already been studied by historians before me. My attempt is to take a fresh look at them and read them closely with a new set of questions. The book is divided into two parts. The first part comprises of the first two chapters. It closely explores the dynamics of imperial military campaigns in different parts of North India. Existing historiography gives us the impression that these campaigns unfolded in a geographical vacuum. I will point out that this is far from the real picture. We will see how they transpired in constant engagement with the natural environment and various other material factors. In turn, this made warfare itself a fundamentally heterogeneous process. The first chapter studies the Mughal conquest of the heart of North India. I argue that the heterogeneous geography of this landmass shaped the course and nature of military engagements. The vast open plains of the Punjab and the Gangetic Basin allowed large-scale cavalry manoeuvres. Hence, the Mughals were able to engage their adversaries in a number of battles and skirmishes here. In contrast, the broken terrain of the forested highlands of central India restricted free movement of troops and encouraged fortress warfare. For this reason, Mughal expansion entailed a greater number of sieges here. This environmental heterogeneity also made it impossible for either cavalry or firearms to spearhead Mughal military conquests uniformly or single-handedly. Thus, even within the fairly contiguous region that was to eventually comprise the political heartland of the Mughal Empire, the natural environment left a deep imprint on the conduct of warfare and the course of empire-formation. The second chapter carries forward this analysis of military campaigns. Here I look into the ones that took Mughal armies beyond this imperial heartland that they had created by 1569. I explore Mughal wars of expansion in six different theatres of war—the Bengal Delta,

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the Brahmaputra Basin in Assam, the Lower Indus Basin, Kashmir and the Himalayan foothills, Balkh–Badakhshan, and Qandahar. Across these regions, Mughal armies had to negotiate great diversities in terms of climate, terrain, ecology, as well as the military techniques of local polities. Their substantial distance from imperial bases of military mobilization also made fighting here very different from that within the North Indian heartland. Owing to the great diversity of fighting conditions, the nature of military campaigns greatly variegated across these regions in terms of tactics, strategy, and deployment. All of this made the imperial military experience a deeply heterogeneous one, denying the possibility of a standardized Mughal ‘way of war’. The second part of the book comprises of the next three chapters. It dissects the relation between warfare and state-formation using three registers—logistics, frontier, and ideology. Going beyond the traditional tendency of analysing war in isolation, the chapters of this part locate war within the larger processes of empire-formation. In the third chapter, I delve into the organizational world of Mughal warmaking using three categories—labour, animals, and infrastructure. I look into the participation of quasi-military labourers in fulfilling a variety of war-related tasks. I also explore the process of mobilization of horses, elephants, mules, camels, and cattle. Next, I study how the Mughals kept their armies supplied with food and water, how they constructed bridges across rivers, transmitted military intelligence, gathered boats for their war-fleet, and so on during military campaigns. The larger argument is that once we shift our gaze away from the historiographically popular issues of technology and combat, it becomes clear that Mughal war-making involved an enormous array of organizational activities. These required the participation of a very large part of the non-elite, non-combatant population of the empire. This helps us appreciate Mughal warfare—and in turn, imperial expansion—less in terms of the victorious march of a single technology or a single social group, and more in terms of a broad-based enterprise that involved a large part of South Asian society. I study the dynamics of the formation of imperial frontiers in the Mughal Empire in the fourth chapter. Eschewing the idea that frontiers were simply areas far away from the political heartland, the chapter argues that frontiers of Mughal power emerged due to the

Introduction

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conjuncture of several processes. These included failures to control routes of communication, cope with environmental conditions, negotiate the military techniques of their adversaries, and co-opt local zamīndārs (chieftain) into the imperial project. It shows how two regions—the Afghan belt and Bengal–Assam—emerged as longstanding imperial frontiers through these processes. In effect, frontiers signified zones of fading imperial authority and increasing scope of personal agency and ambition of military commanders. Physically, they did not resemble the closed, enveloping borders of modern times; rather, they were embodied by forts that commanded routes of communication that emanated radially outward from within the imperial domain. These were areas that signified the fading away of imperial authority, rather than simply the outermost limits of the empire. The final chapter investigates the cultural climate of conquest at the Mughal court. I begin by discussing how the Mughals conceptualized the nature and meaning of kingship. I then go on to probe the location of war and conquest within this ruling ideology. I argue that inspired by Nasirean akhlāq, the Mughals conceptualized the sovereign as a divinely mandated instrument for establishing equilibrium, order, and, above all, justice across the world. They looked upon war as an unavoidable means of achieving this. This conceptualization of war in terms of the vague concept of justice allowed the empire a great degree of flexibility in terms of applying and legitimizing military violence. By studying different imperial narratives of war from the period under study, the chapter argues that this flexibility in turn fed a particular approach to war, whereby the empire expanded more by defeating and co-opting its adversaries than by eliminating them completely. Finally, in the conclusion, I sum up the main arguments that emerge from this study and highlight their implications for our general understanding of Mughal war-making and state-formation in a comparative global context. In many cases I have cited both a Persian text and its English translation at the same time. Such citations typically begin with the abbreviation for the text, followed by the volume number (in any), and then the page numbers of the Persian and English texts respectively separated by a slash, for example, AN, 2:316/467 (for Akbar-nāma).

CHAPTER ONE

Environment and the Heterogeneous Conquest of North India

The Mughals conquered North India twice. The first time, Zahiruddin Muhammad Babur (r. 1526–1530), a young Turkish prince, marched in from Kabul against the Afghan sultanate of the Lodis. He was a Timurid prince dispossessed of his paternal inheritances in Transoxiana by bitter fraternal rivalry and an ascendant Uzbeg Khanate. Based in his modest domain in Kabul and its surroundings to the south of Transoxiana, he tried his luck to get hold of Hindustan—the fabled land of riches—several times since 1519. It was in 1525–6 that fortune finally smiled upon him. Spectacular victories in two battles fought in quick succession near Delhi and Agra gave him the control over these two imperial cities and an opportunity to establish his dynastic power in this new land. However, as it turned

Climate of Conquest: War, Environment, and Empire in Mughal North India. Pratyay Nath, Oxford University Press (2019). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199495559.003.0001

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out, Babur could enjoy the fruits of his long-drawn efforts only for four more years.1 Upon his death, his eldest son Nasiruddin Muhammad Humayun (r. 1530–1540, 1555–1556) inherited his father’s North Indian possessions in 1530. His rule started well with rapid military advances towards the west and the east. However, his fortune quickly reversed with successive defeats against a brilliant Afghan military general from Bihar—Sher Khan Sur.2 As the latter styled himself as Sher Shah to celebrate his victories over Humayun and proclaim himself an independent ruler, the first Mughal attempt at building an empire in South Asia came to a sudden halt in 1540.3 It took Humayun a decade and a half, which included a brief sojourn at his rival Shah Tahmasp Safavi’s court in Iran and a bitter war against his own brothers, to re-enter North India. When he did manage to lead a Mughal army to retake the city of Delhi, he met with an accident and died an untimely death soon after.4 It was under his son and successor Jalaluddin Muhammad Akbar (r. 1556–1605) that the Mughals defeated yet another Afghan army on the fields of Panipat in 1556 1

The best political biography of Babur is by Stephen F. Dale, The Garden of Eight Paradises: Babur and the Culture of Empire in Central Asia, Afghanistan and India (1483–1530) (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2004). Also see Lisa Balabanlilar, Imperial Memory and Dynastic Politics in Early Modern South and Central Asia (New Delhi: Viva Books Pvt. Ltd, 2013); A. Azfar Moin, The Millennial Sovereign: Sacred Kingship and Sainthood in Islam (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), 56–93. For the Battle of Panipat, see BN, 1:468–75; TB, 64–90; AN, 1:95–8/242–4; Dale, Garden of Eight Paradises, 321–35; William Erskine, History of India under Baber (New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers and Distributors, 1994), 427–41. For the battle of Khanua, see BN, 1:547–74; AN, 1:105–11/259–65; TA, 2:24–6/35–8; Dale, Garden of Eight Paradises, 345–52; Erskine, History of India under Baber, 463–74. 2 B.P. Ambashthya, Decisive Battles of Ser Sah (Delhi: Janaki Prakashan, 1977). 3 For a recent analysis of this Mughal–Afghan face-off and the rise of Sher Shah Sur, see Raziuddin Aquil, Sufism, Culture and Politics: Afghans and Islam in Medieval North India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2012). 4 For a study of Humayun’s political career with an emphasis on his kingship, see Moin, The Millennial Sovereign, 94–129. Also see Faruqui, Princes of the Mughal Empire, 46–65.

Environment and the Heterogeneous Conquest of North India

5

and thereby sealed their control over Delhi and Agra once again. This began the second chapter of Mughal history in early modern South Asia.5 Over the next decade and a half, armies of the young emperor expanded their territory and consolidated Mughal territorial power in North India.6 By 1569, they established control over much of the land that would eventually constitute the heartland of their empire. This area mainly comprised the modern Indian federal states of Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Rajasthan as well as eastern parts of Pakistan. It was based on their hold over this area that Mughal armies invaded more distant lands, including Sind and Gujarat in the west and Bihar and Bengal in the east—all in the early 1570s. The story of this second wave of expansion is something I will discuss in the next chapter. The dynamics of the initial campaigns that created the Mughal heartland under Akbar is what the present chapter unravels. Douglas Streusand studied this process around three decades back.7 I build on his arguments and take the inquiry forward. More specifically, I probe the kind of negotiations with the natural environment these initial campaigns under Akbar entailed. In the process, I also revisit the formulations of two different groups of historians, who argue that Mughal military conquests were spearheaded by the imperial cavalry and firearms respectively. I will argue that while both of these made valuable contributions to the overall process of military expansion, environmental diversity of the region under study prevented either of them from actually driving imperial conquests single-handedly everywhere.

5

Andre Wink and Douglas Streusand have carried out the most recent and critical analysis of this early phase of the second chapter of Mughal expansion. (Streusand, Formation; Andre Wink, Makers of the Muslim World: Akbar [Oxford: Oneworld, 2009].) 6 Akbar was only fourteen years old when he succeeded his father to the Mughal throne. From 1556 to 1560, Bairam Khan, a Mughal nobleman of Iranian origins, acted as his regent. 7 Streusand, Formation. Streusand’s insights are very valuable and relevant for my work. I will refer to them from time to time in the relevant sections.

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Climate of Conquest

EURASIAN GEOGRAPHY AND THE POSITION OF SOUTH ASIA

In order to discuss the specifics of Mughal military engagement with the environment of early modern North India, one needs to begin by locating South Asia within a broad geographical framework. Several historians have pointed out that a roughly Z-shaped arid zone occupies the heart of the interconnected landmass of Afro-Eurasia (see Map 1.1). Its northern arm stretches across Central Eurasia from Mongolia in the east to Poland in the west, mostly comprising vast swathes of steppes grasslands and cold deserts such as the Gobi and Taklamakan. Its southern arm stretches from the Thar Desert in the east to the Atlantic Ocean in the west. It consists of several dry plateaus and hot deserts that spread over Iran, Arabia, North Africa, and Spain. Taken together, this entire arid zone has always been a low-fertility region housing primarily nomadic people of different sorts. The low level of agriculture meant that historically, towns were relatively rare and population sparse and migratory. Animal husbandry and long-distance trade comprised the principal form of economic activity. With extreme temperatures and low level of rainfall, climate is inclement in general.8

Map 1.1 The Arid Zone of Afro-Eurasia Source: Courtesy of the author. Note: Map for respresentational purpose only. 8

Kenneth Chase, Firearms: A Global History to 1700 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 8–15; Gommans, ‘The Silent Frontier of South Asia’, 4–10; Gommans, Mughal Warfare, 8–10.

Environment and the Heterogeneous Conquest of North India

7

This arid zone is surrounded by the fertile lands of the agrarianate zone. This mainly comprises South and East Asia as well as Europe. Vast river basins drain these lands, rendering them fertile. Thanks to the prosperity of agriculture, population in this zone is dense and there is an abundance of big cities which can be supported by the surplus production from the countryside. Climate is moderate on the whole and rainfall abundant. Beyond this agrarianate region, once again lie zones of extreme climate. A classic case of this is Southeast Asia—a region of hot weather, extremely heavy rainfall, settled agriculture, and very dense vegetation.9 Jos Gommans points out that South Asia enjoys a unique position in this geographical framework. It comprises a good chunk of the agrarianate zone. However, at the same time, it also serves as a transitory region between the arid zone of Central Eurasia to the north-west and the subtropical monsoon region of Southeast Asia to its south-east.10 Across South Asia, climate is generally moderate. Its river basins create fertile plains that have been cultivated extensively for many centuries. The surplus production from these plains feed populous cities. These have also functioned as nodal points of manufacture and commercial exchange over centuries. Towards the northwest, climate becomes increasingly harsh and dry, till one crosses the Afghan region to enter the Central Eurasian arid zone. Similarly, rainfall increases within South Asia as one proceeds in a southern and eastern direction. Mawsynram in the modern Indian federal state of Meghalaya in eastern India is one of the wettest places on the planet. Rainfall and tropical conditions steadily increase towards the southeast and eventually transition towards the rather extreme conditions of Southeast Asia. There is one more crucial observation that Gommans makes. He highlights that for China, the frontier between the arid zone and

9

Chase, Firearms, 4–10; Gommans, ‘The Silent Frontier of South Asia’, 4–10. 10 Jos Gommans, ‘Burma at the Frontier of South, East and Southeast Asia: A Geographic Perspective’, in The Maritime Frontier of Burma: Exploring Political, Cultural and Commercial Interaction in the Indian Ocean World, 1200–1800, eds. Jos Gommans and Jacques P. Leider (Leiden: KITLV Press, 2002), 1–8; Gommans, ‘The Silent Frontier of South Asia’, 4–5.

8

Climate of Conquest

the agrarianate zone is quite clearly demarcated and represented by the Great Wall. To its east, the fertile river basins of China proper house vast and settled agrarian societies. To its west, the grasslands and cold deserts of Central Eurasia mainly accommodated horserearing nomadic societies through the ages. However, in South Asia, there is no such clear demarcation between these two radically different environmental zones. Loosely speaking, the Afghan region separates the dry and extreme conditions of Central Eurasia from the humid and moderate conditions of South Asia. Similarly, Bengal and Assam stand between the moderate climate of agrarianate South Asia on their west and the extreme subtropical conditions of Southeast Asia on their south-east. Yet, the transition of climate and ecology is much more gradual across both these regions than in the case for China.11 Gommans points out that the arid zone itself directly penetrates the South Asian landmass from its west. The Thar Desert in western India is a prime example of this. Several dry regions with poor ground fertility and low rainfall—such as Bundelkhand, the Malwa Plateau, and the Deccan Plateau—comprise the western and central parts of the South Asian landmass. These landforms are characterized primarily by hills, plateaus, forests, and grasslands. They slowly graduate eastwards into more fertile and populous river plains. Valleys of several rivers such as Krishna, Kaveri, and Godavari cut through these relatively arid regions in their western stretches before creating more fertile lower courses and deltas towards the east. According to Gommans, this close coexistence and the lack of any pronounced barrier between the arid and agrarianate zones have played key roles in shaping South Asian history. Drawing upon J.C. Heesterman, he calls this grey area between the two zones the ‘inner frontier’ of the Indian landmass.12

11

Gommans, ‘The Silent Frontier of South Asia.’ Gommans, ‘The Silent Frontier of South Asia’; J.C. Heesterman, ‘Warrior, Peasant and Brahmin’, Modern Asian Studies 29, no. 3 (1995), 637–54, see 644, 646; J.C. Heesterman, The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship and Society (Chicago University Press: Chicago and London, 1985), 170–1. 12

Environment and the Heterogeneous Conquest of North India

9

It is not possible to analyse the Mughal conquest of North India without taking this ‘inner frontier’ into account. Within the North Indian landmass, the inner frontier stretches from the west in a north-west–south-east alignment. In the west, it is approximately represented by the northern limits of the Thar Desert, which graduates into the Punjab Plain. In the central part, it is marked off from the Gangetic Basin by the River Yamuna, whose three major tributaries— Chambal, Betwa, and Ken—join it after cutting through the rugged lands of Bundelkhand and Malwa. Further east, it follows the course of the River Ganga along its southern flank.13 To the south-west of this frontier, the South Asian arid zone lies as a south-eastern extension of the Afro-Eurasian arid zone. It represents a vast expanse of physically complex landforms. It comprises a triangular landmass at the heart of South Asia that includes the Thar Desert, the Aravalli Hills and associated forests in the west, the arid land of Bundelkhand and the huge Malwa Plateau in the centre, and the Rewa and Chhotanagpur Plateaus in the east. To the south, the Vindhya, Satpura, Mahadeo, and Maikal Hills separate this triangular area from the Deccan Plateau of Peninsular India. This whole region offers a broken terrain dominated by hills, furrows, ravines, and plateaus. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a huge part of this region also had thick forest cover.14 In contrast, the land to the north and east of this frontier zone comprises flat and fertile river basins. In the west, lie the Punjab Plains, consisting of the River Indus and its five tributaries—the Chenab, Jhelum, Ravi, Beas, and Sutlej. Immediately to its east, lies the IndoGangetic Divide that marks a geographical transition between the river systems of the Indus and the Ganga. East of this, the bulk of the North Indian Plains consists of the massive river basins of the Ganga and its numerous tributaries. At its eastern limits, the Gangetic river system merges with that of the Brahmaputra. The latter descends onto Bengal after making its way through Tibet and Assam. Together with the Ganga, the Brahmaputra creates the largest riverine delta in the world.15 13 14 15

Gommans, Mughal Warfare, 9–10. Gommans, Mughal Warfare, 8–15. Gommans, Mughal Warfare, 8–15.

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Broadly speaking, this was the physical geography of the land that faced the Mughals following their victory over the Afghans in the Second Battle of Panipat (1556). I will take up further details of the various geographical areas and their interaction with Mughal military campaigns in the relevant sections later. Based on the previous discussion, what deserves to be noted here is the fact that while North India represents a fairly contiguous landmass, in conquering it, the Mughals actually had to straddle two, not one, environmental regions. These were the dry arid and the humid agrarianate regions. They also had to negotiate the porous and hazy ‘inner frontier’ between them. The following sections will demonstrate that it was this factor that made the Mughal conquest of North India under Akbar a fairly uneven process. PUNJAB : MUGHAL BRIDGEHEAD TO NORTH INDIA

Making his way towards South Asia following his brief refuge at the Safavid court, Humayun seized Kabul and Qandahar in 1545.16 He gained control of Badakhshan the very next year.17 In 1554, he mounted an invasion against Hindustan.18 Seizing Peshawar 16

Qandahar, which had been under the control of Humayun’s brother Mirza Askari, fell after a siege of three months. Initially it was occupied by the Safavid force under Murad, but following his death, it was seized by Humayun. (AN, 1: 228–35/459–67; HN, 175; TA, 2:61–4/101–05; TV, 77–82.) Kabul was taken from another brother of Humayun, Mirza Kamran, after a brief siege. (AN, 1:238–45/471–81; HN, 177–8; TA, 2: 64–5/105–06; TV, 82–8.) Kabul was temporarily lost to Mirza Kamran, but regained by Humayun in 1546–7. (AN, 1: 256–67/499–514.) Also see Erskine, History of India, 301–25; Ram Shanker Avasthy, The Mughal Emperor Humayun (Allahabad: University of Allahabad, 1967), 240–60. 17 AN, 1:250–3/490–2; HN, 186–8; TA, 2: 65–72/107–19; TV, 89–92; Erskine, History of India, 347–57; Avasthy, The Mughal Emperor Humayun, 458–72; Ishwari Prasad, The Life and Times of Humayun (Bombay, Calcutta and Madras: Orient Longman Ltd, 1955), 275–87. 18 To the Mughals Hindustan meant largely North India, and more specifically the Punjab Plains and the Upper and Middle Gangetic Basins. (AN, 1: 340/620–1; TA, 2:78–80/127–31; TV, 109–11; Erskine, History of India, 422, 506–11.)

Environment and the Heterogeneous Conquest of North India

11

and Rohtas on his way, Humayun entered Lahore unopposed in February 1555 while his commanders took control of large parts of the Punjab.19 The enormous Punjab Plains, formed by the deposition of immense quantities of alluvium by the Indus and its five tributaries, comprise the northernmost section of the plains of the Indus. They also comprise the westernmost sector of the North Indian Plains (see Map 1.2). Writing in 1631, Johannes De Laet described the Punjab as ‘very large and fertile, being irrigated by those five rivers of which mention has already been made, and from which it derives its name.’20 Near the Himalayan foothills in Kashmir, the land is broken by the innumerable torrents descending on the plains from the hills. Apart from some small elevations on either side of the Chenab, the whole region presents a flat topography. The lands between the rivers have historically housed dense populations and have been intensely cultivated.21 Early modern Punjab also had several thriving commercial centres and cities. At the time of the Ghurid invasion of North India in late twelfth century, several towns such as Lahore, Dipalpur, Uchch, Tabarhind, Multan, and Sialkot were still of moderate size. Most of these were used as garrison towns by the eastward-advancing Ghurid armies.22 By the time Humayun’s army entered the region almost four centuries later, many of them had grown into massive commercial and administrative centres. The most prominent of them were

19

AN, 1:341–3/621–4; TA, 2: 80–1/131–2; TV, 112–17; Erskine, History of India, 511–19; Avasthy, The Mughal Emperor Humayun, 483–7; Prasad, The Life and Times of Humayun, 340–50. 20 Johannes De Laet, The Empire of the Great Mogol, trans. J.S. Hoyland (New Delhi: Oriental Books Reprint Corporation, 1974), 7. 21 O.H.K. Spate, A.T.A. Learmonth, and B.H. Farmer, with the collaboration of A.M. Learmonth, India and Pakistan: A General and Regional Geography (Suffolk: Methuen and Co. Ltd, [1954] 1967), 513–18; J.S. Grewal, The New Cambridge History of India, Vol. 2.3, The Sikhs of the Punjab (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990), 1–6. 22 Andre Wink, Al-Hind: The Making of the Indo-Islamic World, Vol. 2, The Slave Kings and the Islamic Conquest (Leiden, New York and Köln: Brill, 1997), 217–64.

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Climate of Conquest

To Baramula

ag

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To Kashmir To Lh as

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THE N MO ORTHE R UNT AIN N S K i sh twa r Ra nge Bh ad ral Ra ng e

To S

ash

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To Kabul Attock

lum Jhe

Gujrat

a

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e

Ch DESERT

Ch en ab To Qandahar

Multan

al ach Him ange R

l De

Lahore

h Bea Kullu Hills

Kahlur Range

vi Ra

Sirmur Hills

lej

Sut

10

To ow Luckn

To Agra

SAND DUNES To Jaisalmer

ar

0

10 0

Delhi

ta lka Ko To

20 20

40

DESERT To Ajm er

k ak Bh To

Jamuna

Forest

s du In ind) S (

40 50 Miles 60 70 Kilometers

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Forest

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Mountains Desert

Map 1.2 The Punjab Basin Source: Based on Irfan Habib, An Atlas of the Mughal Empire: Political and Economic Maps with Detailed Notes, Bibliography and Index, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1982, 4A and 4B. Note: Map for respresentational purpose only.

Lahore and Multan. They also acted as nodal points of various land and riparian routes. Lahore shared a direct connection with the prosperous city of Kabul by routes with an overall north-west–south-east orientation. Kabul was the primary link between Central Eurasia and South Asia. Passing through several important towns and forts on the way, this route varied its course at times in terms of its exact layout with the changing fortunes of these commercial and military centres. But, on the whole, it preserved a certain basic pattern through

Environment and the Heterogeneous Conquest of North India

13

the centuries.23 It was using this route from Kabul that Humayun’s army overran the Punjab Plains and occupied its important towns such as Narnaul, Kalanaur, and Jalandhar in 1555–6.24 This foothold in the Punjab enabled his forces to reach out further eastward. Close enough to the fertile Gangetic Basin, this foothold gave them an area they could fall back on if need be. It also enabled them to harness the agrarian and non-agrarian financial resources of this prosperous region to fund further campaigns. Marching eastward, Humayun’s armies entered the Indo-Gangetic Divide (see Map 1.2). Bounded by the steep slopes of the Himalayan foothills in the north, the Sutlej in the west, the Yamuna in the east, and the low and irregular outliers of the Aravalli Hills in the southwest, this area lies to the east of the Punjab Plains. It represents a zone of transition between the river systems of the Indus and the Ganga. Eastward across this region, the noticeable aridity of the Punjab Plains rapidly yields to the more humid climate of the Gangetic Basin. In its northern parts, the Himalayan foothills receive fairly high rainfall, especially from the Western Disturbances. Aridity gradually enhances towards the south, making cultivation increasingly dependent on irrigation. Other than a few outlying ridges of the Aravallis in the south-east, which run right into the city of Delhi, the topography of the region is flat on the whole. The Ghaggar and the few Himalayan rivers that join it form the main drainage system of the area.25 The Indo-Gangetic Divide has historically held high economic and strategic value in North India. Three sets of major routes of communication converge here. They link this area with commercial towns and cities of Central Eurasia in the north, the thriving ports of Gujarat and the Deccan in the south-west, and the prosperous and fertile

23

Jean Deloche, Transport and Communications in India Prior to Steam Locomotion, Vol. I: Land Transport, trans. James Walker (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1993), 32–6; Irfan Habib, An Atlas of the Mughal Empire: Political and Economic Maps with Detailed Notes, Bibliography and Index (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1982), 0B, 1A-B, 4B. 24 AN, 1: 341–3; AN, 1:621–4; TA, 2:80–1/131–2; TV, 112–17; Erskine, History of India, 511–19; Avasthy, The Mughal Emperor Humayun, 483–7; Prasad, The Life and Times of Humayun, 340–50. 25 Spate et al., India, Pakistan and Ceylon, 534–40.

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Gangetic Basin in the east.26 This region rose to political importance for the first time under King Harshavardhana. In the seventh century, he came to dominate North Indian politics from his capital at Thaneswar.27 Jos Gommans explains that by the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the strategic value of this area had rapidly increased. This was due to the greater integration of North India with the Central Eurasian arid zone across the environmental frontier signified by the Afghan region. He argues that the incidence of various interrelated technological developments in Central and West Asia resulted in this phenomenon around the close of the first millennium ce.28 Delhi is located at the south-eastern tip of the Indo-Gangetic Divide. This favourable geopolitical location was one of the major factors that enabled successive Delhi-based dynasties—the Mamluk, the Khaljis, and the Tughlaqs—to dominate South Asian politics in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Their military and political successes derived in a large way from the economic and strategic benefits that the location of their capital bestowed on them.29 By the time Humayun’s army invaded Delhi, the city’s strategic importance had already been firmly established. Although the Lodis had ruled from Agra, Sher Shah Sur had once again made Delhi the capital of another North Indian empire.30

26

Habib, Atlas of the Mughal Empire, 0B, 4B, 6B, 7B, 8B, 9B. Dilip K. Chakrabarti, Geopolitical Orbits of Ancient India: The Geographical Frames of the Ancient Indian Dynasties (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2010), 74–5. 28 For details on how these phenomena integrated North India more closely with the Central Eurasian arid zone, see Gommans, ‘The Silent Frontier of Eurasian History’; Gommans, ‘The Eurasian Frontier after the First Millenium ad: Reflections along the Fringe of Time and Space’, The Medieval History Journal 1, no. 1 (1998), 125–43. 29 This is, for instance, argued by Simon Digby in terms of the control of war-animals. Simon Digby, The War-Horse and Elephant in the Delhi Sultanate (A Study of Military Supplies) (Oxford: Orient Monographs, 1971). 30 Streusand reminds us that although Sikandar Lodi had shifted his capital to Agra in 1505, the image of Delhi as the Muslim political and cultural centre of North India had become concretized over three previous centuries of imperial rule. (Streusand, Formation, 49.) 27

Environment and the Heterogeneous Conquest of North India

15

Due to all these reasons, for any army invading North India from the north-west with the aim of conquering it, targeting the imperial city of Delhi was the logical conclusion of seizing the Punjab Plains. And this is exactly what Humayun’s armies did. As they rode eastward, troops of the Afghan sultanate of Delhi blocked their way. In the military engagements that followed, Humayun’s forces prevailed.31 Taking advantage of the absence of the main Afghan army from Delhi, Mughal troops occupied the city without a fight in July 1555.32 The victory over the Afghan forces of Himu at Panipat next year secured Mughal hold over the key cities of Delhi and Agra as well as much of the Indo-Gangetic Divide in general. This meant that from here, they could now speculate on the possible directions of fresh campaigns. At  this juncture, most of the Mughal possessions lay in the northwestern parts of South Asia—in the Afghan region, the Punjab Plains, and the Indo-Gangetic Divide. Even here, their hold was still tenuous and political consolidation required more organized campaigning. To the west of their new domains, lay the south-westward routes to the Gujarat Littoral and the Deccan Plateau through the Rajput states of western India.33 To the south, the erstwhile Lodi capital city of Agra stood at the head of the Dholpur–Gwalior–Sivpuri–Sironj–Sarangpur route that led to the heart of the Malwa Plateau.34 To the east, the vast, flat plains of the Gangetic Basin lay open.35 The Punjab Plains saw a lot of Mughal military activity in the immediate aftermath of the Second Battle of Panipat. Incidentally, it was the resistance put up by some of the Afghan leaders defeated at Panipat that drew Mughal forces back here. One Sikandar Sur contested Mughal authority in the Punjab. He was chased north by  Akbar’s troops towards the Himalayas where he shut himself in the fort of Mankot. Eventually, the fort fell to a Mughal siege. 31

AN, 1:345–9/626–32; TA, 2:81/132–3. TA, 2:83/135; TV, 16–17/351; Erskine, History of India, 520–1; Avasthy, Mughal Emperor Humayun, 487; Prasad, Life and Times of Humayun, 350–2. 33 Deloche, Transport and Communication, 52–3; Habib, Atlas of the Mughal Empire, 6B. 34 Habib, Atlas of the Mughal Empire, 9B. 35 Deloche, Transport and Communication, 53–5; Habib, Atlas of the Mughal Empire, 8B, 10B. 32

16

Climate of Conquest

Sikandar surrendered to the young emperor. He was pardoned and co-opted into Mughal service in 1557.36 One standard practice that the Mughals used quite frequently during this early phase of expansion was to assign individual commanders their jāgīr (land assignment) in areas yet to be fully subjugated. The responsibility of eliminating political rivals and establishing Mughal authority in that area would—by implication—then fall on these individual commanders and their troops. In case they would require reinforcements, commanders who held land assignments nearby would lend support with their manpower and resources. This approach was especially fruitful in a region such as the Punjab, where there were plenty of friendly forces around, ready to be called upon in case of a need for reinforcements. In a classic execution of this practice, Bahadur Khan was assigned Multan—a major city in the Punjab Plains to the south-west of Lahore—as his jāgīr. He was sent there with the instruction of censuring (taṃbīh numāyid) the recalcitrant Baluchi tribesmen of the area. Abul Fazl writes: Bahadur Khan, after arriving in that pleasant country [of Multan] behaved with bravery. A large number of [Baluchi] foot and cavalry came to oppose him, and displayed great obstinacy.37 The fighting lasted for a month, but as the shadow of the fortunes of the one of the earth [Akbar] had been cast over him, he became victorious by the Divine aid.38

In 1563, a campaign was launched against the Ghakkar tribesmen of the Punjab. The Ghakkars, who lived between the Beas and the Indus in this period, were notorious for engaging in regular plunder. This frequently undermined the control of North Indian states over this region. The Ghakkars were also infamous for following armies invading North India from the north-west in search of booty. Hence for any North Indian state, keeping these tribesmen under control was imperative. This would often be done by co-opting them into the state

36

AN, 2:19–20/35, 46–52/73–81, 58–9/89–91; MT, 2:11–12; TA, 2:125– 6/210–11, 221–3; TF, 2:190–1. 37 ‘tāb wa tuwān-i khūd koshish mī-namūdand’, lit. displayed the power and strength of their endeavours. 38 AN, 2:62/94.

Environment and the Heterogeneous Conquest of North India

17

apparatus.39 This is precisely what Akbar did. His army defeated a faction of the Ghakkars under Adam Khan and instituted the emperor’s own candidate, Kamal Khan, in his place as their leader in lieu of promises of loyalty from the latter.40

CONQUERING THE GANGETIC BASIN

The Gangetic Basin lies to the east of the Indo-Gangetic Divide. Geographically, it is usually partitioned into three major sections— the Upper, Middle, and Lower Ganga Basins. The Upper Ganga Basin occupies the modern Indian federal state of Uttarakhand and the western two-thirds of Uttar Pradesh (see Map 1.3). It is drained by the massive Ganga and two of its biggest tributaries—the Ghaghara in the north and the Yamuna in the south. The basin of the Yamuna first forms the western and then the southern boundary of the Upper Ganga Basin. The river flows by the imperial cities of Delhi and Agra before joining the Ganga on its right bank at Prayag. The Upper Gangetic Basin is bordered in the north by the Himalayan foothills. To the south its boundary is much less regular. Here, the Ganga, the Yamuna, and the latter’s right bank tributaries—Chambal, Betwa, and Ken—have deposited massive amounts of alluvium over the northern extensions of the peninsular block of Central India. The entire region—especially its eastern and northern parts—receives heavy rainfall in the monsoon. Aridity increases as one heads west towards the Delhi–Agra belt.41 The Middle Ganga Basin is an eastward topographical continuation of the Upper Ganga Basin (see Maps 1.3 and 1.4). It stretches over the modern Indian federal state of Bihar and the eastern third of Uttar Pradesh. It receives most of its rainfall from the monsoon. 39

The case of Ghakkars and the dealings of the Mughals with them will be discussed in greater details in Chapter 4. 40 Kamal Khan Ghakkar had already won battles for the Mughals, as a recognition of which Akbar had gifted him with the revenue of the towns of Kara, Fathpur and Hanswah. (AN, 2:78/119; TA, 2:159–62/265–8; TF, 2:213; TQ, 71–2/103–4; Streusand, Formation, 74.) 41 Spate et al., India, Pakistan and Ceylon, 545–50; Habib, Atlas of the Mughal Empire, 8A, 8B.

18

Climate of Conquest Badrinath Range

Srinagar

T

H

E

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re aho To L

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S L AYA

S

di ) Go mti o (G

ga Gan

H IM A

Agra

Ga nd

pti

Lucknow

Awadh

ak

Saru

d

Betwa

Kara Jam

Jaunpur

n

a Kara Allahabad

a

ng Ga

Banaras

Ke n

asa Dh

tw a

un

Be

ur

ha

np

ur

Sin

To B

Ro

Kanauj Etawah

er Ajm To al mb Cha

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n

S on

Map 1.3 The Upper Ganga Basin and the Western Part of Middle Ganga Basin Source: Based on Irfan Habib, An Atlas of the Mughal Empire: Political and Economic Maps with Detailed Notes, Bibliography and Index, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1982, 8A and 8B. Note: Map for respresentational purpose only.

Precipitation is particularly heavy towards the east and the Himalayan foothills in the north. To the south of the Ganga, the peninsular block infringes upon the alluvial plain in the form of small rugged hills of bare rock and scrubland. The entire plain is drained by the Ganga and its numerous tributaries—the Ghaghara, Gandak, Burhi Gandak, Gomti, Kosi, and Kamla on the left bank, and the Son on the right.42 42

Spate et al., India, Pakistan and Ceylon, 563–6; Habib, Atlas of the Mughal Empire, 10A, 10B.

19

Environment and the Heterogeneous Conquest of North India The Nepal Range

sa

ha

L To

an ge

Murung Hills

Kos i

Ma ha bh ara tR

The Bhutan Ranges

Ga nd

uar

or S

aru

Tirjog

PATNA

To Jaunpur Ganga Banaras

Son

To Ag ra

Gan ga

Mahanadi

Sar

Kala Pani

ak

Garhi

B To al

So

n

eng

Rohtas Hills Rajgir Hills

JHARKHAND FOREST

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sor e

H To

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Map 1.4 The Eastern Part of the Middle Ganga Basin Source: Based on Irfan Habib, An Atlas of the Mughal Empire: Political and Economic Maps with Detailed Notes, Bibliography and Index, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1982, 10A and 10B. Note: Map for respresentational purpose only.

20

Climate of Conquest

The Ganga is the main east–west highway for commercial traffic across the Upper and Middle Gangetic Basins. The principal land routes follow this general orientation of the river. Due to the eminence of Delhi and Agra—both located on the Yamuna, the main land route followed the course of this river during the early modern period. It joined the other major land route, which followed the course of the Ganga, at Allahabad. A whole range of secondary routes connected the different manufacturing towns and provincial political centres of the Gangetic Basin with this east–west highway.43 Mughal armies made an eastward push into the Gangetic Basin right after the Second Battle of Panipat. This indicates that they clearly understood that control over the agrarian surplus of these fertile plains would be central in stabilizing the financial basis of their nascent state.44 However, at the same time, they were careful not to overstretch their domain, lest the density of troops posted across it would become too thin to be effective. In quick successive pushes, the Mughals conquered up to the Gorakhpur–Jaunpur belt in eastern Uttar Pradesh by 1559. Before proceeding any further, they focused their efforts on consolidating their political power in this belt, bringing all the major towns and cities under their control, and trying to appropriate the bulk of the economic surplus of the region. More than a decade passed before they moved further eastward.

43

Jean Deloche, Transport and Communications in India Prior to Steam Locomotion, Vol. 2, Water Transport, trans. James Walker (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994), 18–23; Deloche, Transport and Communications, 1:37–9; Spate et al., India, Pakistan and Ceylon, 8B, 10B. Also see Laet, Empire of the Great Mogol, 64–5, 77–8. In the late sixteenth century, Ralph Fitch travelled from Agra to Tanda ‘in the companie of one hundred fourscore boates laden with Salt, Opium, Hinge, Lead, Carpets, and diuers other commodities downe the riuer Iemena’ over a period of five months. For a detailed description of his rather long journey, see Ralph Fitch, Ralph Fitch: England’s Pioneer to India and Burma, with His Remarkable Narrative Told in His Own Words, ed. J. Horton Ryley (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1899), 100–11. 44 Douglas Streusand discusses why expanding empires in South Asia have historically gravitated towards the Indo-Gangetic Basin. (Streusand, Formation, 49–50.)

Environment and the Heterogeneous Conquest of North India

21

The eastward Mughal push mainly entailed fighting off Afghan forces ahead of them in a series of skirmishes. The Mughal commander Ali Quli Khan Khan-i Zaman, for instance, conducted a successful campaign against the Afghan leaders Hasan Khan Bachgoti and Rukn Khan Lohani in the Upper Gangetic Basin. He defeated them in a field engagement near Lucknow. In 1559, he defeated another Afghan army near Jaunpur and occupied the city in the name of the emperor.45 These victories triggered the process of the rise of Mughal power in the Gangetic Basin early on under Akbar. The practice of assigning jāgīrs that were yet to be conquered to military commanders was continued here as well. In one example, Ali Quli Khan—the Mughal commander mentioned earlier—rebelled and instituted one Ismail Khan, his partisan, as the governor of Sambhal. Akbar’s retaliated by assigning this town to Sultan Husain Khan Jalair, a loyalist commander. Eventually we find Husain Khan invading Sambhal, driving Ismail Khan out, and occupying the town in the name of Akbar. Ismail fled to his patron, Ali Quli. The latter came out to challenge Husain Khan, only to be beaten back by the loyalist forces.46 This pattern of bringing territories under control in such a gradual piecemeal fashion was one of the prime forms in which Mughal conquest unfolded across North India during this time. By 1559, the Mughals came to hold—with considerable firmness— the Punjab Plains, the cities of Delhi and Agra, and some neighbouring towns and forts such as Alwar and Gwalior.47 In the Gangetic Basin, their control was much more fractured. However, even here they had already occupied several towns and cities of

45

AN, 2:82/126; TA, 2:141/233–4. The most detailed account of Khan Zaman’s battles is given by Badaoni. See MT, 2:18–19; Ashirbadi Lal Srivastava, Akbar the Great, Vol. 1, Political History, 1542–1605 A.D. (Agra, Delhi, and Jaipur: Shiva Lal Agarwala & Company Pvt. Ltd, 1962), 36. 46 AN, 2:68–9;106. 47 Alwar was occupied immediately after the Second Battle of Panipat. (AN, 2:45–6/71.) Gwalior was captured after a brief siege by Habib Ali Sultan, Maqsud Ali Kur and Qiya Khan. (AN, 2: 77/118–19; TA, 2:140–1/233; MT, 2:24–6.)

22

Climate of Conquest

political and economic eminence, including Awadh, Lucknow, Kalpi, Sambhal, Kara, Fathpur, Hanswah, and Sandila. With the occupation of Jaunpur by Ali Quli Khan, this city became the easternmost outpost under Mughal control. It remained so for more than a decade. In the years that followed, we see the Mughals steadily establishing their sway over this entire stretch of the Gangetic Basin right up to Jaunpur. Around 1564, Chunar, an important stronghold on the Ganga near Jaunpur, also came under imperial control. Securing Jaunpur’s eastern flank, this further consolidated Mughal control over this region.48 While Akbar’s young conquest state was embroiled in these expansionist campaigns, a Safavid army besieged the Mughal fort of Qandahar in 1558. The possession of this fort was crucial to Mughal defensive strategy on the north-western frontier. When another Safavid army would occupy Qandahar almost a century later, Akbar’s grandson Shah Jahan (r. 1628–1658) would raise an alarm. He would send three successive expeditions in a span of five years under his own sons to try to retake the stronghold. However, in 1558, undoubtedly under the influence of his regent and other senior commanders, Akbar decided to overlook this act of aggression on the part of the dynasty’s erstwhile allies.49 Abul Fazl—the emperor’s official biographer and Mughal political ideologue— observes that the official reason cited for this was that Humayun had promised Qandahar to the Safavid Shah in lieu of Persian military assistance in his North Indian campaigns. Now that the latter had been successful, it was only fitting that the former condition would be fulfilled.50 However, considering the importance of the fort to Mughal military strategy, it is easy to see through this excuse. In reality, preoccupied with their numerous ongoing campaigns in North India, the Mughal state was in no position to challenge a fully equipped Safavid army at this point, especially so far away from its political heartland. The loss of Qandahar meant that for Akbar’s empire, Multan effectively became the chief western bastion on the north-western frontier. 48 49 50

AN, 2:149–50/231–2; MT, 2:28; TA, 2:170/280. Srivastava, Akbar the Great, 1:36. AN, 2:78–9/120–1.

23

Environment and the Heterogeneous Conquest of North India MALWA : INITIAL FORAYS ACROSS THE INNER FRONTIER

To Agra

Son

T I N

D I

A

r n h e u t S o Narbada

N

So n

Jo

C

hi

A L T R E N

Ujjain M A L W A h e P L AT E A U T

lla

ge Ran hya d n Vi

Kalibhit Hills

Ma

ha

na

di

F O R E S T

Tapti

ge Ran ya h d Vin Burhanpur Tapti a

To Aurangabad

Kh

Sahya

ara

k P urn

To Haidarabad

rn Gi

G R E A

i n t a u n M o

Sarangpur

Narbada

en

T H K E

Betwa

Sind

Ch

am

Kali Sind

ba

l

It was only after the expansion across the vast plains of the IndoGangetic Basin had reached a certain degree of maturity that Mughal armies decisively breached the inner frontier and ventured into the arid zone of Central India. The triangular Central Indian landmass is a vast extension of the Peninsular Block (see Map 1.5). In the north it is bounded by the Yamuna Basin, in the east by the Gangetic Delta, in the south by the Tapti River, and in the west by a rough line running from Kachchh along the western margin of the Aravalli Range till Delhi. Geographically, this is a complex region, with several hill ranges, flat-topped plateaus, and a number of rivers that cut through these landforms. Apart from the Aravallis, the whole mass of hills and plateaus of this region forms the northern sector of the Peninsular

Rang Aran e

a Penna 10

0

10 0

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40 50 Miles 60 70 Kilometers

Route Major Cities

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Map 1.5 Central India Source: Based on Irfan Habib, An Atlas of the Mughal Empire: Political and Economic Maps with Detailed Notes, Bibliography and Index, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1982, 9A and 9B. Note: Map for respresentational purpose only.

24

Climate of Conquest

Block. They are aligned in an east–west orientation, buckled and sagged under the pressure of the Himalayan mountain formation in the north. Much of the land is still forested.51 The first target of the Mughals in this region was the Sultanate of Malwa. Following an abortive expedition in 1559–60,52 this Afghan sultanate was invaded again in 1561. It lay at the heart of Central India, on the sprawling expanse of the Malwa Plateau. This plateau is drained by the various right-bank tributaries of the Yamuna, including the Chambal and its right bank tributaries, as well as the upper courses of the Betwa and Ken. It has two main physical divisions. The folded mass of the Vindhyan scarps lie in the north. In the south, stands the Deccan Plateau and the Vindhya Range. The Chambal and its tributaries etch their courses across the difficult terrain of the scarp land and head northward while descending from this plateau. In the south, gradually rising with the plateau, the Vindhya Range forms a steep and high southward ridge. It stands as a mighty elevation over the valley of the Narmada River that flows to its south. In contrast to the relatively more rugged northern parts which are dominated by grassland and acacia, the southern area offers plain lands that house agriculture in many parts. Rainfall and temperatures are moderate and precipitation is often variable.53 Together, the Vindhyas and the Narmada Valley separate the Malwa Plateau of Central India from the Deccan Plateau of Peninsular India. Following the Mughal conquest of Malwa, they also came to signify the political frontier between the Mughal Empire and the Sultanate of Khandesh. The fort of Asirgarh— the principal northern bastion of defense of Khandesh—guarded the main route that linked Malwa Plateau with the Deccan.54

51

Spate et al., India, Pakistan and Ceylon, 611–15. AN, 2:89–90/136. 53 Spate et al., India, Pakistan and Ceylon, 621–7. 54 Taken together, this mountainous belt has often been depicted as a great barrier between North India and its southern peninsular counterpart. However, Dilip Chakrabarti has demonstrated how different polities based in the Gangetic Basin as well as the Deccan Plateau undermined it repeatedly and projected their power beyond it. Even in the case of the Mughals, although the Narmada acted as a recognized frontier for quite some time, military initiative eventually flowed beyond it to gradually engulf the Berar 52

Environment and the Heterogeneous Conquest of North India

25

In 1561, an army under Pir Muhammad Khan, Abdullah Khan, and Adham Khan approached Sarangpur, the capital of the Malwa sultanate. Its ruler Baz Bahadur decided to engage the invaders on field. He lost. With him fleeing southward to the Deccan, Malwa fell to the Mughals.55 Baz Bahadur eventually returned to contest the occupation but was chased back westwards.56 With this, Mughal control in the south stretched till the Narmada River. Immediately following the conquest of Malwa, Pir Muhammad Khan, the newly appointed Mughal governor of that province, led a plundering raid across the Narmada into Khandesh. He pillaged the land, took the city of Burhanpur by storm, and ordered a general slaughter of the population. He was ultimately given chase by the governors of Burhanpur and Asirgarh as well as the fugitive Baz Bahadur. Pir Muhammad died by drowning while trying to cross the Narmada back into Malwa.57 One might argue that this raid shows that Mughals did not follow a predetermined plan or order of conquest, but were actually ready to grab any opportunity whatsoever to expand their dominions. That is why immediately after gaining a foothold in Malwa, they lurched towards Khandesh in the Deccan. What needs to be highlighted in response is that Pir Muhammad’s campaign was only a raid, and not a proper invasion. Mughal conquering armies would not usually indulge in plunder and mass slaughter because this could potentially delegitimize their conquest at the very outset. These actions also did not fit into the Mughal notions of how an invasion should be conducted—something I explore in detail in the

region and flow further southward. Hence, at no time did these hills and plateaus form a natural frontier between the northern and southern parts of South Asia. (Dilip K. Chakrabarti, Archaeology of the Deccan Routes [New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt. Ltd, 2005].) 55 AN, 2:149–50/208–9, 211–14; MT, 29, 42–4; TA, 2:151–2/252–3; TF, 2:205–6; TQ, 66–9/95–8; Srivastava, Akbar the Great, 1:54–7; Vincent A. Smith, Akbar: The Great Mogul, 1542–1605 (Bombay: S. Chand and Co., 1966), 36–8; Upendra Nath Day, Medieval Malwa: A Political and Cultural History, 1401–1562 (Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1965), 339–41. 56 TA, 2:157/261–2; Day, Medieval Malwa, 344–7. 57 AN, 2:165–8/256–8; MT, 2:46–7; TA, 2:156–7/260–1; Streusand, Formation, 76; Srivastava, Akbar the Great, 1:67; Day, Medieval Malwa, 343–5.

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fifth chapter. In all probability, Pir Muhammad did not have imperial sanction for moving against Khandesh. Nizamuddin Ahmad’s comment on the drowning of Pir Muhammad in the Narmada provides us with a hint to indicate that this expedition did not have the approval of the imperial circles. Describing the accident, the highly placed imperial commander wrote: ‘[Pir Muhammad Khan] got the reward of his own deeds [mukāfāt-i khūd rasīd]’.58 Nizamuddin, thus, clearly held Pir Muhammad Khan himself responsible for his horrible fate. One might infer that the imperial circles knew their strategic limits well and did not consider attacking Khandesh very wise at that point of time. Their hold over the newly conquered region of Malwa was yet to be consolidated, the deposed king Baz Bahadur was still at large, and the neighbouring states were cautiously watching the Mughal advance. In fact, as it would turn out, Baz Bahadur would make a bid to take back Malwa from the Mughals soon after Pir Muhammad’s raid and in the face of a Mughal chase, take refuge with Rana Udai Singh of Mewar—a Rajput state that lay nearby.59 It was, in fact, not before another four decades had passed that the Mughals would target Asirgarh and give their southern frontier a determined southward push using Malwa as the launchpad.60 Malwa was particularly important for Mughal geopolitics because one of the two main routes from the imperial cities of Delhi and Agra to the thriving ports of the western littoral passed through this region. In the sixteenth century, this route headed southward from Agra and passed through Gwalior, Sivpuri, Sironj, and then the political centres of Sarangpur, Ujjain, and Mandu. It crossed the Narmada at Akbarpur, touched the strongholds of Asirgarh and Burhanpur, and then ran straight westward to reach the maritime metropolis of Surat.61 Akbar’s armies had already opened this route by capturing Gwalior in 1558–9.62 The conquest of Malwa gave the Mughal state complete control over most of it. In fact, this region became a major area of their influence to the south of Delhi and Agra. It secured 58 59 60 61 62

TA, 2:157/261–2. Emphasis mine. Also, see TF, 2:210. TA, 2:157/261–2. AN, 3:767/1147, 777–82/1163–70. Deloche, Transport and Communications, 1:52–3. AN, 2:77/118–19; TA, 2:140–1/233.

Environment and the Heterogeneous Conquest of North India

27

the southern flank of their imperial capitals and brought the process that had begun with the occupation of Gwalior to a logical conclusion. Since the 1590s, Akbar would use Malwa as the primary launchpad for expeditions further south against the Sultanates of the Deccan.

THE CONQUEST OF GARHA KATANGA

In the sixteenth century, the Malwa Plateau was connected to the Ganga Basin to its north-east by a series of routes that branched off from the north–south stretching Agra–Gwalior–Sironj–Sarangpur route and headed across Bundelkhand towards the towns and commercial centres of Itawa, Kalpi, Fathpur, Kara, Allahabad, and Benaras in the Gangetic Basin. Till around the end of the first millennium ad, these north-east–south-west aligned routes hosted voluminous political and military traffic. This was because several of the imperial centres wielding power over larger parts of North and Central India during this period were located in the Middle Ganga Basin or the Malwa Plateau. Magadh, Pataliputra, and Ujjain—the capitals of the Nanda, Maurya, and Gupta dynasties—are cases in point. However, the political importance of these routes diminished somewhat in the second millennium ad, when cities located in the Indo-Gangetic Divide started dominating North Indian politics. From the IndoGangetic Divide, the north–south route through Gwalior remained the direct access route to Bundelkhand and the Malwa Plateau, and in turn to the Deccan and the western littoral.63 When the Mughal armies entered Malwa Plateau in 1561 and defeated Baz Bahadur to occupy the region, they used this Gwalior route. However, Akbar’s troops continued to use the north-east–south-west aligned routes occasionally to pass from central India directly to the Ganga Basin. In order to secure these routes over Bundelkhand, the area occupied by the kingdom of Garha Katanga needed to be conquered. This kingdom lay to the south of Bundelkhand and to the east of the 63

Dilip Chakravarti has studied ancient routes passing from the Gangetic Basin to the Deccan Plateau through Central India. Jean Deloche’s work shows that many of these routes survived through the Mughal period. (Chakrabarti, The Archaeology of the Deccan Routes; Deloche, Transport and Communications, 1:58–9.)

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Sultanate of Malwa. The region consists of a large area of rounded rocky hillocks, with considerable forest cover.64 Asaf Khan led an army to invade Garha Katanga in 1564. Rani Durgavati, the ruler of the kingdom, engaged the invading Mughal army in a pitched battle, but lost. Following her death on the battlefield, her son made a stand in the fort of Chauragarh. But the invading army succeeded in storming the fort eventually. Garha Katanga fell. Immense treasures of the kingdom landed in the hands of Asaf Khan’s troops.65 This conquest extended Mughal domination over Bundelkhand, thereby firmly connecting newly annexed Malwa to the imperial possessions in the Gangetic Basin. This created a compact interconnected territory for the Mughals. The twin victories over Malwa and Garha placed Akbar in a dominant position in Central India. This does not mean that his administration controlled the entirety of the region immediately. Many scattered areas continued to be outside their ambit of control. The kingdom of Orchha, for instance, was not to be subdued before 1577.66 What it did mean, however, was that the young Mughal state had conquered two major kingdoms of the region, controlled several notable towns and forts, and commanded the important routes that crisscrossed these parts.67 From here, they consolidated their position and extended their dominance over the surrounding countryside with a certain degree of rapidity and firmness. CO - OPTION AND CONQUEST IN THE WEST

Several powerful Rajput states lay to the west of the Mughal dominions of the Punjab, Indo-Gangetic Divide, and Malwa. Today this region roughly corresponds to the modern Indian federal state of 64

Spate et al., India, Pakistan and Ceylon, 627–8. AN, 2:208–16/323–33; MT, 2:65–6/217–18; TA, 2:170–1/280–2; Streusand, Formation, 75; Srivastava, Akbar the Great, 1:89–92; Smith, Akbar, 50–2. 66 AN, 3:228–31/324–7. 67 In Chapter 4, I will discuss in greater detail the link between Mughal territorial expansion and their control over forts and routes of communication. 65

29

Environment and the Heterogeneous Conquest of North India

DELHI

) una Jam an ( Jaw

M To

To w Luckno

To Lahore

To Multan

d Sin us) an d lt (In u

SAND DUNES To B hak k

Agra To Gwalior

Ajmer

SAND DUNES

as

l

ba

am

Ch

Gw ali or

Ban

AN

To

GE

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i

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ar Jaisalmer

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an To Burh

pur

AV AL L

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Kali Sind

THE RANN

AR

ta hat To T

To Ah am da ba d

To Ahamdabad

IR

e ak r L ar Bamani pu Sag i a i Ud Uda e Lak bar Dhe Dariawad Hills Udaipur Hills

Forest

Pass

Major Rivers

Mountains Desert

Map 1.6 Western India Source: Based on Irfan Habib, An Atlas of the Mughal Empire: Political and Economic Maps with Detailed Notes, Bibliography and Index, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1982, 6A and 6B. Note: Map for respresentational purpose only.

Rajasthan (see Map 1.6). On the west, its landform is dominated by the Thar Desert, which graduates further westward into the Lower Indus Basin. Its eastern parts are dominated by the Aravalli Range. Bordering the Malwa Plateau on the west, this extremely old mountain range runs in a general south-west–north-east orientation. It stretches from Kachchh in the south to Delhi in the north, climaxing near the Mewar region in a great junction of spurs and ridges. With a brief gap near Jaipur, the range again rises in a group of ridges near Tonk. A series of outlying ranges runs to the east of and parallel to the main ranges through the forested Alwar–Ranthambhor belt. Further north, the range peters out in a number of low ridges half-sunken in Gangetic alluvium near Delhi. Several areas on and near the range are densely forested and the naturally defensible

30

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landforms produced some of the strongest forts of North India over the ages.68 While they were venturing into Central India, the Mughals also started sending out their feelers towards the Rajput states in these parts. Following a policy of carrot and stick, Akbar won over several of them during the 1560s. Rulers of Amber, Jodhpur, Bikaner, and Jaisalmer forged alliances with the emerging Mughal Empire. They were rewarded handsomely as new partners of the imperial project. The ties were sealed with Akbar marrying the daughters of the rulers of Amber and Jaisalmer, as well as the niece of the ruler of Bikaner.69 However, wherever this conciliatory approach failed, Akbar showed his determination to apply force. In 1562, his army seized Mirtha near Ajmer.70 Between 1567 and 1569, the prominent Rajput strongholds of Chitor and Ranthambhor were occupied following long and difficult sieges.71 Their conquest was particularly crucial and I will turn to their military dimensions shortly. What needs to be noted here is that these victories secured for the Mughal state the control of two secondary routes passing from the Delhi–Agra belt south-westward to the western littoral. Both of these routes connected Agra with 68

Spate et al., India, Pakistan and Ceylon, 617–21. AN, 2:155–8/240–4, 365–6/518–19; MT, 2:137; Streusand, Formation, 75. For the complex political dynamics and cultural meanings of MughalRajput matrimonial alliances, see Norman P. Ziegler, ‘Some Notes on  Rajput Loyalties during the  Mughal Period’, in Kingship and Authority in South Asia, ed. John F. Richards (Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1978), 215–51; Frances H. Taft, ‘Honor and Alliance: Reconsidering Mughal Rajput Marriages’ in The Idea of Rajasthan: Explorations in regional Identity, 2 volumes, eds. Karine Schomer et al. (New Delhi: Manohar, American Institute of Indian Studies, 2001), 2:217–41. For the career of the Rajputs of a prominent kingdom under Mughal rule, see Kunwar Refaqat Ali Khan, The Kachhwahas under Akbar and Jahangir (New Delhi: Kitab Publishing House, 1976). 70 AN, 2:161–2/247–50; TA, 2:155–6/258–61. 71 For Chitor, see AN, 2:300–4/441–4, 313–24/464–77; MT, 2:105–8; TA, 2:214–20/341–8, 223–5/352–5; TF, 2:229–32; TQ, 109–15/148–53. For Ranthambhor, see AN, 2:333–9/489–96; MT, 2:110–11/232–3; TA, 2:223– 25/352–5; TQ, 115–21/154–9. Also see Srivastava, Akbar the Great, 1:113–20, 123–5; Smith, Akbar, 58–65, 70–2. 69

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Mandasore in Malwa. One of them went through Amber, Ajmer and Chitor, while the other touched upon Ranthambhor and Kota. The unified route then headed southward from Mandasore towards the western littoral.72 For the Mughals, no move towards the economically lucrative littoral could be made without having established a firm control over these routes. Within two years of occupying these forts— and thereby securing these routes—Akbar invaded Gujarat. Hence, he probably had this strategic consideration in mind while targeting these forts in the late 1560s. Taken together, these alliances with some of the Rajput states and conquests of some others reasonably secured the western flank of the Mughal state and created a more or less coherent political domain for them in North India. The only major state that continued to resist Mughal expansion in this region was the Rajput kingdom of Mewar. Mughal armies defeated its ruler Rana Pratap Singh in a pitched battle in 1576.73 Following this, imperial armies also succeeded in occupying several other important strongholds in the region. They took Abugarh in 1576,74 Bundi in 1577,75 and Kumbhalmir in 1578.76 Yet, throughout the next two decades following his defeat, Rana Pratap continued to use the hills and jungles near Mewar as his refuge and offer stiff resistance to the Mughal occupation of his erstwhile kingdom.77 This notwithstanding, with the co-option of Amber, Jodhpur, Bikaner, and Jaisalmer in the Mughal imperial project as well as the successful sieges of Chitor and Ranthambhor, the Mughals emerged as the dominant power in western India by 1569. Against the backdrop of these geopolitical ramifications of the Mughal campaigns of expansion in the first decade and a half of Akbar’s reign, let us now turn to the military techniques used to achieve these victories. 72

Deloche, Transport and Communications, 1:57–8. AN, 3:173–6/244–7; MT, 2:236–9; Srivastava, Akbar the Great, 1:198– 211; Smith, Akbar, 105–9. 74 AN, 3:196–7/278–9. 75 AN, 3:201–2/284–5; Srivastava, Akbar the Great, 1:217. 76 AN, 3:238–9/339–40; Srivastava, Akbar the Great, 1:218–19. 77 Smith, Akbar, 109–10. 73

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BATTLES FOR NORTH INDIA

Akbar’s victory over the Afghans on the fields of Panipat marked the sequel of his grandfather’s victory on the same plains exactly three decades back. At that time, Babur had used a battle tactic that his two gunners—Ustad Ali Quli from Iran and Mustafa Rumi from the Ottoman Empire—had brought to him.78 This tactic had been developed by the Ottomans at the turn of the fifteenth century. It assimilated firearms—a relatively new technology—with the traditional cavalry tactics of the Central Eurasian steppes. For the first time, this allowed the simultaneous deployment of mounted archery, heavy cavalry, matchlock-bearing infantry, and field artillery. The pivot of this tactic was the wagon laager—a temporary defensive battlefield entrenchment comprising chiefly wagons, used widely for sheltering the matchlock-wielding infantry.79 European armies had already become familiar with the laager. In the early fifteenth century, Jan Zizka and his Hussite forces of Bohemia deployed it to shelter their infantry in a very effective way against the armies of the Holy Roman Empire and the kingdom of Hungary. The Hungarians picked up this technique from the Hussites and transmitted it to Eastern Europe and Russia.80 The Ottomans learnt about this tactic by the mid-fifteenth century in the course of their conflicts in Eastern Europe.81 However, the wagon laager took on a different form in the Ottoman battlefield. In the European case, the laager would often be built in the rear of the army. However, the Ottomans arranged their 78

For an analysis of Babur’s battle tactics, see Streusand, Formation, 52; Pratyay Nath, ‘Rethinking Early Mughal Warfare: Babur’s Pitched Battles, 1499-1529,’ in Warfare, Religion, and Society in Indian History, ed. Raziuddin Aquil and Kaushik Roy (New Delhi: Manohar, 2012), 109–45. 79 Helen Nicholson, Medieval Warfare: Theory and Practice of War in Europe, 300–1500 (Hampshire and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 89–90. 80 Brian Davies, ‘Guliai-gorod, Wagenburg, and Tabor Tactics in 16th– 17th Century Muscovy and Eastern Europe,’ in Warfare in Eastern Europe, 1500–1800, ed. Brian Davies (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2012), 93–108, see 99–100, 102–3. 81 Rhoads Murphey, Ottoman Warfare: 1500–1700 (New York: Routledge, 1999), 107–8; Davies, ‘Guliai-gorod, Wagenburg, and Tabor Tactics,’ 100–2; Chase, Firearms, 86.

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wagons along the front of their battle formation. Placed with gaps between them, these wagons would be chained with each other to prevent the enemy cavalry from storming the laager. Behind this laager, the Janissaries—the elite Ottoman matchlock-men—would be posted. The slow-loading matchlocks of the infantry made them vulnerable at close quarters.82 In fifteenth and sixteenth century Europe, the task of protecting them was done with great efficiency by pikemen.83 In the Ottoman armies, the wagon laager fulfilled a similar purpose. Armoured heavy cavalry, carrying weapons for close combat, would be stationed behind this laager in the centre and in the two wings. Light cavalry units of mounted archers would be positioned at the extremities of the flanks as well as in the vanguard. They wore minimal armour, carried bows and arrows, and were wellsuited for engaging the enemy from a distance. From behind the laager, the infantry and field artillery would hold the enemy centre at bay. The mobile light cavalry would execute evasive tactics and attack the flanks and rear of the enemy by showering arrows on them. These attacks were supposed to draw the forces of the adversary out of their formation. The final decisive blow would then be delivered by a heavy cavalry charge by the centre of the army. Developing this tactic in the fifteenth century allowed Ottoman armies to adopt a new technology—firearms—as well as a new defensive mechanism—the wagon laager—without fundamentally changing the tactical centrality of their cavalry.84 An  army led by Sultan Selim I demonstrated the

82

David Eltis, The Military Revolution in Sixteenth-century Europe (London: I.B. Tauris, 1998), 45–53. 83 Keith Roberts, Pike and Shot Tactics, 1590–1660, Osprey Elite 179 (Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2010). 84 This was quite contrary to the developments in Western Europe. Here the rise of the handgun-bearing infantry in the sixteenth led to a gradual tactical as well as social marginalization of the feudal heavy cavalry. For the gradual emergence of the infantry and the demise of the feudal heavy cavalry in the battle tactics of early modern Western Europe, see Roberts, Pike and Shot Tactics. For the complex social ramifications of this process, see Rogers, ‘The Military Revolutions of the Hundred Years’ War’; John Stone, ‘Technology, Society, and the Infantry Revolution of the Fourteenth Century,’ The Journal of Military History 68, no. 2 (2004), 361–80.

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power and efficacy of this tactic on the plains of Chaldiran in 1514. On this occasion, they routed a Safavid army under the Persian millenarian sufi-king Shah Ismail.85 European powers also found it tough to handle the combined impact of cavalry and firearms. In 1526, the Ottomans decimated the Hungarians in the battle of Mohacs using similar tactics.86 Following their defeat, the Safavids adopted the Ottoman tactic themselves. They deployed it successfully against the Uzbegs in the battle of Jam in 1528.87 The Uzbegs in turn took lesson from their defeat. They also learnt about this technique from the Ottoman professionals in their service. As a result, Uzbeg armies started using the wagon laager during their campaign in Herat soon afterward.88 And finally, the Ottoman and Persian military professionals in Babur’s employment helped the Timurid prince conquer his way into South Asia in 1526–7 using the same tactic. Although firearms had spread throughout South Asia much before the advent of the Mughals,89 it was on the plains of Panipat and Khanua that North India saw the first coordinated deployment of mounted archers, field artillery, handgunbearing infantry, and heavy cavalry. And the effect was devastating for the local armies.90 Thirty years later in the Second Battle of Panipat, things did not turn out to be quite the same. On this occasion, the heavy cavalry and mounted archers of the Mughals numbered some 4,000 to 5,000.

85

Chase, Firearms, 119–20. Chase, Firearms, 90. 87 Chase, Firearms, 123. 88 Mansura Haidar, Medieval Central Asia: Polity, Economy and Military Organization (Fourteenth to Sixteenth Centuries) (New Delhi: Manohar, 2004), 315. 89 Khan, ‘Early Use of Cannon and Musket’; Khan, Gunpowder and Firearms, 17–58. 90 AN, 3:95–8/242–4, 105–11/259–65; BN, 1:468–75, 547–74; HN, 93–4, 98–100; TA, 2:15–16/21–3, 24–6/35–8; Erskine, History of India under Baber, 463–74. Douglas Streusand and Kaushik Roy argue that it was this technological–tactical combine that gave the Mughals a decisive military advantage over their opponents. (Streusand, Formation, 52–4; Roy, India's Historic Battles, 54–79.) 86

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They were faced by the Afghan commander Hemu, leading a staggering 30,000 heavy cavalry, 1,500 war-elephants, and a vast infantry.91 When the battle began, the Afghans launched an elephant charge against the Mughal wings, which were thoroughly shaken under its impact. Then the Afghans charged the Mughal centre. Though hit hard, the centre held its ground and ultimately pushed the Afghans back. Meanwhile, the Mughal mounted archers repulsed the elephants of the Afghans with showers of arrows. At the same time, the Mughal centre wheeled round the enemy and attacked from the rear. Suddenly, an arrow struck Hemu in the eye and caused a mortal wound. The Afghans did not recover from this shock. As the news of his death spread, they fled from the battlefield, leaving the Mughals triumphant.92 The Second Battle of Panipat was quite different from the first in many respects.93 The first was dominated by the wagon laager, field artillery, and evasive tactics of the mounted archers. In contrast, the second primarily saw clashes between the Afghan heavy cavalry and war-elephants on the one hand and the Mughal heavy cavalry on the other. The latter also used some mounted archery. While Babur was fighting against an enemy with ten times his own cavalry strength,94 Akbar’s opponent was only six times stronger. The number of elephants that Babur had to face was close to the number of his horsemen.95 Akbar’s cavalry fought against elephants numbering only a third of them. Hence, it can be said with certainty that Babur’s task had been much more difficult than his grandson’s. This was, however, not reflected in the manner in which these battles were conducted. Babur handled Ibrahim Lodi’s elephant contingent quite efficiently, using artillery and musket fire on the front and enveloping tactics on the flanks and rear. In comparison, the elephant charge of Hemu’s forces practically broke the wings of Akbar’s army. In fact, in the absence of the enveloping maneuver by the mounted archers and with its overwhelming thrust on frontal shock charge by the cavalry, 91 92 93 94 95

AN, 2:37–8/61; TA, 2:131/217; MT, 2:7. AN, 2:37–40/62–5; TA, 2:131–3/217–20; TQ, 49–52/72–5; MT, 2:7–9. For an analysis, see Streusand, Formation, 53. BN, 470. BN, 470.

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Mughal tactics in the Second Battle of Panipat strongly resembled that of the Afghans and caused a tactical stalemate.96 MUGHAL BATTLES AFTER PANIPAT

Following their victory at Panipat, it was the might of their cavalry that won the Mughals the command over the Gangetic Basin. There are occasional instances of mounted archery and deployment of elephants, but in general heavy cavalry retained tactical centrality in field engagements. As Streusand has pointed out, Mughal expansion over these plains is characterized by a lack of big battles. The Second Battle of Panipat stands out as the one important exception. Most other engagements were relatively small in scale. It was not that the terrain was not suited for cavalry warfare; on the contrary, it was ideal. The reason, rather, lies in the absence of any major adversary. The Afghan elite, who had held this region previously, were steadily driven eastward through a series of small-scale engagements. The one in which the Mughal commander Ali Quli Khan defeated the Afghan leaders Hasan Khan Bachgoti and Rukn Khan Lohani in the Upper Gangetic Basin is a typical example.97 It appears that these Afghans thought it more pragmatic to withdraw increasingly eastward than to unite and challenge the Mughal hold over the Punjab, the Indo-Gangetic Divide, or the Upper Gangetic Basin. For a while, this indeed worked well. It was not before 1612—when Khwaja Usman was defeated in eastern Bengal—that the Mughals finally succeeded in neutralizing these various Afghan groups. The two major battles that the Mughals fought in Central India were the ones against the Malwa army of Baz Bahadur in 1561 and the Garha Katanga army of Rani Durgavati in 1564. Both reflect a similar Mughal dependence on heavy cavalry. In the battle against Garha Katanga, the Mughals fielded 5,000 to 10,000 cavalry. It was accompanied by a large infantry, which is likely to have included a good number of matchlock-men and archers. Durgavati’s army comprised 20,000 cavalry and infantry, and 700 elephants. Contemporary 96

For a discussion on Mughal battle tactics, see Streusand, Formation,

53–6. 97

AN, 2:82/126; MT, 2:18–19; TA, 2:141/233–4.

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Mughal texts furnish us with no evidence to suggest that the wagon laager was used in either of the battles. It was primarily a clash of Mughal heavy cavalry on the one hand, and heavy cavalry and warelephants of Garha Katanga on the other.98 The first concrete example of Mughal armies deploying an elephant-charge is from 1567. This particular battle was fought near the Manikpur ford on the Ganga between the Mughal forces under Akbar and Uzbeg rebels under Khan-i Zaman and Bahadur Khan. Mughal army fielded around 500 cavalry and 500 elephants. The Uzbeg rebels gathered around 3,000 to 4,000 cavalry and some elephants. Akbar himself came to the battlefield riding an elephant named Balasundar. The initial Uzbeg charge was warded off by a shower of arrows from the Mughal mounted archers under Baba Khan Qaqshal, who, it seems, were posted in the vanguard. They pursued the retreating Uzbegs, but were repulsed by another Uzbeg charge by Bahadur Khan. Following this, fighting began at close quarters. After sometime, Akbar dismounted from his elephant and mounted a horse in order to assume a more active role in the battle. Next the Mughal elephants, followed by the heavy cavalry, charged the Uzbegs. To counter this, the Uzbegs deployed a few elephants of their own, but these were defeated by the Mughal elephants. The Uzbegs were routed and sustained heavy losses of men and material.99 This battle is very significant from a tactical point of view. It was one of the first battles where a Mughal army used an elephant charge, backed by a charge of the heavy cavalry.100 This was also one of the first instances of the simultaneous deployment of an elephant charge with mounted archers, although the latter no longer enjoyed the same tactical importance they did under Babur. Far from being an isolated incident, this combined deployment of mounted archery—a classic 98

AN, 2:211–14/327–30; TA, 2:170–1/280–2. AN, 2:292–6/430–4; TA, 2:209–11/333–6; TF, 2:227–9; TQ, 140–1/97–9. 100 Technically speaking, elephants can be seen in certain earlier battles also. In the battle of Paronkh, the Mughals fielded 200 cavalries and 200 elephants. However, this engagement did not take the form of a pitched battle, and there is no contemporary evidence of any elephant charge being deployed on field. This army fought against a group of more than 4,000 men, who fought from inside a fortified village. (AN, 2:162–5/251–5.) 99

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Central Asian military technique—with the elephant charge—a specifically sedentary South Asian tactic—is indicative of a wider transformation Mughal battle tactics were undergoing in this period. We will return to this issue again. For now, let us move on to investigate the processes underway in the field of siege warfare.

SIEGES AND IMPERIAL EXPANSION

In contrast to the handful of pitched battles that Mughal armies fought during their second conquest of North India, sieges were much more frequent, even in the initial phase of expansion in the 1550s and 1560s. Mention may be made here of Mankot (1557), Gwalior (1558–9), Chauragarh (1564), Satwas (1567), Awadh (1567–8), and Ranthambhor (1569). Mughal armies used a variety of techniques to capture these forts. The ideal scenario was to capture them without having to besiege them at all. Douglas Streusand explains that forts were important centres of military defense. Once occupied, they needed to be converted into a defensive establishment. Hence, it was in the interest of any besieging army to occupy forts without damaging or destroying them. Damaging a fort in the course of its occupation would mean that the victor would first have to spend on its repairs before using it. Moreover, sieges, with their potential of lasting for months and years, were costly operations.101 Hence, like all invaders, Mughal armies also first tried to win over through peaceful negotiations the commander of any fort that they targeted. Here, the goal of the negotiation would be to pressurize the commander in two ways. First, they would try to persuade him by offering high rewards for submission. One common form that such rewards took was an office in the state apparatus. This signified a lucrative share in an expanding empire’s increasing economic, political, and cultural resources. Second, a covert threat of ruthless action in case of non-compliance would be added to this offer of rewards. Contemporary texts suggest that the Mughals found such an approach very effective, even in the early years of Akbar’s empire-building. In response, several fort commanders preferred to surrender to

101

Streusand, Formation, 65–6.

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Mughal armies than to fight them. Gagraun and Kalinjar are cases in point.102 If the initial negotiations failed, a siege would begin. For the Mughals, any siege would begin with the army surrounding the fort, constructing the lines of circumvallation, and erecting mūrchal (battery) with the objective of isolating the fort from the surrounding countryside. In the context of the siege of Ranthambhor (1569), for example, Nizamuddin Ahmed writes: ‘His Majesty besieged the fort and placed his army in a circle with the fort in its centre [qal‘a rā markaz-wār dar-miyān girifta muḥāṣara farmūdand].’103 Siege batteries were well-defended nodal points which had groups of soldiers commanding artillery pieces and other siege equipments. Attacks on the fort as well as the coordination within the besieging army revolved around the command over these nodal points. In the siege of Chitor, for instance, three principal batteries were formed over the first month of the siege. Two naqbs (mines) were started from one battery, and a sābāt̤ (sap) from another.104 Most of these forts were commanded by garrisons which were at par with the Mughals in terms of technology. Most had—in addition to archers and matchlock-men—artillery pieces mounted on their ramparts to prevent invading armies from nearing the fortifications.105 Consequently, rather than resorting to simpler methods such as direct scaling of the ramparts, Mughal armies had to resort to more elaborate siege techniques, such as sapping and mining. Naqb zadan (mining) was one of the traditional methods of siege operations throughout Eurasia.106 Mines were hollow underground chambers, dug from the camp of the besiegers till underneath the ramparts of the fort. Once constructed, they would be filled up with highly combustible articles and eventually set on fire. The resultant combustion would bring down the fortifications that stood above 102

For Gagraun, see AN, 2:140/218; TA, 2:153/253–4. For Kalinjar, see AN, 2:340–2/498-501; TA, 2:225–6/356–7. 103 TA, 2:223. 104 AN, 2:316–17/467; MT, 106. 105 AN, 2:316/467; TA, 2:217/344. 106 For a discussion on mining in sieges by Ottoman, Russian, and English armies, see Duffy, Siege Warfare, 159, 172, 207, 214.

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these hollow chambers. Troops of the besieging army would be standing by. Once the fortifications had collapsed, they would rush in and seek to take the fort by storm. After the invention and dissemination of gunpowder, its use as charges in mines made them even more deadly. This was because the explosion of gunpowder charges in underground chambers would amplify the effects of the combustion manifold. Describing the construction of mines at Chitor, the Mughal commander Nizamuddin Ahmad writes: The men, constructing the mines, dug them, and carried them to the foot of the citadel [ba-pā-ī ḥiṣār rasānīdand]. They then made a cavity under two bastions, which were close to each other, and filled it with gunpowder [wa do burj rā, ki bā-ham qarīb būd, mujauwaf sākhta, az dārūyi tufang pūr kardand]. A body of [the imperial] servants; who were ready to sacrifice their lives, and were noted for their manliness and bravery, came fully armed and equipped, and waited; so that as soon as the mines would be fired, and a breach should be made, they would at once hurl themselves into the fort [hargāh ki ātish bān naqb-hā ba-dihand wa rakhna dar qal‘a shūd, ishān khūd-rā ba-qal‘a āndāzand].107

A sābāt̤ on the other hand, was aimed at transporting troops and artillery within striking distance of the ramparts without exposing them to garrison fire. Once again, Nizamuddin Ahmad gives us a detailed description from the siege of Chitor: Sabat is a word used to express two walls [dū dīwār-ast], the foundations of which are laid at a distance of about one musket-shot [ from the fort], and under the protection of planks, which are fastened together by raw hides, and are made strong [dar panāh-i takht-hā-ī ki, charm kham girifta mustaḥkam sākhta-and], and forming something like a lane are carried to the wall of the fort; and from it the walls of the fort are demolished by cannon balls [dīwār-i qal‘a ba-ẓarb top mī-andāzand]. Brave young warriors entered the fort by means of the breaches thus made.108

Abul Fazl describes the course of the sābāt̤ as zigzag, with broad, strong mud walls on both sides, ‘such that [cannon] balls could not penetrate it [az du t̤arf ba-t̤aur yaka top kār na-kunad dīwār-i gilīn-i 107 108

TA, 2:217/344. TA, 2:217/344.

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‘arīẓ-i mār-pech bar-awārda]’.109 Nizamuddin Ahmed observed that the sābāt̤ built at Chitor was so wide that ten horsemen could ride abreast through it and so deep that it could allow safe passage of a man, spear in hand and seated on an elephant.110 Under the constant firing by the garrison, the construction of such saps often took a heavy toll on the lives of the workmen. At Chitor, the Mughal workforce sustained a daily loss of 100 to 200 workmen.111 Their use of mines and saps connected the Mughals with the armies of other empires operating in sixteenth- and seventeenthcentury Eurasia. Christopher Duffy tells us that the sap was widely used in early modern Europe as well. Here, saps would be reinforced at regular intervals by fortified square redoubts, mounted with cannons to defend the siegeworks.112 The Ottomans also used similar zigzag approach trenches, which they called siçan yolu, around the same time.113 Like Mughal sābāt̤s, the saps in other parts of the world would also be covered by branches, twigs, and other material to protect the troops and workmen from getting shot by the garrison.114 Michael Charney points out that in the first half of the seventeenth century, the Javanese were using similar covered sunken approachways in their sieges. As in the Mughal case, these also would often be used to erect stockades or siege towers and would eventually be mounted with artillery pieces or musketeers.115 109

AN, 2:316/467. MT, 2:106; TA, 2:217/344. 111 Abul Fazl estimates daily casualties among the workmen to be 200, while Nizamuddin Ahmad says that ‘of the masons and labourers, more than a hundred men were killed every day’. Given that the construction of these siegeworks lasted for several months meant that the ranks of Mughal workmen sustained enormous losses during this period, forcing the imperial army to constantly hire new recruits to keep the work going. (AN, 2:316/467; TA, 2:217/344.) 112 Duffy, Siege Warfare, 95. 113 Murphey, Ottoman Warfare, 16–19. 114 Rhoads Murphey tells us that the Ottomans also used gabions, woven out of twigs and boughs. (Murphey, Ottoman Warfare, 117.) In Western Europe, gabions as well as canvas was used to cover the saps. (Duffy, Siege Warfare, 95.) 115 Michael W. Charney, Southeast Asian Warfare, 1300–1900 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2004), 99–100. 110

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Another technique used in Mughal sieges during this period was the sar kob. The term was used for an elevation which would offer besieging Mughal armies some sort of command over the interior of the fort under siege. Once located or constructed, archers, matchlockmen, or even artillery pieces could be mounted on it. The presence of a natural elevation would be ideal from the perspective of the besiegers. Cases in point are the hill called Ran located right outside the fort of Ranthambhor or the elevation by the name of Swarg Dwari outside the fort of Awadh. During the siege of Ranthambhor, Akbar, who was conducting the operations himself, had fifteen ẓarbuzans (big cannons) dragged up to the top of this hill. Once these pieces opened fire from the top of the hill, they demolished several buildings inside the ramparts. Abul Fazl observes: ‘At every discharge … there was a breach in the walls of the fort and the houses went to dust [dar har martaba rakhna dar dīwār-i qal‘a mī uftād wa khāna-hā ba-gard mī-raft].’116 Scared, the commander of the fort, Rai Surjan, immediately surrendered the fort.117 During the siege of Awadh, the Mughal army first targeted the Swarg Dwari hill where the garrison had posted some archers and matchlock-men. Abul Fazl writes that Mughal troops seized this location and stationed their own soldiers ‘so that not a single person could put his head outside of a window’ inside the fort.118 In cases where such elevation would be required, but was found to be lacking in the nature, artificial ones would be built. The siege of Chunar (1535) is an instance.119 The case of Chitor exemplifies that elevated platforms resembling sar kobs, could also be built in a sābāt̤. In the cover of the walls of the sābāt̤ such a platform could be raised and used to target soldiers of the garrison, as well as to rally the besieging soldiers. Describing the siege of Chitor, Abul Fazl writes about the construction of ‘excellent quarters [manzil wa mawāqif-i dil-kushā]’ in the sābāt̤. Akbar is said to have positioned himself here at an advanced stage of the siege and supervised the conduct of operations.120 116 117 118 119 120

AN, 2:336–7/493–4. AN, 2:337–8/494–5. AN, 2:298/437. TA, 2:40–1/62–3; TV, 9–10. AN, 2:319/471.

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One of the miniature paintings of the Persian manuscript of Akbarnāma illustrating the siege shows Akbar shooting down Jaimal, the Rajput commander of the fort, from here. GUNPOWDER ARTILLERY IN AKBAR ’ S INITIAL CONQUESTS

The observations and arguments made in the previous sections support Douglas Streusand’s observation that ‘Mughal conquest of Hindustan was not a blitzkrieg’.121 The campaigns of Akbar’s armies in North India between 1556 and 1569 did not come anywhere close to what Weston Cook Jr. has called ‘cannon conquest’ in the context of late fifteenth century Spain.122 On the field, the efficacy of artillery derived from its coordinated deployment with heavy cavalry, mounted archers, and handguns. For this, the Mughals relied on the tactic developed by the Ottomans. However, as Streusand points out, since the Mughals fought only a very small number of big battles and primarily in the beginning of their empire-building, it would be problematic to attribute Mughal military success entirely to this battle tactic, or by extension, to Mughal field artillery.123 121

Streusand, Formation, 63. Weston F. Cook, Jr., ‘The Cannon Conquest of Nasrid Spain and the End of Reconquista,’ The Journal of Military History 57, no. 1 (1993), 43–70. 123 Streusand, Formation, 52. More recently, Jos Gommans has argued that the value of such early military victories lay in the fact that they gave Indian powers leverage in the game of political alliance-building, something that he argues South Asian state-formation has traditionally revolved around. In arguing this, Gommans heavily draws upon Andre Wink’s formulations about South Asian politics being dominated by fitna, or the politics of shifting alliances. However, the suggestion that in this part of the world, rulers were generally not interested in forging empires through war or technological innovation and that territorial expansion rather revolved around fitna is deeply problematic. For one, the Mughals fought wars ceaselessly. The empire they created was based as much on building and switching alliances as on violent military conflict. Also, alliance-building is a common means of building empires and is not something specific to India. Almost all states across the world have always relied on it to increase their influence and domains (Jos Gommans, ‘Warhorse and Gunpowder in India, c. 1000–1850’, in War in the Early Modern World 1450–1815, ed. Jeremy Black [London and New York: 122

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At the same time, the number of fortresses Mughal armies captured during Akbar’s early conquests in North India by the power of their gunpowder artillery is simply negligible. The sole exception during this early phase is the siege of Ranthambhor (1569). It has already been mentioned how Akbar’s troops used the nearby hill of Ran to bombard the fort with ẓarbuzans. What also needs to be highlighted is that even this was achieved after extreme exertions. Contemporary chronicles say that ordinarily, each of these ẓarbuzans required 200 pairs of oxen for moving them around on level ground. In this case, 500 kahars (workers usually specializing as palanquin bearers) dragged each of these to the hill-top over its extremely difficult uphill tract. One by one, this enormous workforce executed the arduous task of hauling up fifteen ẓarbuzans up the hill in this way.124 In the other sieges, other varied factors won the day. In some cases such as Mankot (1557), the garrison surrendered owing primarily to a food shortage.125 Blockades and diplomatic pressures were sufficient in inducing the garrisons of Gwalior (1558–9),126 Awadh (1567),127 and Kalinjar (1569)128 into submission. Commanders of Gagraun (1561),129 Chunar (1564),130 and Rohtas (1564–5)131 surrendered voluntarily and were happy to be co-opted into the imperial officialdom. In the landmark siege of Chitor (1567–8),132 one of the bestdocumented Mughal sieges, Akbar’s army had no siege artillery at all

Routledge, (1999) 2005], 105–28, see 108–9). For Wink’s arguments on fitna, see Andre Wink, ‘Sovereignty and Universal Dominion in South Asia’, Indian Economic and Social History Review 21, no. 3 (1984), 265–92. 124 A Mughal miniature painting from Akbar-nāma graphically illustrates this episode. Alongside labourers, it also shows a group of oxen drawing the heavy cannons. It is this image that has been used in the cover of this book. 125 AN, 2:19–20/35, 46–52/73–81, 58–9/89–91; TA, 2:125–6/210–11. 126 AN, 2:77/118–19; TA, 2:140–1/233. 127 AN, 2:298–300/437–40. 128 AN, 2:340–2/498–501; TA, 2:225–6/356–7. 129 AN, 2:140/218; TA, 2:153/253–4. 130 AN, 2:149–50/231–2; TA, 2:170/280. 131 AN, 2:243/365–6. 132 AN, 2:314–24/464–76.

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to begin with. They cast one at the site of the siege. However, there is no evidence to indicate that it influenced the course of the siege in any way. The decisive breach in the fortifications was achieved by a direct assault on the walls delivered from a sābāt̤.133 Clearly, Ranthambhor was an exception, not the norm. The kind of exertions that went into successfully deploying the siege artillery at Ranthambhor points to the role of terrain in shaping the nature of siege warfare in North India. While the forested hills of Central India hosted many impregnable forts, the lack of navigable waterways made it extremely cumbersome, time-consuming, and expensive to transport siege artillery overland.134 The location of the forts on often-forested elevated locations also meant that even in the cases when they could actually be hauled to the actual location of the siege, making an impact on the fortifications with them would prove to be difficult and arduous. All this meant that rather than being able to rely on the might of gunpowder artillery, Mughal armies were forced to resort to other tactics. MATCHLOCKS , MINES , AND FORTIFICATIONS

Artillery was not the only technology where gunpowder was used. Since the days of Babur, Mughal armies fielded contingents of matchlock-men in both battles and sieges. Deployed in conjunction with artillery and cavalry, Mughal matchlock-men played an important role in early Mughal battle tactics. While the difficulty of transportation and deployment allowed artillery to play only a limited role in sieges,

133

AN, 2:320/471. William McNeill makes a similar point in his world history. Viewing gunpowder artillery as a means of imperial consolidation, he says, ‘In the interior of India, where water transportation was unavailable, imperial consolidation remained precarious.’ (McNeill, The Pursuit of Power, 95, 98.) I disagree with McNeill’s general understanding of firearms as the primary tool of centralization. However, I concur with the point that the difficulty of deployment of Mughal artillery in certain parts of South Asia created military complexities. Douglas Streusand also points out how this logistical difficulty limited Mughal ability to take forts quickly. (Streusand, Formation, 68–9; Streusand, Islamic Gunpowder Empires, 257.) 134

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imperial armies under Akbar did deploy large numbers of matchlockmen. However, this did not give the Mughals any technological or tactical advantage over its adversaries. Contemporary records make it amply clear that in most of the forts that the Mughals besieged, the garrison was equally well-armed. In both Chitor and Ranthambhor, Mughal soldiers and siege-workers suffered enormous casualties due to handgun- and artillery-fire by the garrison. As mentioned earlier, firing by the garrison of Chitor claimed the lives of 100 to 200 Mughal workmen every day during the construction of the siegeworks.135 Moreover, Dirk Kolff, Douglas Streusand, and Iqtidar Alam Khan have made us conscious of the fact that over the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, matchlocks did not remain a monopoly of North Indian states. They also disseminated widely among various non-state actors. At the time when Babur entered North India, there was already a large peasant population that rendered part-time military service to various states in lieu of salary to supplement their income from agriculture. These peasants mainly functioned as foot-archers. Over the sixteenth century, many of them embraced the new technology—matchlocks. By late sixteenth century, several communities arose in  the Middle Gangetic Basin, who specialized in musketry. Over time, they gained increasing importance in the military labour market. At the time of Akbar’s initial conquests and subsequent consolidation of power in North India, these martial peasant communities were a force to be reckoned with. By the late seventeenth century, there were several new social groups in North India who also specialized in foot-musketry, such as the Bahelias and Bhadurias, among others. Iqtidar Alam Khan also points out that during the reign of Aurangzeb (r. 1658–1707) the Baksariyas were the largest social group serving in the Mughal army as foot-musketeers as well as foot-archers.136 Manucci’s observation about Aurangzeb’s army is worth noting here: In these armies the foot soldiers are commonly Rajputs, the greater number being of the Bundelah tribe or Purbiyahs from the direction of 135

AN, 2:316/467; TA, 2:217/344. Whereas in many other parts of Eurasia, gunpowder weapons acted as  an agent of centralization by the state, the case was quite different for 136

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Allahabad. They are matchlockmen and archers, and also serve to look after the baggage. They are faithful to their employers, but great thieves on the march.137

Streusand points out that it was due to this armed nature of a vast part of the peasantry that the Mughals could not adopt the tahrirtimar form of land revenue assignment from the Ottomans, where one land assignment supported one single cavalryman.138 Iqtidar Alam Khan also emphasizes that it was primarily because of this peculiar dissemination and adoption of the matchlock by a vast peasant population that the weapon did not enjoy the centralizing role it did for other emergent state powers across the world in the sixteenth century.139 Aside from artillery and handguns, gunpowder was also deployed in mines in sieges. As mentioned earlier, Mughal armies used this technique widely. However, there is at least one instance in these early years to indicate that they had not become the masters of the technique yet. In Chitor, Akbar’s army spent months digging mines.

North India. For the most comprehensive analysis of this armed peasantry, see Dirk H.A. Kolff, Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy: The Ethnohistory of the Military Labour Market in Hindustan, 1450–1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). For how firearms were used to resist state-centralization here, see Iqtidar Alam Khan, ‘Muskets in the Mawas: Instruments of Peasant Resistance,’ in The Making of History: Essays Presented to Irfan Habib, eds. K.N. Panikkar, T.J. Byres and Utsa Patnaik (London: Anthem South Asia Studies, 2002), 81–103; Khan, Gunpowder and Firearms, 164–90, 218–26. For the nature of implications that this armed peasantry had on Mughal state-formation and its ways of military recruitment, see Dirk H.A. Kolff, ‘Peasants Fighting for a Living in Early Modern North India,’ in Fighting for a Living: A Comparative History of Military Labour 1500–2000, ed. Erik-Jan Zürcher (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2013), 243–65, see 255–65 for a focused discussion on the Ujjainiyas. Also, Streusand, Formation, 70–2. 137 Niccolao Manucci, Storia do Mogor, trans. William Irvine, 4 vols (Delhi: Low Price Publications, 2005), 2:431–2. Dirk Kolff’s work explores the dynamics of the formation of this Rajput identity among these peasant-soldiers. (Kolff, Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy.) 138 Streusand, Formation, 70. 139 Khan, ‘Muskets in the Mawas,’ 81–103.

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Eventually, they planned to blast two of them simultaneously. With the cavalry waiting to storm the fort through prospective breaches in the fort, both the charges were ignited. However, as it turned out, the charges were of unequal length. First, one mine blew up, bringing down the fortifications above. The cavalry rushed in. At this moment, the other mine exploded, thereby killing a great number of these Mughal soldiers. Contemporary imperial miniature paintings portray a graphic scene of military disaster, with bodies of the soldiers flung up high into the air. Several important commanders were also killed in the incident. Exploiting the confusion in Mughal ranks, the garrison closed up the breach in the walls.140 Eventually, another mine was fired, but it caused no significant damage to the fortifications.141 Such repeated debacles in a crucial siege such as that of Chitor points to the fact that while the use of gunpowder in mines was widespread, not often did it play a decisive role in determining the outcome of sieges during Akbar’s initial conquests. Hence, notwithstanding the rise of Mughal power in North India, neither the imperial gunpowder artillery nor gunpowder mining threatened the security of pre-gunpowder fortifications to any major extent. This becomes evident from the fact that early modern North India hardly saw any changes in fort architecture of the likes witnessed by contemporary Europe.142 Jean Deloche has shown that the few changes that came about in this respect in Peninsular India were mostly aimed at integrating gunpowder artillery into the fold of the fort defenses. For example, raised platforms came to be constructed inside many forts to mount artillery pieces on them. Big gun ports were installed in fort walls for firing cannons from inside the fort. All these changes helped the garrison to harness the new firepower to their benefit.143 But beyond these small alterations, the structure of 140

AN, 2:317–18/468–9. AN, 2:318/469. 142 Unfortunately, beyond certain works on specific forts, no thorough study of fortifications has been conducted for early modern North India. See, for instance, B.D. Misra, The Forts and Fortresses of Gwalior and Its Hinterland (New Delhi: Manohar, 1993). 143 Jean Deloche, Studies on Fortification in India (Pondichéry: Institut Français de Pondichéry, 2007); Richard M. Eaton and Philip B. Wagoner, 141

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forts remained largely the same. Based on the extant forts, a similar point can be made about North India as well. It can also be pointed out that the forts the Mughals built in Agra, Lahore, and Delhi did not integrate any of the features of the trace italienne model which had become prevalent in Europe in the course of the sixteenth century. Unlike the transformed bastion fortress of Western Europe, Mughals continued to build their forts with relatively thin and very high walls. Completed in 1573 under the supervision of Muhammad Qasim Khan, his foremost military engineer, Akbar’s massive fortress in Agra is a case in point.144 The angled bastion, one of the most distinctive features of the trace italienne model, too was absent in this fort. Mughal forts usually had circular bastions, and at times—as in the case of the bastions guarding the main entrance of the Agra Fort—octagonal ones.145 In sum, it needs to be highlighted that gunpowder weaponry— artillery, matchlocks, or mines—did not facilitate Akbar’s early and decisive military victories. Iqtidar Alam Khan observes that unlike the seventeenth century, when innovation of Mughal firearms stagnated, the sixteenth century represented a time of great technological advancements for both handguns and artillery. His work establishes it beyond doubt that in this century, Mughal firearms were in no measure any less than those in Europe or the Ottoman Empire.146 Irfan Habib discusses Akbar’s contribution in bringing about technological innovations in the field of handguns, which improved the techniques of manufacture and discharge of the weapon.147 However, the previous discussion points out that based on evidence of the mere existence of or even innovations in cutting edge firearms, we cannot assume

‘Warfare on the Deccan Plateau, 1450–1600: A Military Revolution in Early Modern India?,’ Journal of World History 25, no. 1 (2014), 5–50. 144 For details on the interesting career of Qasim Khan, see Pratyay Nath, ‘Building the Empire: Military Infrastructure and the Career of Muhammad Qasim Khan in Mughal North India’, Proceedings of the Indian History Congress (New Delhi, 2014), 270–4. 145 The Imperial Gazetteer of India, 26 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1908–31), 5:85. 146 Khan, Gunpowder and Firearms. 147 Habib, ‘Akbar and Technology,’ 11–12.

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that they automatically played a decisive role in Akbar’s early conquests. Contemporary information about the actual campaigns clearly indicates that the actual impact of gunpowder weaponry was extremely  limited, even in a phase of rapid military conquests. In the next chapter, we will see that this was also true for a big part of the campaigns beyond the imperial heartland. For now, let us quickly assess the contribution of the imperial cavalry to this phase of Mughal warfare. CAVALRY IN AKBAR ’ S INITIAL CONQUESTS

In the early modern period, North Indian states imported a large part of their warhorses from Iran and Central Eurasia. Entering North India through the cities of Kabul and Qandahar, these animals reached the various market cities and towns of the Punjab Plains and the Gangetic Basin.148 The fact that under Akbar, Mughals rapidly gained control over these areas meant that they could employ these excellent warhorses in their armies. With the conquest of the Gujarat littoral in the early 1570s, they tapped into another major source of the import of horses—from West Asia by the Arabian Sea. This control over a major chunk of both these channels of import of horses into South Asia meant that the empire commanded one of the best cavalries of the early modern world. The most important benefit that this bestowed on imperial armies was unmatched strategic mobility and the ease and swiftness with which they could deploy troops across a vast region. Not in all cases, however, did this strategic mobility have the opportunity to be converted into tactical mobility in battles—the prime site where the cavalry could make a military impact. Although the Mughals fought very few big battles under Akbar, this cavalry did make its impact felt in the series of skirmishes through which it pushed the Afghans progressively eastward in the period discussed in this chapter. It also played an important role in the few important battles

148

Gommans, Mughal Warfare, 111–17. Also see Jos Gommans, ‘The Horse Trade in Eighteenth-Century South Asia’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 37, no. 3 (1994), 228–50.

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that took place in Central India. But at the same time, I have shown that Mughal battle tactics were already undergoing a slow transition. In Babur’s battles, mounted archery had been as important as the heavy cavalry charge. War-elephants did not figure there. However, the latter began to grow in importance in the course of Akbar’s rule. On the one hand, Mughal armies made increasing use of warelephants and heavy cavalry for delivering the shock charge.149 On the other hand, they also deployed more and more infantry in the form of foot-archers and matchlock-men. However, these changes came at a cost—decreasing number and tactical importance of mounted archers. It is to be noted that in several battles of the 1570s, including those at Sarnal in Gujarat and Tukaroi in Odisha, mounted archers are mentioned. However, one can discern from contemporary descriptions their diminishing impact on the outcome of battles.150 Descriptions of battles from this period have increasing references to the operations of the heavy cavalry. Later battles—such as the one in Uhar in eastern Bengal in 1612—bear evidence to the complete overshadowing of mounted archery by the close combat tactics of heavy cavalry. Alongside this, the elephant charge also came to be used on some occasions, as the battle of Uhar exemplifies.151 At the end of the day, battles were just one form of military engagement. In sieges—the other equally, if not more, important form of conflict during this period—the role of the warhorse was greatly circumscribed. Here scope of mobility was mainly strategic— transporting troops between different sites of military mobilization and action, keeping military intelligence flowing, occasionally raiding and plundering the invaded territory, and so on. However, in the actual siege per se, there was little that the cavalry could do. The various other methods and technologies discussed previously took the centre 149

Jos Gommans has also discussed this rise of tactical importance of war-elephants under Akbar. (Gommans, Mughal Warfare, 124–5.) 150 For battle of Sarnal, see AN, 3:13–4/19–21. For battle of Tukaroi, see AN, 3:121–6/173–9, 177/248–9; MT, 2:196–8; TA, 2:305–7/463–5, 320– 1/483–4, 324/489–90. TF, 2:247–9; TQ, 201–4/236–8; The History of Bengal, Vol. II: Muslim Period 1200–1757, ed. Jadunath Sarkar (Dacca: The University of Dacca, [1948] 2006), 191–3. 151 BG, JS60:67a-73b/1:173–92; TJ, 1:101–4/209–12.

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stage here. Given that sieges were a large part of the military engagements that comprised Akbar’s conquest of the North Indian heartland, it can be argued that the role of cavalry in the overall process of empire-formation was far from central. It played an important role in giving Akbar the command over the Punjab Plains and the Gangetic Basin. However, other factors and players won the Mughals their dominance over central and western India. As I have pointed out in this chapter, the main reason behind this heterogeneity was the way the natural environment shaped the dynamics of war-making. *** A few things emerge from the earlier discussion. First, the conquest of North India comprised of more sieges than big battles. Battles were certainly important politically. The Second Battle of Panipat gave the young Akbar control over Delhi and Agra. His armies also defeated Baz Bahadur and Rani Durgavati in battles. There were also a host of smaller skirmishes that steadily pushed the Afghans eastward and helped expand the Mughal domains. However, in comparison, sieges were simply much more frequent.152 Streusand explains this by arguing that the initial victories of the Mughals discouraged their adversaries from engaging them in open battles. Instead, they increasingly preferred to make a stand within fortified locations.153 While such an argument makes sense at a theoretical level, it is not possible to discern a pattern where battles faded out in numbers at any particular point of time and sieges replaced them. After all, big battles such as Tukaroi (1575) and Haldighat (1576) occurred after the landmark sieges of Chitor (1567–8), Ranthambhor (1569), and Kalinjar (1569). A more plausible explanation is a differentiated spatial distribution of battles and sieges depending on the nature of the terrain. Owing to the presence of vast, open, and flat plains, the Punjab Plains and the Gangetic Basin allowed large scale cavalry maneuvers. It was for this reason that it witnessed a greater number of engagements on field. Long-drawn sieges were a rarity here. On the other hand, the broken and forested terrain of central and western India encouraged the 152 153

This was first pointed out by Streusand. (Streusand, Formation, 52.) Streusand, Formation, 49–50.

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proliferation of big stone forts. Hence military expansion in these parts entailed a greater number of sieges on the part of Mughal armies. Battles such as those against Baz Bahadur and Rani Durgavati were exceptions here. Hence, the reason the 1560s saw a large number of sieges is not because Mughal adversaries stopped giving battle, but because this is the period when Akbar’s armies penetrated central and western India. Finally, no single technology or tactic emerged during this period as the driving force of Akbar’s conquests. Undoubtedly in the initial big battles, Mughal armies enjoyed what Streusand has called a ‘limited superiority’ by virtue of their ability to simultaneously deploy field artillery, matchlocks, heavy cavalry, and mounted archers. However, within the space of the battle, the tactical importance and impact of mounted archers gradually faded away over the sixteenth century. In sieges, Mughal armies did not enjoy any visible technological or tactical advantage over their adversaries. It was only their ability to persevere and see through long sieges that gave them a slight edge. Here we have to also take into account various other factors such as the Mughal ability to pay and mobilize thousands of works to execute the construction of siegeworks, their capability to offer garrisons lucrative terms for surrender, and their ability to move troops around over an increasingly wide region with great efficiency. The process of military expansion became even more complex as Mughal armies ventured beyond the political heartland that they created in North India and started invading more distant territories. As armies negotiated techniques of war and environmental conditions that they were less familiar with, military success and failure become even more difficult to explain for the modern historian. In the next chapter, I will make an effort in this direction.

CHAPTER TWO

Moving East, Moving West War, Environment, and Imperial Expansion

In February 1646, the fifth Mughal emperor, Shah Jahan sent his son Murad Bakhsh at the head of around 50,000 cavalry and 10,000 infantry to conquer Balkh and Badakhshan in modern Afghanistan.1 The prince marched gallantly northward from the Mughal frontier city of Kabul. Over the next few months, his army captured one fort after another and assumed the command of Badakhshan. It then veered westward and marched on Balkh.2 As his forces closed in, Nazar Muhammad Khan, the Uzbeg ruler of Balkh, slipped out and fled westward to

1

AS, 2:473–8; BL, 2:482–4; SN, 408–9/335; Jadunath Sarkar, History of Aurangzib, 5 vols (Calcutta: M.C. Sarkar & Sons, 1912), 1:93. 2 BL, 2:484–90, 514–37; SN, 415–19/342–5, 422–3/348–9.

Climate of Conquest: War, Environment, and Empire in Mughal North India. Pratyay Nath, Oxford University Press (2019). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199495559.003.0002

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Khurasan.3 Murad’s army took possession of the city in July without much resistance.4 One would have expected—as indeed did Shah Jahan—that following such an easy victory, the prince would set his sight on consolidating imperial control over his new conquests. Murad, however, started growing uneasy. The impending arrival of the Central Asian winter worried him. Although Babur, the founder of the dynasty, had migrated to South Asia from Transoxiana, no Mughal army had returned to these southern reaches of Central Eurasia since the midsixteenth century. Born and brought up in the moderate climatic conditions of South Asia, Murad Bakhsh did not find the idea of having to bear a harsh Central Eurasian winter too savoury. He requested his father for a transfer of post, so that he could return to the familiarity and comfort of North India as soon as possible. This unexpected request cut short the celebrations for the Mughal conquest of Balkh at the imperial court. Irritated, Shah Jahan categorically instructed his son to remain in his station until Mughal hold over the region had been firmly established. Anxious and desperate, Murad now decided to act on his own. Without further notice, he marched out of Balkh for Kabul in August, leaving his subordinate commanders in charge. Furious, Shah Jahan sought to threaten his son into obedience by depriving him of his manṣab (military rank) and jāgīr. Even this public act of punishment could not stop the prince, who made it straight back to Kabul.5 Shocked at his son’s insubordination, Shah Jahan refused to grant him audience for another nine months.6 What was even more worrying for the Mughal emperor was that Prince Murad’s actions were not an eccentric exception; rather, it reflected the Mughal army’s general apprehensions about braving a winter in Balkh—something that is made abundantly clear in contemporary accounts. One biographer of Shah Jahan observed: ‘[O]f the nobles and mansabdars from Hindustan who served under 3

BL, 2:529–33, 548–53; SN, 424–5, 427/350–1, 354; Sarkar, History of Aurangzib, 1:94. 4 SN, 422–3/348–50, 426/353; Sarkar, History of Aurangzib, 1:94. 5 SN, 435/362. 6 SN, 458/382.

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the Prince, most concurred in his resolve; and dreading the hardship of passing a winter in that climate, they also were eager to return.’7 The story of the series of debacles the Mughals faced during this campaign does not end here. However, we can pause to reflect on the significance of the episode described earlier. It exemplifies one of the many instances in Mughal history when military campaigns were jeopardized by difficult environmental conditions. At a more general level, it shows how the Mughal military campaigns unfolded in constant negotiations with the climate, ecology, and terrain of different parts of South Asia. The present chapter brings in fresh evidence of this from different expeditions that took imperial armies beyond their political heartland in North India. It argues that in most of these cases, battling diverse environmental factors was as much an integral part of Mughal war-efforts as actual combat. In turn, this shows that geography and environment were not just mere ‘context’ or ‘setting’, which is what many scholars of military and imperial histories relegate them to be. Environmental factors acted as active forces that greatly influenced almost all aspects of the conduct of war, and in turn, the broader course of imperial expansion. Not many historians have explored the dynamics of actual military campaigns to unravel the complexity of war-making in the Mughal context. One notable exception is Jos Gommans. In his monograph on Mughal warfare, he devotes an entire chapter to the study of three campaigns—those in Bengal (1608–12), Balkh (1645–8), and Gingee (1689–97).8 These are broad and much-needed surveys, which discuss issues related—as Gommans puts it—to ‘geography, mentality, recruitment, strategy, tactics, logistics and weaponry’.9 I do not find any major contention with this part of Gomman’s work. In fact, my research draws on his and takes the inquiry forward by extending the analytical focus on more campaigns and operations over a longer period of time and a broader geographical area. I am particularly interested in identifying how the course and outcome of imperial expansionist campaigns in different parts of South Asia was

7 8 9

SN, 356. Emphasis mine. Gommans, Mughal Warfare, 169–99. Gommans, Mughal Warfare, 169.

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shaped by environmental factors. I do not seek to narrate or record the details of any particular campaign. Neither do I wish to present a comprehensive account of imperial operations in the various theatres of war.10 Rather, I focus on six different regions where Mughal armies fought after they had carved out a stable base at the heart of North India by 1569. Using these examples, I highlight how military operations unfolded across the vast North Indian landmass in constant negotiations with various environmental and geographical factors. Moreover, I discuss how Mughal adversaries often exploited to their own advantage the very same conditions that imperial armies struggled to cope with. This made the military challenges that Mughal forces faced more complex and difficult to deal with. The six regions under focus are the Bengal Delta, the Brahmaputra Basin in Assam, the Lower Indus Basin, Kashmir and the Himalayas, Qandahar, and Balkh–Badakhshan. Let us go over them one by one.

THE BENGAL DELTA

Mughal armies entered Bengal for the first time in the course of a brief campaign under Humayun in 1538–9. However, no long-term conquests resulted from this.11 Decades later, the region was conquered by Mughal armies under Akbar and Jahangir (r. 1605–1627) through a slow and difficult process of expansion that stretched from 1574 to 1612.12 Located on the enormous delta of the Ganga and the

10

Even though such a study is beyond the scope of the present book, it needs to be conducted at some point for furthering our understanding of Mughal warfare. This is especially because, as a result of its focus on the analysis of technology, isolated battles, and army organization, the bulk of Mughal military history has neglected the question as to how military operations actually unfolded on ground. 11 Syed Ejaz Hussain, The Bengal Sultanate: Politics, Economy and Coins (AD 1205–1576) (Delhi: Manohar, 2003), 184–6. 12 For understanding the complex socio-political and cultural processes that accompanied the Mughal conquest of Bengal, see Richard M. Eaton, The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204–1760 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, [1993] 2000), especially 137–315; Tapan Raychaudhuri, Bengal under Akbar and Jahangir: An Introductory Study in Social History

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Brahmaputra Rivers, Bengal presented the invading Mughals with a geography they had never encountered thus far (see Map 2.1). On the west, the old and moribund delta—approximately overlapping with the area occupied by the modern Indian federal state of West Bengal— is dominated by the north–south expanse of the Bhagirathi River. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Bhagirathi was the main distributary of the Ganga and carried the bulk of its water to the Bay of Bengal. Towards the east, the active delta—embraced roughly by the modern nation state of Bangladesh—is overwhelmingly dominated by innumerable rivers, rivulets, and other waterbodies.13 In the period under study, large parts of it were still thickly forested. These forests and the challenge they posed for campaigning Mughal armies are mentioned repeatedly in contemporary texts. One such instance comes from the autobiography of Mirza Nathan, a Mughal commander who served in Bengal and Assam in the early seventeenth century. While narrating an expedition against the Arakan kingdom in north-western Myanmar, he describes the main route along which the army marched as being ‘impassable even for an ant’.14 He continues that ‘[T]hroughout the way not only others but even the Khan [Mirza Nurullah, a Mughal commander] himself cleared jungles with his own hands and he proceeded onward till he arrived at a place where the boats could not ply any farther’.15 A small boat carried the Khan forward and elephants marched with utmost difficulty. Horses could not be taken any further due to the dense vegetation.16 Another big challenge for imperial armies was the annual rains and the abundance of rivers and forests in the region. From June to September, precipitation in the delta is extremely high. Heavy downpour annually converts the landscape—already dominated by waterbodies of various shapes and sizes—into an almost continuous sheet of water. Mughal armies struggled against such conditions. The first invasion

(Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt. Ltd, 1969); Aniruddha Ray, Adventurers, Landowners and Rebels: Bengal, c. 1575–c. 1715 (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt. Ltd, 1998). 13 Spate et al., India, Pakistan and Ceylon, 571–6. 14 BG, JS62:273b/2:632–3. 15 BG, JS62:273b/2:632–3. 16 BG, JS62:273b/2:632–3.

59

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Map 2.1 The Ganga–Brahmaputra Delta Source: Based on Irfan Habib, An Atlas of the Mughal Empire: Political and Economic Maps with Detailed Notes, Bibliography and Index, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1982, 11A and 11B. Note: Map for respresentational purpose only.

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of Arakan in 1617, for instance, was foiled by the impending threat of monsoon showers. Mirza Nathan writes the following about the concern of the Mughal council of war about the approaching wet season: ‘when the rainy season actually begins and blocks all the routes, then whatever quantity of corn, large or small, we have in stock now, will be entirely consumed and men will have to eat men.’17 Fearing that a retreat might not be possible anymore at such a juncture, the commander considered it more prudent to return to safe ground before the rains set in.18 Primarily owing to this centrality of rivers, rains, and floods in the geography of the Delta, wars were usually amphibious.19 Imperial armies initially found it difficult to cope with this idea. In the first two decades of their presence in Bengal, Mughal resources in terms of war-boats were extremely meager. Abul Fazl expressed this sense of illpreparedness of the empire for amphibious warfare vis-à-vis local powers in the 1580s when he wrote: ‘[N]either was there afleet, which is the chief means of making war in that country [guzīn asbāb-i nabard-i ān diyār], whereas the enemy had a large supply of war-boats’.20 The imperial conquest of the cities of Tanda and Rajmahal in western Bengal had pushed their Afghan adversaries southward. Yet, the latter continued to threaten the Mughal foothold in Bengal from their bases in Odisha. This meant that imperial armies could not commit to a push towards the river-infested eastern delta, which the Mughals called Bhati. It was only after Man Singh’s decisive victories in Odisha in 1590–3 and his appointment as the ṣūbadār (governor of a province) of Bengal in 1594 that the Mughals could finally focus on these eastern parts.21 It was mainly at this juncture that under Man Singh’s supervision, imperial armies began to fight using an increasing number of war-boats. By the time

17

BG, JS61:193b/1:408. BG, JS61:193b/1:408. 19 I have used ‘amphibious’ to describe campaigns that would involve the simultaneous use of both land armies and naval forces. The waterbodies the Mughals fought in were usually not seas, but rivers. There were three theatres where amphibious warfare was widespread—the Lower Indus Basin in Sind, the Ganga–Brahmaputra Delta in Bengal, and the Brahmaputra Basin in Assam. 20 AN, 3:479–80/722. 21 Sarkar, History of Bengal, 2:207–15. 18

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Islam Khan Chishti assumed the leadership of this expansionist drive in 1607, the Mughals were using hundreds of them. However, no sooner did Islam Khan’s war-fleets enable the Mughals to finally emerge as the dominant power in the Bengal Delta, than a new threat appeared. Aggression came from the Arakan state of coastal Burma as well as the Portuguese pirates and freebooters settled in coastal Bengal in the south-east.22 The Arakanese traditionally considered south-eastern Bengal to be a part of their dominion. Arakanese rulers Man Raja-kri and Man Khamaung saw the advent of the Mughals in the Bengal Delta as a threat to their own power in the region. Consequently, since 1603—and especially after 1614—the Arakanese organized repeated naval expeditions in these areas to lay claim to these territories and thwart Mughal advance.23 The situation became more complex, and certainly more difficult for the Mughals, when 1620 onwards these Arakanese raids came to be supplemented by naval raids by Portuguese pirates and freebooters, who started combing south-eastern Bengal in search of slaves, food grains, and booty.24 22

For a survey of Mughal activities in coastal Bengal during this period, see Aniruddha Ray, Adventurers, Landowners and Rebels: Bengal, c. 1575–c. 1715 (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt. Ltd, 1998), 83–97. 23 Stephan van Galen, ‘Arakan and Bengal: The Rise and Decline of the Mrauk-U Kingdom (Burma) from the Fifteenth to the Seventeenth Centuries A.D.,’ unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Leiden (2008), 76, 101–7, 113–14, 116–18, 123–5, 127, 153–6, 166; Michael W. Charney, ‘Arakan, Min Yazagyi and the Portuguese: The Relationship between the Growth of Arakanese Imperial Power and Portuguese Mercenaries on the Fringe of Mainland Southeast Asia, 1517–1617,’ SOAS Bulletin of Burma Research 3, no. 2 (2005), 974–1145; Sarkar, History of Bengal, 2:292–5, 302–3, 305, 314, 331–2 Wil O. Dijk, ‘An End to the History of Silence? Dutch Trade in Asian Slaves: Arakan and the Bay of Bengal, 1621–1665,’ IIAS Newsletter 46 (2008), 16. 24 The demand for these slaves was generated by the Dutch, who committed genocide in the Banda Islands in 1621 and needed slave labour to tend their newly occupied nutmeg plantations. (FI, 115–47, see 125. Dijk, ‘An End to the History of Silence?’; Manucci, Storia Do Mogor, 2:109; J.J.A. Campos, The History of the Portuguese in Bengal [New Delhi and Chennai: Asian Educational Services, 1998], especially 157–164; Radhika Chadha, ‘Merchants, Renegades and Padres: Portuguese Presence in Bengal in the

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Both these adversaries were proficient in amphibious warfare. They exploited the terrain of south-eastern Bengal—pierced by a complex meshwork of rivers and covered by forests—to infiltrate the region on their war-boats. The Mughals simply did not know how to tackle these vicious and frequent naval raids. Although they mounted several expeditions against Arakan in the first few decades of the seventeenth century, all of these failed.25 As I have pointed out earlier, the problem once again lay in negotiating the forests that covered the land routes linking Bengal and Arakan as well as in the ever-looming threat of the onset of monsoon showers. In one of the rare cases of a Mughal retreat, Prince Shah Shuja—upon his appointment to the post of the ṣūbadār of Bengal in 1639—shifted the Mughal base from Dhaka westward to Rajmahal. He thereby virtually forfeited control over large parts of south-eastern Bengal.26 Ultimately, it was Shaista Khan who—during his tenure as the ṣūbadār—managed to stall these raids by threatening the Portuguese pirates into an alliance with the empire and conquering Chatgaon with a reorganized war-fleet in 1666.27 These amphibious wars saw the deployment of copious projectile weapons. Both archers and matchlock-men were used by the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,’ unpublished Ph.D. thesis submitted to Jawaharlal Nehru University [2005]; Sarkar, History of Aurangzib, 3:126–32. Also see Atul Chandra Roy, History of Bengal: Mughal Period, 1526–1765 A.D. [Kolkata: Nababharat Publishers, 1968], 171–219; Maurice Collis, The Land of the Great Image, Being Experiences of the Friar Manrique in Arakan [New Delhi and Chennai: Asian Educational Services, 1995], 89–93.) 25 Successive ṣūbadārs launched expeditions to conquer Arakan and to neutralize the naval raids at their base. For example, in 1617, Qasim Khan launched one expedition and in 1621, Ibrahim Khan initiated another. All of these, however, failed. (Roy, Adventurers, Landowners and Rebels, 85–90.) 26 During the entire period of his ṣūbadārī in Bengal between 1639 and 1660, Shuja mostly lived in Rajmahal, while a subordinate officer was posted at Dhaka. (Sarkar, History of Bengal, 2:332.) 27 FI, 115–47, see 114–47; Campos, History of the Portuguese, 164–8; Manucci, Storia Do Mogor, 2:108–10; Francois Bernier, Bernier’s Travels in the Mughal Empire, A.D. 1656–1668, trans. Archibald Constable, (Westminster: Archibald Constable and Company, 1891), 179–82; Sarkar, History of Bengal, 2:377–81; Sarkar, History of Aurangzib, 3:132–40.

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Mughals as well as their opponents to engage each other from a distance. There was also a great deal of artillery that was deployed. In contrast to most other parts of North India, the ubiquity of riverine channels of communication in Bengal allowed Mughal armies to move around heavy artillery with great ease. Imperial armies learnt how to mount cannons on big boats such as ghurābs, presumably from their local adversaries, their boatmen, or Portuguese mercenaries.28 There are numerous references to the exchange of artillery-fire during amphibious engagements. There are also instances of war-boats—with artillery fitted on them—besieging fortified positions on land.29 The most numerous wielders of projectile weapons that Mughal armies deployed were matchlock-men. In the expedition against Pratapaditya of Jessore, for example, the army had 5,000 matchlock-men.30 3,000 were sent against Raja Ram Chandra of Bakla,31 5,000 against the Kuch kingdom,32 and 5,000 against Khwaja Usman of Bokainagar ‘in addition to the matchlockmen of the fleet’.33 In many cases, the number of matchlock-men in Mughal armies exceeded the number of horsemen. In the expedition against the raja of Tripura in the early 1620s, for example, the army included 9,000 matchlock-men and only 6,000 cavalry.34 This general preponderance of projectile weapons in the campaigns in Bengal was owing primarily to the riverine, marshy, and forested terrain, which restricted the movement of the cavalry and thereby curbed its efficacy. More often than not, waterbodies separated opposing armies, precluded the possibility of close combat, and forced them to engage each other from a distance.

28

In the course of the sixteenth century, Portuguese mercenaries and renegades fled the official control of Goa and gravitated towards the Bengal coast in large numbers. A lot of them took up employment first in the armies of local Bengali and Afghan chieftains, and—since early seventeenth century— the Mughals. (Chadha, ‘Merchants, Renegades and Padres’.) 29 The siege of Dhubri is a case in point. See BG, JS60:110b–111a/I:231. 30 BG, JS60:49b/1:121. 31 BG, JS60:53a/I:131. 32 BG, JS60:106a/1:223. 33 BG, JS60:42a/1:102. 34 BG, JS62:231a/2:511.

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The abundance of riverine silt and mud also compelled Mughal armies to engage with a new type of fortress warfare in this region. In the course of their campaigns, they found their Afghan and Bengali adversaries constructing improvised mud fortifications and taking up position inside them. This stood in sharp contrast to the stone forts the Mughals had encountered in the heart of North India. Constructed within a very short period of time mostly by the unskilled cheap labour of the local boatmen, these forts were meant to defend strategic locations commanding riverine communication. They were inexpensive, yet remarkable in their resilience. Built of riverside mud, the walls would not break when hit by cannon shots, as stone walls might; instead, the force would be absorbed by the mud and the shot rendered harmless. Provided with firearms by the early seventeenth century, these mud forts could be defended well even by a small garrison and could be occupied by the besieger only after a great amount of exertion. Indeed, subduing enemy mud forts consumed a great amount of Mughal military resources, especially during their extensive campaigns in eastern Bengal between 1608 and 1612.35 Mughal armies, in turn, were quick to appreciate the military value of this local defensive technology. They started constructing mud forts quite regularly themselves, especially while campaigning in hostile regions. For instance, on their cautious march towards Bokainagar, an imperial army built mud forts to secure their position at every stage (‘qal‘a dar qal‘a rawāna shūdand’).36 It was owing to the realization of the high efficacy of these mud forts in controlling riverine communication that in the second half of the seventeenth century, they started reinforcing important mud forts with brick masonry and lime mortar and installing heavy artillery inside them.37 The French merchant Jean-Baptiste Tavernier saw one such fort ‘with several guns on each side’ at the intersection of the Padma and the 35

See, for example, BG, JS60:6a–6b, 40b–41a, 51a–52b/1:18–19, 97–8, 126–30. 36 BG, JS60:43a/1:105. 37 Ayesha Begum, ‘Mughal Fort Architecture in Bengal with an Introduction to Some Important River Forts,’ Journal of Asiatic Society of Bangladesh 47, no. 1 (2002), 1–24.

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Lakhya rivers near Dhaka during his visit to eastern Bengal in the mid-seventeenth century.38 Finally, the abundance of rivers and forests encouraged Mughal armies to deploy a large number of war-elephants in their campaigns. Militarily, these animals were very effective against enemy war-boats. Mirza Nathan narrates one incident where a group of Afghans charged his army near Khatrabu and in retaliation he marched against them with a contingent of soldiers on elephants. He managed to drive the Afghans away and attack their boats with his elephants, who went ahead to destroy or capsize several boats and crush or drown many Afghan soldiers.39 Elephants were also regularly deployed to demolish enemy mud forts. Since artilleryfire generally proved to be ineffective against mud forts, imperial troops often used this method of direct assault.40 The battle of Uhar (1612) also points to the fact that by the early seventeenth century, Mughal armies had grown accustomed to using elephants to deliver shock charge on the field.41 Finally, they were indispensable in moving troops around and carrying their provisions. In many cases, especially in their early years in the delta, troops were sometimes transported across rivers on the back of elephants. Large numbers of war-elephants also accompanied the armies sent to Arakan. Nathan writes that 200 elephants were included in the army that marched against Arakan in 1617, while another 1,000 accompanied the one dispatched in 1621.42 An army dispatched to invade Tripura included 70 elephants,43 while 300 went with each of the armies sent against both Khwaja Usman of Bokainagar and Raja Parikshit Narayan of Kamrup.44 In terms of both numbers and tactical importance, the Bengal Delta saw a greater prominence of war-elephants than most other parts of North India. 38

Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, Travels in India, trans. V. Ball, 2 vols (London and New York: Macmillan and Company, 1889), 1:127. 39 BG, JS60:33a/1:84. 40 See, for example, BG, JS60:50b–51a/1:124. 41 BG, JS60:67a–73b/1:173–92; TJ, 1:101–4/209–12. 42 BG, JS61:192b/1:405; BG, JS62:273b/2:632. 43 BG, JS62:231a/2:511. 44 BG, JS60:42a, 106a/1:102, 223.

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On the whole, Mughal armies showed remarkable geographical and military adaptability over a period of time. This enabled them to establish themselves as the dominant power of the delta in the course of the seventeenth century. In this, they enormously benefitted from the alliances they were able to forge with various local zamīndārs.45 Yet, the memory of the empire’s struggles with rain, rivers, and floods survived in the collective memory of the region and found interesting cultural expressions in later years. One such instance is an episode narrated by the Bengali poet Bharat Chandra Raygunakar in his eighteenth-century text Annadā-maṅgal—a long Middle Bengali poem aimed at legitimizing and encouraging the worship of Annapurna, the local Bengali goddess of rice.46 He writes that in order to get people to worship her, Annapurna decided to use Raja Man Singh. She thought that if she would first plunge the Mughal ṣūbadār of Bengal into trouble, only to rescue him later, then he was bound to end up worshipping her out of gratitude. The example of the Mughal ṣūbadār would, in turn, inspire others to follow suit. Next, the poem describes in minute detail the nature of distress that engulfed Man Singh’s army once the goddess let her clouds loose. The poet lyrically narrates the darkening of the skies (‘dash dik āṅdhār karilā meghgan’), the strong gales (‘dun hoye bahē ūnapancāsh paban’), the roaring of the clouds (‘haḍhaḍhi megher bheker makmaki’), the cracking of the lighting (‘jhanjhanār jhanjhani bidyut-cakmaki’), and the flooding of the Mughal camp (‘kṅuḍhē ṭhāṭ ḍubilā tāmbutē elō bān’).47 He also describes vividly the struggle of the thousands of soldiers, horses, elephants, camels, cattle, workmen, labourers, and musicians of the imperial army to cope with this deluge and stay afloat. In the end, Man Singh was forced to seek out Bhabananda Majundar48—his local ally and a devotee of Annapurna. At his counsel, the ṣūbadār performed a ritual worshipping the goddess. Immediately, the clouds withdrew and the Mughal army lived to see another day. The poet 45

This is something I will discuss in greater details in Chapter 4. Maṅgal Kābya is a branch of Middle Bengali literature. The composition of Annadā-maṅgal was completed in 1752. 47 Madanmohan Goswami, ed., Bhāratchandra, (New Delhi: Sahitya Academy, 2011), 85. 48 A corruption of mazūmdār—a Mughal revenue officer. 46

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Bharat Chandra concludes by saying, ‘Man Singh Ray worshipped Annapūrnā/And the rain and the storm ended, thanks to the grace of the goddess (Annapūrnā pūjā kailā Mān Siṁha Rāy/dūr hailā jhaḍhbṛishṭi debīr kṛipāy).’49 In turn, this encouraged others—ranging from the common people of Bengal to the Mughal emperor himself—to take to worshipping Annapurna.50 The goddess had succeeded in her plans. Bharat Chandra did not pretend to narrate a historical event. Instead, exploiting Mughal imperial authority to legitimize the worship of the local goddess, he drew upon the very real problems that imperial armies faced while negotiating the natural environment of the delta. Based on these, he devised a literary trope that bore the imprint of the actual struggles of the empire in the region.

THE BRAHMAPUTRA BASIN

The Mughals started expanding into the Brahmaputra Basin right after Islam Khan Chishti’s decisive victories in Bengal between 1608 and 1612. They encountered three states here. From west to east, these were Kuch, Kamrup, and the Ahom kingdoms. By the turn of the sixteenth century, the Mughals had already transformed the Kuch king into a subordinate feudatory. Their hold over his domains was to remain strong on the whole till the early 1660s, with the occasional rebellion being put down viciously. After this, Mughal presence in the region declined gradually till it waned away entirely by the early eighteenth century.51 Their position in Kamrup, which they invaded in 1612–13, proved to be even more 49

Goswami, Bhāratchandra, 86. Translation mine. Goswami, Bhāratchandra, 86–92. 51 AK, 676–94; MM, 39–40/24; Sarkar, History of Bengal, 2:345–6, 376–7; H.K. Barpujari, ed., The Comprehensive History of Assam, Vol. II: Medieval Period: Political, from Thirteenth Century A.D. to the Treaty of Yandabo, 1826 (Guwahati: Publication Board Assam, 1992), 92–8, 104–8; Sudhindra Nath Bhattacharya, A History of Mughal North-East Frontier Policy, Being a Study of the Political Relation of the Mughal Empire with Kuch Bihar, Kamrup and Assam (Guwahati and Delhi: Spectrum Publications, 1998), 95–116, 124–32, 158–63, 251–5, 297–315; Roy, History of Bengal, 145–51. 50

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precarious. Being at the frontier of Assam, successive Ahom kings fuelled insurrections of local chieftains in order to destabilize Mughal authority in the region. After repeated insurgencies and counter-insurgencies, Kamrup slipped entirely away from imperial grip in 1682.52 Compared to these two kingdoms, the Ahom state in Assam proper was a much stronger adversary. The Mughals fought four wars here over a period of seven decades, without reaping any long-lasting benefit. The first Mughal invasion of Assam—undertaken in 1615— ended in a military disaster that involved the annihilation of almost the entire army.53 Following a period of suspension of hostilities for nearly two decades, the second war broke out early in 1636 with an Ahom invasion of Mughal Kamrup. Fortune swung either way repeatedly over the next couple of years. After facing great reverses initially, the Mughals consolidated their hold on Kamrup and led an invasion back into Assam. This, however, proved to be disastrous once again. Following a major naval defeat, the Mughals were forced to conclude the hostilities in early 1639.54 The next big invasion was mounted in 1662 under Mir Jumla, the new ṣūbadār of Bengal. The latter led imperial troops deep into Ahom territory and swiftly occupied the capital city of Garhgaon, which the Ahoms had evacuated. However, soon after this, the Mughal army faced enormous challenges, owing as much to stiff Ahom resistance as to the torrential monsoon rains and the widespread floods they caused. The exhausted army barely managed to struggle its way out of the region and conclude a treaty that 52

KB, 16–26, 52–60; Barpujari, Comprehensive History of Assam, 99–103, 108–26; Roy, History of Bengal, 151–8; Bharat Chandra Kalita, Military Activities in Medieval Assam (Delhi: Daya Publishing House, 1988), 59–75; Bhattacharya, Mughal North-East Frontier Policy, 116–23, 132–48, 163–246, 383–7; Sarkar, History of Bengal, 2:284–8, 328–30; Sarkar, History of Aurangzib, 3:124–5. 53 BG, JS61:187b–91a/1:390–9; AG, 98–100; Barpujari, The Comprehensive History of Assam, 148–52; Bhattacharya, Mughal North-East Frontier Policy, 148–57; Kalita, Military Activities, 75–84; Sarkar, History of Bengal, 2:295–7. 54 SN, 308–19/233–42, 324–6/249–51; AG, 113–19; KB, 33–41; Barpujari, The Comprehensive History of Assam, 152–65; Bhattacharya, Mughal North-East Frontier Policy, 246–50, 256–86; Sarkar, History of Bengal, 2:328–31.

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somehow saved their face.55 The last Mughal offensive against the Ahoms was launched in 1669 under another ṣūbadār of Bengal—Raja Ram Singh. This ended in a Mughal defeat in the battle of Saraighat (1671).56 As the Mughals withdrew from Assam—and eventually lost their territories in Kamrup and Kuch as well—the Ahom kingdom stood as the main power in the region.57 Mughal campaigns in these parts primarily revolved around the control of the Brahmaputra River itself. The main line of advance as well as supply of the armies heading northward from the imperial base of Dhaka was the Dhaka–Sherpur–Ghoraghat–Dhubri route.58 East of Dhubri, it followed the west–east expanse of the river (see Map 2.2). Over the course of the wars, the points of confluence of the Brahmaputra with its various tributaries repeatedly emerged as the key points of military contest. Due to this overwhelming strategic importance of these waterways, imperial armies had to fight amphibious wars in Assam. While pitched battles were rare, there are many examples of sieges undertaken to occupy fortified positions commanding strategic stretches of the rivers. Usually the imperial fleet

55

AG, 158–85; AK, 696–812; AS, 18–23; KB, 61–9; MM, 39–40, 43–4/24, 26–7; TT, 17–135; Barpujari, The Comprehensive History of Assam, 168–96; Bhattacharya, Mughal North-East Frontier Policy, 316–58; Constable, Bernier’s Travels in the Mughal Empire, 171–3; Manucci, Storia do Mogor, 2:90–4; Jagadish Narayan Sarkar, The Life of Mir Jumla: The General of Aurangzeb (Calcutta: Thacker, Spink & Co. Ltd, 1951), 223–83; Kalita; Military Activities, 87–112; S.C. Dutta, The Northeast and the Mughals (1661–1714) (Delhi: D.K. Publications, 1984), 57–95; Sarkar, History of Aurangzib, 3:95–117; Sarkar, History of Bengal, 2:346–50; Roy, History of Bengal, 251–5; Thomas Bowrey, A Geographical Account of Countries Round the Bay of Bengal, 1669 to 1679, ed. Sir Richard Carnac Temple (Cambridge: Hakluyt Society, 1905), 143–4. 56 AG, 204–18; KB, 85–99; AS, 29–30; AB, 48–9; Sarkar, History of Aurangzib, 3:120–4; Bhattacharya, Mughal North-East Frontier Policy, 358–78; Barpujari, Comprehensive History of Assam, 210–34; Kalita, Military Activities, 113–17; Dutta, The Northeast, 96–126. 57 Bhattacharya, Mughal North-East Frontier Policy, 378–88; Roy, History of Bengal, 159–70. 58 Habib, Atlas of the Mughal Empire, 11B, 13B.

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sailed along the River Brahmaputra, with the land army accompanying it along both the banks. The two wings would help each other out in combat. Sometimes assault on a fortified enemy position would be led by the war-fleet, as in the siege of Dhubri in 1613.59 Often a land force would seek to engage enemy war-boats by bombardment, as in the Ahom siege of the Mughal garrison of Hajo in the late 1610s.60 Mughal land armies would have both cavalry and infantry. Boats, on the other hand, carried mostly archers and matchlock-men. As in Bengal, big vessels were mounted with artillery pieces.

59 60

BG, JS60:110b–11a/1:231. BG, JS62:226a/2:495.

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It is unlikely that any technological gap existed between the Mughals and the Ahoms. It has been pointed out that much before the arrival of the Mughals, intelligence about the manufacture and use of firearms had reached these eastern reaches of South Asia from China.61 As a result of these transfers of technology, when the Mughals tried to expand into these parts, they were welcomed by the locals with heavy firepower, both in terms of matchlocks and artillery. Mughal chroniclers note that the Ahom soldiers were good matchlock-men.62 Tavernier also recorded that ‘Mir Jumla brought back from this war [of 1661–3] numerous iron guns’, and that ‘the gunpowder made in that country [was] excellent’.63 Elsewhere he noted that, during the invasion, the King of Assam had greeted the invading Mughal army with ‘many guns, and an abundance of fireworks’.64 The main sphere where Mughal armies struggled was in adapting to the natural environment of the Brahmaputra Basin. Shihabuddin Talish has left behind a graphic description of this struggle in his eye-witness account of Mir Jumla’s campaign in 1661–3. There is no reason to believe that what Talish saw and described was atypical of what imperial troops usually endured in Assam at different points in the seventeenth century. I will discuss 61 Several historians have pointed to the long-standing connection of Bengal, Assam, and their neighbouring areas with Yunnan and Tibet. Ranabir Chakravarti has shown how Tanghan ponies were traded into Assam and Bengal from both Tibet and Yunnan in the early medieval period. It has been argued that Chinese firearms reached these north-eastern reaches of South Asia through these routes. (Ranabir Chakravarti, ‘Early Medieval Bengal and the Trade in Horses: A Note,’ Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 42, no. 2 (1999), 194–211; Sun Lai-Chen, ‘Military Technology Transfers from Ming China and the Emergence of Northern Mainland Southeast Asia (c. 1390–1527),’ Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 34, no. 3 (2003), 495–517; Lorge, The Asian Military Revolution, 118.) 62 TT, 77. 63 Tavernier, Travels in India, 2:277. Tavernier also makes a curious suggestion that gunpowder and firearms had originally been discovered in Assam, from where it had diffused to Pegu, and then to China. Although historically inaccurate, this reflects how the Ahoms were widely seen as being extremely proficient in the use of firearms. 64 Tavernier, Travels in India, 2:279.

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the nature of Mughal problems using this well-documented campaign as a case in point. The Brahmaputra Basin greeted Mughal armies with very thick forests. Any army marching from Bengal into Assam had to literally cut their way through this vegetation on both banks of the river. From Talish’s account, we know that Mir Jumla’s army invaded the Kuch kingdom first to secure its rear before heading eastwards into Assam. Even on its march towards the Kuch region, the army struggled to navigate its way through the forests of North Bengal. Talish remarks that the Kuch ruler understood the strategic benefits of these forests well and he used them to secure himself against the threat of potential invasions.65 In response, the Mughal army cut down a big part of the forests to facilitate their own troop movement following their occupation of the city of Kuch Bihar in late 1661.66 As the army veered eastward towards the Ahom kingdom early in 1662, they encountered ever denser vegetation. Talish gives us an extremely graphic description of Mughal hardships as they made their way through it.67 Much like in Bengal, these difficulties of negotiating ecology were exacerbated by climatic factors. Assam too experiences severe monsoons. Excessive rainfall causes widespread floods annually, even in our own times. In Muntakhabu ’l-Lubāb, Khafi Khan describes the impact of the sudden onset of monsoon rains on the landscape of Assam as well as on the campaigning Mughal army in 1662. The passage gives us a glimpse into the troubles of Mughal armies in these parts. It reads: Though the Khan-i Khanan [Mir Jumla] made many arrangements for capturing the [Ahom] Raja, yet it was found impossible to pursue him owing to the monsoon season, when it rains continuously both night and day for five months in that territory, and the water covers the whole surface of the land, and the roads are completely closed … Armies of clouds, moving like elephants, appeared from the side of every mountain; arrows of raindrops caused the nalas [canals] and the rivers to swell; and the latter, putting on the helmets of waves over their heads, raised noise and tumult in all directions. To sum up: The rivers and the deluge 65 66 67

TT, 10. TT, 14. TT, 17–19.

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of water came forward to give battle on all sides; the whole of the earth was so covered with water that the tracts for marching of men and horse disappeared, and the camp itself was so flooded with water that the tents looked like bubbles on its surface.68

Talish too portrays an apocalyptic picture of the advent of the rains and the flooding of the Brahmaputra and its tributaries.69 He writes that as water inundated much of the land, the various Mughal thānas (military outposts) lost connection with one another. Consequently, the main line of supply, which the thānas were supposed to guard, also became vulnerable.70 While the imperial army struggled to cope with these environmental challenges, the Ahoms seemed to negotiate them very well and even use them to their own advantage. Previously, they had withdrawn to the shelter of the forests and allowed Mir Jumla’s army to march deep into Assam. However, as the floods isolated the Mughal thānas, the Ahoms came out of hiding in their boats. They attacked the marooned thānas at will and cut off the main Mughal supply line. Owing to their isolation, the thānas found it tough to reinforce one another in the face of these attacks. Moreover, the Ahoms also repeatedly used a tactic that the Mughals absolutely dreaded and found most dishonourable—night-attacks.71 They used the cover of darkness to attack imperial outposts and forts, destroy bridges built by the imperial army, and set fire to granaries.72 Describing this situation, Khafi Khan found it hard to hide his sense of frustration. He wrote: ‘The illnatured and blood-thirsty Assamese, who were waiting for such a day, came out of every corner of the hill and the plain, and joining each other made night-attacks on the royal thanas.’73 At the same time, the floods severely restricted the mobility—and hence the efficacy—of the famed Mughal cavalry. Unfamiliarity with the terrain, ecology, and climate also curtailed the scope and effectiveness of their operations.

68 69 70 71 72 73

ML, 2:153/193, 160/199. TT, 69–72. TT, 72–6. TT, 84, 87–102. TT, 93. ML, 2:160/199.

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Meanwhile, with the thānas hit, granaries attacked, and the main supply line from Dhaka cut off, a scarcity of grain struck the imperial camps by the second half of 1662.74 The situation worsened further due to the simultaneous scarcity of food in Dhaka, the launchpad of the Mughal expedition to Assam. This pushed up food prices greatly everywhere. Although Mir Jumla tried to ship grain stores to Garhgaon from his base in Mathurapur, not even a fourth of this grain could be transported due to the sheer unavailability of carriers.75 Meanwhile, the widespread inundation and humidity caused the outbreak of an epidemic, possibly of malaria or cholera. The local inhabitants probably had higher immunity to these diseases while the Mughal army suffered terribly and faced a drastic depletion in their numbers.76 Contemporary writers provide vivid descriptions of the imperial troops reeling under the impact of disease and scarcity of food.77 Faced by crisis on all sides, Mir Jumla concluded a hasty treaty with the Ahoms and scrambled out of Assam with whatever remained of his army. One needs to note that this debacle of 1662–3 was not an isolated phenomenon; rather, contemporary sources indicate that it is representative of the troubles imperial armies had to routinely go through in the course of their campaigns here in the seventeenth century. What can be hardly overemphasized is that the reason for Mughal military setbacks in the region lay as much in their inability to militarily deal with the Ahom tactics as in their failure to negotiate the environmental conditions of the region and the way the Ahoms used the latter to attack the imperial troops.

LOWER INDUS BASIN

Akbar’s armies conquered the Lower Indus Basin over the last three decades of the sixteenth century. One of the longest rivers of Asia, the 74

TT, 107, 113–17. TT, 114. 76 Talish writes that Dileer Khan’s cavalry numbered 1500 at the beginning of the expedition in 1661. By the end of the monsoon in late 1662, the number had been reduced to 400 to 500, that is, one third of the original number. (TT, 111. ML, 2:167–8/204–5.) 77 ML, 2:167–8/204–5; TT, 110–13. 75

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Indus originates in Tibet and flows across the entire length of modern Pakistan to drain into the Arabian Sea (see Map 2.3). South of the Punjab Plains, the river first flows towards the south-west, and then after Sehwan takes a more southward course. Its trajectory is shaped by the rocky ranges to its west, which prevent alluvial expansion of

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Map 2.3 The Lower Indus Basin Source: Based on Irfan Habib, An Atlas of the Mughal Empire: Political and Economic Maps with Detailed Notes, Bibliography and Index, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1982, 5A and 5B. Note: Map for respresentational purpose only.

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the river to a great degree. The river deposits an enormous amount of silt, and over time its lower course has gradually shifted westward. Geographically, the Indus Plains can be differentiated into the western and eastern plains, the former being formed of older alluvium, while the latter being the product of newer deposits. Further south, the delta graduates into the sands of the Rann of Kachchh in modern Gujarat. Unlike the deltas of most other rivers of South Asia, the Indus Delta is a wasteland with the occasional grassland and cultivable zone.78 The most important route of the region is the riparian highway of the Indus itself. It connects the agricultural plains and the manufacturing centres of the Punjab with the ports at the mouth of the river.79 Johannes De Laet observed in 1631: ‘[M]any of these boats ply between Lahore and the trading centre of Tatta in Sinde after the rainy season is over. The voyage takes about forty days. Multhan [sic], Seetpore, Buchur, Rauree [Rohri] are passed on the way.’80 The major land routes closely follow the course of the river. Apart from this, the Lower Indus Basin is also connected with the heart of North India through a few desert trails that pass across the Thar Desert that lies to its east. The most crucial nodal point here is the desert town of Jaisalmer. Three routes from the Indus Basin—from Multan, Bhakkar, and Thatta respectively—converge here and then head eastward to Ajmer.81 Mughal campaigns unfolded here in two phases. In the first instance, the principality of Bhakkar was invaded in 1571.82 The war hinged on the imperial army besieging the fort of Bhakkar.83 The siege proved to be a lengthy one and in three years the Mughals succeeded in making little progress.84 Ultimately, it was the breakout of a serious food crisis and epidemic inside the fort that forced the garrison to open negotiations for a settlement. Distrustful of the intentions of the commanding officers, Sultan Mahmud—the ruler of 78 79 80 81 82 83 84

Spate et al., India, Pakistan and Ceylon, 504–7. Habib, Atlas of the Mughal Empire, 5B. Laet, Empire of the Great Mogol, 51–2. Habib, Atlas of the Mughal Empire, 5B. AN, 2:361–2/526–7; TA, 2:233–4/366–8; TS, 160–3. AN, 2:363/528; TA, 2:234–5/368; TS, 170–1. AN, 3:90–1/127–8; TS, 170–6.

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Bhakkar—apparently petitioned Akbar directly and requested him to send a trusted officer to whom he could surrender the fort. Akbar sent one Mir Gesu. However, before he could reach Bhakkar, Sultan Mahmud passed away. The garrison delivered the fort once he arrived.85 Further downstream, Thatta was attacked in 1591–2. Hostilities began with Mughal forces seizing control of the Lakhi pass near Sehwan, which commanded the principal land route to Thatta.86 Over the next few months, the war took the form of amphibious engagements and sieges at different points along the Indus River between Sehwan and Nasirpur. After a series of amphibious encounters, Jani Beg—the ruler of Thatta—surrendered in 1592. He surrendered the strategically crucial fort of Sehwan to the imperial army and gave the hand of his daughter in marriage to the Khan-i Khanan, the commander of the Mughal forces.87 During the war against Bhakkar and Thatta, the Mughals mainly relied on the riparian highway of the Indus as well as the land route that closely followed the river for transporting its troops and supplies from its bases in the Punjab.88 Aside from cash, food grains, and soldiers, artillery pieces were also shipped down the river, which connected Lahore and Multan—imperial bases of military mobilization—with the theatres of war.89 This main route was supplemented by the rather difficult land routes that passed across the desert. Although not very hospitable, these routes were still used in times of war. Nizamuddin Ahmad mentions Akbar sending reinforcements under Rai Rai Singh through Jaisalmer.90 Abul Fazl mentions Rawal Bhim, the ruler of

85

AN, 3:91/128–9; TA, 2:234–5/368. Nizamuddin says that the garrison contacted Akbar only after Sultan Mahmud had passed away. Mir Gesu was sent thereafter. (TA, 2:301/457.) Also see MT, 2:138; TQ, 200/233–4; TS, 173–6; Srivastava, Akbar the Great, 1:179. 86 Habib, Atlas of the Mughal Empire, 5B. 87 AN, 3:601–3/918–20, 606/925, 608–9/929–31, 613–15/938–40; MT, 369–70, 392; TA, 2:414–17/636–7, 639–41; TF, 2:265–6; TS, 194–206; Richards, The Mughal Empire, 51; Srivastava, Akbar the Great, 1:365; Smith, Akbar, 176–7. 88 See, for example, AN, 3:606/925, 608/929. 89 TA, 2:414–15/637. 90 TA, 2:415/637.

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Jaisalmer, and one Dalpat Rai Singh travelling across these desert trails toward the Lower Indus Basin via Umarkot.91 Jaisalmer had already acknowledged Mughal suzerainty in the 1560s. Now this army also coerced the ruler of Umarkot into recognizing Mughal overlordship, thus securing this land route for the empire.92 The principal interest of the Mughals in waging war on Thatta was to capture the latter’s thriving sea ports such as Lahari Bandar. These were extremely well-integrated with West Asian maritime networks. Thevenot, who visited the western littoral of South Asia in the 1660s, described Thatta in the following words: ‘It is a Country of great Traffick, and especially in the Town of Tatta, where the Indian Merchants buy a great many curiosities made by the Inhabitants, who are wonderfully Ingenious in all kinds of Arts’.93 When the war at Bhakkar began, the Mughals already commanded the flourishing agricultural and manufacturing hinterland of the Punjab Plains. Over the course of the war, they made their way down the Indus River, gaining control of the crucial points that commanded the riparian route—Bhakkar, Lakhi, Sehwan, and Nasirpur—one after the other. The final capitulation of Thatta in 1592 established imperial command over both the ports of the Indus Delta on the one hand, and the principal routes of communication that linked them with the Punjab hinterland on the other. This bore tremendous economic significance for the empire. There were also strategic benefits involved. The command over the Indus highway also gave the empire control over important secondary routes that connected North India with the coveted stronghold of Qandahar in modern Afghanistan. The route that connected Bhakkar with Qandahar through Sibi and Quetta, for example, was a key road for approaching the frontier fortress. As I will discuss shortly, this route was used by Mughal troops during the third invasion of 91

AN, 3:602/919. AN, 3:605/924–5. 93 M. De Thevenot and John Francis Gemelli Careri, Indian Travels of Thevenot and Careri, Being the Third Part of the Travels of M. De Thevenot into the Levant and the Third Part of a Voyage round the World by Dr. John Francis Gemelli Careri, ed. Surendranath Sen (New Delhi: The National Archives of India, 1949), 75. 92

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Qandahar in 1653.94 In addition, a command over Thatta also enabled them to safeguard the mouth of the River Indus from possible Portuguese inroads from Hormuz.95 Like Bengal and Assam, the fact that in the Lower Indus Basin too the war revolved around fighting across riverine spaces made the campaigns amphibious. Pitched battles were scarce. Abul Fazl mentions only one battle, in which a numerically superior Thatta army was defeated by a Mughal force.96 Military contest often hinged on the control over key strategic positions on the river. Here too local armies built temporary forts with riverine mud and sand to defend such positions from invading armies. Abul Fazl describes how Muhammad Jani Beg’s army erected a fort at Nasirpur and made a stand there.97 On another occasion, Jani Beg selected a spot after a lot of contemplation and then ‘on the bank of the Indus, he built a fort, and surrounded it with a deep and broad moat’.98 Abul Fazl narrates that Mughal armies adopted standard siege techniques in response and proceeded ‘after the custom of the [Ottoman] Turks’ by raising up mounds of earth, carrying their batteries towards the fort, and draining the water out of the moat—in other words, digging saps.99 The fact that these forts were located near rivers meant that in the process of the siege, war-boats were as important as traditional methods of siege-craft in threatening the fortifications. What comes out from a look at this type of fortress warfare is that the prime prize in the wars fought in the Lower Indus Basin was control over the river itself. I will return to this point in Chapter 4 again. It suffices to point out here that in the course of the war, temporary fortifications were repeatedly built and occupied in order to wield this control. Wars being amphibious, in the campaigns against Bhakkar in the early 1570s and against Thatta two decades later, Mughal armies 94

SN, 553–54/477, 557/480. This is indicated by an isolated reference by Abul Fazl. (AN, 3:633–4/ 971–2.) 96 TA, 2:416–17/539–640; AN, 3:609/931. 97 AN, 3:602/919. 98 AN, 3:613/938. 99 AN, 3:614/938–9. 95

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had to counter naval attacks and the defenses of their adversaries by fielding war-boats of their own. Much like in Bengal and Assam, these operations too saw projectile weapons play a central role. Both the principalities of Bhakkar and Thatta were well-equipped with artillery and handguns. Abul Fazl, for example, observes that Jani Beg’s army defended the Lakhi Pass with a lot of firepower.100 Both the sides also deployed war-fleets to defend the fortified locations that commanded the riparian highway. Jani Beg, for instance, is mentioned to have fortified a place commanding the pass of Nasirpur on the Indus, and ‘strengthened it using warboats [kashtī-hā-i jangī] and a park of artillery [top-khāna]’.101 In the amphibious engagements that took place, both the armies deployed war-boats, although the Mughal army was vastly outnumbered in this field.102 Nizamuddin says that while on one occasion Jani Beg deployed around a 100 ghurābs, the Mughals managed to come up with only 25.103 There is no evidence to suggest that the Mughals used boats with artillery mounted on them in these campaigns.104 They deployed mainly passenger boats to carry around their troops. The use of projectile weapons was widespread. There were also instances of close-quarter fighting on the river, which must have happened after one side had climbed into the other’s boats.105 Climate played an important role in shaping the course of the campaigns. Just like in Bengal and Assam, Mughal armies had to race, although to a lesser degree, against the looming threat of the onset of the rains in the Lower Indus Basin. Abul Fazl mentions on one occasion that with the Mughal armies besieging the fort of Sehwan,

100

AN, 3:601/918. AN, 3:602/919; TA, 2:414/636. 102 See, for example, AN, 3:602/919. 103 Nizamuddin says that in addition to the 100 ghurābs, Jani Beg sent another 200 boats, which were probably passenger boats carrying soldiers. (TA, 2:414/636.) 104 In fact, there is no evidence to indicate that the Mughals knew how to mount artillery pieces on boats at this point of time. In Bengal and Assam too, we have evidence of this ability of imperial troops only from the early 1600s. 105 See, for instance, AN, 3:602/919. 101

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the soldiers of the garrison ‘were watching for the rains [chashm bar bārish dāsht]’, in anticipation that once the showers start, ‘water will envelop all places [ki āb hama jā firo-gīrad] and the foreign army would be dispersed without an engagement’.106 Later, he again comments on the strengths of the Thatta army and mentions a ‘large fleet of war-boats, and the nearness of the rains’ as two of the prime factors that kept their morale high. In its lower course, the Indus is well known for its propensity to flood during the rainy season even in modern times.107 The Thatta army was clearly hoping that the rains would jeopardize the invasion by the Mughal army—who were quite unfamiliar with the local environment—and force them to withdraw. Since the former commanded a large number of war-boats, it is probable that it hoped to intensify their attacks, using them once the area was flooded. In contrast, the Mughal army seemed keen to bring the war to a close before the rains set in. This race against time must have created additional pressure on their operations. Mughal armies also suffered from serious problems regarding food supplies. In the absence of the grain-supplying nomadic Banjara merchants of South Asia, they were forced to live off the land.108 However, owing to the great aridity of the region and the stiff resistance of the local peasants, they found this very difficult.109 There are several mentions of supplies being sent to the army from Mughal bases in the North Indian heartland.110 However, even this was not easy, since the armies of Jani Beg repeatedly intercepted the main Mughal supply line that followed the course of the Indus.111 In fact, Abul Fazl explicitly points out that one of the main reasons for the Mughal army not

106

AN, 3:605–6. Translation mine. Spate and Learmonth say that high floods often happen in August or September and when Indus floods coincide with high tides, the delta region could get flooded for up to 20 Km inland. (Spate et al., India, Pakistan and Ceylon, 504, 507.) 108 Banjaras were grain-carrying nomadic tribes of medieval and early modern South Asia. I will discuss them and their role in keeping Mughal armies supplied in Chapter 3. 109 AN, 3:614/939. 110 See, for example, AN, 3:614–15/940. 111 AN, 3:608/929. 107

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pressing for more severe terms during the peace negotiations with Jani Beg was the ‘scarcity of provisions’.112 Evidently, by depriving invading Mughal armies of the luxury of living off the land, the ecology of the Lower Indus Basin forced the empire to bring the war to a hastier conclusion than they would have otherwise liked.

THE HIMALAYAS

Created by the prehistoric collision of two continental tectonic plates, the Himalayas are the highest mountain range in the world. They border South Asia all along its north. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Mughal armies campaigned in the western stretches of the Himalayan foothills primarily in two main areas—the Valley of Srinagar in Kashmir and the Kangra region in the modern Indian federal state of Himachal Pradesh. The latter comprised what the Mughals called kohistān-i siwālik (Siwalik Hills). Much of these foothills lay close to—and hence could be easily accessed from—Mughal bases in the Punjab. The hills are divided into several valleys by the Ravi, Beas, Sutlej, and their tributaries, which generally flow towards the south-west.113 The proximity of the imperial city of Lahore from these hills meant that it could be used as a base for mounting expeditions against this region. The first foray into the Himalayan foothills under Akbar happened when a Mughal army besieged the Afghan chief Sikandar Sur in the fort of Mankot in 1557.114 The two forces were quite evenly matched and the deadlock was finally broken after six months when scarcity of grain broke out inside the fort and members of the garrison started deserting. Sikandar Sur surrendered.115 He was pardoned, absorbed into Mughal service, and given land assignments in Kharid and Bihar.116

112

‘fīrozī sipāh az kam āzūqī pazīruft’. (AN, 3:614/940.) Spate et al., India, Pakistan and Ceylon, 452–6; Habib, Atlas of the Mughal Empire, 4A and 4B. 114 AN, 2:51–2/79–81; TA, 2:133/221–2. 115 AN, 2:52/81, 56–9/87–91; TA, 2:133–4/222–3; TQ, 52–5/77–9. 116 AN, 2:59–60/91; MT, 11–12; TF, 2:116. 113

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War broke out again in the hills when Akbar assigned Nagarkot— which belonged to the Rajput ruler Raja Jai Chand—to Raja Birbal in 1573 and sent an army under Husain Quli Khan to wrest the fort.117 Following a difficult siege, the garrison surrendered and paid tribute to the Mughal army. A mosque was built in front of the palace of Jai Chand. Khutba (Islamic sermon delivered at Friday prayers and special occasions) was read and coins were struck in the name of Akbar in the fort.118 In 1594, another expedition was sent, this time against the fort of Bandhu to coerce Bikramjit, the grandson of Raja Ram Chand, into acknowledging Mughal suzerainty and sending regular tributes.119 From Abul Fazl’s narrative, it appears that the Mughal army did not even need to lay siege. It scared the garrison with its raids on the countryside which were under the control of Bikramjit.120 He eventually surrendered and made a formal submission.121 Finally, further inroads were made into the Punjab Himalayas in the early seventeenth century. In 1615, the fort of Kangra was invaded. Five years later, it was taken by Prince Khurram. The besieging army starved out the garrison by enforcing a blockade and forced them into submission in the end.122 Further north, Kashmir and its neighbouring areas became another major target of Mughal expansionism in the mid-1580s.123 The first target was the Valley of Srinagar. It lies to the north-west of the Punjab Himalayas between the Pir Panjal range and the Himalayan Mountains (see Map 2.4). To the north of the Pir Panjal lay Kashmir and the Himalayas. To its south, lay the plains of the Punjab. Climatically, its southern slopes, which face the Punjab, are more closely related to the climate of the plains than the northern ones, which face Kashmir and the Himalayas. Consequently, the southern slopes are wetter and receive the warm air-currents of the

117

AN, 2:370/538; TA, 2:256–7/398–9. AN, 3:36–7/51–2; MT, 2:159–60, 164–6; TA, 2:258–9/401–2. 119 AN, 3:648–9/997. 120 AN, 3:711/1059. 121 AN, 3:711/1059. 122 MJ, 310–17; TJ, 2:318–19/183–6; IJ, 171–4; Beni Prasad, History of Jahangir (Allahabad: The Indian Press Publications Private Ltd, 1973), 287–91; Richards, The Mughal Empire, 109–10. 123 For a brief survey, see Richards, The Mughal Empire, 51. 118

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plains, while the northern slopes are colder, receive snowfall from the west and north-west, and house large coniferous forests. In the early modern period, the principal route into the Valley of Srinagar led from the Punjab Plains up the River Chenab, and passed through Bhimbar and Hirapur.124 It would cross the range at the Pir Panjal Pass. Akbar’s troops invaded Kashmir in 1585. As they struggled their way through the precipitous terrain and the narrow defiles, the ruler Yusuf Chak opened negotiations with the invaders. A deal was struck. 124

Habib, Atlas of the Mughal Empire, maps 3A and 3B; Spate et al., India, Pakistan and Ceylon, 430–1.

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Yusuf left for the imperial court.125 However, Akbar dispatched a bigger force the very next year to push the political victory home and occupy Srinagar.126 In the absence of Yusuf, his son Yaqub rallied a group of the local aristocracy to resist the invasion. At the same time, others variously selected Shams Chak, Haidar Chak, and Husain Chak as their leaders in their struggle against the Mughal attack.127 A decisive engagement took place in one of the passes near Srinagar, in which the Mughals prevailed. Following this, Qasim Khan led his army on a victorious march into the city of Srinagar in October 1586.128 Over time, Mughal armies used Srinagar as a base to occupy some of the surrounding areas. In 1601, an army seized the city of Jammu to the south of the Kashmir valley.129 In 1620, the area of Kishtwar, located to the south-east of Srinagar, was conquered.130 Under Shah Jahan, the Baltistan–Skardu region, which the Mughals called Tibet-i Khurd (Little Tibet) was invaded in 1636–7.131 However, at the end of the day, imperial hold over much of these mountainous areas was quite tenuous. In Kishtwar, for instance, there were repeated insurgencies, indicating that the Mughal state failed to co-opt or destroy many of their political rivals in these parts.132 The main factor that prevented the Mughals from establishing firm control over the regions they conquered or expanding their  operations further emanated primarily from their inability 125

AN, 3:480–1/722–5; TA, 2:401/612–13. AN, 3:496/752–3; TA, 2:403/616. 127 AN, 3:504–6/767–70. 128 AN, 3:505–6/769–71; Smith, Akbar, 172–4; Mohibbul Hasan, Kashmir under the Sultans (Delhi: Aakar Books, 2005), 197–201; P.K. Parmu, A History of Muslim Rule in Kashmir, 1320–1819 (New Delhi: People’s Publishing House, 1969), 267–81; R.L. Hangloo, The State in Medieval Kashmir (New Delhi: Manohar, 2000), 111; Srivastava, Akbar the Great, 1:336, 350. 129 AN, 3:808/1213. 130 IJ, 141–7; MJ, 291–5; Parmu, History of Muslim Rule, 307–11; Prasad, History of Jahangir, 282–6; TJ, 2:295–6/135–8. 131 SN, 287–93/213–18. Bernier, who visited Kashmir with Aurangzeb in the 1660s, records how the emperor told him about this expedition. (Constable, Bernier’s Travels, 422; Parmu, History of Muslim Rule, 315–17.) 132 TJ, 2:311–12, 345/170–1, 234. 126

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to negotiate the mountainous terrain and its steep roads. Crossing the crucial Pir Panjal pass, which linked the Punjab Plains with the Valley of Srinagar, could prove to be extremely dangerous itself. Abul Fazl narrates one incident from 1594, when around 115 porters lost their lives in what seems to have been an avalanche and landslide near the Pir Panjal Pass.133 Bernier narrates another accident from the time he accompanied Aurangzeb’s army on its way to Kashmir in the 1660s. He narrates that not being able to climb the steep slope, a long line of elephants tumbled on each other, fell down the cliff, and perished.134 There were several variations of this main route and the final choice for an advancing army usually depended on the immediate condition of the roads and how badly they were covered with snow.135 Even after the initial conquest of Srinagar, difficulties with negotiating the terrain persisted. They proved to be a great headache especially in the face of the recurrent insurgencies by the defeated Kashmiri aristocracy. In the Kishtwar expedition of 1620, the Mughal army had to leave almost all their horses behind due to the rugged and steep nature of the ground.136 Contemporary sources repeatedly acknowledge that the terrain played a key role in the failure of certain expeditions. On one occasion, for instance, Abul Fazl blames the ‘strength of the place [where Yusuf Chak was hiding], and the difficulties of the roads [az ustuwārī-i jā wa dushwārī-i rāh]’ as reasons for their failure to apprehend him.137 In many cases, thick forests also blocked the path of marching armies. In the case of the expedition to Nagarkot, Nizamuddin Ahmad narrates that due to thick forest cover in a particular stretch, a group of workmen and infantrymen had to proceed in front of the main army, cutting the forests down and creating a clear path ahead.138 133

AN, 3:648/997. Constable, Bernier’s Travels, 407–8. 135 See, for example, AN, 3:539–40/821. 136 Motamad Khan writes, ‘chūn rāh bar āmad asp na-būd chand asp bajihat-i iḥtiyāt̤ ham-rāh girifta aspān-i sipāhī rā dar kull bāz gardānīda ba-Kashmīr firistād.’ (IJ, 142.) Also see TJ, 2:295/135–6. 137 AN, 3:522/796. 138 TA, 2:256–7/400. 134

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The extreme climate of the region did not make things any easier. One of the most important adaptations that imperial armies had to do was to alter the campaigning season. In other parts of North India, campaigns would usually be undertaken in the drier and cooler months between October and March. In contrast, no campaign could be undertaken in the mountains in this period owing to snowfall and very low temperatures. The first army that was dispatched into Kashmir had to halt at Bhimbar till the roads became clear of snow and only then could they advance.139 Although the army made their way into Kashmir, Abul Fazl notes that they were ‘exceedingly harassed by the severe cold, the dearness of provisions, the difficult roads and the rain and snow’.140 When Qasim Khan led his army into the valley in 1586, once again there were immense difficulties caused by snowfall. Abul Fazl writes that ‘the snow increased and many animals died of excessive cold’.141 On another occasion, he writes how in the middle of a fight between a Mughal detachment and a Kashmiri army, a storm of rain and snow made things infinitely more difficult for the invaders.142 Abul Fazl mentions repeatedly that the imperial troops ‘were distressed by the snow and sleet’ and a part of them was eager to turn back.143 Even after Srinagar had been occupied, Mughal commanders showed serious unwillingness to campaign braving the bitter winter. On one occasion, Qasim Khan failed to persuade his commanders to go and put down an insurgency staged by Yaqub, and had to go himself instead. Abul Fazl observes wryly, ‘[A]pparently these delicate men of hot countries [garm-serī-ān-i ra‘nā] were averse to campaigning in a cold country [diyār-i sard] and did not like to traverse defiles.’144 The imperial biographer did not take kindly to the fact that the harsh climatic conditions did not spare even the emperor. During his march into the valley in 1589, Akbar and his army underwent a lot of hardships. One passage that describes his crossing of the 139 140 141 142 143 144

AN, 3:480/722–3. AN, 3:480/724. AN, 3:504/766. AN, 3:504/767. AN, 3:505/769. AN, 3:515/786.

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Pir Panjal pass is worth quoting here at length to illustrate the point. Abul Fazl exclaims: The walking was over snow. Shall I describe the severity of the cold [sakhtī-i sarmā]? Or shall I tell of the depth of the snow [shigarfī-i barf ], and of the bewilderment of the natives of India [sarāsīmagī-i Hindī nizhādān]? Or shall I describe the height of the pass [bulandagī-i girīwa], or speak of the narrowness of the path [tangī-i rāh], or of the heights and hollows of this stage [nishīb wa farāz-i īn maḥrala]?… While crossing, it snowed and hailed … When the station was reached, it snowed heavily for an hour. Every one of those who were coming behind, and who on that day showed foresight and turned back, arrived at a comfortable place. Some inexperienced persons who went on rapidly lost their lives on account of the snow and rain [barf wa bārān].145

In the context of the Mughal invasion of Skardu and Baltistan in 1636–7, Inayat Khan wrote that the warm season there did not extend beyond two months, after which ‘the passes would become closed with the snow (barf-i rāh-hā rā masdūd sākhta) and return would be rendered impracticable (murāja‘at muta‘zzir mī-gardad).’146 The aridity of winter and the lack of provisions would hasten the process of destruction of the trapped army. Consequently, the looming threat of harsh winters acted as a perpetual fear for Mughal armies. In turn, this decisively shaped the planning and execution of campaigns as well as the course of imperial expansion in this part of the subcontinent. Supply was another problem. Cultivation is limited in Kashmir.147 Outside the Valley of Srinagar, agriculture is scarce. Under such circumstances, it was difficult to keep huge armies supplied. In the context of the Mughal invasion of Baltistan and Skardu, Inayat Khan describes the region as completely barren. Without the Banjara network to support them, the Mughal army that invaded Baltistan in the early seventeenth century had to carry with it all the provisions

145

AN, 3:540–1/823. SN, 290/215. 147 Even in mid-twentieth century, only a fifth of the total area was under cultivation. (Spate et al., India, Pakistan and Ceylon, 434.) 146

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for both soldiers and animals.148 This inevitably slowed them down and limited the scope and efficacy of the expedition. One way that imperial troops tried to negotiate the hurdles posed by the unfamiliar environmental conditions of the Himalayan region was by eagerly seeking out local allies and collaborators. This was especially true in Kashmir. At a point, when the march of Qasim Khan’s army was being delayed due to the difficulties of travelling over the mountainous roads, he sent an advance party in front of the main army to try to rally the Kashmiri chieftains. Describing his strategy, Abul Fazl writes: ‘[T]he first thing to do was to raise their hopes by princely favours, and then march rapidly into the city [of Srinagar], and beat high the drum of victory.’149 This bore fruit. Several chieftains of the passes [rāh-bānān-i buzurg kutal] came to greet the imperial army and provided their support.150 When Akbar journeyed towards Kashmir in 1589, once again several local hill chieftains came and offered their loyalty.151 The support and assistance of this group must have been crucial to the Mughal armies negotiating the unfamiliar terrain, ecology, and climate of the region. Owing to the broken mountainous terrain, imperial forces hardly got to use their favourite form of military engagement—the pitched battle—in the Himalayan region. Much like the landform of the forested highlands of Central and Western India, the foothills of the Himalayas offered the local polities plenty of naturally defensible locations which they could fortify and defend easily. Due to this proliferation of fortified locations, war revolved much more around sieges than battles. This was especially true of the Punjab Himalayas. Mughal adversaries had ample scope of not meeting Mughal troops face to face, but rather catch them on the wrong foot. In Kashmir, local insurgents avoided engaging Mughal armies on the field and preferred to launch surprise attacks on imperial bases at night or assault their armies while they were struggling through narrow passes and steep defiles.152 In many cases, they occupied strategic 148 149 150 151 152

SN, 293/218. AN, 3:503/766. AN, 3:503/764. AN, 3:540/822. Hasan, Kashmir under the Sultans, 223–6.

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elevated ground and attacked Mughal armies as they passed down below. In one such instance, a group of insurgents showered arrows and hurled stones at a Mughal army that was descending down a slope. Abul Fazl writes that ‘owing to the hurry [az nā ba-hangāmi], the narrowness of the defile [tangī wa nā-hamwārī], and the slipperiness of the road [lakhshīdagī-i rāh], men lost heart and fell, one on top of the other’.153 The insurgents took advantage of this debacle and intensified their attacks. This incident claimed the lives of almost 300 Mughal soldiers.154 Just like in Assam, in Kashmir too night-attacks proved extremely effective as a means of local resistance. The Mughal garrison at Srinagar became a recurrent target of these attacks in the immediate aftermath of the imperial conquests.155 Failing to catch their adversaries on level ground, Mughal operations had to focus on occupying forts. As the cases of Mankot and Nagarkot exemplify, sieges in the hills followed the usual course of building the lines of circumvallation and cutting off traffic to and from the fort. Saps would be dug and carried forward up to the fortifications. In the sieges of Kutila and Nagarkot, imperial armies managed the extremely difficult task of transporting siege artillery over the hilly terrain and deployed them to much effect.156 In fact, alongside the siege of Ranthambhor discussed in Chapter 1, these two were the only sieges where gunpowder artillery played a decisive role under Akbar. However, these were exceptions rather than the norm. The terrain—over which transporting even soldiers and animals usually proved to be extremely challenging—prevented the Mughals from transporting or deploying much artillery in the course of their campaigns. It seems that in the Punjab Himalayas in particular, they were greeted by garrisons that had already amassed a lot of firepower—both artillery and handguns. In the context of the siege of Mankot, Abul Fazl writes, ‘[T]he adversary guarded the fort, and by the force of their cannons and muskets [ba-ẓarb-i top wa tufang] allowed no one to come close to the fort.’157 Narrating the 153 154 155 156 157

AN, 3:522/797. AN, 3:522/797. See, for example, AN, 3:515–16/787. TA, 2:258–9/400–1. AN, 2:52. Translation mine.

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siege of Kutila, Nizamuddin describes how the garrison ceaselessly fired bullets, stone-shots, and arrows on the Mughal army.158 From contemporary accounts it thus appears that there indeed was a technological difference between the Mughals and their adversaries in these Himalayan sieges, but it usually worked against the empire. The fact that local powers had managed to transport artillery to their forts beforehand in spite of the nature of the terrain, indicates that it might have been their greater familiarity with local environmental conditions that helped create this difference. QANDAHAR

The fort of Qandahar is located in the southern part of modern Afghanistan (see Map 2.5). In the early modern period, it marked the frontier between the Mughal and the Safavid Empires. Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the fort repeatedly changed hands between these two neighbours. The area became a zone of major conflict between 1648 and 1653. Full scale war began in December 1648, when the Safavid emperor Shah Abbas II besieged the fort and occupied it, alongside several neighbouring strongholds such as Bust and Zamindawar.159 The reigning Mughal emperor Shah Jahan responded by sending three expeditions over the next five years to retake the fort.160 Prince Aurangzeb led the first two expeditions in 1649 and 1652, while Prince Dara Shikoh commanded the third in 1653.161 None of them, however, succeeded in making much

158

TA, 2:258/400. AS, 3:65–9; SN, 488/412, 417–21. 160 The Safavids had earlier taken advantage of the premature death of Humayun and seized Qandahar in 1558. AN, 2:78–9/120–1. However, they lost it to the Mughals in 1595. Immediately after the accession of Jahangir, they mounted an abortive expedition to recover the fort. (TJ, 1:33, 41/70–1, 86.) 161 For the 1649 expedition, see AS, 3:70–97, 99–104; SN, 491–2/415–16, 502–5/426–9, 508–18/433–42. For the 1652 expedition, see AS, 3:137–50; SN, 539–48/462–72, 550/474. For the 1653 expedition, see AS, 3:155–75; SN, 553–9/477–82, 561–6/484–9, 568–71/491–4. Jadunath Sarkar provides us with the most detailed analytical account of the first two sieges under Prince Aurangzeb. (Sarkar, History of Aurangzib, 1:138–69.) 159

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Map 2.5 Qandahar Source: Based on Irfan Habib, An Atlas of the Mughal Empire: Political and Economic Maps with Detailed Notes, Bibliography and Index, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1982, 2A and 2B. Note: Map for respresentational purpose only.

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of an impression on the Safavid garrison, which defended the fort doggedly. In the end, when Dara Shikoh abandoned the third siege and headed back, the Mughals lost Qandahar forever. For the Mughal armies, reaching Qandahar from North India was not easy. This is primarily owed to the complex landform of the region. The Lower Indus Basin in modern Pakistan is bounded on its west by chains of rugged mountains, the most important junction of which lies in the inter-montane basin of Quetta. From here, the Kirthar Range runs southwards. Near the Makran coast, they run westward in a west–east alignment. Collectively, the Kirthar Range separates the Lower Indus Basin from the arid hills and plains of Baluchistan, which extends westward to Qandahar and the Iranian Plateau.162 North of Quetta, the Toba Kakar and Sulaiman Ranges run northwards till the Gomal Pass. Due to the pressure of the Eurasian plate from the north and west, and the Indian plate from the south, these ranges are greatly twisted and constitute a somewhat arcuate pattern between the Bolan and Gomal Passes.163 There were three main routes which connected Qandahar with North India in the seventeenth century. The principal one first passed north-westward from Lahore to Kabul, and then south-westward from Kabul through Ghazni. This was the route Mughal armies primarily used in the course of their three invasions of Qandahar.164 The second road passed from North India westward through the towns of Multan, Dera Ghazi Khan, and Sakhi Sarovar, went across the Sulaiman mountain range, and then headed westward through Duki and Pishin.165 This route was shorter, but the terrain was rugged and there were few towns to the west of the Sulaiman range. Tavernier observed in the mid-seventeenth century that although it was shorter, ‘the caravan scarcely ever [took] it, because from Kandahar to Multan there [was] nothing but deserts almost all the way, and because one

162

Spate et al., India, Pakistan and Ceylon, 480–9. Spate et al., India, Pakistan and Ceylon, 489–91. 164 Habib, Atlas of the Mughal Empire, maps 1A–B. 165 Deloche, Transport and Communications, 1:24–9; Habib, Atlas of the Mughal Empire, 1A–B, 2A–B. Also see Laet, Empire of the Great Mogols, 69–70. 163

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[marched] sometimes for three or four days without finding water’.166 The comparatively hospitable terrain of and the presence of several towns on the Kabul route ensured uninterrupted supply of food and water for itinerant caravans and armies. The third route started from Bhakkar, which could either be reached by travelling down the Indus River from the Mughal base at Multan or by overland routes that ran from the Delhi–Agra area through the desert cities of Jodhpur and Jaisalmer. After crossing the Indus, the route headed north-westward through Sibi, Dadhar, and the Bolan to merge with the Multan– Qandahar route at Pishin.167 During the 1653 expedition, Shah Jahan had artillery shipped to Qandahar by this route. It was brought from Lahore down the Indus, disembarked at Bhakkar, and then transported by the abovementioned route through Sibi.168 Further south, the arid conditions of Baluchistan and the Makran coast, together with the almost continuous Kirthar ‘wall’, which is broken only by a few gorges, meant that the routes through this region were not usually taken by campaigning armies.169 The rugged terrain of this entire region and the fact that many of the roads would remained covered with snow for the better part of the year posed a serious challenge for the transportation of armies and their equipments. During the first expedition, for instance, the army under Prince Aurangzeb faced grave difficulties in their initial march from Multan to Kabul itself. Upon being warned by an advance party that the roads ahead were completely covered with snow, the main army was forced to select a different—and more rugged and difficult—route. Once the army reached Kabul, they had to wait there for several days to raise a body of workmen and road-builders from the neighbouring areas to level the roads ahead for the army to proceed.170 166

Tavernier, Travels in India, 1:90. For a description of the Kabul route, see Tavernier, Travels in India, 1:91. 167 Deloche, Transport and Communications, 1:24–9; Habib, Atlas of the Mughal Empire, 1A–B, 2A–B. 168 SN, 553–4/477, 557/480. 169 The two prominent exception to this tendency were one division of Alexander’s withdrawing army in the fourth century bce, and the Arab invasion of Sind in the eighth century ce. (Spate et al., India, Pakistan and Ceylon, 480–2, 487.) 170 SN, 502/426.

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This difficulty in reaching Qandahar created a technological gap between the two sides in the early phase of the war. Safavid firepower increased dramatically once they supplemented their own artillery resources with what the fort already contained. Contemporary Mughal texts repeatedly mention the heavy deployment of both handguns and artillery by the Safavid garrison. Inayat Khan points out that the Safavid garrison had ‘all the appliances for standing a siege [pur āzūqa wa dīgar asbāb-i qal‘a-dārī], such as cannons and matchlocks. They also possessed a great quantity of heavy guns [top-hā-i kalān], as well as skillful and active gunners [top-andāzān-i māhir chālāk]’.171 During the third siege, the Mughals failed to storm the fort even after being able to breach the fort ramparts due to heavy firing by the Safavids. Describing Safavid firepower, Muhammad Salih Kambo writes in ‘Amal-i Ṣāliḥ: The shower of shots from the booming cannons rained down like fiery hailstorm on the field and near the foot of the fort and gave no respite to the besiegers [az rag-i ātish-bār-i top-hā-i khuroshān ghalūla mānand zhāla-i atishīn ba-bārish dar āwarda dar maidān gāh wa pāy qal‘a kasī rā furṣat sar bar-dāshtan namī-dād]. Inspite [sic] of this, the courageous soldiers braved the firing of cannons and matchlocks, and rushed to the foot of the fort. But since the fort was extremely strong and the garrison was well-stocked with firearms and other defensive equipment, the efforts of the valiant soldiers did not bear fruit [ḥiṣār kamāl matānat wa istiḥkām dāsht wa ba-ālāt wa adawāt-i qal‘a-dārī wa ātish-bāzī ārāsta wa āmada būd sa‘y wa talāsh jān-bāz-ān sūdī namī dād].172

Inayat Khan’s narrative is punctuated with phrases such as: ‘heavy fire began to pour down upon them from the fortifications [tufang wa ḥuqqa chādar-i naft-ālūd ātish gīrifta, az qal‘a shurū‘ dar bārīdan gīrift]’, ‘[Mughal soldiers] gallantly exposing themselves within range of the guns and matchlocks, many quaffed the sharbat of martyrdom [khūd rā ma‘raf-i top wa tufang dar-āwarda, sharbat-i mamāt chashīdand]’, ‘those who had rushed forward from Ghairat Khan’s entrenchments were either killed or maimed, owing to the blazing forth of guns

171 172

SN, 511/435–6. Also see SN, 548/471. AS, 3:148. Translation mine.

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and matchlocks fired on them from three sides [mardumī ki az t̤arf-i malchār-i Ghairat Khan dawīda būdand, ba-sabab-i raushan shūdan roz wa bisyārī top wa tufang ki az sih jānib mī-zadand].’173 This was sharply contrasted by the state of Mughal firepower.174 Matchlock-men were there in substantial numbers no doubt; all of the three imperial armies had an infantry numbering around 10,000, comprising matchlock-men, rocketeers, and so on. However, the main problem lay in the fact that the rugged terrain made it extremely difficult to transport artillery overland from the distant Mughal bases in North India. Consequently, in the first siege, Aurangzeb’s army reached Qandahar without any siege artillery at all. Inayat Khan points out that the first army did not have any ‘heavy ordinance [top kalān]’ or ‘clever artillerymen [top-andāz-i khūb]’ who could be either ‘capable of demolishing the parapets with their fire [ki ba-ẓarb ān kungura rā wirān sākhta] or preventing the enemy’s gunners and matchlock-men from discharging their pieces [top-chī wa tufang-chī rā az andākhtan-i top wa tufang bāz dārad]’. He highlights this as the prime reason behind the failure of the first siege.175 During the second siege, the imperial army sought to solve this problem to some extent by transporting seven artillery pieces in all [jumla haft top-i kalān] from Kabul.176 However, none of them managed to create an impact on the fortifications. Muhammad Salih Kambo narrates that out of these seven, ‘two were damaged due to the stupidity of the unskilled artillerymen, who poured excessive gunpowder in them while firing [do ẓarb az bī-wuqūfī-i top-andāzān-i nā-kardakār ki bārūt ziyāda az wazn-i muqarrar rekhta mī-andākhtand az kār raft]. The five remaining ones failed to make any impact owing to the poor aim of the gunners [panj ẓarb-i dīgar ba-sabab-i ānki top-andāzān-i qadr-andāz ham-rāh na-būdand muwāfiq mudda‘ā kārgar namī uftād]’.177 It was finally in the third campaign that the Mughal forces managed to close this technological gap. Along with receiving shipments again from Kabul, additional artillery was 173 174 175 176 177

SN, 568–9/491–2. Sarkar, History of Aurangzib, 1:145–6. SN, 511/436. AS, 3:148. AS, 3:148. Translation mine.

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transported from Lahore by the Lahore–Multan–Bhakkar–Sibi– Dhadhar route.178 It is only in the closing stages of the third siege that Mughal artillery finally was able to make some impact on the proceedings.179 However, even this could not solve the inherent problem of the sheer distance between Qandahar and Mughal bases in North India. On the one hand, Mughal armies had to carry with them all the gunpowder and cannon balls that they might need. On the other, the more they carried, the heavier their burden and slower their speed became. Consequently, the amount that would allow them to move faster—and devote enough time to the actual siege—as well as make an impact on the fortifications had to be optimum, just about enough to last them for five months. However, this meant that they would have to withdraw after five months. All of these points are borne out clearly and repeatedly in contemporary sources. For instance, writing about a later stage of the 1653 campaign, one chronicler observes: ‘At this point, the siege had already been protracted for four months, and the supply of lead, gunpowder, and cannon balls now began to fail.’180 Elsewhere he writes: ‘Ultimately, as the duration of the siege of Qandahar had extended beyond five months, the winter began to set in. All the lead, gunpowder and cannon balls were expended; and neither was there any forage left in the meadows, nor provisions with the army.’181 The last few words of the lines quoted here point to some of the other problems that the onset of winter around October triggered. The area around Qandahar is economically impoverished. When the first invasion was launched, a detachment was sent ahead of the main army to prevent the Safavid garrison from carrying away all the standing crops from the fields into the fort.182 Even the Persian army under the Safavid Shah, which—unlike the three Mughal armies—had succeeded in seizing the fort of Qandahar, had to curtail its stay there owing to a ‘severe shortage of forage for the horses and similar scarcity 178 179 180 181 182

SN, 557/480, 562/485, 568/491. SN, 568–70/491–3. SN, 568/491. SN, 571/493. SN, 502/427.

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for the troops [dawābb-i lashkar fiqdān-i ‘alaf aks̤ar talaf wa qaḥt̤-i ghalla ẓamīma-i ān gardīda]’.183 During winter, the area becomes even more arid and inhospitable. One of the main factors forcing Mughal armies to withdraw from Qandahar repeatedly was the increased scarcity of forage and other supplies at the onset of winter.184 Writing about the first siege, Inayat Khan notes that by September, the army started getting wary about the approach of winter. Explaining the reason for Aurangzeb’s decision to lift the siege, he writes: ‘[A]s the winter was now close at hand and forage had become unattainable, the Prince [Aurangzeb] did not deem it expedient to delay any longer.’185 Winter posed another serious threat. Apart from the extremely low temperatures, the onset of winter also meant that the roads of return to North India would be blocked due to snowfall. Some of the roads leading to Qandahar remain covered with snow till April. After a gap of a few months, snowfall again starts by October. The author of ‘Amal-i Ṣāliḥ points out that the surrender of the fort of Qandahar by its Mughal qal‘a-dār in the winter of 1648–9 was influenced by his knowledge of the fact that owing to excessive snow blocking the routes to Qandahar from both Kabul and Multan, there was no chance of reinforcements arriving from North India.186 The window of the four to five warmer months between May and September was the only time Mughal armies had to complete the campaign.187 The situation was very similar for Kabul and the regions to the north of it. Ishwardas Nagar reminds us that ‘in that region [Kabul] in winter due to heavy snowfall, all roads [were] blocked. Due to intense cold the people [had] to undergo great privation’.188

183

SN, 497/421. SN, 518/442. 185 SN, 518/442. 186 ‘dānista ki dar zamistān ba-sabab-i kis̤rat barf taraddud az rāh-i Kabul wa Multan muta‘azzir ast.’ AS, 3:66. 187 In the first expedition, the main army reached Qandahar on 26 May 1649 and decamped on 15 September 1649. On the second campaign, it reached on 12 May 1652 and set off in late July 1652. On the third campaign, the dates were 13 May 1653 and 7 October respectively. (SN, 503/427, 518/442, 545/469, 548–50/472–4, 563/485, 571/493.) 188 FA, 103. 184

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In sum, while Mughal armies managed to close the technological gap that separated them from the Safavids by the third siege and also demonstrated their prowess on the battlefield, they still found the environmental challenges insurmountable.189 The Persians were much more familiar with the arid conditions and snowy winters of Qandahar. It was probably for this reason that Shah Abbas II had seized the fort during winter, being sure that no Mughal reinforcement would be able to relieve the garrison owing to the snows. The Mughals realized by 1653 that reaching the distant fort, prosecuting a difficult siege against a powerful adversary, and returning back to their bases in time was probably unachievable for them. Perhaps this is why even after succeeding his father as the emperor in 1558, Aurangzeb never made a bid for Qandahar again.

BALKH AND BADAKHSHAN

I began the present chapter with an incident that transpired in the course of the Mughal invasion of Balkh in 1646. It is time to return to this campaign in this final section of this chapter. One of the most ambitious as well as disastrous of Mughal expansionist adventures, this campaign has attracted the attention of several historians, who have studied it from various perspectives. Athar Ali has mainly investigated the motives behind the expedition.190 Richard Foltz also seeks to uncover the motives, but also provides us with a detailed account of the political and diplomatic events in the process.191 Finally, the most relevant study for us comes from Jos Gommans, who provides a detailed account of the military processes.192 In this section, I  contribute to this body of work by exploring the role of the natural environment of Balkh in shaping the course of the campaign. The two targets of this expedition—Balkh and Badakhshan— both lay to the north of the northernmost Mughal base of Kabul (see Map 2.6). The geographical setting of this area around Kabul 189

SN, 512–18/436–41. Ali, ‘The Objectives behind the Mughal Expedition’. 191 Foltz, ‘The Mughal Occupation of Balkh 1646–1647,’ Journal of Islamic Studies 7, no. 1 (1996), 49–61. 192 Gommans, Mughal Warfare, 179–87. 190

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is complex. The landscape is dominated by the several ranges running down from the complex knot formed by the Hindu Kush, the Karakoram Ranges, and the Pamir Plateau. In fact, the entire region to the west of the Punjab Plains is interspersed with rugged ranges and deep valleys. The Kabul Valley lies to the north-west of this region. The Safed Koh Range, the Hindukush, the Salt Range, and their associated elevations dominate the landscape between the western part of the Punjab Plains and the Kabul Valley. Thus the terrain is extremely broken and dominated by hills and ravines, making the region particularly difficult to navigate and control for a power based in the plains.193 The main route connecting North India with Kabul passed north-westward from Lahore, crossing the Chenab at Wazirabad, the Jhelum near Rohtas, and the Indus at Attock. It then proceeded further through the Peshawar Valley and Jalalabad. Beyond Kabul, this route ran northward to Central Asia.194 Kunduz—the main town of Badakhshan—could be reached from Kabul by two roughly northward routes, one through Ghori, another by the Panjshir Range. From Badakhshan, two routes headed westward to Balkh, one from Ghori and another form Kunduz. They met each other near the desert town of Khulm and proceeded further westward through Mazar-i Sharif to reach Balkh. An alternate route through the Bamiyan area connected Balkh directly with Kabul.195 Following the quick conquest of both Badakhshan and Balkh in 1646 and the even quicker withdrawal of Prince Murad—the commander of the army—back to Kabul, Shah Jahan hurriedly sent his commander, Allami Sadullah Khan to take charge of matters there.196 Over the next several months, Mughal forces remained busy warding off attacks on their forts by the Uzbegs and their allies on the one hand, and trying to forge alliances with some of the tribal groups and local chieftains on the other. Apprehensive of things reaching a stalemate, Shah Jahan sent Prince Aurangzeb early in 1647 to complete 193

Spate et al., India, Pakistan and Ceylon, 489–92. Habib, Atlas of the Mughal Empire, 1A–B, 4B. Laet, Empire of the Great Mogol, 49–50, 54–6. 195 Habib, Atlas of the Mughal Empire, 1A–B. 196 BL, 2:559–64; SN, 430–2/357–9. 194

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the process of conquest.197 In the following months, the prince led the Mughal resistance against persistent Uzbeg attacks. However, over 1647, the Mughals gradually came to grasp the impossibility of holding onto their possessions in Balkh and Badakhshan in the face of dogged resistance by the Uzbegs and their allies.198 Eventually, the Mughals considered it best to hand the authority over the region back to Nazar Muhammad Khan and head back. The greatest military challenge that imperial armies faced in Balkh–Badakhshan was the way their adversaries deployed steppe nomadic cavalry tactics that revolved around mounted archery, enveloping tactics (taulqama), and attacking the Mughal flanks and rear.199 Using evasive methods, their mounted archers engaged the imperial forces from a distance. Mughal chroniclers describing these campaigns frequently refer to the Uzbegs ‘swarming around the Mughal army like locusts [ba-bushābih mūr wa malkh jam‘ āmda]’, or hanging around the flanks of a Mughal army on the march and engaging them from a distance.200 There are repeated references to Uzbegs and their allies discharging a ‘flight of arrows’ and a ‘shower of arrows’ on Mughal armies and then retreating when pursued.201 Inayat Khan complained that these foes refused to draw up in a proper battle line [jang-i ṣaff na-kard] and only offered a fight while fleeing [jangī bagurez mī-kardand].202 As I observed in Chapter 1, this kind of evasive mounted tactic was an integral part of Babur’s military strategy at the time of his invasion of North India more than a century back. Yet, there is no evidence to show that the Mughal army deployed much mounted archery in their campaign in Balkh. They mainly sought to combat the Uzbeg attacks by deploying heavy cavalry charges, war-elephants, and matchlock-fire. Given chase, the Uzbegs would retreat rapidly, 197

BL, 2:668–71; SN, 444–5/370–1; Sarkar, History of Aurangzib, 1:97. BL, 2:671–7, 686–708; SN, 446–8/372–92; Sarkar, History of Aurangzib, 1:99–106. 199 Gommans also discusses this in details and his conclusions are similar to mine. (Gommans, Mughal Warfare, 185.) 200 SN, 465–6/389, 390. 201 See, for example, SN, 463–4/387–8. 202 SN, 463–4/387. 198

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drawing the Mughal units away from their main army and military bases.203 The thin density of troops stretched over a largely unfamiliar land between Kunduz and Balkh meant that imperial armies would usually shy away from pursuing these withdrawing enemy forces beyond a point. Imperial matchlock-men and rocketeers were often more effective—primarily owing to their large numbers and projectile weapons—in contrast with the imperial heavy cavalry, which seldom managed to reach within striking proximity of the Uzbeg mounted archers.204 Uzbegs also regularly resorted to ambushes. In one example, about 15,000 of their cavalry attacked the Mughal thāna of Khanabad. Only a 1,000 of them appeared before the fortifications, while the rest remained scattered and hidden away. Encouraged by the seemingly small number of assailants, the thāna-dār (officer in charge of an army outpost), Shamsher Khan, came out of the fort with his troops and charged them. Following a brief engagement, the adversary galloped away and drew the Mughal force towards a place where more Uzbeg forces were waiting to ambush them. As the Mughals arrived there, they were attacked from all sides and sustained heavy casualties. Shamsher Khan barely managed to escape with his life and return to his thāna. The enemy then came and invested the thāna for several days. In the end, they withdrew at the arrival of Mughal reinforcements.205 However, military challenges were only part of the problem that the imperial troops faced. Since the entire region was dominated by arid hills and ravines, and roads were often very narrow and full of elevations, a main area where the army had to devote a lot of its time and energy was the construction of roads. The difficulties would be exacerbated by the winter snows, which would bring extreme cold and block roads entirely. One chronicler writes that in the very beginning of the Badakhshan campaign, for instance, a body of workmen was sent ahead of the main army so to render ‘the most strenuous exertions in widening narrow defiles [tausī‘ tangī-hā], leveling inequalities [hamwār sākhtan-i past], and constructing bridges [bastan-i pul-hā] 203 204

See, for example, SN, 461–2/386. See, for example, SN, 433–5/360–1, 452–4/377–8, 460–1/385, 464–

5/389. 205

SN, 449–50/374.

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along the road’.206 There are several references to Mughal armies being stranded on the road for days due to excessive snowfall and impassibility of the roads on either side. It was principally due to the difficulty the Mughal army faced in negotiating the roads and passes that the first expedition to Badakhshan, undertaken in 1645, had to be withdrawn. Following this, the emperor instructed Amir-ul-Umara, one of the main commanders, to first send ‘as many masons [sangtarāsh, lit. stonecutters], carpenters [najjār], and sappers [bel-dār] as should be required to improve the road’ on the eve of the next expedition.207 Accordingly, in preparation of the next campaign in early 1646, Amir-ul-Umara reached Kabul and focused on removing snow from the roads and passes, and building bridges over the streams to facilitate easy passage of the main army.208 Such instances are recurrent in contemporary sources. The description of the clearing of snow at the Tul pass is quite graphic. Abdul Hamid Lahori writes in Bādshāh-nāma: [Asalat Khan] quickly put to work all the imperial sappers as well as the several thousand labourers, whom the Amir ul-Umara had brought from the neighbourhood of Kabul, to clear the snow from the road and deposit it on either side [ki barf rā az sar-i rāh bar dāshta ba-at̤rāf be-andāzand wa kūcha ki shutur bā bār ba-āsānī ba-guzarad ba-sāzand], so that loaded camels could pass through easily, and to beat and level the remaining snow in such a way that horses and camels could pass over it [wa bāqī rā chun ān ba-koband ki asp wa shutur ba-rūy tuwānad guzasht]. As soon as this task was completed by the sappers and labourers, Bahadur Khan, Raja Bithaldas, and Asalat Khan ascended the pass one after the other, and instructed all cavalrymen and infantrymen under their command to clear the path and open a way in front.209

As in the case of Qandahar, the complete absence of waterways, the rugged nature of the terrain, and the distance from Mughal bases in North India seriously affected the ability of the imperial forces to deploy artillery in this campaign. Reference to artillery in 206 207 208 209

SN, 397/323. SN, 403/330. SN, 412/338. BL, 2:513.

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contemporary accounts of the campaign is very less, especially during the early phase of the war. References increase to some extent after the arrival of Aurangzeb in Balkh, indicating that the prince must have brought some pieces with him.210 Like Kashmir and Qandahar, Balkh and Badakhshan were agriculturally impoverished regions. Consequently, Mughal armies were forced to carry along much of their supplies, while for the rest they banked on raiding the areas they would be campaigning in. The option of procuring supplies from areas the army would be passing through was limited, principally due to low amount of cultivation and hence, the low availability of food grains. Gathering enough grass for the horses of the cavalry was another headache. While marching towards Badakhshan in 1645, the Mughal army was told by the locals to carry all their provisions with them and warned against the impending arrival of the winter snows which would make food and grass even more difficult to find.211 When the main army of invasion was sent from Lahore towards Badakhshan under Murad Bakhsh in February 1646, the army was split up into two parts and was instructed to march separately along two different routes. One part was asked to march through Peshawar, and the other through the Bangash area. They were supposed to meet at Kabul and then march ahead together. Explaining such a move, Inayat Khan wrote, ‘[B]y using different routes, the vast army would be able to procure grass and grain in greater abundance, and also to advance with greater ease through the steep and rugged passes among the hills.’212 Because of all these challenges, garnering local collaboration became a priority for the invading army. Before the first campaign set off, the bakhshī (army paymaster), Asalat Khan was instructed to ‘recruit a band of gallant and sturdy youths [jawānān-i kār-t̤alab wa mardāna] from among the Oymaqs, Chaghtais, and other tribes dwelling in the neighbourhoods of Kabul on the Badakhshan frontier’.213 We could interpret this as a way of co-opting a part of the tribal population of the region and giving them a stake in imperial expansion through the obtainment 210 211 212 213

SN, 462/386, 464/388, 466/390. SN, 402/329. SN, 409/336. SN, 397/323.

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of booty. Once the campaigns began, the local chieftains were mostly caught between the Uzbegs on the one hand, and the Mughals on the other. Several of them chose to side with the latter. Khusrau Beg Turkman, leader of the Turkmans, for instance, submitted to a Mughal force under Rustam Khan hoping that the latter could protect him from raids by the Uzbegs and Almans.214 The commander of the fort of Kunduz also surrendered to the invaders.215 The Mughals were also able to garner the support of some of the local tribal leaders. The cases of Aman Beg Chaghta of the Qipchaqs and Atish Qalmaq of the Qalmaqs could be cited as examples of this.216 Such alliances were by no means examples of a powerful empire forcing petty chieftains into hopeless unequal submission. On the contrary, contemporary texts suggest that the chieftains had considerable bargaining power vis-àvis the empire. This is indicated, for example, by the submission of Aman Beg and Atish Qalmaq. During the negotiations, Atish Qalmaq demanded that high manṣabs be granted to several of his relations and that the forts of Shibarghan and Maimana be given away to them. In reply, the two Mughal commanders Asalat Khan and Bahadur Khan said that they had already recommended high manṣabs for Atish Qalmaq’s men and that they would also be granted whatever jāgīr they wished for. Moreover, the imperial officers promised that as soon as the Qalmaqs rendered their services to the empire, they would receive higher manṣabs as well as the forts they desired.217 Dissatisfied with these terms, the Qalmaqs deserted the Mughals and went back to Nazar Muhammad Khan. Aman Beg, on the other hand, accepted the deal and proved his worth to the empire by negotiating with some of the tribal populations of the region. He persuaded a section of the Qalmaqs and Hazaras to desist from opposing the Mughal occupation and thus neutralized potential trouble for the imperial armies.218 Thus, to a large extent, the collaboration of local chieftains helped swell the numbers of Mughal armies on the one hand, and more crucially, helped them negotiate with other groups fighting them. 214 215 216 217 218

SN, 434/360. SN, 415–17/342–3. SN, 442/368–9. SN, 443/369. SN, 443/369.

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In spite of all this, the hasty retreat of the imperial troops turned into a complete disaster, where all their difficulties seemed to come together to haunt them. By mid-1647, Aurangzeb and his commanders started becoming restless and wished to retreat to North India. A contemporary chronicler described this consensus in the following words: The country was desolated [mulk wīrān ast], winter close at hand [zamistān rasīda], grain scarce [ghalla girān shūda], and time short [furṣat tang]; and moreover, there would be great difficulty in making arrangements for the winter [sar-anjām-i zamistān namūdan] and remaining in the kingdom [dar īn mulk māndan] during the inclement [winter] season.219

There was also the fear that the routes for their return journey would get blocked by the winter snows.220 In view of this, forfeiting any hope for an honourable retreat, Aurangzeb handed over the control of Balkh to Nazar Muhammad Khan in a rush, assembled all the troops posted across the region, and started off for North India in October 1647.221 However, as much as the army raced against time to reach Kabul safely, snowfall started while a part of it was still on the road. Heavy snowfall impeded the return march and blocked several stretches of the route.222 Narrating the difficulties endured by a detachment under Raja Jai Singh, a contemporary chronicler recorded: The snow commenced falling and never once ceased all that day or the next, during which he [Raja Jai Singh] halted on the road. When he arrived at the pass of the Hindukush, the snow kept falling for three more days and nights, after which he was able to cross over.223

Similar privations were borne by another detachment under Zulqadar Khan, who had been deputed to guard the imperial treasure. Anticipating a snow storm, he hastened to get the treasure through 219 220 221 222 223

SN, 476/399. SN, 476/399. SN, 476–7/399–400; Sarkar, History of Aurangzib, 1:110. SN, 476–9/400–3. SN, 478–9/402.

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the pass of Hindukush before snow could block the road, but failed. Heavy snowfall completely blocked the pass and a good part of his camel train tumbled down the pass, preventing him from crossing the Hindukush that day. Although he continued to guard the treasure with a small band of followers through the night braving the snow storm, most of his troops were completely dispersed. Inayat Khan notes, ‘[A]ltogether they spent seven days and nights on top of the Hindukush in the midst of snow and intense cold with but a scant supply of provisions.’224 The presence of frost on the roads made things additionally difficult.225 Recounting the horrors of crossing the Tang Shahr pass, Inayat Khan writes that much of the army had to spend a night out in the open. Around 5,000 men and another 5,000 animals perished that night owing to the biting cold and severe snowfall. A big part of the luggage and property also got buried under the snow.226 The Uzbegs, Almans, and Hazaras exploited this Mughal debacle to the hilt. Their light cavalry attacked the retreating imperial troops from all sides. These attacks inflicted further casualties on the already-depleted Mughal ranks and decimated their morale.227 The Uzbegs and their allies also carried away Mughal treasures and material possessions.228 An enormous amount of baggage was either buried under snow, or carried off by Hazara raiding groups.229 Sustaining an enormous loss of life, property, and prestige, the survivors crawled back to Kabul in late 1647.230 The Balkh–Badakhshan campaign stood out as one of the most spectacular military disasters in Mughal history. *** Several points emerge from the preceding discussion. I have shown that negotiation with the natural environment formed a vital part

224 225 226 227 228 229 230

SN, 478–9/402. SN, 477–8/401. SN, 478–9/402. SN, 477–8/400–1. SN, 478–9/402–3. SN, 478–80/402–3; Sarkar, History of Aurangzib, 1:110–13. SN, 478–80/401–3.

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of Mughal warfare and territorial expansion. The various factors that shaped the course of military campaigns, the nature of combat, and the outcome of expeditions included climate, ecology, terrain, distance from centres of mobilization, and so on. This is not a dimension of Mughal warfare and empire-building that has attracted a lot of attention till now. The present chapter shows the kind of new perspective this sensitivity towards environmental factors can provide about larger histories of imperial expansion. However, an acknowledgement of the influential role of environment must not be read as a determining one. It is not that the challenge in front of imperial armies was purely environmental. As I have highlighted earlier, what was even more troubling for them was the way this challenge dovetailed into military difficulties. This was a result of the way Mughal adversaries with relatively deeper local roots exploited the environmental conditions to their own advantage almost everywhere. The Ahoms using the rains and the floods to attack Mughal troops or the Uzbegs catching the retreating army on the wrong foot during snowfall are examples discussed previously. It was their greater familiarity with the local conditions that enabled them to do so. Another related challenge was to transport armies and keep them supplied in the face of such environmental and military challenges. We have seen how in Assam, Balkh, and Lower Indus Basin in particular, adversaries sought to cut off imperial supply lines. In other parts, such as Qandahar and Kashmir, aridity of the land made it extremely difficult for large armies to keep themselves provisioned. Consequently, the difficulties that campaigning Mughal armies faced were several; they included the environmental, the military, and the logistical. The previous discussion highlights that the complexity lay in the fact that all of them were entangled with each other. Relatively new to most of the regions they invaded, one way in which imperial armies sought to negotiate these myriad challenges was to strike alliances with local powers. In cases such as Bengal, Balkh, and Kashmir, this helped them push their expansionist agenda forward.231 231

I agree with Farhat Hasan and Munis Faruqui in their argument about alliance-building and co-sharing of sovereignty being one of the main sources of Mughal political and administrative power. Both of them have explored this issue in great details, although in somewhat different contexts. I will return to

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Alongside the wide spatial variation of Mughal practices of war, it is also possible to note a certain degree of temporal evolution of the empire. I have already discussed in Chapter 1 the kind of changes that Mughal battle tactics underwent in the 1560s and 1570s, with a gradual marginalization of mounted archery and increasing tactical focus on frontal combat and shock tactics. The earlier discussion gives us some more indications. The case of Mughal officers refusing to obey Qasim Khan’s orders about marching out of Srinagar to suppress an insurrection because of the inclement weather and mountainous terrain indicates that already by the late sixteenth century, the imperial ranks were populated by people who were rooted or becoming rooted in the moderate environmental context of North India. By another half a century, this tendency had matured. The serious reluctance of Murad Bakhsh, Aurangzeb, as well as the rank and file of their army to endure the Central Asian winter in Balkh is indicative of a profound shift in imperial culture and environmental preferences that had already transpired. The case of Balkh also illustrates that this process was accompanied by temporal shifts in the realm of military practices. While the adversaries of the Mughals deployed battle tactics that were similar to those deployed by Babur, the Mughal armies under the descendant of the latter no longer used this tactic to any major extent in the mid-seventeenth century. Instead, they tried to counter the evasive mounted tactic of the Uzbegs with matchlocks, elephants, and light artillery—characteristic weapons of sedentary societies. This highlights the fact that in the seventeenth century, the Mughal army was no longer the ‘nomadic army’ that Gommans claims it still was.232 It had, in fact, come a long way from its nomadic heritage. Its post-nomadic condition was not a static, but a dynamic one; one to which their present location in South Asia imposed a strong tendency of sedentarization. In the course of its military campaigns in different parts of South Asia, what imperial armies exhibited, was not only spatial heterogeneity,

this important discussion in Chapter 4, in the context of the making of imperial frontiers. (Hasan, State and Locality; Faruqui, Princes of the Mughal Empire.) 232 Gommans, Mughal Warfare, 186.

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but also temporal evolution. Ebba Koch has written about the shift of Mughal hunting practices from the nomadic mode of the qamargāh (hunting circle) in the sixteenth century to hunting with matchlocks on foot or from the back of elephants in the seventeenth.233 Munis Faruqui has discussed the abandonment of the nomadic practice of inheritance by dividing the land ruled by a king among his sons in favour of a single prince inheriting all the dominions under Humayun and Akbar.234 The present study of changing military practices gives us a new analytical route to understanding the changing nature of the post-nomadic condition of the Mughal Empire. In view of all this, the story of military expansion does not remain a simple narrative of armies fighting armies, but emerges as a complex scenario where success or failure depended on a variety of factors. Rather than bulldozing through South Asia using a fixed military structure, warfare took the form of constant negotiations. In the process, success became indelibly linked with flexibility and adaptability. The more imperial armies could adjust to the local environmental conditions and borrow from local military practices, the better they could adapt to the changing techniques of war of their adversaries. Also, the faster they could find local allies, the higher chance they had of achieving military success and eventually converting it into political control. Wherever this was achieved, the empire met with some success, although its degree varied very widely depending on a host of other factors. This was true for Bengal, Kashmir, and Sind. In the end, conquest and control in these parts remained much more incomplete in comparison to the imperial heartland in North India. At the same time, wherever Mughal forces failed to achieve this degree of adaptability, the course of military expansion faltered. The campaigns in Assam, Qandahar, and Balkh bear testimony to this. In view of this overwhelming importance of the ability of imperial armies to adapt, adopt, and accommodate, trying to find a single Mughal way of war becomes quite absurd. This conceptualization of war as such a dynamic process becomes even clearer when we shift our gaze beyond the question of combat.

233 234

Koch, Dara Shikoh Hunting Neel-Gais. Faruqui, Princes of the Mughal Empire, 60–5.

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After all, combat was only one part of war. As long as the Mughal state existed, combat occupied as much of its attention and concern as did various managerial and organizational processes through which the very conditions of combat were produced. These are some of the issues I unravel in Chapter 3.

CHAPTER THREE

Military Labour, Animals, and the Material Production of War

In 1581, the Mughal emperor Akbar was chasing his half-brother Mirza Muhammad Hakim across the Punjab Plains towards his base in Kabul.1 Hakim had emerged as a political threat to Akbar’s authority in North India around this time and the expedition was dispatched in retaliation for an attack Hakim had launched on Akbar’s domains.2 1

Akbar was accompanied on this expedition by the Portuguese missionary Anthony Monserrate. The latter has left behind a detailed account of the journey in his travelogue. This is the main source of the information for this section. See Anthony S.J. Monserrate, The Commentary of Father Monserrate on His Journey to the Court of Akbar, 1580–1582, trans. J.S. Hoyland (New Delhi and Chennai: Asian Educational Services, 2003). 2 For the political analysis of Mirza Hakim’s career, see Munis Faruqui, ‘The Forgotten Prince: Mirza Hakim and the Formation of the Mughal Empire in India,’ Journal of Social and Economic History of the Orient 48, no. 4 (2005), 487–523. Also see Streusand, Formation, 154–72. Climate of Conquest: War, Environment, and Empire in Mughal North India. Pratyay Nath, Oxford University Press (2019). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199495559.003.0003

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Marching out of Delhi, the emperor’s army first encamped on the banks of the Sutlej while a temporary wooden bridge was built across the river.3 After a few days, the army arrived on the banks of the Beas. It marched along the river for two days in search of a narrow stretch on the river where another wooden bridge could be constructed and a ford where the elephants could cross. Scouts were sent ahead of the main army for this purpose. Once they located a favourable spot near Kalanaur, the army camped there while a bridge was built. The elephants were made to ford the river while the rest of the army— the cavalry, infantry, as well as draught animals such as mules and camels—were transported over the bridge.4 Proceeding from here, the army crossed the Ravi at Ramgarh by means of a similar bridge. Things became much more difficult as the troops reached Chenab. No bridge could be built here, mainly owing to the great width of the river. A number of men tried to ford it, but drowned. There was a scarcity of boats, notwithstanding imperial orders to local villagers to bring their boats to the Mughal camp. It was gathered that when Mirza Hakim had fled across the river towards Kabul, he had broken or burnt all the boats in which his army had crossed, so as to delay the pursuit of Akbar’s army. His purpose was served, as the Mughals were stuck by the river for three days trying to cross it. The Iberian Jesuit missionary Monserrate, who accompanied Akbar on this expedition, writes that as many as 400 imperial soldiers of different ranks perished while trying to cross the river. In the end, only a few boats could be gathered and the whole army had to be ferried across in what must have been a lengthy and arduous process.5 The next river was the Jhelum. In order to avoid a recurrence of the disaster on the Chenab, the army took a longer route in search of a place suitable for crossing. Finding a satisfactory location at Rasulpur, the army camped there. Monserrate says that even at this point the river was quite broad and deep, impossible to be swum across by 3

Monserrate, Commentary of Father Monserrate, 102–3. Monserrate, Commentary of Father Monserrate, 104. 5 Monserrate, Commentary of Father Monserrate, 109. More than seven decades later, Bernier, travelling from Delhi to Kashmir with a Mughal army, crossed the Chenab over a bridge of boats. (Bernier, Bernier’s Travels in the Mughal Empire, A.D. 1656–1668, 386.) 4

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men, horses, or even elephants. Consequently, the army decided to build a bridge. While Akbar busied himself in hunting with his sons, a wooden bridge was constructed on the river over eight days. Once it was ready, the army crossed over this and marched ahead.6 After several days, the troops reached the Indus. This river was so swift and wide that even elephants could ford it only with great difficulty. Realizing the sheer impossibility of bridging such a huge river, Akbar tried to gather boats by making friendly overtures towards the local Dilzak Afghans. Forty boats and much timber were obtained from them. Another 40 boats were constructed out of this timber. Once all the boats were ready, Akbar put a detachment under the command of his son Murad and deputed him to march ahead in pursuit of the Mirza. This detachment was ferried across the river. Eventually, the emperor also crossed in boats along with the main army. As with the crossing of the Chenab, the availability of a very small number of boats for ferrying a large number of men and animals made the crossing enormously time-consuming.7 As Mughal troops marched on towards Kabul, the campaign continued. For Akbar, a permanent solution to the threat posed by Mirza Hakim was to emerge only in 1585, with the latter’s premature death. What does this journey of the emperor in pursuit of his political adversary tell us? Among other things, it demonstrates how military expeditions were not only about combat. They were also about myriad other tasks, including the transport of the troops from its base of mobilization to its potential theatre of war. The present case has shown that the crossing of rivers—a seemingly simple action—could become a matter of repeated and serious trouble for the armies of one of the most powerful empires of the early modern world. It illustrates that the conduct of military campaigns not only revolved around the performance of the soldiers and military technologies in combat, but also on the more mundane quotidian processes that produced the very conditions under which they could 6

Monserrate, Commentary of Father Monserrate, 109–10. Monserrate, Commentary of Father Monserrate, 121–35. According to Persian sources, the imperial army first attempted to build a bridge of boats at the confluence of the Indus and the Kabul rivers, failing which they took to ferrying the troops across in boats. (AN, 3: 353–4/519; TA, 2: 359–60/548–9.) 7

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perform. War was not, and indeed never has been, only about combat or technology. It is also about an infinite number of infrastructural activities that need to come together to produce the circumstances for combatants to operate in. In the course of campaigns that could last for months, early modern armies needed to be constantly supplied with food, water, and equipment. Even during combat, soldiers would require the help of a whole range of non-combatants to perform a variety of actions. In sieges, for example, the building of trenches and mines would require the coordinated labour of thousands of workmen with diverse specializations. Artillery required to be transported to the site of action from centres of military mobilization in order to be used in combat. This would be done either by pack animals, carriages, or boats. These animals and transports, in turn, needed to be gathered on time in the required numbers and manned during the transportation process. Armies needed proper roads to march on and bridges to cross the rivers on its way. They sometimes had to defend themselves at night by building temporary fortifications. They constantly required information about the surrounding terrain and enemy troop movements to decide on their own course of action. Military success depended as much on the efficient management of this entire range of organizational tasks, as on actual combat. Unless each and every one of these tasks would be taken care of efficiently, tactical and technological expertise, even superiority in combat, could come to naught. In sum—as John Lynn put it in his landmark contribution to the study of military logistics— ‘Mars must be fed’.8 In spite of this overwhelming importance of military mobilization and logistics, works that have explored these issues have been few and far between—not only for South Asia, but across the world. Scholarly works are particularly sparse for the pre-colonial period.9 As far as 8

John A. Lynn, ed., Feeding Mars: Logistics in Western Warfare from the Middle Ages to the Present (Boulder and Oxford: Westview Press, 1993), vii. 9 Globally, most of the existing body of literature on military logistics pertains to European history. Some of the most important works include Bernard S. Bachrach, ‘On the Origins of William the Conqueror’s Horse Transports’, Technology and Culture 26, no. 3 (1985), 505–31; Bernard S. Bachrach, ‘Some Observations on Administration and Logistics of the Siege of Nicaea,’

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South Asia is concerned, while issues of military labour, roads, and the mobilization of war-animals have been explored separately for certain periods and regions, hardly any thorough study of military logistics in relation to a particular empire or campaign has been conducted.10 What is the reason for this? One could surmise that with its overwhelming thrust on pitched battles, military technology, and army organization, histories of warfare of South Asia have conceptualized warfare primarily in terms of combat. This narrow approach to war has led to its treatment in isolation from the broader social, political, economic and cultural processes that went into the making of war. Within the larger historiography of wars and empires of precolonial South Asia, Mughal history has been relatively fortunate. Recently, the works of Jos Gommans and Andrew de la Garza have explored several dimensions of Mughal logistics. Gommans studies the dynamics of the military labour market, the mobilization of waranimals, and the logistics of the mobility of the royal camp.11 De la Garza also discusses the procurement of war-animals and then goes on to explore issues related to the manufacture and supply of military equipments, the transport of food, the administration of medicine,

War in History 12, no. 3 (2005), 249–77 Martin van Creveld, Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton (Cambridge, New York, and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1977); Lynn, Feeding Mars; Jonathan P. Roth, The Logistics of the Roman Army at War (264 B.C.–A.D. 235) (Leiden, Boston, and Köln: Brill, 1999); John H. Pryor, ed., Logistics of Warfare in the Age of the Crusades, (Hampshire and Burlington: Ashgate, 2006). 10 One major exception is Randolf Cooper’s work on the AngloMaratha wars. Randolf GS Cooper, ‘Beyond Beasts and Bullion: Economic Considerations in Bombay’s Military Logistics, 1803’, Modern Asian Studies 33, no. 1 (1999), 159–83; Randolf GS Cooper, The Anglo-Maratha Campaigns and the Contest for India (New Delhi: Foundation Books Pvt. Ltd, 2005). Some work has been done on the roads of the Mughal Empire. See Abul Khair Muhammad Farooque, Roads and Communications in Mughal India (Delhi: Idarah-i Adabiyat-i Delli, 1977); Subhash Parihar, Land Transport in Mughal India: The Lahore–Agra Highway (New Delhi: Aryan Books International, 2008). 11 Gommans, Mughal Warfare, 67–130.

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and the transmission of military intelligence. His work raises new questions about the empire’s ability to support their armies of conquest.12 In the present chapter, I intend to build on the work of Gommans and de la Garza. Defining military logistics in the broadest sense, the present chapter sheds light on some of these less explored aspects of Mughal war-making. Through this exploration, the effort will also be to highlight some of the enduring links that war shared with the broader political, societal, and economic processes. MILITARY LABOUR

Several historians have written about various sections of the military labour market in medieval and early modern South Asia. The social group that has received the greatest amount of scholarly attention by far is the military aristocracy of the Mughal Empire. This was a result of the Marxian turn in medieval Indian historiography in the early 1960s. Around this time, historians—mainly those based in Aligarh Muslim University—started to analyse the functioning of the Mughal Empire in terms of a parasitic class of wealthy mounted aristocrats fighting over the share of agrarian resources of South Asia.13 At the same time, a number of scholars unravelled the world of armed ascetics, who increasingly hired their services out as mercenaries since the seventeenth century.14 Several historians have also explored the realm of the armed peasants of North India, who would take up employment in various armies during the off season of agriculture since the medieval 12

De la Garza, The Mughal Empire at War, 157–81. Spilling beyond the realm of military labour, this rich corpus of work also contributes to our understanding of Mughal political economy. Important works include Ali, The Mughal Nobility under Aurangzeb; M. Athar Ali, The Apparatus of Empire: Awards of Ranks, Offices and Titles to the Mughal Nobility, 1574–1658 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1985); Firdos Anwar, Nobility under the Mughals (1628–1658) (New Delhi: Manohar Publishing House, 2001); Qaisar, ‘Distribution of the Revenue Resources’; Afzal Husain, The Nobility under Akbar and Jahangir: A Study of Family Groups (New Delhi: Manohar Publishing House, 1999). 14 David N. Lorenzen, ‘Warrior Ascetics in Indian History,’ Journal of American Oriental Society 98, no. 1 (1978), 61–75; Dirk Kolff, ‘Sannyasi Trader-Soldiers,’ Indian Economic and Social History Review 8 (1971), 213–18; 13

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period. The most important contribution in this field has come from Dirk Kolff. Published in 1990, his landmark monograph offers a rich socio-cultural history of the peasant-soldiers of early modern North India.15 In more recent years, Jos Gommans has contributed to the study of military labour by linking it to the mobility of people and soldiers across the different environmental zones of South Asia and by discussing how the Mughals exploited this mobility.16 Finally, a few scholars such as Peter Jackson, Sunil Kumar, and Richard Eaton have looked into the world of military slavery in Islamicate states.17 Together, this rich body of scholarship discusses the roles of diverse groups of military participants. However, there is a common thread running through all of them—they all focus only on combatants. However, even a cursory glance at the narratives of war in contemporary texts makes it clear that alongside combatants, Mughal military operations also squarely depended on the logistical workforce, comprising thousands of non-combatant workers who created the very conditions for combat. Unless we broaden the very definition of the military labour market and include this enormous and diverse pool of

Bernard S. Cohn, ‘The Role of Gosains in the Economy of Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Upper India,’ Indian Economic and Social History Review 1 (1964), 175–82; J.N. Farquhar, ‘The Fighting Ascetics of India,’ Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 9 (1925), 431–52; W.G. Orr, ‘Armed Religious Ascetics in Northern India,’ Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 24, no. 1 (1940), 81–100; The most comprehensive work on the subject so far is William R. Pinch, Warrior Ascetics and Indian Empires (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 15 Dirk H.A. Kolff, Naukar, Rajput and Sepoys: The Ethnohistory of the Military Labour Market in Hindustan, 1450–1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Kolff, ‘Peasants Fighting for a Living in Early Modern North India’; Khan, ‘Muskets in the Mawas’. 16 Gommans, Mughal Warfare, 42–51, 67–81, 88–97. 17 Richard Eaton, ‘The Rise and Fall of Military Slavery in the Deccan, 1450–1650,’ in Slavery and South Asian History, eds. Indrani Chatterjee and Richard M. Eaton (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2006), 115–36. An important work on the subject focused on a slightly earlier period is Sunil Kumar, ‘When Slaves were Nobles: The Shamsi Bandagan in the Early Delhi Sultanate,’ Studies in History 10, no. 1 (1994), 23–52.

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military participants in our discussion, we will only get to know half the story. It is for this reason that, instead of contributing further to the body of scholarship that analyses the role of soldiers, I dedicate the present section to the study of this unexplored body of labourers. The following paragraphs will illustrate their role in and contribution towards the execution of Mughal military campaigns.18 Sieges were one major military activity that required the participation of a very large number of labourers with different skills. In fact, the fate of sieges depended as much on the coordinated work of these labourers as on the performance of soldiers.19 As mentioned in Chapter 2, the Mughals would usually begin siege operations by surrounding the fort in question and enforcing a blockade. Next, they would start constructing mines, saps, and defensive fortifications. Imperial armies always needed a large number of workers with various specializations to execute these tasks. Performed as fast as possible under constant enemy firing, this type of labour must have demanded specialized training and coordinated action. Unfortunately, contemporary texts do not tell us anything about this. In the siege of Chitor in 1567–8, for example, 5,000 builders (bannā’), carpenters (najjār), stonemasons (sang-tarāsh), sappers, and other workmen constructed several mines and a sābāt̤ as a part of the Mughal siege operations.20 The task took a heavy toll on the lives of the workmen. Abul Fazl narrates that artillerymen of the garrison ‘continually showered balls [tīr bārān mī-kardand] on the trenchers and other workmen [gil-kārān wa muzdūrān]’.21 He points out that the labourers ‘protected

18

Labour is an under-researched area for the history of early modern South Asia. Important works include Ahsan Jan Qaisar, Building Construction in Mughal India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1988); Kolff, Naukar, Rajput, Sepoy; Neelam Chaudhary,  Labour in Mughal India (New Delhi: Aravalli Books International, 1998); Shireen Moosvi, ‘The World of Labour in Mughal India (c. 1500–1750)’, International Review of Social History 56, no. 19 (2011), 245–61. 19 Bernard Bachrach makes this valuable point in the context of siege warfare in medieval Europe. (Bernard S. Bachrach, ‘Medieval Siege Warfare: A Reconnaissance’, The Journal of Military History 58, no. 1 (1994), 119–33.) 20 TA, 2:216–17/343–4. 21 AN, 2:316/467.

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themselves by shields of raw hides and laboured hard at making the covered way’.22 Under such circumstances, 100 to 200 workmen lost their lives every day. The dead bodies of the workers would be built into the walls of the sābāt̤̤. Emperor Akbar, who was directing the siege himself, distributed money profusely to keep the workforce active in the face of such a heavy casualties.23 The liquid cash must have been a substantial incentive for the labourers. However, in all probability, this was also coupled with a degree of coercion on the part of the imperial army to keep the workforce going. Unfortunately, this is not something the imperial sources reveal.24 While some of this workforce must have comprised skilled labour—required to plan and build the mines and sābāt̤s—there must also have been a far greater number of unskilled labourers required for digging, levelling the ground, carrying earth out, and so on. Labourers would also regularly be required to move around heavy pieces of siege artillery. During the siege of Ranthambhor in 1569, for instance, 500 ‘iron-armed kahars [kahārān-i āhanīn-bāzū] and strongshouldered porters [ḥammālān-i sangīn dosh]’ dragged 15 Mughal ẓarbuzans to the top of a nearby elevation, called the hill of Ran to be deployed against the fort.25 Where such natural elevations would be absent, workmen could also be employed in building sar-kobs (siege tower), which would command the inside of besieged fort.

22

AN, 2:316/467. Abul Fazl writes, ‘[T]he coin of presents was poured into the lap of the workmen’s hopes, and silver and gold were reckoned at the rate of the earth (zar wa sīm khāk bahā shūda būd).’ (AN, 2:316/467–8.) 24 The description of many sieges reveals such information about the crucial contribution of labourers with various specializations towards the construction of Mughal siegeworks. Aside from Chitor, another very prominent example is the siege of Ranthambhor, where fast-paced builders (bannāyān-i chābukdast) and ‘strong stone-cutters [khārā tarāshān-i sakht bāzū] as well as smiths [haddādān] and carpenters [najjārān]’ are described to have ‘addressed themselves to this duty’ under the watch of imperial officers. (AN, 2:336–7/493–4.) 25 Kahars were a community of labourers usually specializing as palanquin bearers. (AN, 2:337/494; TA, 2:224–5/354–5.) Badaoni says that the number of kahars deployed was 700–800. (MT, 2:111.) 23

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Another major sphere where labourers routinely rendered their services was road-building. At the beginning of many campaigns, woodcutters and pioneers would precede the main army, clearing forests and levelling the ground to facilitate easy troop movement. Khafi Khan, for instance, mentions a group of ‘hatchetmen and woodcutters’ marching ahead of the main army on their way into Assam in early 1662.26 He narrates that ‘with great care and caution, they cut down the trees with their hatchets and other implements and made a broad road for the army between the trees’.27 Manucci, who travelled across the Mughal Empire with the army of Aurangzeb, noted: ‘[T]here marched close to the baggage one thousand labourers, with axes, mattocks, spades, and pickaxes to clear any difficult passage.’28 He described their leaders to be riding on horseback, ‘carrying in their hands their badges of their office, which [were] either an axe or a mattock in silver’.29 The duties of these labourers included pitching the tents and placing the heavy artillery in position at the halting ground of the army at the end of every day.30 A huge corps of workers and officials was also kept in employment for producing, procuring, and maintaining myriad equipment as well as for the mobilization and upkeep of war animals. Some of these, especially weapons and suits of armour needed to be produced non-stop at different workshops at the imperial or the regional level. Under the guidance of master craftsmen, a whole corps of blacksmiths and other metal-workers remained constantly at work producing these articles. Once produced, this array of weapons would demand the continuous attention of a great number of men to ensure they remained in proper working condition. The huge numbers of war-animals and draught animals in the imperial armies required a vast number of people to take care of them on a day-to-day basis. In addition to this, the war-elephants needed to be trained properly at the fīlkhānās (elephant stables) before they could be deployed in war. The Ā’īn describes in detail the different categories into which the Mughals 26 27 28 29 30

ML, 2:138/184. ML, 2:138/184. Manucci, Storia Do Mogor, 2:63. Manucci, Storia Do Mogor, 2:63. Manucci, Storia Do Mogor, 2:63.

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divided their elephants according to their functions and then goes on to explain how each type of elephant would have several servants taking care of it. For example, every mast (in heat) elephant was supposed to have five and a half 31 servants assigned to it for its maintenance. In addition to these servants, faujdārs (military commanders) would be appointed in a supervisory capacity over every group of 10, 20, and 30 elephants.32 The sheer number of people thus employed for the upkeep and training of elephants alone gives us a sense of this massive workforce that kept oiling the sprawling Mughal war-machine at all times. The imperial army on the march would require the coordinated labour of an astounding number of workmen on a daily basis. Abul Fazl notes that while the army would be encamped in one place, a complete second set of tents, furniture, and other material, would be dispatched in advance so as to facilitate uninterrupted encampment of the army the following day. This required the participation of a huge number of labourers. Writing in the late sixteenth century, he observed that the entire process of wrapping up one set of encampment, dispatching it to the site chosen for the next day, and setting it up there would require each time the participation of ‘a thousand Farrashes (labourers in charge of tents and carpets), natives of Iran, Turan, and Hindustan; 500 pioneers [bel-dārān]; 100 water-carriers (suqā); 50 carpenters [durodgar], tent-makers [khaima-doz], and torchbearers [mash‘al-chī]; 30 workers in leather [charm-doz]; and 150 sweepers [khāk-rob]’.33 In addition, a huge body of soldiers and beasts of burden would be required to guard and carry this material respectively. Given that the army always maintained two sets of such encampments, the total number of workers associated with the entire process was actually double the figures quoted earlier. Although armies marching with the emperor or a royal prince would naturally have a higher number of such workmen than what an army with a commander of more modest pedigree would require, one could surmise that even in the latter case the number would still have been sizeable. This is because aside from actual military requirements, 31

The translator of the Ā’īn explains that this implied ‘either eleven servants for two elephants, or [that] the last was a boy’. (AA, 1:132.) 32 AA, 1:134/123–39. 33 AA, 1:42/49.

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military commanders increasingly emulated the emperors and princes in their display of pomp and luxury. A different group of labourers was needed for imperial operations in Bengal and Assam. Here, Mughal troops used increasingly big war-fleets in the seventeenth century. On the eve of the wave of campaigns that began in 1608, for example, the Mughals had almost 300 war-boats.34 In 1611–12, in a major operation in Sylhet against the Afghan chieftain Khwaja Usman, around the same number of vessels were deployed.35 In 1612, the campaigns against the states of Kuch Bihar, Kamrup and Kamta in northern Bengal involved 400 imperial war-boats.36 In the late 1610s, around 1,000 war-boats were dispatched against the Arakan kingdom to the south-east of Bengal.37 These huge war-fleets required proportionally numerous boatmen and crew. Mirza Nathan says that in one instance there were 12,000 sailors on the imperial war-fleet under the command of his father.38 On another occasion, the number is given to be around 13,000.39 We know that at these points, the fleet had around 300 war-boats.40 This means that on an average, each war-boat required around 40 to 43 people to be manned. However, not all boats were of the same size. Larger boats, which had artillery mounted on them, would definitely have required more manpower than smaller boats which would mostly be used for the fast transportation of matchlock-men and archers. It needs to be highlighted that the duties of these boatmen did not end with simply manning boats. Mirza Nathan’s memoirs provide a lot of information about the myriad other ways in which these labourers contributed to imperial military operations. Just as workmen would be required to cut down forests and level the ground to prepare roads elsewhere, in these riverine areas, the boatmen would be needed to clear up riparian channels of navigation. War-boats would often run into shallow water or silted water channels. The silt would 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

BG, JS60:5a–5b/1:15. BG, JS60:42a/1:102. BG, JS60:106a/1:223. BG, JS61:192b/1:405. BG, JS60:21a/1:62. BG, JS60:17a–17b/1:47. BG, JS60:16a/1:45.

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then need to be removed to enable the passage of the fleet. During the campaign at Jatrapur against Musa Khan in 1608, for example, the Mughal fleet needed to enter the Ichhamati River at a point, through the dried-up channel of a certain canal. In order to enable the fleet to make this passage, Mirza Nathan deployed 10,000 out of the 12,000 boatmen of the imperial fleet in excavating the canal. He supervised the work personally and distributed copper coins, rice, bhāng (Indian hemp), and opium among them to keep their spirits high. Eventually, the entire canal was dug up and its mouth cleared within a span of a week. The Mughal fleet successfully sailed through it to enter the Ichhamati.41 The boatmen also helped imperial armies by building temporary defensive fortifications. The boatmen of Bengal were famous for their prodigious mud forts. Over the course of the seventeenth century, Mughal armies learnt the usefulness of the mud fort from their opponents and increasingly resorted to defending their own positions by constructing such fortifications. For this, they were squarely dependent on the skills of the boatmen. In this way, labour that was initially hired for a somewhat benign purpose of rowing and manning warboats was drawn into an ambit of labour that was much more overtly militaristic. As imperial campaigns gathered speed, these changing roles of the boatmen spilled into even more active military roles. They would regularly be called upon to assist in actual siege operations. At one point during the siege of Musa Khan’s fort at Dakchara in 1607–8, for instance, the Mughal army was finding it extremely difficult to approach the fort in the face of constant firing by the garrison.42 Mirza Nathan then ordered the wagons of the army to be brought up to form a defensive barrier behind which imperial soldiers could take shelter. Next, half the boatmen of the war-fleet were ordered to pile up bundles of grass, and the other half mounds of earth, behind these wagons to form a wall. The boatmen sustained heavy casualty in the process, but eventually completed the task.43 As the besiegers slowly advanced near 41

BG, JS60:20b–22a/1:60–4. For another example, see BG, JS60:16b –17a/

1:47. 42 43

BG, JS60:22b/1:65–6. BG, JS60:22b–23a/1:66–7.

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the fort in the shelter of such barricades, they were confronted by the ditch of the fort and an area with sharp bamboo spikes planted on the ground by the garrison. Nathan then ordered the captains of his fleet to divide the boatmen into two groups—one group to be ready with bundles of straw and the other with basketfuls of earth, so that first the bamboo spikes and then the ditches around the fort could be covered with straw and earth and facilitate the advance of the Mughal army.44 This task too was executed with great proficiency. Nathan writes that the boatmen ‘kept ready five thousand bundles of straw and five thousand basketfuls of earth, and they began their work [of filling up the ditch] immediately after dusk’.45 Soon, they covered all the bamboo spikes and the ditch was covered by earth and straw and the imperial army stormed the fort with their war-elephants.46 Their central role in Mughal military logistics notwithstanding, references to the work of these workmen is quite sparse in contemporary imperial chronicles. The reason for this has to do with the very nature of these sources. Mughal chronicles were either written or sponsored by emperors and the imperial aristocracy. As such, the primary concern of these authors was to extoll the achievements of this political elite. One of the ways in which this was achieved is by playing down the importance or contribution of all other parties in the process of Mughal expansion. Since the primary social production of this elite was warfare, their valorization at the cost of various other participants is also especially visible in the field of military operations. Consequently, these imperial narratives of Mughal war-making often read like a sequence of achievements of the imperial mounted aristocracy. Since most of the workmen discussed previously belonged to the lowest social strata, their contribution is often glossed over. Their role is mentioned only occasionally in a matter of fact way. This makes it quite difficult to put together a reasonably comprehensive picture of these workmen. Imperial chronicles are almost silent, for instance, on the methods of recruitment and payment of these labourers. There is no evidence to indicate that the Mughals maintained permanent corps of workmen for performing these diverse 44 45 46

BG, JS60:23a/1:68. BG, JS60:23a. BG, JS60:23a/1:68–9.

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functions during various military expeditions. Some incidental references indicate that more often than not, they would be recruited from the immediate area of military operations. On the eve of the invasion of Balkh and Badakhshan, the Mughal commander Amir-ul-Umara, who had been given the responsibility of making the routes going northward from Kabul pliable for the main army, recruited a huge group of labourers from Kabul and set to work by levelling the roads and removing snow from them.47 Similarly, the main Mughal army heading towards Qandahar in 1649 waited at Kabul ‘for the arrival of the pioneers (beldār-ān) who had been sent for from all the districts around Jalalabad’.48 In Bengal, boatmen would similarly be raised in centres of mobilization at the beginning of a campaign. In times of contingency, they could also be recruited on a more ad hoc basis from the immediate locality. It seems that recruitment was done through imperial agents and officers present at the local level, such as the karorī (revenue collecter) and mutāṣaddī (administrator). In one such instance, we see Mirza Nathan visiting Khwaja Mutahhar Karori before his campaigns against Musa Khan in 1608 and ‘making a special requisition for boatmen’.49 In another place, Nathan writes that he ‘deputed trustworthy officers to recruit boatmen and issued strict orders to Mutasaddis’ to this effect.50 On another occasion, Nathan records his father Ihtimam Khan as having written to him ‘to send the revenue officers to all the parganas with strict orders to recruit boatmen’.51 All these references point to the relative ease with which huge numbers of workmen could be raised and deployed by states in early modern North India. In this context, Babur’s observation from the early sixteenth century is worth recalling: Another good thing in Hindustan is that it has unnumbered and endless workmen of every kind. There is a fixed caste for every sort of work and for … which has done that work or that thing from father to son till

47 48 49 50 51

SN, 412/338. SN, 502/426. BG, JS60:15b. BG, JS60:9b–10a. BG, JS60:14a.

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This indicates that early modern South Asian states benefitted from the existence of labour based on caste and community occupation, which could either be hired or be coerced into service for rendering labour in both civil and military fields. Ā’īn mentions that the state would pay the labourers, needed for military campaigns, and hand them over to different manṣabdārs according to their rank and requirement as dākhilī troops. Such labourers included carpenters (durod-gar), blacksmiths (āhan-gar), water-carriers (suqā), and pioneers (bel-dār). A part of the workforce must have been forced to render labour without pay as a part of their social or caste obligations, especially at the behest of local zamīndārs, who, in turn, were obliged to help out imperial armies by providing them with military resources. The rest were paid in cash. Shireen Moosvi points out that in the towns of the Mughal Empire, paying skilled and unskilled labour as well as domestic servants in cash was largely the standard practice, especially in the seventeenth century.53 In view of this complex world of non-elite labour that helped Mughal armies produce the conditions of combat, I would like to close this section with the plea I opened it with. Given the close relationship of the myriad tasks this logistical workforce fulfilled with war-making, it is necessary to categorize the nature of their labour as military. It is essential to acknowledge that the importance of these non-elite non-combatants in the process of war-making and imperial expansion was no less than the mounted aristocracy. The latter has received the bulk of the attention of historians of the Mughal Empire till now. As the first step towards this acknowledgement, we need to broaden our definition of the category of military labour itself, in order to include these various peoples in it. 52 53

BN, 2:520. Moosvi, ‘The World of Labour’, 246.

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WAR - ANIMALS

Making and supplying war in the premodern world has always required the constant procurement, upkeep, and deployment of a huge number of animals of different sorts. Some of these animals, such as the warhorse, would be used in actual combat. Some, such as the mule and the ox would be used as pack animals for carrying arms and supplies. Still others, such as the camel and the elephant could be employed for both purposes.54 In the context of South Asia, some important work has been done to explore the links between war, state-formation, and the mobilization of animals. In one of the early instances, Simon Digby studied the role of the supply of warhorses and elephants in the formation, consolidation, and eventual demise of the Sultanates of Delhi.55 More recently, Jos Gommans has studied the nature of the animal-economy of the Mughal Empire as well as relationships between horse-trade and the rise of the Indo-Afghan state of the Rohillas in eighteenth-century North India.56 In addition to this, a few other articles also explore the issue of horse trade in the South Asian context.57 Work on other animals is comparatively rare.

54

Both camels and elephants were used as pack animals by the Mughals. The use of elephants for shock charge in battles was an old and widespread practice in South Asia. In the seventeenth century, both these animals came to be used in the battlefield in another new way. Around this time, we see the spread of mobile and light field artillery pieces, which would be placed on camels and elephants. These were called shutūr-nal (camel-artillery) and gaj-nal (elephant-artillery). Visiting North India in the mid-1610s, Edward Terry noted that mounting light artillery pieces on elephants was a common practice. (Edward Terry, A Voyage to East-India Wherein Some Things Are Taken Notice of, in Our Passage Thither, but Many More in Our Abode There, within That Rich and Most Spacious Empire of the Great Mogul: Mixt with Some Parallel Observations and Inferences upon the Story, to Profit as Well as Delight the Reader [London: J. Wilkie, 1777].) 55 Digby, War-Horse and Elephant. The work was path-breaking in the way it foregrounded military supplies as a driving force of state-formation. 56 Gommans, Mughal Warfare, 111–30; Jos Gommans, The Rise of the IndoAfghan Empire, c. 1710–1780 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999). 57 See, for example, Chakravarti, ‘Early Medieval Bengal and the Trade in Horses’; Jos Gommans, ‘The Horse Trade in Eighteenth Century South Asia,’

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The present section will study the variegated economy of war-animals in Mughal North India. Horses In 1618, during his trip to Gujarat, Jahangir received from the zamīndār of Kachchh 100 Kachchhi horses as a part of his tribute. The emperor did not deem any of these horses fine enough to be put in his stables.58 He did not care to mention in his autobiography what exactly these horses were deficient in. Stamina, speed, physical stature, load-carrying capacity, and so on were very important practical qualities that determined the value of horses on the battlefield. At the same time, as Monica Meadows has recently demonstrated, their value and consumption patterns would also be determined by a whole gamut of cultural factors of the times.59 The Mughals had very strong opinions about which horses were battleworthy, and which were not. If we are to trust Abul Fazl, they maintained quite a strict hierarchy when it came to horses. It determined, in turn, the priority with which they would be procured, cared for, and finally deployed to the battlefield. The Mughal ideologue wrote: They [horses] have been divided into seven classes. The rate of their daily food has also been fixed. These seven classes are Arabs, Persian horses, Mujannas, Turki horses, Yabus, Tazis, and Janglah horses. The first class are either Arab bred, or resemble them in gracefulness and prowess … The second class are horses bred in Persia, or such as resemble Persian horse in shape and bearing … The third class, Mujannas horses, resemble Persian horses, and are mostly Turki, or Persian geldings … The fourth class are horses imported from Turan; though strong and well-formed,

Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 37, no. 3 (1994), 228–50; Syed Ejaz Hussain, ‘Silver Flow and Horse Supply to Sultanate Bengal with Special References to Trans-Himalayan Trade (13th–16th Centuries),’ Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 56, no. 2 (2013), 264–308. 58 TJ, 2:234–5/19–20. 59 Monica Meadows, ‘The Horse: Conspicuous Consumption of Embodied Masculinity in South Asia, 1600–1850,’ unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Washington (2013).

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they do not come up to the proceeding … The fifth class (yabu horses) are bred in this country, but fall short in strength and size. Their performances also are mostly bad. They are offspring of Turki horses with an inferior breed. The last two classes also are mostly Indian breed. The best kind is called Tazis; middling ones, Janglahs; inferior ones, Tatus. Good mares are reckoned as Tazis; if not, they are counted as Janglahs … Formerly mules were reckoned as Tazi horses; but nowadays, as Janglahs. For Tatus the monthly expenditure is 160 d.; but this animal is now altogether thrown out.60

The royal stables contained mainly Persian, Arabic and Turkish horses. These were also the most expensive ones. All other horses cost less and were put in second class stables.61 Consequently those whose value was the highest in the Mughal eyes were always imported from outside South Asia.62 Pointing to their origin in Central and West Asia, the Ā’īn says: Merchants bring to court good horses from Iraq i Arab and Iraq i Ajam, from Turkey, Turkestan, Badakhshan, Shirwan, Qirghiz, Thibet, Kashmir, and other countries. Droves after droves [kārwān dar kārwān] arrive from Turan and Iran, and there are now-a-days twelve thousand in the stables of His Majesty. And in like manner, as they are continually coming in, so there are others daily going out as presents, or for other purposes.63

The French traveller Jean de Thévenot, who visited North India in the 1660s, noted, ‘[T]he Country not affording so many Horses as are requisite for so great an Army, they bring them out of Persia, and Arabia [sic].’64 Turki horses were mostly imported from Central Asia via Kabul. Thevenot noted about Kabul: ‘Usbecs [Uzbegs] alone sell yearly above threescore thousand Horses there.’65 Arabi horses were

60

AA, 1:243–4. AA, 1:140–1/141. 62 For an overview of the traffic in horses, see Gommans, Mughal Warfare, 114–17. 63 AA, 1:140/140. 64 Thevenot and Careri, Indian Travels of Thevenot and Careri, 219. 65 Thevenot and Careri, Indian Travels of Thevenot and Careri, 80. 61

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imported mostly by sea, which gave them the name Bahri, meaning, ‘of the sea’. Iraqi horses could either be imported by sea or by overland routes across Iran and through Qandahar. There are many references in contemporary chronicles about these horses streaming into the empire from the west and north-west. Jahangir, for example, mentions in his memoirs receiving 30 Iraqi and Turki horses sent in from Lahore and 63 horses sent in from Kabul.66 Describing early sixteenth century Kabul, Jahangir’s great-grandfather Babur described how horse-merchants of Central Asia would bring here anything between 7,000 and 10,000 horses annually from Turan.67 Having travelled through the city more than a century later, Jean-Baptiste Tavernier noted that ‘it is there the people of Usbek [Uzbeg] come every year to sell their horses; they estimate that the trade in them amounts annually to more than 60,000 [Rupees?]’.68 Parts of the Punjab Basin offered good pasturage and were famous as horse-breeding grounds.69 Abul Fazl writes, ‘In the Punjab, horses are bred resembling the Iraqis, especially between the Indus and the Bahat (Jhelum): they go by the name of Sanuji’70 In another place, he says that ‘[t]he horses [of ṣūba Lahore] resemble the Iraq breed and [were] of excellent mettle’.71 South of the Punjab, horse-breeding was done along the western fringes of the Ganga Basin—‘in the district of Pati Haybatpur, Bajwaral, Tihara, in the Suba of Agra, Mewat, and in the Suba of Ajmir, where horses have the name of pachwariyah [sic]’.72 However, the horse-economy of the Mughal Empire went far beyond these West and Central Asian horses. And in spite of looking

66

TJ, 1:158/322–3. BN, 1:202. 68 Tavernier, Travels in India, 1:92. 69 Gommans, Mughal Warfare, 113–14. 70 AA, 1:140–1/140. 71 AA, 2:538/317. 72 AA, 1:140/140. The most comprehensive work on horse-trade and horsebreeding in early modern South Asia has been conducted by Jos Gommans. See Gommans, ‘The Horse Trade in Eighteenth Century South Asia’; Gommans, Mughal Warfare, 111–18; Gommans, The Rise of the Indo-Afghan Empire, 68–101. For an earlier period, see Digby, War-Horse and Elephant. 67

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down upon indigenous horses, the empire continued to absorb them. The locally bred Kachchhi horse from western Gujarat is a prime example of this trend. Kachchh lies right on the western littoral—a region that had several flourishing ports through which horses from West Asia were imported throughout medieval and early modern times by North Indian states. Horse-breeding was practiced for long in this region, mixing superior imported Arab breeds with inferior local horses.73 Jahangir reports 100 of these horses being taken by his army on his way back from Ahmadabad. He comments wryly, ‘there was none of great excellence’.74 The English traveller Edward Terry, who visited parts of Gujarat around this time, writes that this region ‘affords very good horses, which the inhabitants know well to manage. Besides their owne , they have many of the Persian, Tartarian, and Arabian breede [sic]’.75 Once again, this points to the status of Gujarat not only as one of the entry points of Central and West Asian horses into South Asia, but also as a place of horse-breeding. A very different sort of horse flowed into the empire from the opposite corner of South Asia. These were hill ponies—short and stout hill animals, found across the Himalayas to date. In the western Himalayas, they are called gunt, while in the eastern reaches, they are known as Tangan or Tanghan. Ranabir Chakravarti points out that since the early medieval times, states based in Bengal and other parts of eastern India used to import horses from Tibet and Yunnan. Ever since imperial armies made their way into north Bengal in the early seventeenth century, we find the mention of the flow of Tanghan ponies from these parts into the Mughal Empire. These Tanghan horses of the Kuch Bihar region were Tibetan ponies, bred

73

Recording the popular myth of origin of horse-breeding in this region, Abul Fazl notes: ‘There are fine horses bred in every part of the country; but those in Cachh [Kachchh] excel, being equal to Arabs. It is said that a long time ago an Arab shipped was wrecked and driven to the shore of Cachh; and that it had seven choice horses, from which, according to general belief, the breed of the country originated.’ (AA, 1:140/140.) 74 TJ, 1:216/435. 75 William Foster, ed., Early Travels in India: 1583–1619 (Delhi: Low Price Publications, 2007), 304.

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in Bhutan, and eventually brought to the northern Bengal.76 There is at least one reference to Bhutiyas selling Tanghan horses in the Kuch Bihar region in early seventeenth century.77 Some Tanghan horses also featured in the horse markets in Bihar.78 Abul Fazl writes, ‘in the confines of Bengal, near Kuch [Bihar], another kind of horses occurs, which rank between the gut and Turkish horses, and are called tanghan: they are strong and powerful’.79 Gut horses were regularly used to carry goods in the flourishing trade in the Himalayan foothills bordering the Gangetic Basin in the north.80 Abul Fazl mentions Gut horses while describing the Kumaon hills as well.81 Visiting North India in early seventeenth century, William Finch recorded in his journal about Kumaon that ‘heere [sic] is the great breed of a small kind of horse called gunts [gut], a true travelling scalecliffe [sic] beast’.82 Johannes De Laet noted about the zamīndār of Kumaon that he ‘can

76

The most detailed discussion of the trade in horses in early medieval Bengal is in Chakravarti, ‘Early Medieval Bengal and the Trade in Horses’. Chakravarti shows how during this period Bengal would not only import Tanghan horses from Tibet through Bhutan, but also export some of them to Southeast Asia by maritime routes. Chitralekha Gupta also discusses this trade and how it augmented the rise of the Hayagriva cult in North Bengal and Assam. (Chitralekha Gupta, ‘Horse and Horse-Headed Deity of NorthEastern India,’ in Studies in Hindu and Buddhist Art, ed. P.K. Mishra [New Delhi: Abhinav Publications, 1999], 101–11.) Also see Hussain, ‘Silver Flow and Horse Supply’; Nisar Ahmad, ‘Assam–Bengal Trade in the Medieval Period: A Numismatic Perspective,’ Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 33, no. 2 (1990), 169–98. For the routes connecting northern Bengal and Assam with Tibet in medieval times, see John Deyell, ‘The China Connection: Problems of Silver Supply in Medieval Bengal,’ in Precious Metals in the Later Medieval and Early Modern Worlds, ed. John F. Richards (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1983), 207–27. Jos Gommans also mentions Tanghan horses in his exhaustive study of horse-breeding in early modern South Asia. Gommans, The Rise of the Indo-Afghan Empire, 77. 77 BG, JS62:288a/2:677. 78 Gommans, ‘The Horse Trade in Eighteenth Century’, 233. 79 AA, 1:140/140. 80 AA, 2:434/183. 81 AA, 2:514/285. 82 Foster, Early Travels in India, 181.

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make no use of cavalry on account of the roughness of the mountains … He has however a kind of horse called Gunts which seem to have been specially made by nature to climb inaccessible mountains’.83 In the mid-seventeenth century, Tavernier noted the use of similar ponies in the trade between Bhutan and the eastern Gangetic Basin. Describing them, he writes: These horses are by nature so small that when a man is upon them his feet nearly touch the ground, but they are otherwise strong, and all go at an amble, doing up to 20 leagues at a stretch, and eating and drinking but little … when you enter the mountains you can only use that means of carriage, it being necessary to leave behind all the others, which become useless on account of the numerous passes, which are very narrow.84

Tanghan ponies were similar animals found further east in the Bhutan Himalayas.85 Mughals started collecting these avidly following their conquests in North Bengal in early seventeenth century. In 1612–13, a Mughal army invaded the kingdom of Kuch. Its ruler Parikshit Narayan agreed to make peace in exchange of a payment of ‘one hundred pie-bald tangan horses’ in addition to 100,000 rupees, 100 elephants and the hand of his sister as bride to Islam Khan, the ṣūbadār of Bengal. He also agreed to send to the emperor Jahangir ‘three hundred high-bred tangan horses’ in addition to 300,000 rupees, 300 elephants and the hand of his own daughter as bride.86 Although these terms were eventually rejected by Islam Khan,87 this reference to Tanghan horses, alongside other valuables, underlines the high desirability of Tanghan horses among elite Mughal and Kuch circles. Forty Tanghan horses reached Jahangir in 1613. It is likely that they 83

Laet, Empire of the Great Mogol, 60. Tavernier, Travels in India, 2:263. 85 The fact that both Gut and Tanghan were similar animals—Tibetan ponies bred in different parts of the Himalayas—is brought out by the way one name was used to designate either at times. Referring to Tanghan horses sent to Shah Jahan by Shah Shuja from Bengal, Inayat Khan uses the phrase ‘Gut-i ablaq-i Bangala [piebald Guts of Bengal]’. It could also be that Gut was a more generic term for such hill ponies, while Tanghan referred specifically to those bred in the eastern Himalayas. (SN, 591/513.) 86 BG, JS60:114a/1:240. 87 BG, JS60:114a–114b/1:241. 84

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were a part of the war booty extracted from Kuch Bihar.88 In the early 1620s, 65 Tanghan horses were seized by a Mughal army operating in Kamrup by storming a fort of the Kuch rebels. Clearly, these were being used by the rebel Kuch armies either as war-mounts or as beasts of burden.89 In 1637, Shah Jahan received 50 piebald (ablaq) Tanghan horses as a part of the tribute sent from Bengal.90 Two years later, on the occasion of the birthday of the Emperor, 20 Tanghan horses were gifted to Ali Mardan Khan—the governor of Qandahar, who had just switched sides from the Safavids to the Mughals—along with 18 Arab steeds, 30 Baluchi camels, and other precious items.91 In 1656, 20 Tanghan horses featured among the lavish offerings made by the ṣūbadār of Bengal, Prince Shah Shuja, to Emperor Shah Jahan.92 Chronicling Mir Jumla’s campaign in Kuch Bihar in 1661, Shihabuddin Talish mentions that plenty of Tanghan horses could be found to the north of Kuch Bihar.93 As the examples cited earlier indicate, although indigenous horses were probably not used in battles by the Mughal cavalry, they held an important position in the gift-economy of the empire. The case involving Ali Mardan Khan is particularly important for understanding this phenomenon. This man was a prominent Safavid noble, the qal‘a-dār of the strategically and symbolically important fort of Qandahar. He defected to the Mughals in 1638 and was greeted with enormous magnanimity. He was given a very high position in the Mughal officialdom.94 The fact that the gift bestowed on him at this crucial juncture included 20 Tanghan horses points to the high cultural value that these horses enjoyed at the Mughal court. In the late 1610s, Shaikh Ibrahim, the imperial karorī of Kamrup rebelled and was eventually killed by loyalist forces. Mirza Nathan

88

TJ, 1:120/247. BG, JS62:282a/2:660. 90 SN, 285/211. 91 SN, 329/254. 92 SN, 591/513. 93 TT, 11. 94 He was assigned the ṣūba of Kashmir as his jāgīr, since he ‘could not endure the burning heat of Hindustan’ and needed to be located somewhere ‘delightfully cool’. (SN, 298/224, 327–9/251–4.) 89

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writes that among the property ‘procured by him at Kamrup through his officers’, were much cash, gold and silver, precious cloth, and slaves. There were also 292 horses of almost all available breeds— ‘Iraqi, Arabian, cross breeds, Turkish, Yabu or draught-horse, Jangla, Tazi, Kacchi and Tangan’.95 The very fact that a high-ranking imperial officer, seeking to build up a personal fortune during his tenure in Kamrup, found it worthwhile to collect Kachchhi and Tanghan horses—both systematically derided by Mughal normative equestrian hierarchy—points to how complex the attitudes of Mughal officialdom was towards the various types of equestrian breeds they had access to. As Monica Meadows has argued recently, these attitudes were as much mediated by cultural factors as they were by material concerns. It is true that the Mughal state imported most of its horses used as war-mounts from Western and Central Asia. However, to focus only on this equestrian traffic while discussing the imperial horse-economy does not do full justice to the complexity of the picture. The previous discussion points out that it is necessary to compliment the work of Gommans and other scholars on horse-trade by also investigating the cultural processes that went into the making of the horse-economy that sustained a big part of the Mughal armed forces. Elephants Mughal armies used elephants for several purposes. The first of these was combat. 1560s onwards, imperial armies increasingly deployed elephants in the battlefield. Aside from delivering the shock charge, commanders and emperors also took them as war-mounts. In several regions including Bengal, they were also used against mudfortifications of the adversary. As beasts of burden, they often were made to draw heavy pieces of artillery and occasionally ferry troops across rivers. Throughout the seventeenth century, they were also used as mounts for hunting other animals and as mobile platforms for deploying artillery pieces were called gaj-nal (elephant gun).96 All this means that through the good part of the period under focus, the Mughal 95

BG, JS62:219b/2:477. Irvine, The Army of the Indian Moghuls, 135; Khan, Gunpowder and Firearms, 94, 98, 103, 193. 96

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Empire deployed the animal in very large numbers. Some aspects of the mobilization, training process, and military role of Mughal warelephants have already been discussed in detail by Jos Gommans.97 Since the present chapter primarily focuses on questions of supply, I will build on his observations and elaborate in greater details on the dynamics of the supply of the animal to the imperial armies. Today, elephants are found only in certain pockets in India. The situation was quite different in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Writing in the 1520s, Babur recorded the large presence of elephants in the Middle Gangetic Basin, which had considerable forest cover during this time.98 At the turn of the century, Abul Fazl noted the wide distribution of elephant resources in North India: Elephants are found in the Subah [sic] of Agra, in the forests of Bayawan and Narwar, as far as Barar [Berar]; in the Subah of Ilahabad [Allahabad], in the confines of Pannah, and Ghora, and Ratanpur, Nandanpur, Sirguja, and Bastar; in the Suba of Malwah, near Handiyah, Uchhod, Chanderi, Santwas, Bijagarh, Raisin, Hoshangabad, Garha, Haryagarh; in the Suba of Bihar, in the neighbourhood of Rahtas [Rohtas] and Jharkhand; and in the Suba of Bengal, in Orisa [sic], and Satgaw [Satgaon].99

This passage names places across a fairly large region, including the entirety of the Gangetic Basin, the Bengal Delta, Odisha, and Central India. There is a lot of information in contemporary Mughal texts to indicate that all these various places supplied imperial armies with elephants at different points of time. In the initial years of the empire, the two most important areas for obtaining elephants lay close to the emerging imperial heartland, which occupied the Punjab and the Upper Gangetic Basin. The first of these were the Kumaon hills. Even in the seventeenth century—by which time the empire had located areas with even denser elephant populations in other parts of South Asia—the Mughals continued to procure some elephants from the Himalayan foothills. Writing in the mid-seventeenth century, Inayat Khan says: ‘[I]n these days, 97

Gommans, Mughal Warfare, 121–6, especially 122–3 for supply of elephants. Also see Irvine, The Army of the Indian Moghuls, 175–81. 98 BN, 2:488. 99 AA, 1:132/129–30.

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in conformity to orders Khalil Allah Khan set off towards Kumaon and Hardwar, for the purpose of catching and bringing back as many elephants, both male and female, as he could find in that quarter [az fīlān-i nar wa māda jangalistān-i ān ḥadūd har qadr muyassar shūd].’100 The second region comprised the forested highlands of Central India. They emerged as an important source for elephants to Akbar’s young empire in the immediate aftermath of the conquest of Malwa in 1561.101 Several contemporary chronicles mention Akbar’s elephant hunts here soon afterward. According to Abul Fazl, the imperial army that conquered the kingdom of Garha Katanga three years later extracted a war booty that included 1,000 elephants.102 Even if we take this number to be inflated, it still gives us a sense of the enormity of the elephant resources that the Mughal penetration of Central India allowed the state to tap into. Writing in late sixteenth century, Abul Fazl notes: ‘Garha is a separate State [near Malwa], abounding with forests in which are numerous wild elephants. The cultivators pay the revenue in mohurs [gold coin] and elephants.’103 Elsewhere, he notes that ‘in the Sarkar of Handiah [in Malwa, there were] numerous wild elephants’.104 Central India’s status as a prominent provider of elephants to the Mughal state continued into the seventeenth century as well. In 1617, Rustam Khan, who had been sent against the zamīndār of Gondwana, sent to Jahangir a tribute of 110 elephants and 120,000 rupees. This evidently was a share of the plunder he obtained from these zamīndārs.105 In 1618, Jahangir himself participated in an elephant hunt while travelling through western Malwa. Writing about the same year, Jahangir mentions that while he was in Ahmadabad, he was informed that 69 elephants, both male and female, had been captured till then that year. His officials in charge of catching elephants were headed by the chief huntsman (qarāwul beg) Baluch Khan. Jahangir instructed them ‘not to take old and small elephants; but with this 100 101 102 103 104 105

SN, 374/300. See, for example, TQ, 78/74. AN, 2:215/332. AA, 1:456/207. AA, 1:457/209. TJ, 1:200/405.

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exception they should catch all they saw’.106 He also writes about the same year: During this [rainy] season, as there was still some of the hunting time left, Gajpat K., the darogha [sic], and Baluch K., the head of huntsman, had been left to hunt elephants, to catch as many as they possibly could. In the same manner the huntsmen of my son, Shah Jahan, had also been employed. On this day they came and waited on me. Altogether 185 elephants had been caught, male and female: of these, 73 were males and 112 females. Out of these, 47 males and 75 females, or 122, the imperial huntsmen and faujdars had secured, while the huntsmen and elephantdrivers of my son Shah-Jahan, had taken 26 males and 37 females, or 63 altogether.107

This illustrates the regular pattern of Mughal officers capturing elephants for the use of the empire well into the seventeenth century. Elephants also comprised a valuable part of tributes extracted from the zamīndārs of the region. In 1618, for instance, Sultan Parviz submitted to Jahangir eighty elephants taken as tribute from Raja Kalyan, zamīndār of Ratanpur.108 Further east, elephants abounded in Bihar and in the forests near Chunar and Kalinjar.109 In the early seventeenth century, we find Ibrahim Khan Fath-Jang, a Mughal manṣabdār, sending a tribute of 49 elephants to Jahangir from Bihar.110 Passing through Bihar in the midseventeenth century, Tavernier came across 130 elephants. He notes that they were being taken to Delhi to ‘the Great Mogul’.111 He also records the abundance of wild elephants near the Himalayan foothills bordering Bihar in the north.112 Evidently, the Middle Gangetic Basin still had enough forest cover around this time to house large populations of elephants. Yet, the relatively infrequent mention of the forests of the Gangetic Basin in the texts of the seventeenth century 106 107 108 109 110 111 112

TJ, 2:231/12. TJ, 2:237/24. TJ, 2:273/93. AA, 2:416/164, 170. TJ, 1:196/397. Tavernier, Travels in India, 1:121. Tavernier, Travels in India, 1:262.

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indicate that by this time, the empire had located even better resources elsewhere. Some of the biggest populations of elephants inhabited the eastern limits of the empire in Odisha and Bengal. The forests of Odisha—an extension of those of Central India—were rich in elephant resources throughout premodern times. This is indicated, for instance, by the title Gajapati (lord of elephants) that its rulers took in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Consequently, these forests attracted the attention of rulers of various parts of South Asia. They served as one of the prime sources of war-elephants for the armies of the Turko-Afghan sultanates of Delhi.113 Mughals got their first foothold in Odisha in the mid-1570s. Elephants started flowing into the imperial stables almost immediately. Soon after his victory over Daud Khan Karrani in 1575, the Mughal commander Raja Todar Mal sent Akbar a shipment of 54 elephants.114 The region was brought under closer Mughal control after Raja Man Singh’s victories here during the early 1590s. Soon after this, we find 120 elephants reaching the imperial court in one instance.115 An incident from the early seventeenth century indicates the importance Odisha came to assume in the elephant-economy of the empire by this time. Some Mughal officers had gone to purchase elephants in Odisha. On their way back, a group of Afghans robbed them and fled with, among other things, the elephants. Immediately, a Mughal detachment was dispatched from Bengal. It hunted down the robbers and recovered the animals.116 The swiftness of this response and precision in execution of the operation is illustrative of the importance the empire attached to the elephant traffic from Odisha. By the mid-1570s, the empire gained access to another major elephant-rich region—Bengal. From this point onward, elephants comprised an important part of all imperial tributes coming out of this region. Abul Fazl records the regular submission of large numbers of 113

Peter Jackson, The Delhi Sultanate: A Political and Military History (Cambridge: University of Cambridge, 1999), 301. Also see Digby, War-Horse and Elephant. 114 AN, 3:157/222. 115 TA, 2:421–2/648; MT, 2:400. 116 BG, JS60:4a/1:10–11.

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elephants to the imperial stables as a significant part of the ‘revenue of Bengal’.117 This trend continued under Akbar’s successors. Writing about events of the year 1612, for instance, Jahangir notes: ‘Islam Khan had sent 160 male and female elephants from Bengal; they were brought before me and placed in my private elephant stables.’118 Years later, a biographer of Shah Jahan recorded about the year 1645: ‘[N]ews arrived from Bengal that Allah Yar Khan had captured 30 male and 26 female elephants for the royal stud in the forests there, where they abound.’119 Even individual officers, returning from Bengal, would make handsome offerings of elephants to emperors. Mutaqid Khan, an erstwhile dīwān (provincial head of financial administration) of the ṣūba of Bengal, presented Jahangir with 25 elephants as a part of his personal tribute, while Tahir, the bakhshī of Bengal, submitted another 12.120 When Shaista Khan was sent to Bengal as the ṣūbadār later in the century, he presented 50 elephants to Emperor Aurangzeb as a part of his personal tribute.121 To the north of Bengal, the Kuch Bihar region was particularly plentiful in elephants. Raja Mal Gosain, a Kuch zamīndār, paid a tribute of 54 elephants to the empire in 1578.122 This shows the kind of access to these animal resources that even relatively small local chieftains commanded. Once the Mughals occupied Kuch Bihar in 1613, the flow of elephants increased. On his submission to the imperial armies, Raja Rarikshit Narayan was compelled to surrender all his elephants.123 In the same year, 94 of these elephants found their way to the imperial court.124 Two years later, a tribute of another 90 elephants arrived from Kuch Bihar, Odisha, and Bengal.125 117

For example, he mentions 171 elephants having been submitted to the emperor in 1581 and another 127 in 1593. AN, 3:297/439, 641/985. 118 TJ, 1:111/227. Several other examples could be cited. 119 SN, 400/327. 120 TJ, 1:112/230, 183–4/371. 121 FA, 115. 122 AN, 3:243–4/349–51. 123 BG, JS61:118b/1:252. 124 Mirza Nathan records that on one occasion several big elephants died en route from Bengal to the imperial court. (BG, JS61:143b/1:264.) 125 Jahangir mentions that these elephants had been procured during Mughal campaigns in Kuch Bihar and Odisha, and in the course of the war against the Arakan kingdom. (TJ, 1:147/300.)

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Finally, at the north-eastern limits of the empire, the forests of the Brahmaputra Basin in Assam contained large populations of elephants. However, since the Mughals failed to make a decisive headway into this region, Assamese elephants came their way only in sporadic numbers, primarily as war booty during campaigns. In one such example, Mir Jumla’s army captured 82 elephants along with other valuables on its occupation of the Ahom capital of Garhgaon.126 Eleven others were captured from near Lakhogarh, four from Gajpur, and another 16 from near Trimohini.127 At the time of signing a truce with the Ahom Raja, the Mughals demanded more elephants alongside gold and silver. They specifically wanted 20 elephants for the Mughal emperor, 15 for Mir Jumla, and five for Dilir Khan to begin with. The Raja was also made to promise the payment of many more elephants along with other valuables within the period of a year in three installments. The annual tribute also included 20 elephants.128 When the Raja did not submit as many elephants as demanded, the imperial officers became extremely upset and threatened him with yet another invasion if the remaining elephants were not submitted immediately.129 This episode points to three things. First, the fact that the financial demand made by the Mughals during the truce of 1663 was expressed in terms of elephants alongside precious metals points to the immense value the Assamese elephant had in Mughal imperial circles. Second, it points to the huge numbers of elephants that the Ahom state commanded. It seems that the Ahoms were also much more adept at taming and using elephants in war than the experts the Mughals relied on. Talish describes, for example, a special way of capturing elephants that the Ahoms practiced but was unknown in the empire. He writes: On enquiry it was found that there was some expert Mahuts [elephant driver] of the Raga who rubbed a particular herb on the body of a female elephant. Then she was carried to graze in the grazing grounds, where wild and must [mast] elephants live, as soon as the must

126 127 128 129

TT, 45. TT, 37, 41. TT, 129. TT, 131, 133, 137.

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Climate of Conquest elephant smelt that herb rubbed on the female elephant, it became uncontrollably mad and followed her. Then the Mahut skillfully brings back the female elephant to the cage-like structure. The moment the must elephant enters the enclosure it is trapped to be trained and domesticated later on.130

Talish adds that Mir Jumla tried his best to get hold of at least one of these mahuts, but failed.131 In a similar vein, Mirza Nathan writes about a herb ‘found in Assam called sarfil which when administered to the elephants, makes them mast within eight pahars [a unit of measuring time]’.132 And finally, the abovementioned incident highlights the position of Assam in the elephant-economy of the Mughal Empire. For the latter, Assam was a land that had highly coveted elephants as well as certain communities with great skill in elephant management. However, both were accessible to the empire only during highly risky and costly campaigns. The passage quoted earlier points to the desperation that the imperial commanders showed during these campaigns in capturing as many of these animals and as much of additional knowhow about them as possible. Once the Mughals started pushing their southern frontier beyond the Narmada in the late sixteenth century, they tapped into yet another vast elephant-rich region—Peninsular India. However, since the present book primarily focuses on North India, we have to leave this region out. From here, we move onto explore the supply of other animals the empire needed for its war-efforts. Camels, Cattle, and Mules Alongside horses and elephants, imperial armies needed several other animals, mainly for carrying supplies. Camels, mules, and bullocks were the chief beasts of burden. Camels were also used in the seventeenth century as mobile artillery units, by mounting swivelguns (shutūr-nal) on them.133 For the Mughal Empire, the biggest camel reserve lay to its west—the Thar Desert, Gujarat, and Sindh. 130

TT, 51. TT, 51. 132 BG, JS62:223a-223b/2:488. 133 Irvine, The Army of the Indian Moghuls, 135–7; Gommans, Mughal Warfare, 126–8. 131

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Writing in the late sixteenth century, Abul Fazl looked upon ‘Ajmir, Jodhpur, Nagor, Bikanir, Jaisalmer, Bhatinda, and Bhatnir’ as the chief source of camels for the empire. He observed that ‘the best are bred in the Suba of Gujarat, near Cachh [sic]’.134 He specifically recorded that ‘in Sind is the greatest abundance; many inhabitants own ten thousand camels and upwards’, while the ‘swiftest camels are those of Ajmir; the best for burden are bred in Thathah [Thatta]’.135 Camels started gaining increasing importance in combat following the development of small swivel guns that could be mounted on these animals and fired from their backs. These light artillery pieces were called shutūr-nals. Mounted on swift camels, these pieces of light field artillery gave Mughal artillery a degree of pace and maneuverability unachieved so far. Their value and wide usage is exemplified by the fact that in the second half of the seventeenth century, Aurangzeb’s imperial artillery included 300 such shutūr-nals.136 Cattle were another important animal that performed several functions.137 Noting its crucial role as beasts of burden, Abul Fazl called them ‘an excellent assistant for the three branches of the government [dar har sih ābādī-i guzīn yāwar]’.138 He observed that while every part of South Asia produced different types of cattle, the ones from Gujarat were the best. ‘Good cattle are also found in Bengal and the Dakhin’, he noted.139 In the Ā’īn, he divided cattle into various categories as per their quality and utility: One hundred choice cattle were selected as khasa, and called kotal. They were kept in readiness for any service, and forty of them are taken unladen on hunting expeditions, as shall be mentioned below. Fifty-one others nearly as good are called half-kotal, and fifty one more, quarter-kotal.140 134

AA, 1:146/151. AA, 1:146/151. 136 For a discussion on Mughal shutūr-nals, see Iqtidar Alam Khan, ‘The Indian Response to Firearms, 1300–1750,’ in Gunpowder, Explosives and the State, ed. Brenda J. Buchanan (London: Ashgate, 2006), 51–66, see 59; Irvine, The Army of the Indian Moghuls, 134–7; Khan, Gunpowder and Firearms, 107–10, 196–7; Gommans, Mughal Warfare, 126–8. 137 Gommans, Mughal Warfare, 128–9. 138 AA, 1:150/157. 139 AA, 1:150/157. 140 AA, 1:150/157. 135

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Both male and female buffaloes were used for carrying water. 141 Oxen were used for drawing leopard-wagons in hunting expeditions and heavy wagons, possibly with supplies, during campaigns. 142 Mules were another beast of burden imperial armies used. Abul Fazl noted that ‘it [was] the best animal for carrying burdens, and travelling over uneven ground, and [had] a very soft step’.143 In the late sixteenth century, the region between Attock and Kashmir was one of the main centres of mule-breeding.144 Also at the same time, mules were also imported regularly from West Asia.145 Clearly, imperial armies used both indigenous and imported mules. The latter received a larger allowance than the former for their upkeep.146

SUPPLY

In medieval and early modern North India, armies on march were almost never required to carry their food supplies themselves. In most cases, they would delegate this responsibility to itinerant bands of grain merchants, the most prominent of whom were the Banjaras. These were tribes of nomadic pastoralists who moved with armed caravans of thousands of pack animals at a time, transporting primarily food grains across most of South Asia from surplus to deficient areas. Jahangir describes them in his memoirs in the following words: The Banjaras are a tribe. Some of them have 1,000 bullocks, and some more or less. They take grain from different districts into the towns and sell it. They go along with the armies and with such an army there would be 100,000 bullocks or more.147

141 142 143 144 145 146 147

AA, 1:151/157–8. AA, 1:151/158. AA, 1:152/160. AA, 1:152/160–1. AA, 1:152/161. AA, 1:152/161. TJ, 2:345/233–4.

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Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, who visited North India during the reign of Jahangir’s son and successor Shah Jahan, presents a more detailed picture: Those who drive these oxen follow no other trade all their lives; they never dwell in houses, and they take with them their women and children. Some among them possess 100 oxen, others have more or fewer, and they all have a Chief [sic], who acts as a prince, and who always has a chain of pearls suspended from his neck … These people dwell in tents, as I have said, and have no other trade but to transport provisions from one country to another. The first of these tribes has to do with corn only, the second with rice, the third with pulse, and the fourth with salt, which it obtains from Surat, and even from as far as Cape Comorin … they entertain a special affection [ for their oxen], loving them as dearly as they do their children, especially when they have none of the latter.148

This indicates not only the existence of several tribes transporting food grains across the length and breadth of South Asia, but also a certain kind of specialization among them in terms of the type of food grain they dealt in. The history of such itinerant grain traders has been traced back at least to the end of the twelfth century. Irfan Habib has put together the most detailed picture of the overland trading activities of the Banjaras seventeenth century onwards.149 I build on his work by bringing in fresh evidence about imperial logistics and its limits.

148

Tavernier, Travels in India, 1:41–2. Irfan Habib, ‘Merchant Communities in Precolonial India,’ in The Rise of Merchant Networks: Long Distance Trade in the Early Modern World, 1350–1750, ed. James D. Tracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 371–99. Also see Claude Markovits, ‘Merchant Circulation in South Asia (Eighteenth to Twentieth Centuries), The Rise of Pan-Indian Merchant Networks,’ in Society and Circulation: Mobile People and Itinerant Cultures in South Asia, 1750–1950, eds. Claude Markovits, Jacques Pouchepadass, and Sanjay Subrahmanyam (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2003), 131–62, see 156–7, 167–8, 174–5; Irvine, The Army of the Indian Moguls, 192. Jos Gommans has studied the political implications of the constant movement of the royal camp and the relationship between mobility and power. (Gommans, Mughal Warfare, 99–111.) 149

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Like armies of other states that existed earlier or around the same time as them, Mughal armies too relied heavily on these Banjaras for food supply for their armies on the march. Thanks to them, imperial armies, traversing the length and breadth of South Asia, hardly ever had to worry about food supplies themselves. A reference to boats of merchant (kishtī-hā-i beopārīyān) by Mirza Nathan in the context of amphibious imperial campaigns in eastern Bengal in the early seventeenth century indicates that in these parts, merchants would also bring in their own flotilla to accompany the army.150 Additionally, invading armies would also sometimes rely on raiding enemy territory and looting grains and cattle. This was especially true for frontier areas, where Banjara support would dwindle and where looting and raiding also doubled up as necessary methods of intimidating peasants and zamīndārs. Predictably, Mughal adversaries—especially those who preferred not to engage imperial armies in pitched battles—often focused on attacking Mughal supply lines. In their campaigns in Kuch Bihar in northern Bengal, for instance, imperial armies were majorly harassed by Kuch insurgents in this way. There are several instances when traders who had gone to neighbouring villages to procure rations for the imperial army, were attacked and plundered.151 It is beyond the limits of South Asia—the usual ambit of Banjara activities—that the Mughal ability to keep their armies supplied was really tested. In such areas such as Qandahar, Balkh–Badakhshan, and Kashmir, all away from the Banjara networks and not too fertile themselves, imperial armies were often compelled to carry their food with them. This, however, would often limit campaigning time and shape the outcome of invasions. The natural aridity of these regions exacerbated the difficulties of Mughal armies and made it virtually impossible for man and beast to live off the land. The effects of this on military campaigns have been demonstrated through the case of the sieges of Qandahar (1649–53) in Chapter 2. The advent of large armies in such arid areas often created massive logistical challenges. 150

According to Mirza Nathan, the imperial army constructed a bridge across a river using these merchant-boats in the course of its campaigns. (BG, JS60:17b/1:51.) 151 See, for example, BG, JS61:169a/1:336.

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In 1595, for example, a food crisis arose in Qandahar owing to the stay of a Mughal army here. Grain had to be shipped from Multan to resolve the situation.152 Information on how armies used to procure water in the course of military operations is much more scarce. One remark of Abul Fazl indicates that in the late sixteenth century, some of it would be transported from waterbodies to armies on the march on the back of bullocks.153 In general, armies would always try to march as close to waterbodies as possible. The availability of big rivers would make things easy. In areas dominated by rivers, rivulets and other waterbodies—as was the case in eastern Bengal and Assam— gathering water for daily usage must not have been a headache for campaigning armies. Even in the Punjab Plains and the Gangetic Basin, the main military routes always ran along the major rivers and their tributaries.154 In drier areas, where such big rivers were absent, the goal was to locate the largest sources of fresh water nearby and then seek to visit them in the course of the march. With the huge daily requirement of water by the enormous Mughal armies, the availability and location of such sources shaped the itineraries of armies substantially. This is made clear by one statement of Jahangir in his memoirs: From Ajmir to Mandu, 159 kos, in the space of four months and two days, in forty-six marches and seventy-eight halts, had been traversed. In these forty-six marches our halts were made on the banks of tanks or streams or large rivers in pleasant places which were full of trees and poppy-fields in flower.155

Visiting North India around the same time, Edward Terry also notes this influence of the location of waterbodies on the route taken by the Mughal army: He [Jahangir] removes [his encampment] not far at one time, sometimes ten miles, but usually a less distance, according to the best convenience 152

AN, 3:671–2/1031. AA, 1:151/1:157. 154 This is clear from the route maps provided by Irfan Habib. See Habib, Atlas of the Mughal Empire. 155 TJ, 1:179/363. 153

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Travelling with Akbar’s army in the Punjab region in the 1580s, Father Monserrate observed that the emperor always led his troops close to the Himalayan foothills so that the soldiers and animals make use of the numerous streams and rivulets of the area and never suffer from a lack of water.157 Due to the lack of information, it is difficult to gauge what would happen when military operations would draw armies away from waterbodies, or in areas where waterbodies would simply not be available for large stretches. One can surmise that under such circumstances, some water would be carried on pack animals. In addition, scouts, along with water-carriers, would be dispatched in different directions to locate and fetch water to the army.158

MILITARY INFRASTRUCTURE

In addition to recruiting soldiers and workmen, gathering, training, and deploying animals, as well as keeping moving armies supplied with the bare essentials, the empire also needed to take care of various other things to keep its troops operating. In this section, I will explore three of them—building bridges, using boats, and transmitting intelligence. Let us begin with bridges. 156

Terry, A Voyage to East-India, 402. Monserrate, Commentary of Father Monserrate, 80. 158 Abul Fazl describes transport of water for the emperor. He writes that since Akbar used to drink water from the Ganga, this had to be dispatched to him daily, both at home, and on campaigns. He also narrates how snow and ice would be transported from the northern mountains to the royal household by water-carriages and bearers. Although nothing is mentioned about the mass-supply of water to the entire army during campaigns, one could imagine that similar logistical arrangements could be made for this as and when necessary. (AA, 1:51/58.) 157

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Bridges Land routes of North India intersect big rivers at various points. The routes linking the imperial cities of the Indo-Gangetic Divide with Kabul and Central Asia, for instance, cross the Indus and its five mighty tributaries.159 In the Gangetic Basin, land routes often follow river courses. During the period under study, the principal land route linking Delhi and Agra with Bengal followed the course of the Yamuna to the west of Allahabad and the course of the Ganga to its east. North of the west–east expanse of the Ganga, land routes usually followed the courses of the Ganga’s tributaries, such as Ghaghara, Gandak, and Kosi. However, at the same time, there were different points where the land routes cut across these river channels. Further east, in the river-dominated terrain of eastern Bengal, armies needed to learn to negotiate the innumerable waterbodies and develop standardized ways of crossing them. This became particularly crucial in contingent times of military operations, when the fate of campaigns could depend on the fast, smooth, and safe transport of troops across waterbodies. The present section will briefly look at how Mughal armies used to cross and bridge rivers during their military campaigns. The easiest way to cross a river—one which required no investment in terms of money, material, or time—was to march right across it at a ford. As the case of Akbar’s army crossing the Beas in 1585 exemplifies, scouts would regularly be sent ahead of the main army to locate fords.160 There are also several instances where armies, being pressed for time, attempted to cross rivers even when they had not yet been able to locate a ford. During a counter-insurgency operation in western Bengal in 1585, for instance, an imperial force crossed the Mangalkot river by riding across it on a rainy night. Unlike the abovementioned case of the crossing of the Chenab, the troops in Bengal were able to cross the Mangalkot successfully. Abul Fazl mentions that ‘some men and horses were swept away’ in the process, indicating how such crossings could be quite dangerous and cause

159

In the beginning of this chapter, we have already noted the kind of logistical difficulties this could pose for an imperial army in the late sixteenth century. 160 Monserrate, Commentary of Father Monserrate, 104.

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considerable loss of human, animal, and material resources.161 Yet the fact that the majority of the army reached the other side safely and was able to inflict a defeat upon the insurgents waiting for them there, points to why such spontaneous crossings could seem worth a try when hard pressed for time.162 Only when a ford could not be located and riding across appeared to be impossible, would bridges be built. Writing on Mughal roads and systems of communications, Abul Khair Muhammad Farooque categorizes Mughal bridges into four groups: permanent stone bridges, wooden bridges, boat bridges, and rope bridges.163 Stone bridges were not many in number in the Mughal Empire in the period under study. Father Monserrate crossed one of them on the Yamuna while accompanying Akbar’s army in 1585.164 Building makeshift wooden bridges was, on the other hand, quite common. I have noted at the outset of this chapter that on the march towards Kabul in 1585, this is what Akbar’s army constructed over the Sutlej, Beas, and Jhelum.165 Bridges of boats, like the ones built across the Indus on the Mughal army’s way back to North India during this campaign, were also equally common.166 Monserrate observes: ‘[I]t is the custom in India to make temporary bridges of boats, which are tied together only by grass ropes. Over these boats is laid a roadway made of branches of trees, bushes and hay.’167 When Bernier visited North India more than seven decades later, the situation was quite similar. He writes in his travelogue: I observed that the great rivers are commonly without bridges. The army crossed them by means of two bridges of boats, constructed with tolerable skill, and placed between two or three hundred paces apart. Earth and straw mingled together are thrown upon the planking forming the footway, to prevent the cattle from slipping.168 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168

AN, 3:461–2/697–8. AN, 3:461–2/697–8. Farooque, Roads and Communications, 40–54. Monserrate, Commentary of Father Monserrate, 98. Monserrate, Commentary of Father Monserrate, 102–4, 109–10. Monserrate, Commentary of Father Monserrate, 121–35. Monserrate, Commentary of Father Monserrate, 81. Constable, Bernier’s Travels, 380.

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The boats necessary for building these bridges could either be constructed on site or procured from nearby villages. Contemporary sources suggest that imperial armies did both.169 These temporary bridges—made of wood and boats—were principally intended for the infantry, cavalry, and the draught animals. Elephants were too heavy to cross over such temporary bridges. They would be made to ford the river, or simply made to swim across it.170 If the river was too wide, or its current was too fast, constructing such temporary bridges would not be possible. Under such circumstances, the only option left would be to ferry the entire army across in boats. The higher the number of boats that could be gathered, the faster would the crossing be. This is how Akbar crossed the Chenab and the Indus in 1585.171 Using boats to cross rivers—either to ferry troops or to build bridges—was particularly common in Bengal and Assam, where imperial armies already fought with hundreds of war-boats.172 Crossing rivers could be hazardous affairs and the Mughals sometimes made an active effort to minimise loss of time and lives by trying to impose some sort of order on the process. Bernier gives us graphic details of how confusion would ensue when the huge armies would cross over bridges of boats.173 Monserrate tells us that in order to prevent chaos and commotion during such crossings, a trench would often be built in front of the bridge, from where troops would be sent ahead systematically during the crossing. He observes: The King [Akbar], however, gave orders that care should be taken to see that only one type of troop or transport should approach the bridges at a time: and that the cavalry, the infantry, the camels, the other baggage animals, the flocks and the herds, should pass over both separately and in a single file, so that if the bridge parted, the river should take no great

169

Monserrate, Commentary of Father Monserrate, 121–35; AN, 3:353– 4/519; TA, 2:359–60/548–9. 170 Monserrate, Commentary of Father Monserrate, 104. 171 Monserrate, Commentary of Father Monserrate, 109. The French traveller Bernier, travelling from Delhi to Kashmir with a Mughal army, crossed the Chenab over a bridge of boats. (Bernier, Bernier’s Travels, 386.) 172 See, for example, BG, JS60:31a/1:78, 84. 173 Bernier, Bernier’s Travels, 380, 386–7.

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Climate of Conquest toll of men and supplies. Therefore on nearing a river, a small blockhouse was set up and occupied by the King’s officers, who took care that a large number should not carelessly crowd the bridge at one and the same time, and so sink the boats. Moreover, elephants were not allowed to cross such bridges, lest they would sink them by their weight.174

This is indicative of the kind of innovations and adjustments Mughal armies had to develop in the course of their negotiations with the river systems of North India. Gradually, as the passage of Mughal imperial traffic across North Indian rivers became more regular, bridge-building activities became increasingly fluent and normalized. Advance parties of supervised workmen would be sent ahead of the main army to level and prepare the roads and bridge rivers. For instance, describing his march to Kashmir in 1618–19, Jahangir notes: They had, according to order, prepared two wooden bridges [du pul az chūb murattab] for the crossing of the victorious army, one 18 dir’a and the other 14 dir’a in length, with a breadth each of 5 dir’a. The way in which they make bridges in this country is to throw pine-trees on the surface of the water, and fasten the two ends strongly to rocks, and having thrown on to these, thick planks of wood, make them firm with pegs and ropes, and these, with a little repair, last for years.175

In spite of the regularization of such bridge-building ventures, accidents continued to occur during river crossings. Such an accident befell the imperial army of Jahangir on his abovementioned visit to Kashmir. While transporting Mughal soldiers across a violent river, 174

Monserrate, Commentary of Father Monserrate, 81. TJ, 2:291/127–8. Jahangir uses the measure dir‘a for measurement here. Alexander Rogers renders it as cubit in his translation of Jahangir’s autobiography, while F. Steingass translates dir‘a as a yard in his dictionary. There is, in fact, considerable confusion as to what measure dir‘a signified exactly. Irfan Habib points out that under Akbar and Jahangir, one dir‘a comprised 38.4 digits (angushts) and 5000 dir‘as comprised one kuroh (a unit of measuring distance). However, this seems to have varied under Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb. (F. Steingass, A Comprehensive Persian-English Dictionary [New Delhi: Manohar, 2007], 513; Habib, Agrarian System of Mughal India, 413–14, 417–18.) 175

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several rafts were washed away by the force of the current, resulting in the loss of 68 lives.176 However, in spite of such occasional cases, accidents while crossing rivers had become more of exceptions than norms by this time. Boats In 1586, some elephants and other presents reached the Mughal establishment in Bengal from the neighbouring kingdom of Arakan. The Arakanese court, with its long-term territorial ambitions in south-eastern Bengal, was probably testing the waters vis-à-vis the new invaders of the Delta.177 The Mughal court heaved a sigh of relief at this seemingly conciliatory gesture because, as Abul Fazl explains: ‘[N]either was there a [Mughal] fleet, which is the chief means of making war in that country [ki gazīn asbāb-i nabard-i ān diyār ast], whereas the enemy had a large supply of war-boats.’178 Yet, exactly eight decades after this incident, Shaista Khan, the ṣūbadār of Bengal, was to defeat Arakanese armies in a keenly contested naval battle and occupy the port of Chatgaon in the name of Emperor Aurangzeb.179 Such a transformation calls for a close study of the way the Mughals were able to build up their own war-fleet during the interim period.180 The development of such naval resources and an expertise of using them in military engagements did not transpire overnight. This was, in fact, a long-drawn process that began when the Mughals invaded Bhakkar in the Lower Indus Basin in 1571. Previously, both Babur and Humayun had occasionally had to engage their adversaries 176

TJ, 2:295/137. For an analysis of the rise of the Arakenese state and its long-term interest in Southeast Bengal, see Charney, ‘Arakan, Min Yazagyi and the Portuguese’. 178 AN, 3:479–80/722. 179 FI, 115–47, see 139. 180 For a comprehensive overview of Mughal amphibious warfare, see Atul Chandra Roy, A History of Mughal Navy and Naval Warfares (Calcutta: The Word Press Ltd, 1972). Also see Pratyay Nath, ‘Battles, Boats and Bridges: Modalities of Mughal Amphibious Warfare, 1571–1612,’ in Chinese and Indian Warfare—From Classical Age to 1870, eds. Peter Lorge and Kaushik Roy, eds. (London and New York: Routledge, 2015), 146–65. 177

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on riverine spaces, but these were isolated incidents.181 The war in Bhakkar for the first time presented the empire with a situation where it became imperative for Mughal armies operating in that area to deploy boats in combat over a protracted period. We have already discussed in Chapter 2 how in this war, Mughal forces were grossly outnumbered in terms of boats. However, over the course of the campaign, their resources increased. This partially happened because they kept capturing and reusing the boats of their adversaries. Akbar’s voyage from Agra to Patna down the Yamuna and the Ganga in 1574 triggered one of the first major boat-construction projects of the empire. The emperor sailed down with his commanders, while the main army marched along the banks of the rivers. Abdul Qadir Badaoni describes the boats being massive, ornate, and diverse in shape. Most of these were carrier boats, meant to transport the imperial elite and their families, their attendants, supplies, wardrobes, carpets, animals to be used in battles and hunting, and so on.182 Once in Bengal, imperial armies slowly started building up their naval resources. The fact that Man Singh could lead a more or less successful eastward expansionist thrust starting in the mid-1590s is indicative of the fact that the Mughals had mustered some resources by then. Otherwise it would have been impossible for his armies to meet any success in eastern Bengal. Alongside constructing war-boats themselves, they were helped by the advent of local allies with significant naval resources. The alliance with Lakshmi Narayan, the raja of Kuch Bihar, in 1596 was a major gain for the Mughals in this respect. A delighted Abul Fazl notes that in addition to 4,000 cavalry, 200,000 infantry, and 700 elephants, the Raja’s army also included 1,000 war-boats.183 181

Babur had to fight two amphibious battles, one on the Ganga (1528) and the other on the Ghaghara (1529). Humayun led an amphibious siege to the fort of Chunar (1535). See Pratyay Nath, ‘Rethinking Early Mughal Warfare: Babur’s Pitched Battles, 1499–1529’, in Warfare, Religion, and Society in Indian History, eds. Raziuddin Aquil and Kaushik Roy (New Delhi: Manohar, 2012), 109–46; Pratyay Nath, ‘Siege Warfare in Mughal India, 1519–1538’, in Warfare and Politics in South Asia from Ancient to Modern Times, ed. Kaushik Roy (New Delhi: Manohar, 2011), 121–44. 182 MT, 2:175; AN, 3:85–6/120. 183 AN, 3:716–18/1066–8.

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Mughal naval resources increased substantially under the ṣūbadārī of Islam Khan Chishti. I have already pointed out earlier that during his decisive campaigns in eastern Bengal in 1607–12, Mughal armies regularly deployed several hundred war-boats. This flotilla enabled the Mughals to win several amphibious engagements against the bāra bhuyān (collective name for the chieftains of Bengal). As some of the latter were defeated and co-opted into the imperial aristocracy, their war-boats came to swell the ranks of the Mughal flotilla further. For instance, when two chieftains by the name of Bahadur Ghazi and Majlis Qutb surrendered, their entire war-fleets were taken over by the Mughals ‘for the use of the state’.184 The increase in the number and variety of Mughal war-boats and the emergence of the Mughals as the dominant politico-military power in eastern Bengal were, in fact, co-constitutive processes. Increasing number and use of war-boats helped them win military encounters, and these victories in turn inflated their naval resources. Mirza Nathan mentions a whole range of indigenous boats that Mughal armies commanded in the early seventeenth century. These included kusā, khelnā, kāṭāri, māniki, bachilā, jāliyā, dhurā, sūndarā, bajrā, piyārā, bāliā, pāl, ghurāb, māchuā, and pāshtā. These were quite diverse in terms of size, shape and function. Some, such as ghurāb, māniki, and kāṭāri, were bigger boats fitted with artillery pieces, while some such as jāliyā and piyārā were swift-sailing small boats, good for carrying matchlock-men and archers during engagements or for pursuing fleeing adversaries. Others were used for transportation of troops, animals, and armaments.185 The increasing naval resources under direct Mughal control as well as their being supplemented by the fleets of co-opted zamīndārs held crucial importance in the consolidation of Mughal power in eastern Bengal in the years to come, as well as in their further invasions in these parts. When Kuch Bihar was invaded in 1613, for example, 400 Mughal war-boats were supplemented by ‘one hundred boats of Musa Khan and his brothers under the command of his admiral Abdal Khan’, and the ‘entire fleet and artillery’ of ‘Bahadur Ghazi, Suna Ghazi, Islam Quli and Majlis Bayizid, son of Khan Alam’.186

184 185 186

BG, JS60:37a–7b/1:88–9. BG, JS60:17a/1:48. BG, JS60:106a/1:223.

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All of the people named here were chieftains of eastern Bengal whom the Mughals had defeated and co-opted during the previous five years. When Mirza Nathan mentions that later in the decade almost 1,000 war-boats were dispatched against the Arakan kingdom, the number probably signified the combined number of the war-boats mustered by the Mughals as well as their zamīndār allies.187 Shihabuddin Talish informs us that during the ṣūbadārī of Shah Shuja in Bengal, the state of the Mughal war-fleet underwent drastic deterioration.188 As discussed previously, his term coincided with violent Portuguese slave raids in south-eastern Bengal and a retreat of the principal Mughal base from Dhaka to Rajmahal. However, the deployment of a considerable number of war-boats in Mir Jumla’s invasion of Kuch Bihar and Assam in 1661–3 indicates that the resources had been replenished to some extent owing to his military enthusiasm. Manucci, who visited eastern Bengal around this time, records the presence of at least one Englishman in Mughal employment and in charge of building war-boats. According to Manucci, ‘[H]e was the master of the riverside, and employed in building boats and making ammunition for river fighting.’189 However, the Mughal imperial establishment realized that if south-eastern Bengal was ever to be brought under Mughal control, Chatgaon had to be conquered and the Portuguese– Arakanese nexus in that area had to be destroyed. The chief tool of such an operation had to be a war-fleet good enough to successfully challenge the excellent flotilla of the Portuguese and the Arakanese. Consequently in 1664, Aurangzeb appointed his uncle, Shaista Khan, as the ṣūbadār of Bengal, with the mandate of resurrecting the war-fleet of Bengal. Shaista Khan exerted himself to this task, instructed existing officers in charge of war-boats, and created new offices to this effect.190 Talish writes: As timber and shipwrights were required for preparing and fitting out the ships, to every mauza [administrative unit] of the province that had timber and carpenters, bailiffs were sent with warrants to take them to Dacca. It was ordered that at the ports of Hughli, Baleshwar, Murang, 187

BG, JS61:192b/1:405. FI, 129–30, 133–4. 189 Irvine, Storio Do Mogor, 2:80. 190 For the contribution of Mir Jumla and Shaista Khan to the Bengal war-fleet, see Roy, History of Bengal, 517–20. 188

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Chilmari, Jessore, and Karibari as many boats should be built as possible and sent [to Dacca] … [Shaista Khan] devoted all his energy to the rebuilding of the flotilla: not for a moment did he forget to mature plans for assembling the crew, providing their rations and needments [sic], and collecting the materials for ship-building and shipwrights.191

Shaista Khan was successful in his efforts and eventually set out from Dhaka to conquer Chatgaon in 1666. Talish records that his army had close to 300 war-vessels, including three seafaring salbs and 21 ghurābs.192 The invasion was successful and the Mughals seized Chatgaon from the Arakan kingdom once and for all.193 However, it was only fitting that even in this moment of success, the Mughal flotilla was supplemented by the war-fleet of their newly co-opted allies, the Portuguese pirates and renegades of Sandwip island, who had deserted the Arakanese and joined the Mughals at the last moment.194 Information The Mughal emperor headed an elaborate information-gathering apparatus. Several historians, including Irfan Habib, M.Z. Siddiqui, and Jagadish Narayan Sarkar, have explored the formal institutions and networks through which administrative information flowed across the length and breadth of the empire and reached the Mughal court.195 191

FI, 134–5. Talish gives a full breakdown of the composition of Shaista Khan’s war-fleet. It had 21 gẖurābs, three salbs, 157 kusās, 96 jalbā, two bāchāris, six pārendā and three other boats. (FI, 139.) 193 FI, 140–7. 194 FI, 136–7. 195 C.A. Bayly, Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India, 1780–1870 (Cambridge, New York and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 14–17; Irfan Habib, ‘Postal Communications in Mughal India,’ Proceedings of the Indian Historical Congress, (Delhi, 1986), 236–52; Jagadish Narayan Sarkar, ‘Newswriters of Mughal India,’ in The Indian Press, ed. S.P Sen (Calcutta: Institute of Historical Studies, 1967), 110–45; M.Z. Siddiqui, ‘The Intelligence Services under the Mughals,’ Medieval India: A Miscellany, Vol. 2 (New Delhi: Asia Publishing House, 1972), 53–60; Farooque, Roads and Communications, 125–63. 192

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Francesco Pelsaert records the mechanisms of the flow of information in the empire in the following words: The King’s letter or farmans [royal decree] to the chief lords or princes are transmitted with incredible speed, because royal runners are posted in villages 4 or 5 kos apart, taking their turns of duty throughout the day and the night, and they take over a letter immediately on its arrival, run with it to the next village in a breath, and hand it over to another messenger. So the letter goes steadily on, and will travel 80 kos between night and day. Further the King has pigeons kept everywhere, to carry letters in time of need or great urgency.196

Compared to this, we know little about the ways in which military intelligence was gathered during an ongoing campaign. Gabor Agoston has shown how ‘local road guides’ were crucial during the Ottoman military penetration of early modern eastern Europe. These guides would keep the army informed about terrain, sources of water, and so on.197 Given the sheer size of the South Asian landmass and its geographical diversities, one can imagine that the Mughals would have faced similar difficulties every time they launched a new campaign. Locally gathered intelligence about the sources of drinking water, places where rivers could be forded, best routes between two places, weather conditions, and so on were invaluable for any moving army, but especially for the staggeringly huge Mughal forces. References to these are scattered across contemporary narratives of campaigns and they help us put together a sketchy picture. For example, Mirza Nathan mentions that during an expedition to counter an Arakanese invasion, Mughal spies brought in valuable information about the Arakanese plan of campaign.198 On another occasion, he narrates that during a siege in Bhusna in Eastern Bengal in 1608, ‘loyal spies’ helped the Mughal army cross a water body that guarded the access 196

Francisco Pelsaert, Jahangir’s India: A Remonstrantie of Francisco Pelsaert, trans. W.H. Moreland and P. Geyl, (Delhi: Idarah-i Adabiyat-i Delli, 1972), 58. 197 Gabor Agoston, ‘Where Environmental and Frontier Studies Meet: Rivers, Forests, Marshes and Forts along the Ottoman–Hapsburg Frontier in Hungary,’ in Frontiers of the Ottoman World, ed. A.C.S. Peacock (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 81–94, see 65. 198 BG, JS61:167b/1:332.

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to the fort ‘by a route up the canal where the water was shallow’.199 Jahangir notes that guides (rāh-barān) helped a Mughal army reach a diamond mine near Patna in 1615.200 Describing his campaigns in the Rangamati region of Kamrup in the late 1610s, Mirza Nathan writes, ‘[S]pies were also appointed to bring fresh news of the activities of the enemies.’201 Later, he writes that the spies led him by the bank of a river to a place where the water was shallow and his army could cross easily.202 He continues: Spies were dispatched one after another to bring true information about the whereabouts of the enemy. The aforesaid spies brought the news that there was a fort named Takunia in the centre of the hill where the rebels had gone and attempts were being made to strengthen that fortress.203

Depending on this information, the army advanced and subsequently captured the fort. Saqi Mustaid Khan, the biographer of Aurangzeb, narrates an incident where—after getting massacred by the Afghans near the pass of Khapash—Mughal survivors were led to safety by ‘men who knew the country [wāqifān-i ān sar-zamīn]’.204 In the context of Mughal operations to quell the Rajput rebellion during the reign of Aurangzeb, Ishwar Das Nagar mentions that Mughal troop deployment depended squarely on the information brought in by the harkarās (postal runners), who had been employed as spies to trace rebel troop movement.205 Scouts (qarāwulān) would always go ahead of the main army gathering information about a whole range of things. Nizamuddin Ahmad mentions that they could bring in news of animals that the emperor might like to hunt or capture.206 There are various references about

199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206

BG, JS60:6a/1:18–19. TJ, 1:155/316. BG, JS61:173b/1:350. BG, JS61:174a/1:350. BG, JS61:174a/1:351. MM, 145/89. FA, 121. TA, 2:178–9/292–3.

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scouts bringing in news about fords on rivers where campaigning armies could cross.207 Abul Fazl remarks that Mewatis, famous as runners, were employed in large numbers by Akbar as spies to perform ‘the most intricate duties’.208 Local zamīndārs were invaluable to Mughal campaigns not only for their support in terms of troops and infrastructure, but also information. To take an example, Mirza Nathan describes that when the Kuch insurgent Sanatan besieged the Mughal thāna of Dhamdhama, the Mughal garrison was already prepared for action, being alerted beforehand by friendly local zamīndārs.209 In the context of the Mughal invasion of Assam in 1662–3, Shihabuddin Talish writes, ‘[W]ithout proper guidance of the local Zamindars, whose lands were on the border of Aasham, it was not possible to conquer the country.’210 *** The previous discussion exposes a huge realm of military processes that lay outside the domain of combat. It enables us to appreciate that war-making did not simply revolve around pitched battles, military technology, and army organization—issues that the bulk of the histories of Mughal warfare focus on. In other words, war was not only about combat. It was also about a whole range of activities that produced the very conditions for combat to take place. Unless the logistical workforce cut the forests, levelled the roads, rowed the war-boats, and built the siegeworks, Mughal soldiers would never even have had the opportunity to engage their adversaries. Military tactics on the field of combat also depended on the availability of warhorses and elephants. Hence the state needed to invest an enormous amount of attention, money, and labour in maintaining a constant flow of these animals from the various parts of the world where they were available, be it inside South Asia or outside. This had to be complimented by the ceaseless mobilization of various 207 208 209 210

Monserrate, Commentary of Father Monserrate, 104. AA, 1:188/262. BG, JS62:208b/2:444. TT, 17.

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beasts of burden which carried the armies’ supplies on the march. During campaigns, the Mughal state had to constantly keep itself busy in making sure that the troops had enough food, animals had enough fodder, and both had enough water. As noted earlier, the scarcity of any of this could cut campaigns short and thereby have a grave impact on the course of imperial expansion. The execution of military operations depended on the production and availability of certain infrastructural resources, such as bridges and boats. They helped them negotiate specific environmental conditions of South Asia, continue military expeditions, and adapt to local conditions while pushing the imperialist agenda of the state forward. Finally, activities such as the transmission of military intelligence enabled armies to navigate unknown regions, be cognizant of the moves of the adversaries, and deal with various environmental factors. All these activities were as crucial in deciding the fate of military campaigns as combat. In fact, if the state failed to execute any one of these logistical activities, its soldiers and technology—no matter how great they were—might not even get a chance to engage the adversary in combat. It was a pool of millions of non-elite people who made the execution of these activities possible. Historians who have worked on the issue of military labour have pointed out that the Mughal state employed in its armies a large number of combatants from South Asian society. The previous discussion has demonstrated that it also employed at all times a very large number of workers and labourers, who executed myriad logistical tasks. Hence, in addition to the throngs of the soldiers, it also relied on a huge part of the non-combatant section of its subject population for the materialization of its political ambitions. This allows us to appreciate Mughal war-making and empirebuilding as far more inclusive processes than what much of Mughal historiography suggests. Instead of being an exclusively elite project, an exploration of the logistical dimensions of warfare allows us to see the Mughal Empire as something that the ruling elite co-created with a very large section of the non-elite population of the Indian subcontinent. A large part of this population’s labour went towards the production of Mughal military campaigns. Hence, it is imperative that as a way of acknowledging the importance of this labour, we include it within the category of military labour. Once this is done, we

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have to re-conceptualize the very idea of the military labour market of early modern North India accordingly. This discussion on the perennial logistical activities that went into the making of imperial military expansion should caution us against conceptualizing war as rupture. It reveals a huge and permanent overlap between warfare, South Asian society, and the priorities of the Mughal state. It points to the fact that war was not something that happened outside the realm of the regular life of the empire and society, but was, in fact, an integral part of their regular life. Seemingly non-military acts such as buying a camel, building a boat, or finding a local who could identify a natural source of drinking water were often a part of the complex web of processes that constituted the world of war-making. War not only required men who could fight, but also those who could cut trees, take care of animals, break stone, level ground, mould metal into weapons, cook food, or simply carry load.211 At the end of the day, it was the combination of all these factors—the concerns and priorities of the state, the means of supplying, producing, and executing military conflict, as well as the involvement 211

Based on the scholarship for early modern Europe, one surmises that not only men of diverse occupations, but also large numbers of women were an integral part of Mughal armies; but more work is needed for South Asia to unravel that history. For the role of women in early modern European armies, see Barton C. Hacker, ‘Women and Military Institutions in Early Modern Europe: A Reconaissance’, Signs 6, no. 4 (1981), 643–71; John A Lynn II, Women, Armies, and Warfare in Early Modern Europe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Mary Elizabeth Ailes, ‘Camp Followers, Sutlers, and Soldiers’ Wives: Women in Early Modern Armies (c. 1450–c. 1650),’ in A Companion to Women’s Military History, eds. Barton C Hacker and Margaret Vining (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2012), 61–89. For early modern South Asia, several historians have highlighted the important contribution of women to Mughal statecraft, governance, and diplomacy. See for instance Ellison Banks Findly, Nur Jahan: Empress of Mughal India (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993); Hasan, State and Locality, 71–90; Ruby Lal, Empress: The Astonishing Reign of Nur Jahan (New York: WW Norton & Company, 2018); Ruby Lal, Domesticity and Power in the Early Mughal World  (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005). However, no work has been done to uncover the involvement of women in military affairs for this time.

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of a large part of South Asian society—that kept pushing forward the frontiers of the Mughal Empire through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This brings us to the next question—what exactly were Mughal military frontiers? What was their physical form and how did the empire conceptualize them? How were imperial frontiers defended and expanded? These are some of the questions Chapter 4 will grapple with.

CHAPTER FOUR

Routes, Forts, Environment, and the Making of Imperial Frontiers

In 1567, a Mughal army was in pursuit of an Afghan group which was making its way eastward across the Gangetic Basin. As they passed beyond the town of Gorakhpur, the Mughal troops came to a sudden halt. Nizamuddin Ahmad writes that the soldiers decided against continuing their pursuit: since ‘most of that country [beyond Gorakhpur] belonged to the Afghans [beshtar wilāyat-i Afghānān būd], the [Mughal] amirs could not enter it, without the emperor’s order’.1 They returned and reported the state of events to the imperial court. The emperor responded by issuing a statement saying that there was no need of chasing the fugitives any further since they had ‘gone away out of the imperial dominions [az mamālik-i maḥrūs ba-dar rafta]’.2 1 2

TA, 2:214/340. TA, 2:214/340.

Climate of Conquest: War, Environment, and Empire in Mughal North India. Pratyay Nath, Oxford University Press (2019). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199495559.003.0004

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What Gorakhpur signified in 1567 was clearly the eastern limit of Mughal political authority and imperial territory. In other words, it represented a frontier of the empire, beyond which the power of the Mughal emperor held no sway. How were such frontiers defined in the Mughal Empire? Were they always marked by such towns and cities? Was the frontier more like a line like the modern international border, or was it more like a zone across which imperial power faded away gradually? How exactly did the Mughals conceptualize their frontiers? These are some of the questions the present chapter seeks to answer. The historiography of imperial frontiers in the early modern world is a rich one. One part of the existing body of scholarship explores ‘frontiers of separation’, mostly in the context of Europe.3 It studies the physical nature of the frontier as it existed between militarized and expansionist states, the nature of accommodation and assimilation that the life on these frontiers entailed, the role of fortifications in defending military frontiers, and so on.4 Another group of scholars have focused on ‘frontiers of settlement’. The majority of this body of work focuses on the political and military ramifications of the environmental frontier between sedentary agrarian polities of Eurasia on the one hand and the nomadic people of the Central Eurasian steppes on the other. With an eye on the environmental context, these works analyse the military interaction between sedentary and nomadic societies across 3

I have borrowed the terms ‘frontiers of separation’ and ‘frontier of settlement’ from Frontiers in Question: Eurasian Borderlands, 700–1700, eds. Daniel Power and Naomi Standen (London and New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999). 4 See, for example, Power and Standen, Frontiers in Question; Robert Barlett and Angus MacKay, eds. Medieval Frontier Societies, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989); Robert Barlett and Angus MacKay, eds. Medieval Frontiers: Concepts and Practices (Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate, 2002). Over the last decade, several interesting works have also made the military frontier a major subject of investigation in the context of the Ottoman Empire. These include Gabor Agoston, ‘Defending and Administering the Frontier: The Case of Ottoman Hungary,’ in The Ottoman World, ed. Christine Woodhead (Oxon and New York: Routledge, 2012), 220–36; A.C.S. Peacock, ed., Frontiers of the Ottoman World, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); Mark Stein, Guarding the Frontier: Ottoman Border Forts and Garrisons in Europe (London and New York: Tauris Academic Studies, 2007).

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these frontiers during the medieval and early modern times.5 In case of early modern South Asia, discussions on military frontiers have either been analysed in the context of the ecological divide between nomadic and sedentary societies, or have been woven into wider histories of socio-cultural processes.6 5

This is a tradition that began with Frederick Turner’s pioneering work on the expanding frontier of American colonial societies. Frederick Jackson Turner, The Frontier in American History (New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1921). In the context of Eurasia, work in this direction has focused principally on the steppes frontiers of Europe, Russia, the Ottoman Empire, China, and South Asia. See, for example, Gommans, ‘The Silent Frontier of South Asia’; Gommans, ‘The Eurasian Frontier after the First Millenium AD’; Michael Khodarkovsky, Russia’s Steppe Frontier: The Making of a Colonial Empire, 1500–1800 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002); Owen Lattimore, Studies in Frontier History: Collected Papers, 1928–1958 (London, New York, and Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1962); Owen Lattimore, Inner Asian Frontiers of China (Hong Kong, Oxford, and New York: Oxford University Press, 1988); William McNeill, Europe’s Steppe Frontier, 1500–1800 (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1964); Peter Perdue, China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 2009. 6 In the first category, mention needs to be made of Gommans, ‘The Silent Frontier’; Gommans, ‘The Eurasian Frontier’; J.C. Heesterman, ‘Warrior, Peasant and Brahmin,’ Modern Asian Studies 29, no. 3 (1995), 637–54, especially 644, 646; J.C. Heesterman, The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship and Society (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 170–1; Chetan Singh, ‘Conformity and Conflict: Tribes and the “Agrarian System” of Mughal India,’ Indian Economic and Social History Review 25, no. 3 (1988), 319–40. The best example of the second type is Eaton’s work on the expansion of Islam’s cultural/military frontier in South Asia. (Richard M. Eaton, The Sufis of Bijapur, 1300–1700: Social Roles of Sufis in Medieval India [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978]; Eaton, The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier.) More recently, John Richards has studied the expanding Mughal imperial frontier in Bengal and its impact on the economy and ecology of the region has been studied. (Richards, The Unending Frontier, 33–8.) For an insightful work on the relationship between environment, empire, and frontier for a slightly later period, see Gunnel Cederlöf, Founding an Empire on India’s North-Eastern Frontiers, 1790–1840: Climate, Commerce, Polity (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2014).

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As for the nature of the military frontier of the Mughal Empire, the most provocative intervention has come from Jos Gommans. He contends that Mughal imperial frontiers were, in fact, open, lateral routes of communication.7 In defining Mughal military frontiers as open routes radiating outwards from imperial centres, Gommans draws upon an earlier argument made by J.C. Heesterman about the Mauryan Empire of Ashoka. Heesterman highlights the connecting function of radial routes emanating from the Mauryan imperial centre. He also argues that roads and rivers—often cited as frontier demarcations—also helped in fostering communication. He writes: ‘Asoka’s empire, like other traditional empires, should therefore be viewed as a string of centres, each with its outward-moving radial lines, instead of a compact and bounded block of territory.’8 He points out that such a conceptualization of a frontier—with its capacity to integrate different regions through the routes of communication— was much better suited for the Mauryan ideology of universal rule than unbroken bounding lines. ‘The empire or realm may shade off into a shifting border zone’, he observed, but, in principle, it cannot be defined by a rigorous and unequivocal frontier line.9 These are inviting propositions. The importance of road-building as a part of the organizational aspects of warfare has already been highlighted in Chapter 3. In view of Gommans’ arguments, the relationship between frontiers and routes of communication needs to be probed more closely.10 This is what the present chapter does. In addition to the questions raised earlier, it also pushes Heesterman and Gommans’ suggestions further by asking if frontiers were indeed open routes, how exactly was control exercised over them? How were such frontiers expanded and defended? The following sections will explore these issues. 7

Gommans, Mughal Warfare, 16. J.C. Heesterman, ‘Two Types of Spatial Boundaries,’ in Comparative Social Dynamics: Essays in Honour of S.N. Eisenstadt, ed. Erik Cohen et al. (Boulder and London: Westview Press, 1985), 59–72, see 66–7. 9 Heesterman, ‘Two Types of Spatial Boundaries,’ 66–7. 10 For Gommans’ reflections on the relationship between Mughal roadbuilding and imperial frontiers, see Gommans, Mughal Warfare, 15–22, 100–11. 8

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ROAD - BUILDING AND MUGHAL MILITARY CAMPAIGNS

The Mughal Empire presided over an elaborate network of routes of communication. These included both overland roads and riparian routes that crisscrossed the entire length and breadth of the empire. Mughal emperors associated high priority to the maintenance of these routes. Contemporary normative texts such as Jahangir’s dustūru ’l-‘amal (rules of conduct), are quite explicit about the care that Mughal officials were expected to devote to the upkeep and improvement of roads. The emperor instructed jāgīrdārs to build sarāys (rest houses) and dig wells at regular intervals on the side of roads, especially in areas prone to thefts and robberies (duzdī wa rāh-zanī) and where roads passed through desolate areas. The emperor hoped that this would encourage people to settle down near the sarāys and gradually decrease the rate of crime.11 Away from issues of governance, road-building also comprised a vital part of Mughal military operations. Often at the onset of a campaign, woodcutters and pioneers would proceed a few marches ahead of the main army, clearing forests and levelling the ground for facilitating easy troop movement.12 This would be especially necessary in three types of regions. First, in places such as Kashmir and the Afghan region, which were dominated by hills, ravines, and defiles, roads needed to be levelled before the army could proceed. There are numerous instances of this in Mughal chronicles that discuss Akbar’s campaigns in these parts especially during the 1580s. In one example, Qasim Khan was deputed to have the roads levelled. Describing Akbar’s march from Agra to Kabul in 1585, Abul Fazl writes, ‘On 7 Azar he [Akbar] encamped at Rohtas … From here Qasim was sent on to level the roads up to the Indus [az īnjā tā daryā-i Sind nishīb wa farāz rā hamwār gardand]. Afterwards he was to make the Khaibar and the road to Kabul passable for carriages [sipas kutal-i Khaibar wa rāh-i Kabul rā gardūn guzār sāzad].’13 Eventually, in the context of Akbar

11

TJ, 1:4/7–8. Father Monserrate, for instance, noted this when he accompanied Akbar on the latter’s journey towards Kabul. (Monserrate, Commentary of Father Monserrate, 80.) 13 AN, 3:470–1/709. 12

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marching towards Kabul, the chronicler observes that Qasim Khan had done a great job. Roads over which camels and horses could travel earlier only with great difficulty had been rendered so good that even ‘carts passed through easily [ki ‘arāba ba-āsānī guzasht]’.14 Next, in places such as Qandahar, Balkh, and Kashmir, it would often be necessary to remove snow from the road to facilitate traffic. Describing the preparations for the Balkh–Badakhshan campaigns, a biographer of Shah Jahan recorded the dispatch of one of the highest commanders of the Mughal army ‘to collect a vast number of the peasantry in those regions for the purpose of removing the snow from the aforesaid [Tul] pass [barāy bar-dāshtan-i barf-i kutal-i mazkūr]’.15 Throughout these campaigns spanning over 1645–7, the Mughal armies operating in the region faced a lot of difficulties with the snows. Under such circumstances, the assistance of these labourers in clearing snow off the roads was absolutely crucial in allowing military campaigns to unfold. Finally, in forested areas such as Assam and the Aravallis, the dense forests needed to be cut down for the troops to march ahead. During the invasion of Assam in 1662, for instance, the Mughal army struggled a lot while cutting their way ahead through the dense vegetation on both the banks of the Brahmaputra River. Dilir Khan, the commander of the vanguard of the imperial army, and Amir Mortaza, the dārogha (superinending officer) of the imperial artillery, were given the responsibility of spearheading the advance with the help of soldiers and elephants. A contemporary observer gives a graphic account of the difficulties the Mughal army faced as they struggled their way into Assam. Mir Jumla, the supreme commander of the invading forces, supervised the fight against nature himself, as workmen and soldiers devoted themselves to the task of chopping down the dense forests and filling up ravines with grass.16 In all the above-mentioned situations, the act of clearing the way and creating a road ahead lay at the heart of imperial military expeditions. In the course of the campaigns, Mughal armies would initially try to use and wrest control of existing routes of communication. 14 15 16

AN, 3:566/856. SN, 412/338. TT, 17–19.

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The first two cases cited earlier exemplify this tendency. In areas where they did not meet with success in this regard, they sought to create new ones. The example of the invasion of Assam shows this. One is also reminded of an instance from eastern Bengal where Mirza Nathan led his workmen to dig up the silted channel of a river so that a new route could be created for the Mughal war-fleet to reach its desired location.17

ROUTES OF COMMUNICATION AS SITES OF MILITARY CONTEST

Contemporary sources indicate that the priority that the Mughal state attached to the control of routes of communication was mirrored by the approach of rival political groups. Throughout Mughal history, routes of communication repeatedly emerged as one of the principal sites of military contest. I pointed out in Chapter 2 that the entire war in the Lower Indus Basin hinged on the control of the riparian highway of the Indus River. Military engagements revolved around the control of strategic points on it, including Bhakkar, Sehwan, Lakhi, and Nasirpur. During the Mughal invasion of Kashmir, the invading army faced very stiff resistance from the Kashmiris over the control of the important mountain passes of the region. Abul Fazl narrates that faced by the Mughal invasion, the Kashmiris ‘endeavoured to close the roads’18 and ‘exerted themselves in closing the defiles’.19 The case of the Afghan region illustrates this point even more clearly. Contemporary sources bear testimony to how both the Mughal state and the various Afghan groups fought primarily over the control of routes of communication. Abul Fazl, for instance, complains that in 1595, the Ghakkars ‘tormented the weak, and closed the road to Qandahar [rāh-i Qandahār bar zad]’.20 The insurgents defended their positions by building stockades. Abul Fazl then describes how Shah Beg Khan, the Mughal governor of Qandahar, led a campaign

17 18 19 20

BG, JS60:20b–21a/1:61. AN, 3:504/767. AN, 3:504/768. AN, 3:697/1043.

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against them and opened the road again.21 Another passage refers to the Tarikis, a religious sect, rebelling and making the Khaibar route unsafe (rāh-i Khāibār na-aimanī pazī-raft).22 In the context of yet another expedition, Abul Fazl writes: Also, on this day Kuar Man Singh was sent off to Kabul, in order that he might civilize that country by justice … An order was given to him that when he came near the Khaibar he should halt for some days and chastise the Tarikis, and make the road safe [chunān sāzad ki rāh aimanī pazīrad], so that pedestrians might feel at ease [pūyand-gān rā firāgh-i khāt̤ir bāshad].23

In the previous sentences, the ideas of safety and security are used as value judgments, passed by the chronicler from the point of view of the Mughal state. At a fundamental level, what the usage of these expressions reflected is the control of the roads changing hands between the state and the local insurgents. This tendency continued in the seventeenth century. Jahangir writes in his memoirs, ‘I determined to tell Shah Beg Khan to secure the Ghazni road in such a way that travelers from Qandahar [mutaraddidān-i Qandahār] might reach Kabul with ease [ba-farāghat ba-Kābul tawānand āmad].’24 Many more such examples can be cited, but it would be belabouring the same point. Collectively, they indicate that the prime site of military contest in the Afghan region were not the hills and defiles, over which the Afghans dominated anyway, but the various roads and passes. In fact, as long as they could hold on to the main roads, the Mughals seemed happy enough not to seek much control over the surrounding country. At best, they received the nominal submission from some of the Afghan tribes of the area. At worst, the Afghan passes repeatedly became the sites of some of the worst military disasters that the empire ever faced. Evidence from Bengal also supports this argument strongly. Here, especially in the eastern part of the delta, networks of

21 22 23 24

AN, 3:697/1043. AN, 3:704/1051. AN, 3:476/717. TJ, 1:53/112.

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communication took the form of a riparian meshwork. Here controlling routes boiled down to controlling the chief waterways. The Mughals tried to achieve this by setting up fortified thānas in various places and defending them with artillery. Initially built of mud, some of these were given more permanent brick structures in the second half of the seventeenth century.25 Throughout the Mughal campaigns in eastern Bengal, riverine channels of communication—and not so much the open country—repeatedly emerged as the prime objects of military contest. During their campaigns in Kuch Bihar, Kamrup, and Assam, the Brahmaputra River itself represented one of the most fiercely contested spaces. Kuch and Ahom armies would always post their war-fleets at different crucial junctures of the river, ones that commanded more than one route of riverine communication. In these campaigns, Mughal land forces would advance along the riparian highway of the Brahmaputra together with their war-fleets. Hence engaging the adversary in naval encounters would become imperative for the army to proceed.26 For instance, during the first invasion of Assam led by Saiyid Abu Bakr, the Mughal army was challenged at the mouth of River Kalang, where there were a ‘hundred war-boats of the raja of Assam which were kept at that place for the purpose of chawki or guard-duty’.27 Given the contested nature of routes of communication, the question that arises next is how exactly the Mughals exercised control over them. Contemporary sources bear out a very clear answer to this—forts. This can be illustrated with examples from two regions where the contest over the routes was particularly stiff and longdrawn—the Afghan and Bengal–Assam regions. The following section will discuss the former and the section after that will take up the latter. 25

Ayesha Begum has studied some of these brick forts built in the second half of the seventeenth century. Built of mud and reinforced by bricks, these forts were provided with artillery platforms and other innovations of fort architecture that had emerged in the early modern period after the spread of gunpowder artillery (Begum, ‘Mughal Fort Architecture in Bengal’). 26 See, for example, BG, JS60:109b–110a/1:229. 27 BG, JS61:189b/1:395.

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FORTS , GARRISON TOWNS , AND ROUTES IN THE AFGHAN REGION

The Afghan region as well as the neighbouring Punjab Plains was studded with forts during the period under focus. The four most important ones were located in Kabul, Qandahar, Lahore, and Multan. Let us begin by exploring the importance these forts within the larger geopolitical context of the region. Lahore was by far the most important Mughal city in the north-western part of the empire. Writing between 1615 and 1619, Sir Thomas Roe called it ‘the Mart of India for trafique [sic]’ in view of the multiplicity of trade routes that it commanded.28 Around the same time Edward Terry described it as follows: ‘[T]he chief city thereof, built very large, and abounds in both people and riches, one of the most principal cities for trade in all over India’.29 Johannes De Laet went a step further and hailed it as ‘by far the largest city in the East’.30 For the Mughals, Lahore held a key position with respect to the geopolitics of this region. This comes out very clearly in what Abul Fazl said in the late sixteenth century, reflecting on Akbar’s decision to move to the city in 1586. He wrote: His [Akbar’s] sole thought was that he would stay for a while in the Punjab, and would give peace [ārāmish yābad] to the Zabuli land, cleanse Swad and Bajaur of the stains of rebellion [az ālāyish-i nā-sipāsī pāk kardad], uproot the thorn of the Tarikian [the Raushaniyyas] from Tirah and Bangash [khār-i ban-i Tārīkī-ān bar karda-and], seize the garden of Kashmir [sarā-bustān-i Kashmīr girifta shūd], and bring the populous country of Tatta within the empire. Furthermore, should the ruler of Turan remove the foot of friendliness, he would send a glorious army thither, and follow it up in person. With these profound views he resolved to spend some time in Lahore the capital.31

This passage sums up several important strategic roles that Lahore had come to assume for the Mughal state by late sixteenth century. 28

Thomas Roe, The Embassy of Sir Thomas Roe to the Court of the Great Mogul, 1615–1619, as Narrated in His Journal and Correspondence, edited by W. Foster, 2 vols (London: Hakluyt Society, 1899), 2:534. 29 Terry, A Voyage to East-India, 76. 30 Laet, Empire of the Great Mogol, 51. 31 AN, 3: 493–4/748.

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It points out at least four different regions which could be accessed easily from Lahore by imperial armies—Kabul; the Afghan lands of Swad, Bajaur, Tirah, and Bangash; the Vale of Kashmir; and Thatta in the Lower Indus Basin.32 Even a cursory glance at Mughal campaigns in this region can tell that this was not an overstatement. Lahore was the primary launchpad for Akbar’s campaigns against his half-brother Mirza Muhammad Hakim who was based in Kabul till 1585. When Kashmir was invaded the next year, once again imperial armies marched out of Lahore. It was also principal city that was used to run extensive counter-insurgency operations against Afghan tribes between Lahore and Kabul in the 1580s and 1590s. The most hyperbolic description of the strategic importance of the city, however, comes from Niccolao Manucci. The Italian traveller called Lahore ‘the key to the kingdoms of Kabul, Balkh, Tartary, Kashmir, Persia, Baloches, Multan, Bhakkar, and Tattah’.33 Even after the annexation of Kabul in 1585, Lahore’s importance did not diminish. This was primarily because the empire failed to establish control over the land routes connecting Kabul with North India once and for all. Hence Lahore continued to be the primary administrative as well as military base of the empire in this region. Multan lay to the south-west of Lahore. Although never an imperial centre, Multan ranked right after Lahore in terms of the imperial geopolitics in region. The two cities were closely connected by both a land route as well as the Chenab and Ravi rivers. Multan lent strategic support to Lahore at all times alongside commanding southern Punjab. Owing to its proximity to the Indus, Multan was the main military base for the campaigns in the Lower Indus Basin in the 1570s through the 1590s.34 Its importance also lay in the fact that it commanded a westward route to Qandahar.35 Although the favoured Mughal route to reach Qandahar from North India passed through Lahore and Kabul, the Multan route functioned as the next best option. Indeed, during the Mughal–Safavid war over Qandahar in 1649–53, the Multan route to Qandahar was used by imperial armies.36 Together, Lahore and 32 33 34 35 36

See Habib, Atlas of the Mughal Empire, 0B, 4B. Manucci, Storia do Mogor, 2:174. AN, 3:601/917. Habib, Atlas of the Mughal Empire, 0B, 4B. See for instance SN, 553–4/477, 557/480.

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Multan represented two nodal points of overland and riparian routes of communication that interconnected a vast region comprising big swaths of agricultural land, flourishing manufacturing cities, and busy administrative centres. Hence, both the cities were extremely important in terms of military, administrative, and commercial traffic in the region. It is hardly surprising that these two cities—and their forts—represented the two bulwarks of Mughal power in the northwest through most of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. As we saw in Chapter 1, it was centering these two strongholds that Mughal power established itself in the Punjab Plains and eventually extended to different neighbouring areas. Although the springboard of the Mughal inroads into North India under both Babur and Humayun in early and mid-sixteenth century respectively, Kabul emerged as a new Mughal base in the north-west under Akbar only after 1585. The city’s primary importance lay in its location on the overland routes that connected Central Eurasia and Transoxiana with South Asia.37 Hence the bulk of the trade that passed between these two regions passed through Kabul during our period of study. It is this intermediate location of the city that is reflected in Thomas Roe’s description of it as a ‘great Kingdome [sic], the Northernmost of this [Mughal] Emperours [sic] dominion; and Confineth with [borders upon] Tartaria [Central Eurasia]’.38 Throughout the seventeenth century, Kabul remained an integral part of the empire. Jahangir spent a good amount of his reign in Kabul. Under Shah Jahan, the city emerged as the principal launchpad for the Mughal invasion of Balkh–Badakhshan in 1645–7 as well as the Mughal attempt to retake Qandahar in 1649–53. Yet, the fact that the Mughals never managed to fully control the routes connecting Kabul with North India kept imperial command over the city somewhat precarious. It perpetually looked east towards Lahore for reinforcement of all kinds. In fact, there was a series of forts and garrison towns on the route connecting Lahore with Kabul. These included Jalalabad, Peshawar, Hasan Abdal, and Rohtas.39 The control of the Lahore–Kabul route revolved around the command over these forts.

37 38 39

Habib, Atlas of the Mughal Empire, 0B, 1A–B. Roe, Embassy of Sir Thomas Roe, 2:533. Habib, Atlas of the Mughal Empire, 1A–B.

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Finally, Qandahar was the westernmost city the Mughals ever controlled. Its primary importance lay in its proximity to Khorasan and Iran as well as its command over the land routes that passed from South Asia to West Asia.40 Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it functioned as an outpost that guarded these routes and separated the Mughal and Safavid realms. The chance of getting any substantial economic returns from Qandahar or its extremely impoverished surrounding areas was very slim. It was primarily the city’s strategic importance vis-à-vis the Safavid Empire that led the Mughals to invest both politically and militarily in this fort. However, its precariousness for the empire lay in the fact that the Safavid town of Farah lay much closer to Qandahar than the Mughal bases in Kabul or Multan. In 1606, for example, the fort was besieged by the Safavid commanders posted in Farah and Sistan, with the assistance of the governor of Heart.41 Qandahar was connected to the Mughal bases of Kabul in the north and Multan in the east. Mughal garrisons posted in Qandahar perpetually looked towards these two cities for military and logistical support.42 However, heavy snowfall during winter would annually block all roads connecting Qandahar with the imperial bases in North India. I have discussed in Chapter 2 how the Safavids exploited this situation during their invasion of the city in 1648. This was one of the main reasons why Mughal control over Qandahar always remained shaky. On a long term basis, control over the land routes connecting North India with Iran was actually exercised by monitoring the traffic passing through Multan and Kabul. Aside from the two latter forts, there were a host of fortified locations that wielded command over different points on these routes. Besides controlling traffic, these forts also served as garrison bases, necessary to replenish the stocks 40 For a discussion on Qandahar’s strategic importance and a brief history of the town, see Sarkar, History of Aurangzib, 1:128–31. Also see Habib, An Atlas of the Mughal Empire, 0B, 2A–B. 41 TJ, 1:33/70–1. 42 Abul Fazl writes that when a food crisis arose in Qandahar following the arrival of a Mughal army there in 1595, ‘[a]ble men [were] sent every kind of grain from Multan, several times, and soon there was plenty’. (AN, 3:672/1031.)

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of marching armies. This strategic importance of these lesser forts became visible in contemporary records in times of heightened military traffic through these routes. The descriptions of the Mughal operations in the region during 1649–53 serve as a good example. Prior to the first Mughal siege of Qandahar in 1649, the Mughal army under Prince Aurangzeb first halted at Kabul for 15 days to gather a body of workmen and pioneers for preparing the road ahead. Setting out from Kabul, they again stopped at Ghazni for another 15 days to collect provisions. Garrisoning the forts of Muqur and Qarabagh on the way to protect the route, the army finally reached Qandahar.43 To the south, the command over the roads between Multan and Qandahar was wielded through the forts of Pishin, Quetta, Sibi, and Duki.44 Abul Fazl’s comment about the significance of the conquest of Sibi in 1594–5 reflects the importance the Mughals attached to these forts. ‘By this victory’, he wrote, ‘the country up to Qandahar, Kac [sic] and Mekran was included in the empire.’45 Rather than taking this statement literally, what can be pointed out in light of the earlier discussion is that Sibi stood at the crossroads of the routes connecting the three areas mentioned. Its conquest gave the Mughals direct access to these routes and also some sway over the surrounding countryside. In addition to occupying and garrisoning these already existing forts, the Mughals also constructed several new ones. Undoubtedly, not all of these functioned as checkpoints on routes of communication; several were established for other strategic and military reasons. For instance, Zain Khan Koka erected a fort called Naushahr to facilitate stronger military action against the Yusufzai resistance against Mughal expansion in the Afghan region in the late sixteenth century.46 Yet, there was hardly any conflict between these two types of strategic interests. In a situation where routes of communication regularly emerged as both the chief site and prize of military struggles, the two interests were, in fact, inseparable. This is illustrated by the case of the fort of Attock. Abul Fazl argues that one of the main hopes of Akbar for building the fort in the Afghan region was that ‘the savages of that 43 44 45 46

SN, 502–4/426–8. Habib, Atlas of the Mughal Empire, 2A–B. AN, 3:666/1022. TJ, 1:49/102.

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region might speedily acquire bliss, and the imperial servants might receive protection’.47 In other words, the fort was conceptualized as a military base for counter-insurgency operations against the local Afghans. The Mughal chronicler does not stop here. He proceeds to add that the other benefit that came from the establishment of the fort was that it secured a good stretch of the principal Mughal land route connecting Kabul with Lahore and the Indus River—at whose intersection the fort stood.48 Finally, imperial armies also established a series of smaller military outposts called thānas, in charge of thāna-dārs. Their importance as instruments for the exercise of Mughal control over both land and riparian routes is indicated by the frequency with which they would come under attack of local insurgents. For instance, when Qadam, an Afridi Afghan—who had been collecting road tax of the Khaibar Pass area on behalf of the Mughals—rebelled in 1616, he sent forces to attack these thānas. Jahangir remarks categorically that Qadam’s forces were able to plunder and lay waste to the surrounding areas due to the incompetence of the Mughal forces posted in these thānas.49 The earlier discussion illustrates the fact that control over fortified strongholds was the primary source of command over routes of communication and the surrounding countryside. Let us proceed to explore the relation between forts and routes at the other end of the empire–eastern Bengal.

CONTROLLING ROUTES AND IMPROVISING FORTS IN DELTAIC BENGAL

One needs to begin by highlighting the significant environmental difference between the Afghan and Bengal regions. First, the Afghan

47

AN, 3:347/510. Abul Fazl writes that owing to the founding of the fort, ‘the seekers of traffic obtained confidence [khẉāsta dar-ān rā biẓā‘at-i it̤mi’nān sar-anjām yāft], and world-traversers had security [jahān nawardān-i rozgār rā aimanī rūy dārad]’. (AN, 3:355/520–1.) 49 TJ, 1:157/321. 48

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region had an abundance of hills, mountains, and defiles, which offer an abundance of naturally defensible locations and, hence, forts. In the low-lying floodplains of the Bengal delta, however, there is a paucity of big stone forts. Second, the Afghan region mainly offers land routes. It is only in its eastern margin that the Indus system provides a network of well-defined and robust rivers. In contrast, the routes of communication primarily took the form of interconnected riverine channels in eastern Bengal. As the present section will point out, these two factors took the relationship between fortified locations and routes of communication in a different direction in this region. Bengal had a few big forts. These included Garhi, Tanda, Rajmahal, and Dhaka. In time, these emerged as some of the main military bases of the Mughals. However, the majority of the fortified locations that imperial armies had to negotiate—and eventually build themselves— was made out of clay, mud, and burnt bricks. These were improvised fortifications, especially ubiquitous in eastern Bengal. There are a lot of references to temporary mud forts during the Mughal advances in these eastern reaches of the delta between 1608 and 1612. The military encounter between the Mughals and these mud forts has already been discussed in Chapter 2. What this section will do is highlight the close nexus between these improvised fortifications and riverine routes of communication. Initially, there were two main complexes of Mughal power in Bengal—the first centered on the fort of Tanda and the latter on that of Rajmahal. Located not far from each other, they guarded the crossroads of three routes. The first route passed westward to the Mughal imperial cities of Agra and Delhi through Patna, Banaras, and Allahabad. The second went eastward towards the cities of Ghoraghat and Dhaka in Bhati, while the third passed southward across the length of the moribund delta to the port of Satgaon and then to Odisha. Together, the Tanda and Rajmahal belt represented the most important nodal point of the routes of communication in the western part of Bengal.50 Not surprisingly, the Mughals did their best to hold on to this area. Seized from Daud Khan Karrani in 1574, Tanda was the first

50

Habib, Atlas of the Mughal Empire, 11B.

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ever Mughal base in Bengal. In the 1590s, the imperial establishment shifted eastward to Dhaka. Located at the crucial junction between the routes passing northward to Kuch Bihar and Assam, south-eastward to Arakan, and westward to North India, his city played a key role in Islam Khan Chishti’s final conquest of eastern Bengal between 1608 and 1612. He also founded the city of Jahangirnagar and erected a new fort to strengthen Mughal presence here.51 In addition to the two biggest cities—Rajmahal and Dhaka, a host of smaller towns and garrison posts commanded the various routes of Bengal. Some of the most important of these were Ghoraghat in the north; Sylhet in the east; Jessore and Bhusna in the centre; and Bakla and Bhalwa in the south-east.52 Ghoraghat had been an important Afghan base before it was seized by the Mughals in the late sixteenth century.53 The town occupied a key position on the principal route connecting Assam with Rajmahal and Dhaka. This is evidenced by the fact that imperial forces invading Kuch Bihar and Assam in the seventeenth century regularly passed through Ghoraghat. Further east, Sylhet stood on the route heading eastward from Dhaka. Occupied in 1612, Sylhet emerged as the most important imperial outpost in the east.54 In years to follow, expeditions were mounted from here further eastward into Kachar and Tripura. The campaigns into Kachar met with only limited success. Although a Mughal army succeeded briefly in establishing an outpost in Asurainagar in Kachar, they could not hold on to it.55 Their control over Udaypur, the capital of the Tripura kingdom, however, proved to

51

BG, JS60: 18b, 30a–30b/54, 74–6. Habib, Atlas of the Mughal Empire, 11B. 53 Following the Mughal occupation of Tanda in 1574, Ghoraghat became a main rallying point of Afghan resistance. Although Mughal troops took the city around 1575, they were soon chased away. In 1583, it served as the place where an Afghan leader called Jabbari mobilized his troops before marching on Tanda. For references to Mughal troops being chased away from Ghoraghat, see AN, 3:131/186, 384/567, 420/695. 54 For a discussion on the eastern territorial limits of medieval and early modern Islamicate states based in Bengal, see Blochmann, Contributions, 27–32. 55 BG, JS60:101a, 105a–105b, JS61:165b–166a/1:208, 219–21, 325–26. 52

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be more enduring.56 In any case, the prominence of Sylhet remained undiminished throughout the seventeenth century. Both Jessore and Bhusna were important stations on the main route connecting Dhaka with Satgaon. Along with smaller towns such as Fatehabad and Qazisala, they wielded immense control over this route.57 Lying at the south-east corner of the empire, Bhalwa and Bakla represented the south-eastern limits of the empire. Bhalwa was closely associated with Chittagong and Arakan, both geographically and politically. This is illustrated by the fact that its ruler Raja Ananta Manik chose to escape to Arakan in the face on a Mughal invasion in the early seventeenth century. Later, when Arakanese and Portuguese war-fleets started raiding south-eastern Bengal, Bhalwa bore a good part of its brunt.58 Later, it was also used as a base by Mughal armies for launching expeditions against Arakan.59 Located near the Bay of Bengal such as Bhalwa, Bakla was also extremely susceptible to the Portuguese slave-raids. Mirza Nathan mentions that in the early 1620s, Portuguese pirates carried away around 1,500 men and women as slaves from the area owing to the negligence of the Mughal officer on duty in Jessore.60 To the north-east of Bengal, towns such as Dhubri, Ghila, Rangamati, Jogighopa, Hajo, Guwahati, Jamdhara, Lakhogarh, and Trimohoni commanded different points on the Brahmaputra River and its tributaries.61 Controlling them was crucial to commanding the

56

While the raids into Kachar were launched basing Sylhet, the first invasion of Tripura was launched from Bhalwa. The Bahāristān mentions Abdul Wahid, the thāna-dār of Bhalwa, sending his son ‘with a strong army to raid the territory of Tippera’. (BG, JS61:166b/1:329.) It is not mentioned whether the second invasion, which brought about the Mughal conquest of Udaypur was also launched from Bhalwa. (BG, JS62:231a, 240a–240b, 246b/2:511, 537–8, 554–6.) On one occasion, the ṣūbadār of Bengal even took a pleasure trip to Udaypur. (BG, JS62:270b–271a/2:627–8.) 57 Habib, Atlas of the Mughal Empire, 11B. 58 For an example, see BG, JS61:166b–167a/1:329–30. 59 BG, JS62:271b–272a/2:629–31. 60 BG, JS62:273a–273b/2:635. 61 Habib, Atlas of the Mughal Empire, 13B.

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routes—centered on the riparian highway of the Brahmaputra—that connected Dhaka with Assam. Consequently, these towns became the primary targets of invading Mughal forces repeatedly. The expedition of 1662–3 is a case in point.62 Besides seeking to control these towns, the Mughals as well as their various adversaries also sought to control different junctures of the riverine channels by erecting improvised fortifications out of mud and clay.63 I have already discussed the details of this in Chapter 2. In sum, the present discussion on the Bengal region brings us to the same observation as in the previous section—it was the command over forts that gave states lasting control over routes of communication.

FAILURE TO CONTROL ROUTES AND THE FATE OF CAMPAIGNS

From the earlier discussion, two things emerge. First, controlling routes of communication was a vital part of Mughal military campaigns and territorial expansion. Second, fortified locations were the primary instruments for exercising this control. Given such a state of things, the failure to control routes could lead to serious consequences. One of the main reasons of why the Mughals could not counter the Portuguese slave-raids in south-eastern Bengal between the 1620s and 1660s lay in the inability of the empire to establish control over routes of communication. In these deep reaches of the delta, there simply were no set of perennial land routes that imperial armies might focus their attention on. Rather, networks of communication comprised the interconnected web of rivers, canals, and rivulets. They would get converted into one continuous sheet of water every monsoon. Understandably, the invading Portuguese—and in many cases Arakanese—war-boats had very little difficulty in bypassing the Mughal thānas by simply choosing alternate riparian channels and thereby making Mughal defenses superfluous. Forests could pose equally daunting challenges. Let us illustrate this point with one example from the very heart of empire. Following

62

TT, 17–45. Begum, ‘Mughal Fort Architecture in Bengal;’ Tavernier, Travels in India, 1:127. 63

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reverses at the hand of the Mughals, Rana Pratap Singh, the king of Mewar, took refuge with his followers in the forests of the Aravalli Hills in the late 1570s. Here, he continued to elude Mughal forces and carry on for many years annual raids on what effectively had become Mughal territories. Whenever imperial armies would chase him, the Rana would promptly withdraw into the forests and defiles. Mughal troops would hem the jungle in from all sides, but ultimately fail to apprehend him. Their failure emanated from the fact that the imperial troops were completely unfamiliar with the forest the Rana was hiding in and did not know how to navigate it. Because of this, the imperial networks of communication simply could not penetrate the forests and hills of these areas sufficiently; nor could they take over the control of the already existing routes which the Rana kept on exploiting. Almost a century later, Mughal armies under Aurangzeb faced very similar difficulties in trying to put down a rebellion in Mewar in 1679–81. Niccolao Manucci explicitly points out that the difficulties principally emanated from the Mughal failure to negotiate the local terrain and bring under their control the routes of communication. Describing how the Rana trapped a Mughal army in Udaipur, he writes: The Rana barred the roads in such a way that the Moguls, being now surrounded by mountains, could find no exit, nor knew they where to pass; for the roads are provided with labyrinths, and none but the natives know the right road. Aurangzeb was amazed at finding himself by one stroke thus encircled, unable to move either forward or backward.64

Failing to penetrate these regions, the Mughals stopped caring about these hills and forests beyond a point. In the context of one rebellion in Gujarat in 1606, Jahangir narrates that after the arrival of the imperial troops, the rebels ‘took refuge in different jungles, and the country was reduced to order’.65 There is no mention of the Mughal forces apprehending the insurgents; the emperor was satisfied with the adversary being driven off into ‘different jungles’ and

64 65

Manucci, Storia do Mogor, 2:226. TJ, 1:23/49–50.

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his forces retaining the command of the world outside it. Describing campaigns of a Mughal army that he commanded in the Rangamati area of Kamrup in the late 1610s, Mirza Nathan writes: ‘[T]he rebels retired to the hilly regions. The victorious warriors making no distinction between high and low lands pursued them to some distance when the Mirza [Nathan], thinking it unadvisable to proceed further sent messengers and brought them back.’66 The same attitude is reflected in the passages of Akbar-nāma, where Abul Fazl describes how, having failed to lay hands on the fugitive Rana Pratap Singh, Mughal forces ‘reared the standards of victory in the open plain’.67 What these examples demonstrate is that the Mughal Empire was primarily an empire of flat, wide, and open plains. This is where imperial armies flourished the best. A passage in the journal of the Dutch trader Francesco Pelsaert proves that this peculiarity of the empire was not lost on contemporary observers. It reads: But [it] is important to recognise also that he [Jahangir] is to be regarded as King of the plains or the open roads only; for in many places you can travel only with a strong body of men, or on payment of heavy tolls to rebels. The whole country is enclosed and broken up by many mountains, and the people who live in, on, or beyond, the mountains know nothing of any King, or if Jahangir; they recognise only their Rajas, who are very numerous, and to whom the country is apportioned in many small fragments by old tradition. Jahangir, whose name implies that he grasps the whole world, must therefore be regarded as ruling no more than half the dominions which he claims, since there are nearly as many rebels as subjects.68

The sustenance and expansion of imperial power relied on the control over routes of communications. Beyond the open plains of North India, this control was difficult to achieve. This was one of the main reasons why Mughal campaigns faltered and territorial control remained tenuous among the riverine meshwork of eastern Bengal, the forests of Assam and the Aravallis, as well as the hills of Himalayas and the Afghan region. Representing zones of fading imperial power, 66 67 68

BG, JS61: 174a/1:350. AN, 3:185/259–60. Pelsaert, Jahangir’s India, 58–9.

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these parts in effect signified imperial frontiers. Conceptualized in this way, a frontier does not need to be an area far away from the imperial heartland; it could be virtually anywhere. As the case of the Aravalli Hills and forests represent, it could also be at the very heart of the empire. However, does this mean that the two long-term frontiers of the Mughal Empire—those in the Afghan region in the north-west and in Bengal–Assam in the east—were purely a result of the inability of the imperial armies to penetrate these areas beyond a point? Saying that would, however, be simplistic. While this inability undoubtedly contributed to the process of these regions emerging as frontiers, there were other factors in play as well. Specifically, there were at least three factors responsible—challenging environmental factors, greatly different military techniques of the adversaries, and negotiating local chieftains and groups. While the first two among these were undoubtedly different, at one level they were also entangled, since these military techniques often hinged on the strategic use of the local environmental factors. The following section will, hence, take up these two factors together. It will give more space to the Afghan region, since this has received less attention till now compared to Bengal or Assam, which I analysed in Chapter 2. The third factor, however, will need some detailed discussion. Two separate sections will be dedicated to this issue afterwards.

INTERPLAY OF ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS AND MILITARY TECHNIQUES

In both the Bengal and Afghan regions, the climate, terrain, and ecology was not much to the liking of the Mughals, who—as I have observed previously—preferred flat open spaces. As mentioned earlier, Bengal was full of rivers and other waterbodies, while Assam had very dense forest cover in addition to huge rivers. The monsoon rains and the consequent annual floods made things infinitely worse for the Mughal troops by robbing them of their mobility. In the Afghan region, on the other hand imperial armies had to negotiate quite extreme climatic conditions. Many parts of this region experience very harsh winters and ample snowfall.

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At the risk of some repetition, let me quickly point out how local techniques of war hinged on exploiting environmental factors. In Bengal, war was largely amphibious. The Mughals struggled with this for the couple of decades after their entry into Bengal in 1574. However, eventually they learnt from their adversaries. By the turn of the century, they started deploying some of these tactics themselves. They started using increasingly bigger war-fleets and constructing mud forts to defending their halting positions and establishes control over crucial nodes of riverine communication. In Assam, however, their difficulties were much greater. Here Ahom soldiers refused to engage the Mughal forces in open battle—which in any case was difficult to execute in the Brahmaputra Basin because of the abundance of forests and the lack of wide open spaces. The Ahoms repeatedly ambushed the imperial troops and attacked them at night. While the rains and the floods often paralysed the Mughal armies, the Ahoms exploited these conditions to their own advantage. Beyond a point, Mughal armies simply did not have an answer for these military techniques. The Afghan terrain, on the other hand, was dominated by hills, mountains, defiles, and ravines. The Afghan tribesmen fought in a terrain that was completely different from that of Bengal or Assam. Yet, their military strategy bore a certain similarity to the techniques of the Ahoms. This revolved around avoiding pitched battles with the Mughal forces and exploiting the local terrain to ambush them. Mughal armies sent to conquer certain areas such as Swad and Bajaur faced tremendous resistance. They found the terrain— dominated by hills, ravines, and defiles—particularly difficult to operate in. The Afghans, on the other hand, harassed the Mughal forces using the same terrain to their own advantage. Abul Fazl makes this evident when he blames the Yusufzais for being ‘haughty on account of the difficulties of the passes [az girīv-hā-i dushwār gushā nakhwat bar az rāzad].’69 In one incident at the Balandari Pass, Afghan troops took up positions on the top of the hills, rolled down big stones on the Mughal army below, and claimed huge casualties in the imperial ranks.70 69 70

AN, 3:481/726. AN, 3:484–5/730–1.

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Abul Fazl puts Mughal casualties at 500. One can, however, guess that being the official chronicler of the empire, he must have been scaling the Mughal losses down. The actual number of losses was probably much higher.71 Mughal armies continued to face repeated disasters even in the seventeenth century. In 1620, an army sent by Jahangir was completely massacred in one of the passes.72 Even at the height of the power of Aurangzeb in the third quarter of the seventeenth century, Mughal armies were regularly decimated in these parts. In 1672, the Afghans once again took position on top of the hills of the Khyber Pass and started hurling arrows and stones as soon as the imperial army marched in. As the Mughal troops and their war-animals scrambled in confusion, Afghan attacks claimed the lives of a huge number of them.73 Two years later, yet another army was massacred at the Kharapa Pass by the ‘stone-showering Afghans’.74 What is important here is to identify the two different, albeit related, challenges that Mughal armies faced. At one level, the challenge was one of military incompatibility. Both the Afghans and the Ahoms refused to engage Mughal armies in the mode of warfare the latter was good at—pitched battles. The Ahoms would withdraw into the hills and forests and allow the Mughals to march into Assam with a false sense of accomplishment before attacking them and targeting their supply lines especially under the cover of the night. The Afghans would station themselves on top of hills and target Mughal forces passing underneath by throwing projectiles. At another level, imperial armies also struggled against environmental forces—heavy showers, devastating floods, dense forests, and rivers in eastern Bengal and

71

AN, 3:484–5/730–2. Nizamuddin Ahmad gives us a more realistic figure of 8,000. A great many Mughal commanders also died, including Raja Birbar, one of Akbar’s closest companions. (MT, 2:361–2.) 72 TJ, 2:307/160–1. 73 FA, 104–8; MM, 117–18/72; ML, 2:232–4/260–1; Manucci, Storia do Mogor, 2:186–8. Also see Sarkar, History of Aurangzib, 3:149–52; Smith, Akbar, 168–70. 74 MM, 131–2/81; Sarkar, History of Aurangzeb, 3:154–5.

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Assam, and cold snowy winters, hills, ravines, and defiles in the Afghan region. The Mughals constantly wrestled against both these factors. Their perpetual interplay severely hampered the military performance of the imperial armies. All this meant that in these two regions, the Mughals needed local allies more than almost anywhere else. They needed people who could keep them supplied with war-animals, military infrastructure, information about the weather, knowhow about routes, and even troops, if possible. The social class who could do this was that of the zamīndārs. The Mughals depended on them heavily wherever they campaigned or conquered. In order to fully appreciate the failure of the Mughal Empire to expand beyond the Afghan and Bengal–Assam regions—and thereby allow these two regions to emerge as two longstanding military frontiers of the empire—we have to delve into this issue next.

LOCAL COLLABORATION AND RESISTANCE IN THE AFGHAN REGION

A large number of autonomous tribal populations (alūs) inhabited different parts of the Punjab Plains and Zabulistan. Among them, the Mughals negotiated the Ghakkars most successfully. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Ghakkars dominated considerable parts of the Punjab Plains, especially the section between Rawalpindi and Lahore. Writing in late sixteenth century, Abul Fazl noted that they lived in the land between Rivers Indus and Beas, ‘in the folds of the mountains, and among hillocks and caverns [dar shi‘ab-i jibāl wa iqlāl aghoar wāqi‘ ast]’.75 Mughal alliance-building with the Ghakkars started when one Kamal Khan Ghakkar joined Humayun’s army on its way to invade North India in 1555. He fought on the Mughal side at Panipat and Mankot.76 Akbar also co-opted Kamal Khan’s uncle, Sultan Adam Khan, into imperial service eventually. Abul Fazl says that although Adam Khan had not joined Humayun’s forces in 1555, Akbar pardoned this offence considering that he had made over Mirza 75 76

AN, 2:191/296–7; Jackson, The Delhi Sultanate, 21, 127, 309, 313. AN, 2:22/38.

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Kamran to Humayun’s forces. In fact, in contrast to the Mughal norm of the circulation of the commanders throughout the realm, Akbar permitted Adam Khan to remain in his own territories.77 This points to at least two things. First, it shows the usual way of operation of the Ghakkars. They were fence-sitters. Kamal Khan undoubtedly joined the Mughal army in search of booty in North India. When they defeated the Afghans eventually, he saw profit in continuing in Mughal service. Adam Khan, on the other hand, had made Mirza Kamran over to Humayun, but had decided against joining the invading army. It was only after the Mughals had established themselves in North India that he became eager to be a part of the empire and find a share in its spoils. Second, it also demonstrates how desperate the Mughals were at this point to win the loyalty of the Ghakkars. Akbar chose to overlook the fact that Adam Khan had not joined Humayun’s invading army. Moreover, in lieu of his allegiance, Akbar had to accede to Adam Khan’s wish to be left in his own area and not be forced to serve in other parts of the Mughal Empire. This clearly indicates that at this point of time, the Ghakkars exercised a fair bit of bargaining power over the Mughal state. Eventually, however, a quarrel broke out between the two Ghakkar leaders. The Mughals saw benefit in backing Kamal Khan. He was rewarded with the towns of Kara, Fathpur, Hanswah, and other places as jāgīr after he successfully put down an Afghan insurgency in Saranj in Malwa.78 Finally, in 1562, the empire intervened in Ghakkar politics directly in favour of Kamal Khan. Akbar sent his commanders of the Punjab at the head of an army against Adam Khan. Contemporary sources tell us that Akbar initially wanted the Ghakkar land to be divided into two portions—one to be given to Kamal Khan and the other to be left to Adam. However, when peaceful negotiations with Adam failed, Akbar instructed his army to squash him and confer all his territories on Kamal Khan. Accordingly, a Mughal army defeated Adam’s forces, imprisoned him and his son, and proclaimed Kamal Khan as the new leader of the Ghakkars.79 What the Mughals effectively achieved by planting their partisan as the leader of the 77 78 79

AN, 2:43/95–6. AN, 2:78/119. AN, 2:191–94/296–300.

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Ghakkars was the crucial control of the routes linking North India with the Indus. In time, more Ghakkar leaders were inducted into Mughal service. In 1586, Prince Salim married the daughter of one Said Khan Ghakkar.80 In the same year we notice Mubarak Khan and Jalal Khan Ghakkar as two of the commanders of the Mughal army sent to conquer Kashmir.81 One Said Khan Ghakkar features among the manṣabdārs dispatched against the Afridi and Urakzai Afghans in 1592.82 In the 1610s, one Shah Muhammad Kakar is mentioned to have been on duty in the Kuch Bihar region.83 One Jalal Ghakkar is mentioned to have fallen in combat while campaigning against the Afghans in 1620. Following this, Jahangir appointed Jalal’s son Akbar Quli—who was already involved in the Mughal siege of Kangra—to the zamīndārī of the Ghakkar areas.84 These examples indicate over this time, the Mughals had succeeded in establishing a stable alliance with the Ghakkars and were able to harness the latter’s military resources. In turn, the Ghakkars must have found being a part of the Mughal imperial project much more profitable than resisting it. In contrast, the Mughals had a much tougher time negotiating the various Afghan tribes to the west of the Indus. The first time since Humayun’s reconquest of North India that the empire got seriously embroiled beyond the Indus was following their annexation of Kabul in 1585. It appears that at least a section of the Yusufzai tribesmen— who dominated the Swad and Bajaur areas—accepted Mughal authority at first. However, the chieftain who was co-opted escaped twice, leaving Abul Fazl to lament that the Yusufzais had ‘returned to their former ways, and applied themselves to robbery and oppression’.85 As the Yusufzais decided to resist Mughal imperialism in the region rather than become a part of it, Akbar sent successive armies 80

AN, 3:494/749. AN, 3:496/752. 82 AN, 3:607/928. 83 It appears that the Mughals used Kakar and Ghakkar as interchangeable terms. (BG, JS61:163b/1:318.) 84 TJ, 2:307–8/161. 85 AN, 3:475/716. 81

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to undermine their resistance. Abul Fazl rationalizes this by saying that ‘the whole idea was that the crooked tribe might be guided aright, and that the black-hearted ones who did not accept counsel should be punished’.86 Unable to tackle the adversary who fought using the hilly terrain to its advantage, Mughal armies unleashed a great deal of violence. Abul Fazl writes that in a short period of time, they succeeded in pacifying the lands of Swad, Bajaur, and Buner. Mughals forces killed a lot of Yusufzai tribesmen, while many more were enslaved and sold off to Turan and Persia.87 Political insurgency also took on a religious colour in this region due to the presence of the millennial group of Muslims called Raushaniyyas, whom Abul Fazl refers to as Tarikis.88 They had followers among different Afghan tribes. In 1586, their leader Jalala Tariki led a group of his followers comprising mostly the Mahmand and Ghori tribesmen to besiege Peshawar. Saiyid Hamid Bokhari, the Mughal jāgīrdār of the city, came out and engaged the Afghans. In the battle that ensued, he was killed. As the Afghans continued to besiege Peshawar, Akbar ordered reinforcements to proceed from Kabul and the thāna of Langarkot.89 Mughal antagonism against the Raushaniyyas was twofold. First, Akbar found their religious views difficult to stomach. These were perceived as a direct threat to Akbar’s own ideology of rule. Second, these views provided the Afghan groups of the region an ideological framework to resist Mughal expansion. If the Mughal state was to dominate the Afghan region, this framework needed to be demolished. Consequently, the empire invested in long-term military action against these groups. Jahangir continued his father’s tradition of persecuting the Raushaniyyas.90 Failure to bring these tribes under 86

AN, 3:475/716. AN, 3:486/734. 88 Founded by Bayazid Ansari, a sufi teacher, Raushaniyyas were a group of egalitarian and heterodox Muslims. They had a large following among the various Afghan tribes. See Afzal Husain, ‘The Family of Bayazid Ansari – The Founder of the Rausaniya Movement,’ Proceedings of the Indian History Congress (1994), 397–403. 89 AN, 3:510/777–8. 90 TJ, 1:56/118. 87

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control bred frustration among Mughal ranks. They sought to demoralize the locals by regularly sending forces just to raid and plunder the countryside. One such campaign backfired in 1620 and led to massive casualties in the Mughal army. Several imperial commanders were killed. Frustrated, Jahangir recorded: ‘[T]he Afghans, swarming round on all sides, like ants and locusts, attacked him [Izzat Khan], and caught him in their midst … the rebels seized the tops of the hills, and fought with stones and arrows.’ When the Mughals did manage to lay hands on these resistant Afghan tribes, they did their best to crush them. They would plunder entire tribes, capture them, and sell them off as slaves. Sometimes tribal populations from elsewhere would be transferred and settled in different parts of Zabulistan as a counterweight against the Afghans. For instance, Akbar moved a group of Gujars, ‘who had passed their time in the neighbourhood in thieving and highway robbery’ and established them in the middle of the Afghans.91 Alongside these operations, the Mughals also ceaselessly tried to co-opt sections of these tribesmen. In one example, they were able to win over one Jamal Tariki, a follower of Jalala Tariki. Jamal joined a Mughal army sent against Jalala in 1587. At one point of time, a confusion arose in the army over which route to take. Jamal, with his knowledge about the local terrain, advised the army on the matter.92 In 1589, Akbar, while returning from Kashmir, met with Shaikh Ismail, ‘in whose sanctity the Yusufzai tribe believe, and to whom they impute miracles’.93 The Mughals probably hoped that by co-opting him, they would be able to neutralize the Yusufzais. Abul Fazl remarks with his typical wry wit, ‘[p]erhaps the sins of this tribe might be forgiven by this intercession!’94 The Mughals also bought the allegiance of the Aimaqs living near Kabul. When Akbar visited Kabul in 1589, he visited them and made lavish gifts.95 Some of these Aimaqs also found employment in Mughal armies as auxiliaries. When some Afghans rebelled at Pakli, Akbar instructed Husain Beg 91 92 93 94 95

TJ, 1:44/91. AN, 3:520/794. AN, 3:559/850. AN, 3:559/850. AN, 3:567/858.

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Shah Umari ‘to march with many Aimaqs of Badakhshan’.96 Jahangir notes the presence of 700 Aimaq cavalry among the troops he sent to the Deccan in 1615.97 It appears that the Mughals also succeeded in gaining the allegiance of some Afridi tribesmen. Jahangir writes that in 1616 he received intelligence about the rebellion of one Qadam, ‘one of the Afridi Afghans who had been loyal and obedient, and to whom the rāh-dārī [transit dues] of the Khaibar Pass belonged’.98 His brother Harun and son Jalal had been kept in the Mughal court. On receipt of the news of Qadam’s rebellion, Jahangir ordered Harun and Jalal to be imprisoned in Gwalior.99 East of the Indus, a considerable area was dominated by the Dilzak Afghans. In one place Jahangir writes: In this village [Amrohi] and its neighbourhood there are 7,000 or 8,000 households of Khaturs and Dalazaks. All kinds of mischief and oppression and highway robbery [fasād wa ta‘addī wa rāh-zanī] take place through this tribe. I ordered the government of this region and Attock to be given to Zafar Khan, son of Zain Khan Koka, and that by the time of the return of the royal standards from Kabul they should march all the Dalazaks to Lahore and capture the head men of the Khaturs and keep them in prison.100

The fact that in Jahangir’s Deccan campaigns of 1615, 3,000 Dilzak Afghan horsemen were employed, points to the fact that by this time, some of these Afghans had been co-opted into the empire, given a stake in the imperial victories and thus neutralised as a threat, at least temporarily.101 Baluchis lived to the south-west of the Afghan lands. Some of them also joined the empire. Abul Fazl records that in 1578, Akbar ‘accepted their excuses and received the entreaties of those tamed ones of the desert of ignorance at the rate of chosen service’ and he ‘issued an 96

AN, 3:577/874. TJ, 1:147/299. 98 TJ, 1:157/321. 99 TJ, 1:157–8/321. 100 TJ, 1:48/100. 101 TJ, 1:147/299. 97

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order that the troops [sent against them] should return’.102 When in 1591, a Mughal army under Khan-i Khanan marched against Thatta, the Baluchis confirmed their allegiance by visiting the Mughal commander near Multan.103 Among the troops sent in 1592 to reinforce the army that was at war against Mirza Jani Beg in Thatta, we find the name of one Ghazi Khan Baluch.104 Another Farhad Beg Baluch was one of the commanders of the Mughal army that invaded Baltistan in 1636–7.105 Moreover, Prince Selim had a daughter born to him in 1594 by the daughter of one Abdullah Baluch.106 This means that like the Ghakkars, the Mughals also married into Baluch families in order to seal political alliances. However, in spite of all their efforts, the empire failed to make any substantial headway in neutralizing these tribesmen. While the local environmental factors and the Afghan military techniques baffled the Mughals, the latter also failed to ally with enough Afghan groups. Writing in 1631, Johannes De Laet observed: The road from Lahor [sic] to Kabul is infested by Pathan brigands, and although the king has established 23 guard-stations of troops at regular intervals, none the less [sic] travelers are frequently robbed by these brigands, who in the year 1611 actually attacked and looted the city of Kabul itself.107

Commenting on Aurangzeb’s personal campaigns against the tribesmen in the mid-1670s, Manucci observed that ‘this campaign lasted twenty-six months without the king gaining the least advantage over the Pathans. On the contrary, he lost some of his most valuable soldiers’.108 This succinctly sums up the nature of the military and political stalemate the Mughal Empire had met in the Afghan region. 102

AN, 3:239–40/342–3. AN, 3:601/918. 104 AN, 3:608/929. 105 SN, 291/216. 106 AN, 3:662/1015. 107 Laet, Empire of the Great Mogol, 55. 108 ML, 2:237–42/263–6; Manucci, Storia do Mogor, 2:191; FA, 111–15. For an overview of Aurangzeb’s Afghan campaigns, see Sarkar, History of Aurangzib, 3:142–62. 103

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While they never really lost control of any major city or fort other than Qandahar since Humayun’s reconquest, the imperial inability to neutralize the rival power centres in this region meant that their control over the routes of communication running through this region, especially to the west of the Indus, remained tenuous. In the first half of the seventeenth century, the empire somehow succeeded in maintaining this control; without it, the military expeditions towards Balkh–Badakhshan and Qandahar would never have been possible. However, the repeated military disasters during the reigns of both Akbar and Aurangzeb indicate how tentative this control was and how easily it could be shaken off. LOCAL ALLIANCE - BUILDING IN BENGAL AND ASSAM

Much like the Afghan region, the Mughals struggled in Bengal and Assam against environmental factors as well as adversaries who used techniques of war radically different from what the Mughals preferred. Under such circumstances, finding local allies became crucial for military success. This was especially true in eastern Bengal. As in the Afghan region, the empire showed great inclination towards absorbing rival chieftains rather than eliminating them. In a typical example, a Mughal army sent against the zamīndārs of Birbhum, Pachet, and Hijli in 1608 was instructed to offer protection and favourable terms to the adversary if they would surrender. In case they would resist, their lands were to be laid waste and they were to be brought before the ṣūbadār as prisoners. If they fell in battle, their heads were to be brought in.109 There are numerous examples where local chieftains surrendered to invading Mughal armies in the initial stage itself and were coopted to the empire. In several cases, chieftains resisted initially, but surrendered soon after hostilities ensued. Here also, Mughal armies were happy to welcome them into their own ranks. Bahāristān-i Ghaybī, a text written by a military commander involved in the military operations in Bengal and Assam in the early seventeenth century, allows us a much closer look at the unfolding of the actual process

109

BG, JS60:6a/1:17–18.

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of alliance-building at the ground level in this region—something that is difficult to gauge for the Afghan region from the imperial chronicles written away from the sites of action. The text shows, for instance, that the occasions of the submission of these local chieftains and their incorporation into the imperial body politic were important affairs and were accompanied by elaborate rituals. Usually, after submitting to an invading army by sending one’s envoys, a zamīndār would have to come himself to the Mughal commander heading the expedition. The latter would receive the chieftain with due honour and bestow upon him markers of imperial authority. Thus, when Raja Satrajit of Busna surrendered to a Mughal army, he came to visit its commander Iftikhar Khan. The latter honoured Satrajit with the designation of ‘a son’ and presented him to the ṣūbadār Islam Khan.110 If the chieftain would pay a tribute and not show much resistance before capitulating, he would usually be reinstated in his own territories without much delay. This was the case with the zamīndārs of Birbhum, Pachet, and Hijli.111 On the occasion of the formal induction of the chieftain into imperial ranks by the ṣūbadār, gifts—which often included ceremonial robes of honour—would be bestowed on him. The Bahāristān narrates that when Raja Pratapaditya of Jessore surrendered to the Mughals after being defeated twice, the ṣūbadār bestowed on him lavish gifts, including a robe of honour and a bejewelled sword-belt.112 This display must also have been intended to impress other chieftains and encourage them to surrender. After the defeat of the Afghan zamīndār, Khwaja Usman, his associates and subordinates surrendered to the Mughals en mass. As a symbolic ritual of integrating these newly co-opted officers into the body politic of the Empire, a feast was organized. Nathan writes that through the consumption of salt in the food served by the representatives of the Mughal emperor, the Afghans were co-opted into the empire, ‘because there was no heavier burden on the neck of a Muslim than the burden of being true to the salt’.113 110 111 112 113

BG, JS60:6a–6b/1:18–19. BG, JS60:6b/1:19–20. BG, JS60:9a/27. BG, JS60:76a.

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Such acts of submission and incorporation would usually entail laying down of detailed conditions. The submission of Pratapaditya, once again, is a case in point. The ṣūbadār Islam Khan restored to the defeated raja of Jessore all his territorial possessions. He also assigned to the raja the revenues of all the districts of Sripur and Bikrampur. In return, Pratapaditya was to contribute 400 war-boats under the command of his son Sangramaditya to the imperial warfleet under Ihtimam Khan. Additionally, the raja was to come down River Andal Khan to Sripur and Bikrampur with 20,000 infantry, more war-boats, and 1,000 maunds of gunpowder to join the Mughal army to be sent against the various independent Afghan chieftains in Bhati. The deal was sealed by Islam Khan gifting him ‘a robe of honour, a bejeweled camphor-stand, five high bred Iraqi and Turkish horses, one male elephant, two female elephants, and an imperial kettle drum’.114 The empire dealt quite differently with the zamīndārs who would surrender after prolonged armed resistance against imperial forces. Usually, they would be put under temporary surveillance, as some sort of a probation period. For instance, following the submission of Musa Khan, he, along with his brothers and their families, was put under strict surveillance. Islam Khan assigned his trustworthy officer Abdur Rahim Patani and his brothers to watch over Musa Khan while the latter served in the imperial army.115 In the same way, Raja Parikshit of Kamta was given over to the charge of Abdun-Nabi, for keeping the raja in ‘attendance at the court and special assemblies in every morning and evening’ and to make him ‘learn the court etiquettes and to be present there’.116 Individual commanders of Mughals armies would usually act as negotiators between imperial authority and the local zamīndārs. It was through these commanders that zamīndārs would initially interact with the empire. As such, these commanders played a crucial role in shaping the process and terms of submission. Let us consider the example of Raja Pratapaditya of Jessore once again. On the day he surrendered formally to an imperial army, he travelled by a boat with 114

BG, JS60:9a–9b. BG, JS60:41b/1:100. The same Abdur Rahim Patani also watched over Raja Lakshmi Narayan of Kuch Bihar. (BG, JS61:152b/1:290.) 116 BG, JS61:153a. 115

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two personal attendants to meet Ghiyas Khan, the commander of the army. Ghiyas Khan sent ‘one of his relatives’ Shaykh Mumin and ‘a wise man’ Saiyid Masud to receive the raja and bring the latter to him. Ghiyas Khan treated the raja with due respect and gifted him a horse and a robe of honour. Pratapaditya also visited the camps of other Mughal commanders, including Mirza Makki and Mirza Nathan. They too also gave him horses and robes of honour. Mirza Nathan writes that ‘the Raja went to his abode with a happy heart’.117 Eventually, it was Ghiyas Khan who accompanied the raja on his journey to meet the ṣūbadār of Bengal.118 The importance of middle-level commanders such as Ghiyas Khan, who conducted the initial rituals of submission of the local zamīndārs, was absolutely paramount in the process of imperial expansion. This is clear also from the fact that when zamīndārs would negotiate for peace, aside from paying indemnity or tribute to the emperor, they would always bestow gifts to these commanders. This the zamīndārs probably did in the hope that these commanders would persuade their superiors to treat them favourably. A good example of this is the case of Raja Parikshit and Shaykh Kamal mentioned earlier. When the raja opened the negotiations, not only did he promise gifts to the ṣūbadār and the Mughal emperor, but he also gifted two elephants, 80,000 rupees, and other presents to Shaykh Kamal immediately. Nathan writes that the raja also ‘satisfied’ Kamal’s envoys ‘to their heart’s content’.119 This indeed bore fruit, and Shaykh Kamal asked the raja to contact Mukarram Khan. When Parikshit sent his envoys to Mukarram Khan, Shaykh Kamal persuaded the Khan to agree to the terms of peace ‘on his [Kamal’s] own responsibility’.120 What happened afterwards has already been described earlier. Yet, pursuing the case of Raja Parikshit a bit more is worthwhile, because then we encounter another important point. Because of this crucial role Mughal commanders on the ground played in brokering peace and alliance with the zamīndārs they encountered, they often felt responsible for the fate of those who had surrendered to them. 117 118 119 120

BG, JS60:55a. BG, JS60:55a/1:137–8. BG, JS60:114a–114b. BG, JS60:114a–114b.

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In the previous case, Mukarram Khan escorted Raja Parikshit to the presence of Qasim Khan, the new ṣūbadār of Bengal.121 During the interview, Qasim Khan ordered Mukarram Khan to hand over the custody of the Raja to him. What Mirza Nathan quotes Murakkam Khan as having said is worth quoting at length here: I, with the aid of other officers, deputed to the conquest of the kingdom of Kuch, brought Raja Parikshit to Islam Khan after utmost exertions, promising him the safety of his person. By the will of God his destiny has taken such a turn. Now, if you respect my promise and covenant, I will continue my devoted services to the monarch of the world and will not go against your pleasure and forsake your company. If you act against it and want to snatch away Raja Parikshit from me and attempt to put him into prison, Heaven forbid, but I won’t allow you even to touch him, as far as it lies in my power, not to speak of allowing him to be marched to prison. In that circumstance, I shall be compelled to leave your company.122

Clearly, Mukarram Khan had allowed his sense of personal honour and duty towards his superiors be coloured by the responsibility he felt towards the raja. He was even prepared to quit Mughal service if his sense of honour was hurt. While he did not actually do this in the end, he did put up a strong resistance when Qasim Khan had his officers seize the raja and take him into their custody.123 At times, alliances with local zamīndārs could also backfire for the empire. After aligning himself with the Mughals and gaining their trust, Anwar Khan, for instance, conspired with two other chieftains Khwaja Usman and Mahmud Khan to attack from all sides a Mughal army that was heading towards Bukainagar. His hope was that this coordinated attack would decisively defeat the Mughal forces, release a captured Musa Khan and his family from Mughal surveillance, and liberate Bhati from Mughal control. However, while this insurrection did start, some of the zamīndārs who had joined the Mughals continued to be loyal towards their new masters and fight in their ranks. The most prominent among them was Raja Satrajit, the zamīndār of 121 122 123

BG, JS60:118a–118b/1:252–3. BG, JS61:152b. BG, JS61:152b–153a/1:291–3.

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Bhusna. He led other loyalist zamīndārs in the eventual operations against Anwar Khan.124 On the whole, it is difficult to overstate the importance of the contribution of defecting zamīndārs towards Mughal conquests in Bengal. As mentioned in the previous chapter, one of the most important resources that they contributed to the imperial armies was war-boats. In the campaigns in Kuch and Kamrup, there are repeated mentions of the war-fleet of the bāra bhuyān—the group of zamīndārs of eastern Bengal whom the Mughals defeated largely between 1608 and 1612—fighting for the Mughals.125 This war-fleet of the bāra bhuyān also accompanied the Mughal army sent against Bayazid Karrani of Sylhet.126 The army sent against Raja Pratapaditya of Jessore included ‘the fleet of Musa Khan Masnad-i-Ala and of his brothers and other Zamindars’.127 Zamīndārī contributions were one way in which the Mughals, who hardly had any fleet when they first entered Bengal in 1574, built a huge war-fleet by the end of the first decade of the seventeenth century. Another valued resource that co-opted zamīndārs brought into imperial ranks was elephants. Aside from their role as shock animals, war-mounts, and beasts of burden, in the river-dominated landscape of Bengal, elephants were also used to cross rivers and to break into mud forts. Both Bayazid of Sylhet and Raja Parikshit of Kamta, for instance, had to hand over all of their elephants to the imperial stables during their surrender.128 Contributions were also regularly made in terms of soldiers. For instance, Mirza Nathan mentions the presence of 800 Kuch paiks in the Mughal ranks following the conquest of Kuch Bihar.129 Zamīndārs also helped imperial armies in mobilizing labourers and workmen locally. For instance, when Mirza Nathan needed to rebuild his house in Gilah after it was gutted by fire, Raja Satrajit, the zamīndār of Busna, lent him hundred boatmen for a period of 124 125 126 127 128 129

BG, JS60:43b–44a/1:106–7. See, for example, BG, JS60:114b–115a/1:242–3. BG, JS60:64a/1:163. BG, JS60:49b. BG, JS60:75a–75b/1:195–6. BG, JS61:236a/2:527.

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three months to reconstruct residential buildings for the Mirza and his men.130 Equally important was the kind of information about local conditions that these zamīndārs could provide. Imperial armies depended so much on the zamīndārs that they would often base plans of campaigns on their information and suggestions. Much more familiar with the local conditions than the imperial troops, friendly zamīndārs regularly supplied the empire with information about the local terrain, climate, routes, and sometimes, even adversaries. In the course of the campaign against Musa Khan, for instance, Raja Raghunath of Susang planned how the Mughal army should proceed from Katashgarh to Jatrapur, while building fortified stations at every stage, keeping the land force ready for combat, and the war-fleet accompanying them on their side.131 During the same campaign, the Mughal forces attacked the fort of Musa Khan, but failed to reach it. This was because it was defended on one side by the river and on the three other sides by a marsh. At this point of time, it was again Raja Raghunath who came to the rescue. He pointed out the existence of a certain silted canal. He argued that if this canal was dug, the imperial war-fleet could enter River Ichhamati and attack the fort. The Mughal army proceeded accordingly, attacked the fort, and succeeded in forcing Musa Khan to open negotiations with them.132 It is probably beyond Bengal, especially in Assam, that imperial armies really came to appreciate the value of the alliances they were able to forge in Bengal. Unlike the latter region, imperial forces failed to forge any lasting alliances with local chieftains and groups. They did not succeed in winning over the major zamīndārs in Kuch Bihar and Kamrup. Consequently, right since the invasion and occupation of Kamrup in 1613, Mughal armies faced stiff resistance and repeated insurgencies. The bulk of the insurgents comprised ordinary people, but they were led by the local chieftains. Imperial armies fought longdrawn wars of attrition in this region, but did not succeed in establishing lasting socio-economic control. The same was true for Assam, which the Mughals invaded four times without any significant or 130 131 132

BG, JS61:149b/1:281. BG, JS60:19a/1:56. BG, JS60:20b–21a/1:61.

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lasting territorial gain.133 Here too, the empire failed to find any allies who could help them navigate the challenging environmental conditions or the radically different techniques of war.

THE EMERGENCE OF THE FRONTIER

On the basis of the earlier discussion, it can be observed that four things happened in both the Afghan and Bengal–Assam regions. First, the Mughals faced a logistical failure in keeping the main routes of communication under control. Second, they found it extremely difficult to negotiate local environmental factors. Third, they also struggled militarily to cope with the techniques of war of their adversaries, who mostly fought using the environmental factors to their own advantage. Finally, beyond a point, the empire failed to co-opt zamīndārs and local groups into their imperial project. This deprived them from the kind of resources co-opted zamīndārs could make available to them in the course of their campaigns. In the end, it was those chieftains—whom the empire failed to co-opt—who led the local population into offering stiff resistance against imperial occupation. It was as a result of all these factors that both these regions emerged as limits of imperial territorial expansion and in time, long-standing frontiers of the Mughal Empire. Such a proposition nuances our understanding of the territorial expanse of the Empire. As Willem van Schendel has argued, the spatial imaginations of modern academics are dominated by two types of territorial entities—nation states that we inhabit and the ‘areas’ we study.134 The early modern empire of the Mughals fits more or less neatly into both these modern spatial categories. Within 133 This resonates with what Farhat Hasan observes for Gujarat, following its occupation by Humayun in 1535–7. Unable to co-opt the various stakeholders of the region into the imperial body politic, Mughal hold over the region was swiftly shattered by stiff local resistance led by Sultan Bahadur Shah. (Hasan, State and Locality in Mughal India, 16–20.) 134 For a provocative critique of the tyrannies of the geographical imagination of ‘area studies’, see Willem van Schendel, ‘Geographies of Knowing, Geographies of Ignorance: Jumping Scale in Southeast Asia,’ Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 20 (2002), 647–68.

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tolerable exceptions, it overlapped with the expanse of the modern space of ‘India’. Whatever spilled beyond, comprising all or certain portions of modern Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, can be comfortably accommodated within the other spatial category—‘South Asia’. Consequently, we often tend to take the nature of Mughal territorial expansion for granted. It seems only natural to us that starting from its north-western corners, the Mughals would eventually conquer all of South Asia—almost like filling up a predefined geographical and political vacuum—and not flow beyond its limits. In the process, we often ignore the fact that the limits of the empire were, in fact, not predefined. They were produced through the kind of historical processes discussed earlier. We tend to overlook the fact that it was through their choices and compulsions that the Mughals ended up giving their empire the shape that it eventually took, which today we identify as Indian or South Asian, and not the other way around. We seldom pause to ask why the empire did not expand into Central Asia or Iran in the north-west and into Yunnan or Myanmar in the east. Identifying some of the reasons for this, the previous sections have analysed the process of emergence of the Afghan and Bengal regions as the frontiers of the Mughal Empire. Used as we are to look at the past through the lens of modern territorial organizations and spatial limits set by nation states and area studies, the location of these frontiers may seem quite normal to us. In addition, since the Afghan frontier revolved around the Indus, its massive tributaries, and the complex mountain ranges to their west, one might imagine that these geographical features created some sort of a natural frontier in the face of Mughal territorial expansion. In the east, the radically different geography of Bengal and Assam, as well as the north–south alignment of the hills that branch off from the eastern limits of the Himalayas and head southwards into modern Myanmar, might also seem to be a natural frontier. It is necessary to problematize any such impression of a ‘natural frontier’. Contrary to such an understanding, there was absolutely nothing obvious about all this. Both of these two regions emerged as frontiers only through various complex processes described earlier— processes that were specific to the Mughal historical experiences. There was nothing inherently frontier-like about either of these two regions. Lucien Febvre has made a powerful critique of the very idea

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of natural frontiers in his work on the influence of geography on the course of human history. He points out that different physical formations—rivers, mountains, forests, and deserts—have, at different times, been perceived as barriers that discourage communication across them. Hence they are often seen to possess the potential of serving as ‘natural frontiers’ to human social expansion. He points out that none of these supposed barriers have, however, proven to be impenetrable to human enterprise. Throughout history, human itineraries have constantly pierced them. Moreover, Febvre argues that treating these physical formations as ‘natural frontiers’ betrays a specific way of looking at them, where they are considered to be nothing more than mere barriers, devoid of any history of their own.135 One needs to bear in mind that the Afghan and Bengal regions, which might appear to be natural frontiers at the first glance and which did represent actual military frontiers in the past, indeed repeatedly became political heartlands at other times. The Afghan region, for instance, served as the heartland of the Kushana Empire in the first century ce, the Ghaznavid and Ghurid states in the tenth through the twelfth centuries, and again the Durrani Afghan Empire in the eighteenth century. Similarly, Bengal, the distant eastern frontier of the Mughal Empire, functioned as the political heartland of the postGupta kingdom of Shashanka in the seventh century, the sprawling empire of the Palas in the eighth and ninth centuries, independent Islamicate sultanates in the thirteenth through sixteenth centuries, and finally the British colonial empire in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The British also breached the erstwhile Mughal frontier in Bengal decisively to invade Burma during the Anglo-Burmese wars.136 All these instances show that the two regions that seem to be natural frontiers from the perspective of the Mughal experience, became so only through very specific historical processes. Historically, they have been straddled by armies all the time and have also repeatedly served as heartlands, not frontiers, of various polities earlier and later.

135

Lucien Febvre, A Geographical Introduction to History (London, New York and Bahrain: Kegan Paul, 2003), 297–315, see 301. 136 For a detailed study of the process of this expansion, see Cederlöf, Founding an Empire.

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FRONTIER AS THE LIMIT OF IMPERIAL AUTHORITY

One of the factors that lent the Afghan and the Bengal frontiers the quality of being a frontier under the Mughals derived from their physical distance from the heartland of imperial power. Although truer for Bengal than the Afghan region, they both signified zones where imperial control gradually faded out. As the frontier was pushed increasingly away from the imperial heartland into less familiar territory, the collaboration and active support of local power groups became all the more indispensable. Away from its centres of power, the empire no longer appeared to be the uncompromising, confident entity it looked in the North Indian heartland. The tight control of the imperial core loosened up dramatically in spite of the numerous administrative mechanisms of checks and balances of power. The further the frontiers were pushed the weaker became the role of the imperial centre in determining the course of events. Imperial officers became more prone to actively seek their personal agenda than keep themselves dedicated to the imperial project. In many instances, it was less of detailed imperial instructions and more of individual ambitions and decision-making at the ground level that determined the career of the empire on the frontier; imperial mandate, if any, merely provided a broad direction in which things were expected to go. Such expectations, however, were not always fulfilled. This picture becomes clear once we shift our attention from imperial chronicles and biographies written at the Mughal court far away from the actual site of military action to texts composed by people actually involved in military campaigns on the frontier. One such text is Mirza Nathan’s mid-seventeenth-century autobiography Bahāristān-i Ghā’ibī. Written by a military commander involved in frontier warfare, it is invaluable to the modern historian for the kind of details it provides about the daily experiences of imperial armies on the expanding limits of the empire. Using this text, the present section will take a closer look at the unfolding of Mughal conquests and the emergence of limits of imperial authority in a region far away from the political heartland of empire. I will argue that alongside a broad imperial mandate, military expansion on the frontiers was majorly shaped by immediate and local factors and interpersonal relationships. The latter included mutual jealousies,

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hatreds, alliances, expectations, and rivalries in the official ranks. It was also moulded by the urgency with which commanders posted there needed to engage with the transpiring events, gauge unfolding political dynamics, and react to unexpected military victories or setbacks. Court chronicles often give us the impression that all acts of expansion at the frontier were the result of imperial orders. However, the evidence of the Bahāristān suggests that individual enterprise—quite unregulated by the imperial centre—could also push the imperial territories ahead. The first Mughal foray into the hilly kingdom of Tripura—immediately to the east of Mughal Bengal—is a case in point. Unsanctioned by the imperial court, this expedition was a result of the personal discretion of Abdul Wahid, who was posted at the nearby thāna of Bhalwa. Mirza Nathan writes that Wahid sent his son at the head of an army to plunder the kingdom.137 The expedition was foiled by the unexpected attack of an Arakanese fleet on the Mughal outpost in Bhalwa, due to which Wahid had to call his son back to his own aid.138 Such independent campaigns could be motivated by the prospect of personal financial gains through raiding and plundering, as well as strategic concerns about strengthening the position of one’s own outpost. This element of individual enterprise could even determine appointments to positions of military command. The replacement of Mirza Imam Quli Beg Shamlu by Mirza Nathan as the principal commander of Mughal forces in Kamrup is an example of this. Dissatisfied with the role of Shamlu, Nathan approached the ṣūbadār Qasim Khan personally. He quotes himself as having said: It is known to you that the Khans of that frontier are disunited and no one listens to another. If you want me to be an associate of their guilt then I have no alternative. If your object is to achieve some real work, then give me the supreme command of quelling the rebellion and disturbance of that place. I will gird up my loins like the broom with fidelity and will proceed most willingly.139 137 138 139

BG, JS61:166b/1:329. BG, JS61:167b/1:332. BG, JS61:159b.

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Nathan writes that his speech convinced the ṣūbadār and he granted Nathan the position. The latter was also given an increase in jāgīr, and was sent to Kamrup with fifty additional war-boats. The imperial establishment posted at the frontier did not always run like a well-oiled machine. In fact, Mirza Nathan’s account suggests quite the opposite. Personality clashes, quarrels and verbal abuses, and even armed altercations between different commanders or factions were extremely common. Many a times, commanders would flatly refuse to obey their superiors. A case involving Abdul Baqi, the commander of the army posted in Kamrup, illustrates this very well. When a besieged Mughal force at the thāna of Badhantara appealed to Abdul Baqi for help, he first approached Mirza Imam Quli Beg and Mirza Mirak Najafi, two of his subordinate commanders. Both of them refused to obey Baqi’s command. Nathan quotes them as having said: We have not come to this place as your followers and companions; nor do we desire to trouble the affairs of the Thana as your associates. We shall go to Qasim Khan [in Dhaka] either to-day [sic] or tomorrow. On the second day of the journey we shall receive the reply of our letters which were written to Qasim Khan. If we are called we shall proceed on; if not, we shall see what we can do.140

Next, Abdul Baqi personally went to persuade one Shaikh Bashutan. Telling him how the other commanders were either absent, unwell, or had refused, he requested the Shaikh to lead the relief army. The Shaikh too, turned him down. Nathan quotes him saying, ‘I will not go even if you seek to ruin me with the plea that you yourself came to my residence to deliver the message and yet I did not consent. You are free to act as you like.’141 The day was ultimately saved by Mirza Nathan, who volunteered to lead an army to Badhantara.142 In many cases, Mughal manṣabdārs allied with one or more of their peers privately. In some cases, they even entered into pacts with their adversaries. Together, they conspired to achieve goals which might or

140 141 142

BG, JS61:169b. BG, JS61:169b–170a. BG, JS61:170a–171a/1:339–41.

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might not have coincided with the imperial agenda. Consequently, the ṣūbadār had to constantly struggle to reconcile these various—often contradictory—interests and channelize the available financial and military resources of the region to fulfill imperial goals. Things became even more complicated on some occasions, when commanders would lose faith in the ṣūbadār himself. The term of Qasim Khan as the ṣūbadār of Bengal is a good example of such a situation. Soon after Qasim Khan took up office, several of the imperial commanders serving in Bengal arrived at the conclusion that the Emperor Jahangir did not have much faith in him. The fact that Jahangir kept sending imperial messengers to censure Qasim Khan only encouraged such rumours. The commanders found all this particularly troubling, especially because their promotions depended on the recommendations of the very same ṣūbadār. On one occasion, Mirza Nathan quotes himself saying to his colleague Abdul Baqi: I am strongly of opinion that no promotion will be obtained by any loyal officer through the recommendation of Qasim Khan, as the temporal and spiritual sovereign [Jahangir] considers your august [Qasim] Khan to be of perverted temperament and has no confidence in his work.143

The reputations of ṣūbadārs such as Qasim Khan also suffered as they often openly participated in the factionalism of their commanders. In one example, Qasim Khan—apparently driven by his dislike of Mukarram Khan—replaced the latter by another commander as the leader of the forces posted in Sylhet. Mukarran Khan was so infuriated by this that he immediately sent a messenger to the emperor seeking redress for this insult.144 Under such circumstances, the ṣūbadār no longer remained the impartial arbitrator that the emperor would hope him to be on the frontier, but become a part of the ongoing factional squabbles. There are several examples of Mughal commanders entering into secret pacts with others. The prolonged personal alliance between Mirza Nathan and Abdul Baqi during their operations in Kamrup is an excellent 143 144

BG, JS61:176b. BG, JS61:171a–171b/1:343.

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example of this. In the few years that they worked together, the two commanders took oaths of helping each other more than once.145 Mirza Nathan promised that he will work to ensure that Abdul Baqi be appointed the commander of the army posted in Kuch Bihar. He was successful in achieving this. Consequently, Mirza Nathan observes, ‘Abdul Baqi became very grateful and obliging to Mirza Nathan. He never disregarded the advice of the Mirza and remained submissive to him for a long time.’146 Following this, there are several instances where the two commanders came to the aid of each other. This was less out of a sense of devotion to the imperial cause and more out of mutual selfinterest. The alliance, however, came to an end when the suggestions from Nathan came to be at odds with the orders Abdul Baqi received from his superior officer Qasim Khan and decided to follow the latter.147 Another such informal alliance bred for a while between Bahadur Khan Hijliwal—the zamīndār of Hijli, who had accepted Mughal suzerainty—and Mukarram Khan, the Mughal ṣūbadār of Odisha. Nathan alleges that emboldened by the support of the latter, Bahadur Khan stopped responding to the summons of Ibrahim Khan Fath-Jang, the ṣūbadār of Bengal, for quite some time. When Ibrahim ordered the imperial troops to march against Bahadur, the latter sought help from Mukarram Khan. The latter immediately dispatched one thousand cavalry in his aid. The alliance broke down when Mukarram eventually withdrew his support, leaving Bahadur to be compelled to submit to Ibrahim Khan.148 Mutual hostility and distrust could shape events and campaigns on the frontier as much as such private alliances. The long-standing enmity between Mirza Nathan and Shaikh Kamal is a case in point. Bahāristān records repeated clashes between these two prominent Mughal commanders for over a decade. The enmity resolved itself only when the Shaikh died. Nathan records that he repeatedly flouted orders from the ṣūbadār and simply refused to serve under Shaikh Kamal.149 On one 145

BG, JS61:162a–162b, 176a–176b/1:315, 357. Mirza Nathan wrote his autobiographical text in the third person. (BG, JS61:164b.) 147 BG, JS61:198a–202b/1:422–35. 148 BG, JS62:272a, 273a–274a/2:631–2, 634–5, 637–8. 149 BG, JS62:275b, 278b–79a/2:642–3, 650–1. 146

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occasion, faced by a contingency created by a severe Kuch insurgency in Kamrup, the ṣūbadār himself tried to mediate between the two commanders. However, his efforts were in vain. Nathan agreed to be a part of the operations only after he—and not the Shaikh—had been named the commander-in-chief of the campaign.150 Similar divisions in the Mughal ranks could also result from serious difference of opinions. For instance, a major disagreement erupted between the ṣūbadār Qasim Khan and the dīwān Mukhlis Khan over their different views on how an expedition against the Arakan kingdom should have been conducted. According to Nathan, Mukhlis Khan had suggested during the planning of the expedition that Qasim Khan should lead the Mughal army personally if it were to meet any success. Qasim Khan had paid little heed to this suggestion. He had sat back in Khizrpur and had watched the campaign unfold from a distance. Soon, the campaign failed due to logistical problems and the troops returned empty-handed. At this, Mukhlis Khan vented out his anger at Qasim Khan. He pointed out that it was because of the latter’s decision not to lead the army personally that 700,000 rupees, that had been spent from the royal treasury to organize the failed campaign, had been lost. As a result, he also refused to sanction ‘even half a dam’ on such missions unless an imperial farmān had been acquired to that effect beforehand.151 On several instances, Mughal officers found it more lucrative to ally themselves with their adversaries rather than continue to serve imperial interests. A very prominent example of this is the rebellion of Shaikh Ibrahim karorī in Kamrup. Nathan tells us that around 1620, this revenue officer allied himself with the Ahom raja as well as Sanatan, the leader of Kuch insurgents, in a bid to become the king of Kuch Bihar. The Shaikh fed Sanatan information about Mughal troop movement and incited him to attack the Mughal thāna at Dhamdhama. Eventually, the Shaikh took the field himself with his private army to oppose the loyalist imperial troops. The latter put down the rebellion swiftly and sent the Shaikh’s head to the ṣūbadār.152

150 151 152

BG, JS62:275b–276b/2:642–4. BG, JS61:194a/1:408–9. BG, JS61:208a–218b/2:443–75.

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Finally, it is interesting to note that even decisions about how to negotiate with local chieftains and whether to accept their submission or not were hugely shaped by the agency of local commanders and their immediate superiors. The comparison between two incidents— one from Kamrup and another from Kachar—makes this clear. In 1613, a Mughal army under Shaikh Kamal and Mukarram Khan invaded Kamrup. Having seized the fort of Dhubri after a difficult siege, they pursued Raja Parikshit further. At this juncture, Shaikh Kamal opened negotiations with the raja.153 Apparently not paying heed to other commanders of the army who argued for continuing the campaign to conquer the kingdom, the Shaikh contacted the raja on his own and tried to strike a deal. The raja grabbed this opportunity. He immediately sent two elephants, 80,000 rupees, and other precious commodities for the Shaikh. The latter’s envoys ‘were also satisfied to their heart’s content’.154 The raja offered to pay 100,000 rupees, 100 elephants, 100 Tangan horses, and the hand of his sister as a bride to the ṣūbadār. He promised another 300,000 rupees, 300 big elephants, 300 Tangan horses, and the hand of his daughter in marriage to the emperor.155 In exchange, he wished to be excused from attending the imperial court and be left to manage his own territories. In what followed, Shaikh Kamal played the peace broker on behalf of the raja first in his discussions with Mukarram Khan and then with the ṣūbadār Islam Khan. Kamal acquired the entire war-indemnity from the raja, persuaded Mukarram Khan to join his scheme, and then proceeded to Dhaka to meet the ṣūbadār. He was so confident about the outcome of his impending discussions with the latter, that he ordered the bulk of the army campaigning in Kuch Bihar to retire to Ghoraghat. Much to his chagrin, however, Islam Khan rejected the conditions of peace. He confiscated the entire tribute from the Shaikh and ordered him to go back and resume the campaign till the raja had been captured and Mughal authority over Kamrup had been firmly established.156 153 154 155 156

BG, JS60:114a/1:239–40. BG, JS60:114a. BG, JS60:114a/1:240. BG, JS60:114a–114b/1:240–1.

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Very different results came out of similar negotiations between another Mughal commander and the raja of Kachar a few years later. When Mubariz Khan invaded Kachar and besieged the fort of Asurainagar, the raja of Kachar opened negotiations with the Khan. He said that if he be discounted from attending on the Mughal ṣūbadār personally—meaning if he be excused from performing a physical act of submission—he would gift two elephants and 20,000 rupees to him and his colleague Mirak Bahadur Jalair. He also promised five elephants and 20,000 rupees to the ṣūbadār, and another 40 elephants, 100,000 rupees, and other precious items to the emperor. Like Shaikh Kamal above, Mubariz Khan accepted these terms and the tribute offered by the raja. He established a thāna at Asurainagar, kept a small force there, and returned to Sylhet. Then he informed ṣūbadār Qasim Khan about the transactions. Unlike Islam Khan, Qasim Khan ratified the agreement and sealed the bargain.157 These two examples show that ground realities and individual agency deeply shaped the course of imperial expansion. Not all campaigns or annexations were the result of strict and exact imperial orders. The waqā’i‘-nawīs (news reporter) posted in every ṣūba constantly reported all major events to the emperor. The latter regularly sent his messengers to the regional military leadership with his commands and instructions. He mandated mainly the broad directions in which the imperial court expected things to proceed. The translation of these mandates into the actual course of territorial expansion on the frontier would usually be determined by the personal agency of the diverse range of imperial officers, commanders, and allies on ground. Hence, military frontiers—in spite of being areas with high concentration of imperial troops—were essentially regions where imperial authority was the most fragile. It was a zone across which imperial authority gradually faded away in both the military and the political senses. CONCEPTUALIZING THE FRONTIER

This final section will discuss the terminology contemporary Mughal texts use to describe the empire’s frontiers. This will allow us to gauge 157

BG, JS61:165b/1:325–6.

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how the Mughal imperial court conceptualized the idea of the frontier. Such references are not ample or explicit; but the texts do provide us with some clues. One such important clue comes from Abul Fazl. Describing the geopolitical significance of the forts of Kabul and Qandahar, he observes: The wise of ancient times considered Kabul and Qandahar as the twin gates of Hindustan [du darwāza-i Hindūstān], the one leading to Turkestan and the other to Persia. The supervision of these highways [nigahbānī-i īn du farākhnā] secured Hindustan from foreign invaders, and are also the appropriate portals for foreign travel [nīz jahānwardī badīn du rāh sazāwār].158

The use of the terms darwāza (gateway), farākhnā (highway), and rāh (road) for describing two important forts guarding the imperial frontier convey a sense of communication, passage, and openness.159 It does not echo the ideas of closure and control that we associate with borders today. This reminds one of the propositions of Heesterman and Gommans that this chapter opened with about frontiers in pre-modern South Asia functioning more like open routes rather than as bounding entities. It also resonates with the historical experiences of several other past societies. Benjamin Isaac, for example, writes about the meaning of the word limes, used in the Roman Empire to denote ‘frontier’. It was originally used to mean a network ‘of military roads constructed throughout the region, to allow movement of army units in newly invaded land, not a fortified line meant to prevent foreigners from entering a peaceful area’.160 Studying meanings of frontiers in medieval China, Naomi Standen observes that a common Chinese

158

AA, 2:592. For one of the first discussions on the subject, see Gommans, Mughal Warfare, 137–9. 160 Benjamin Isaac, ‘The Meaning of the Terms Limes and Limitanei,’ The Journal of Roman Studies 78 (1988), 125–47, 126–7, 146–7. Both Gommans and Heesterman highlight the similarity of the ancient Roman scenario with the Mauryan and Mughal respectively. (Gommans, Mughal Warfare, 16; Heesterman, ‘Two Types of Spatial Boundaries,’ 66–7.) 159

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synonym for frontiers was guan, which also implied the act of passage. She highlights that this suggests that ‘perhaps those using it were thinking of their frontiers less in terms of lines than a series of fortified points of ingress and egress: defensive when the need arose, but at other times allowing for passage back and forth, and for exchange’.161 Investigating the changing meanings of the words used to denote the ‘frontier’ in the medieval Mediterranean world, Eduardo Moreno demonstrates that most of these words in different languages in fact originally implied ideas of ‘opening’, ‘gate’, ‘pass’, ‘defile’ and so on. He writes that the ‘reason behind this is simple: a frontier was not a line, a distinctly defined demarcation; instead, it consisted of a series of strategic points which all provided access to the territory’.162 What we find, then, is a commonality that the Mughal Empire shared with various pre-modern political societies, where military frontiers did not signify closed bounding entities, but were associated with open routes of communication connecting the imperial domains with lands that lay beyond. Based on the discussion of this chapter, it is possible to nuance this idea further. It has been argued earlier that at the territorial limits of the empire, it was forts that comprised the points of control over routes, and hence over the frontier. The designation of the key forts of Kabul and Qandahar as darwāza points in this direction. While the routes linking Hindustan with Turan and Iran passed through Kabul and Qandahar respectively, the forts of these two cities signified points of control for this traffic. Our previous discussions have shown that it was on the control of such forts that the command over the routes depended. The examples cited in this chapter, but also the earlier discussions pertaining to Mughal military campaigns in regions as diverse as Kuch Bihar–Kamrup, Assam, Balkh–Badakhshan, Qandahar, Lower Indus Basin, Kashmir, Malwa, Gujarat and others demonstrate that 161 Naomi Standen, ‘(Re)Constructing the Frontiers of Tenth-Century North China,’ in Frontiers in Question, eds.Power and Standen, 55–79, see 58–9. 162 Eduardo Manzano Moreno, ‘The Creation of a Medieval Frontier: Islam and Christianity in the Iberian Peninsula, Eighth to Eleventh Centuries,’ in Frontiers in Question, eds. Power and Standen, 32–54, see 46.

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conquest would usually happen step by step, with the army advancing along the main route(s) of communication and capturing one fort after another. This would give them control over the land or riverine route(s) that these fortified locations commanded. The limit of the imperial authority, or the military frontier, would be represented by the farthest fort on such route(s). Once the route(s) and the forts on and near it had been taken over, the empire would then seek to expand their control over the surrounding countryside. Alternate centres of power would repeatedly challenge the authority of the empire by attacking the forts and trying to seize the control over the route(s). When the Mughal Empire would be facing another sovereign state, such as the Safavid Empire or the Ahom kingdom, it would seek to expand by precisely advancing along the same route from the opposite direction. For the sake of their own defense as well as for undermining the territorial control of the adversary, they would attack the first fort they would encounter. However, since the outermost forts embodied the limits of the imperial frontier, an attack on them would constitute an attack on the frontier itself. At the end of the day, the frontier would often look like rival-fortified locations facing each other and standing on a route of communication that ran by them. Both would seek to dominate the neighbouring countryside, alongside controlling the route. In times of peace, raiding each other’s territories would, in many cases, be common. It would be the duty of each garrison to check enemy raids and conduct counter-raids. Commercial traffic would, in most cases, go on across along the routes. The frontier could be extended by capturing the next enemy stronghold on the route. This would extend one’s control over the route as well. A comment by Saqi Mustaid Khan supports this argument. In midseventeenth century, the Ahom king attacked the city of Guwahati. Explaining why this was considered to be an act of aggression by the Mughal imperial establishment, he refers to Guwahati as the frontier of the province of Bengal (Guwāhātī ki sarḥad-i wilāyat-i Bangāla ast). In his translation of the text, Jadunath Sarkar has rendered the phrase as ‘Guahati on the boundary of Bengal’.163 This, however, is 163 MM, 64/43. Mustaid Khan adds that through this action, the army of Assam had ‘crossed their own frontier [ḥadd-i khūd pesh guzashta]’. Although

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not accurate, as Mustaid Khan’s words clearly indicate that Guwahati itself was the frontier, and not merely on the frontier. *** Too often, we talk about frontiers as given categories, without asking what they actually looked like and how they emerged in the first place. The earlier discussion has engaged precisely with these questions. I have argued that in Mughal North India, imperial military frontiers cannot simply be conceptualized as volatile areas of weak imperial control that lay far away from the political heartland. They were, in fact, produced as a result of the convergence of several historical processes. I have shown that they emerged due to the failure of the empire to control routes of communication, tackle interlinked environmental and military challenges, and to find local allies. Viewed in this way, the frontier can effectively be decoupled from the idea of distance from the imperial heartland. Distance, of course, brought with it additional problems, which I have discussed with reference to the Bengal frontier. As for the physical form of frontiers, I have drawn on the works of J.C. Heesterman and Jos Gommans and sought to nuance them. I have started with their conceptualization of frontiers as open routes emanating from and connecting multiple political centres. However, I have moved away from them in arguing that while frontiers indeed expanded along the routes, the latter did not represent frontiers themselves. Demonstrating how forts played the crucial function of controlling routes of communication, I have argued that it was actually the outermost forts that signified the frontier. As armies proceeded along a route, conquering a fort on it would expand the imperial frontier up till that point, while the loss of the existing fort on the route would lead to its contraction to the fort behind it on the same route. It might be convenient to think of the frontier as a bounding line that connected all the outermost forts of the empire; but such lines hardly existed in reality. While imperial armies tried to control the countryside that lay between two outermost forts, the land was usually susceptible to raids by the adversary. Often, imperial control remained limited to the Jadunath Sarkar uses frontier to translate ḥadd, it could be also interpreted as limit of authority in a more non-materialistic sense.

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route itself, while the countryside surrounding it remained disputed, if not in the hands of the adversary. At the end of the day, the empire expanded as a spider’s web along the lines radiating out of the centre, while trying to assert their control over the lands that lay in between these radial lines. I have also indicated that frontiers were not only militarily contested areas, but also spaces where imperial authority was often undermined by political calculations and personality clashes at the ground level. In fact, shifting our focus from the empire’s heartland to the fringes of imperial power allows us to see the empire in all its vulnerabilities. It allows us to appreciate the process of imperial expansion less as the unfolding of the iron will of the Mughal court and more than a space of ceaseless contestations and negotiations between various stakeholders within the empire, various power centres of the society, and the different environmental factors. Although the earlier discussion focuses primarily on the Afghan and Bengal–Assam regions, it is highly probable that what happened in these parts represented larger trends of South Asia. A close study of the Afghan and Bengal frontiers has also allowed us to understand military expansion not as the unstoppable advance of the imperial juggernaut, but as a complex process that depended as much on warfare as on forging local alliances. I have pointed out that as sources of military infrastructure, troops, labourers, and intelligence, these local allies were absolutely vital to the process of imperial expansion. We have seen that where the empire succeeded in establishing stable and long-term alliances with the major local chieftains, conquest eventually led to the rise of political control. Wherever the Mughals failed to secure such alliances, campaigns suffered and territorial expansion faltered. At the end of the day, the uncertainty of the dynamics of alliances made conquest and control a fluid and flexible, and essentially a never-ending process. Such an interpretation of the Mughal Empire strongly supports the arguments made by Farhat Hasan and Munis Faruqui. Hasan has located the longevity of Mughal conquests in the state’s ability to co-share its sovereignty with a variety of power centres and social groups of the conquered area.164 Faruqui, in contrast, moves away from Hasan’s 164

Hasan, State and Locality in Mughal India.

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focus on the state. He understands the vitality of the Mughal Empire by foregrounding the ability of the emperor and the imperial princes to establish ties with a variety of people, including soldiers, aristocrats, moneylenders, sufi shaikhs, and so on.165 Borrowing Faruqui’s words, notwithstanding the difference in where exactly they locate the origins of Mughal political power, both the of them look at the Mughal state as ‘a dynamic and continuously evolving entity quite unlike the static and stable creation that emerges from Mughal imperial sources or most modern accounts of the empire’.166 The arguments of this chapter—and the discussion of this book in general—supports this interpretation. Against the context of this discussion about how the empire conceptualized frontiers, let us now move on to ask an even bigger question—how did the empire conceptualize war itself? How was military violence legitimized and narrated? This is what the next and final chapter will address.

165 166

Faruqui, Princes of the Mughal Empire. Faruqui, Princes of the Mughal Empire, 6.

CHAPTER FIVE

Ideology, Empire, and the Cultural Climate of War

In the late sixteenth century, Abul Fazl wrote about Akbar: ‘The world’s lord once more adorned the Earth/He made Time and the Terrain like Paradise [ārāst jahāndār digar-bār jahān-ra/chūn khuldi barīn kard zamīn-rā wa zamān-rā]’.1 For the Mughal ideologue, there were no two ways about it—the Mughal emperor was the ruler of all the world. The three-volume biography of Akbar that Abul Fazl composed was the most eloquent textual embodiment of this philosophy. In the years to come, Akbar’s successors took this idea equally seriously. They converted what was initially a personal claim of greatness into a dynastic proclamation. One of the most obvious forms this took was imperial titles. Akbar’s son Salim took the title Jahangir (conqueror of the world). His son Khurram named himself Shah Jahan (ruler of the world), while Khurram’s son Aurangzeb gave

1

AN, 3:517/789.

Climate of Conquest: War, Environment, and Empire in Mughal North India. Pratyay Nath, Oxford University Press (2019). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199495559.003.0005

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himself the title of Alamgir (conqueror of the universe). Jahangir gave his father’s ideas of universal sovereignty visual expression in a group of spectacular paintings he commissioned. Using the visual allegory of the globe—a novel representation of the world in the early modern period—he vigorously laid claim to this idea through multiple Mughal miniature paintings.2 In several of them, he was shown to be standing on the globe, while in others he held it in his hands. On one occasion, Jahangir was also depicted as being seated on an hourglass, signifying his command over time as well as space. This visually articulated the idea that Jahangir’s biographer Khwaja Kamgar Husaini was eventually to express in text: ‘King Jahangir, the son of King Akbar, is the lord of time/By divine command he is the emperor of seven realms [Shahanshāh-i zamān shāh Jahāngīr ibn-i shāh Akbar/Ka shūd bar haft kishwar pādshāh az ḥukm-i taqdīr].’3 Jahangir’s son Shah Jahan, on the other hand, took to further memorializing the dynastic claim of universal rule through built spaces. The most eloquent and spectacular of these was the Taj Mahal. Erected right next to a mercantile complex, this mausoleum of his wife and himself was meant to declare the greatness of Mughal kingship to traders and travellers from far-flung regions and thereby ensure the transmission of the myth of Mughal imperial greatness across the world.4 2

For a close analysis of the articulation of Jahangir’s ideas about kingship through these allegorical paintings, see Moin, The Millennial Sovereign, 170–210. Also see Ebba Koch, ‘The Symbolic Possession of the World: European Cartography in Mughal Allegory and History Painting,’ Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 55, no. 2/3 (2012), 547–80; Ebba Koch, ‘How the Mughal Padshahs Referenced Iran in Their Visual Construction of Universal Rule,’ in Universal Empire: A Comparative Approach to Imperial Culture and Representation in Eurasian History, eds. Peter Fibiger Bang and Dariusz Kołodziejczyk (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 194–209; Sumathi Ramaswamy, ‘Conceit of the Globe in Mughal Visual Practice,’ Comparative Studies in Society and History 49, no. 4 (2007), 751–82; Corinne Lefevre, ‘Recovering a Missing Voice from Mughal India: The Imperial Discourse of Jahangir (r. 1605–1627) in His Memoirs,’ Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 50, no. 4 (2007), 452–89. 3 MJ, 315. 4 Ebba Koch, ‘The Taj Mahal: Architecture, Symbolism, and Urban Significance,’ Muqarnas 22 (2005), 128–49.

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MUGHAL UNIVERSAL KINGSHIP IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

Mughal emperors were not alone in making such claims of universal sovereignty. In fact, the early modern world saw similar spectacular claims all across Eurasia.5 In China, emperors of both the Ming and the Qing dynasties claimed to be universal emperors, ruling with the ‘mandate of heaven’.6 In the aftermath of the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the Ottomans of West Asia, the Muscovites of Russia, and the Hapsburgs of Central Europe vied for the status of world conquerors in general and the title of the imperial Caesars of Rome in specific. In West Asia, the Sunni Ottoman Sultans also got involved in a bitter struggle with the Shia Safavid Shahs of Persia over the status of the greater defender of the Islamic faith and the leader of the global Muslim community while aspiring to imperial greatness.7 As Sanjay Subrahmanyam has pointed out, all these claims drew upon ideas of universal sovereignty articulated in the past, but also majorly refigured them to suit the new conditions of rule.8 Mughal claims of universal sovereignty evolved in constant dialogue with such ideas articulated elsewhere in the contemporary world. They responded to the claims of their rivals and also appropriated various ideas from them. The appropriation of European cartography to boost their imperial self-image is an example of this.9 At the same time, the Mughals inherited similar ideas about world domination from both the Chinggisid Mongols and the Timurid Turks, from whom they had descended. The works of several historians point out the profound influence Turko-Mongol ideas about universal rule exerted on the Mughal conceptualization of

5

Subrahmanyam, ‘Connected Histories,’ 738–9. Evelyn S. Rawski, ‘Sons of Heaven: The Qing Appropriation of the Chinese Model of Universal Empire,’ in Universal Empire, eds. Bang and Kołodziejczyk, 233–52. 7 Bang and Kołodziejczyk, ‘Introduction’, in Universal Empire eds. Bang and Kołodziejczyk, 8–9. 8 Subrahmanyam, ‘Connected Histories,’ 735–62. 9 Koch, ‘The Symbolic Possession of the World’; Ramaswamy, ‘Conceit of the Globe’. 6

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sovereignty.10 These various ideas and ideals were constantly synthesized at the Mughal court throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Yet, by the late sixteenth century, Akbar and his associates together formulated the basics of a distinctly Mughal version of universal sovereignty. With some modifications, these features underpinned Mughal political philosophy throughout the next century. At the heart of the Mughal claims of universal sovereignty lay a pronounced thrust on cosmopolitanism. This encompassed various aspects of the imperial experience, including religion, race, language, and so on. Several scholars have noted that Mughal emperors scarcely favoured any one particular community when it came to patronage or employment. Ruling a multi-ethnic and multi-confessional land, they kept their imperial vision broad. They welcomed with open arms whoever expressed the willingness to join their ranks. It was due to such a broad-based and inclusive vision that a huge part of the North Indian Hindu zamīndārs felt comfortable allying themselves with Mughal rule.11 A passage from the Akbar-nāma—the founding text of Mughal universal sovereignty—points to the markers of greatness that Mughals under Akbar aspired to: Although Almighty God raised the pure-dispositioned one [Akbar] to lofty heights, viz., to increased territory (fuzūnī-i mulk), abundance of devotees (farāwānī-i mukhlaṣān), the overthrow of enemies (bar uftāndan-i a‘dā’), the gaining possession of the wonders of the world (ba-dast āmdan-i ‘ajā’ib-i dunyā), and the opening of the doors of knowl10

Earlier works include Iqtidar Alam Khan, ‘The Turko-Mongol Theory of Kingship’, in Medieval India: A Miscellany (London: Asia Publishing House, 1972), 2:8–18; R.P. Tripathi, ‘The Turko-Mongol Theory of Kingship,’ in The Mughal State, 1526–1750 eds. Alam and Subrahmanyam, 115–25. More recently, Stephen Dale has studied the emergence of Babur’s ideas about rulership in the post Timurid political milieu of Transoxiana. Lisa Balabanlilar has explored the role of a Timurid identity and dynastic memory in shaping Mughal ideas about sovereignty and empire. Azfar Moin’s work has pointed out the continuity in the ideas of sacred Islamic kingship from Timur to the Mughals and their Persian contemporaries. (Dale, The Garden of Eight Paradises; Balabanlilar, Memory and Dynastic Politics; Moin, The Millennial Sovereign.) 11 For the complex dynamics of Mughal alliances with various Rajput houses of Western India, see Ziegler, ‘Some Notes on Rajput Loyalties’.

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edge, and lofty perception (gashāish-i dar-i dānish wa idrākāt-i baland), yet this suppliant of Deity [Akbar] increased his supplications, and the thirst for inquiry augmented.12

This passage exemplifies the typical Mughal political rhetoric of the period. It needs to be noted that nowhere in it is there any allusion to faith or ethnicity. Abul Fazl measured the glory of Mughal kingship with reference to territory, loyalty, control, and true knowledge. The faith or ethnicity of neither the faithful subjects nor the overthrown enemies is mentioned. If these were the public pronouncements of one of the chief ideologues of the empire, Thomas Roe recorded a very private version of this all-encompassing vision of monarchy some years later. One night, after he had had one drink too many, Jahangir apparently declared to the British ambassador: ‘Am I a king? You shalbe welcome: Christians, Moores, Iewes, hee meddled not with their faith: thell in loue and hee would protect them from wrong: they liued under his safety and none should oppresse them [sic].’13 In his claim of rulership over all of humanity, Jahangir’s statement echoed the same universalist approach expressed by Abul Fazl in the passage quoted earlier. INCLUSIVITY , POLITICAL CULTURE , AND IMPERIAL RULE

Contemporary evidence points to the fact that the Mughal emperors were reasonably successful in convincing their subjects about this inclusiveness of their rule. In the early 1620s, an Italian traveller, Pietro della Valle visited the Mughal port of Surat. Jahangir was the Mughal emperor at that time. Pietro della Valle noted that in spite of being a Muslim ruler, the Mughal emperor made ‘no difference in his Dominions between the one sort and the other; and both in his Court, and Armies, and even amongst men of the highest degree, they [were] of equal account, and consideration’.14 We know that the Italian traveller

12

AN, 3:112/157. Roe, Embassy of Sir Thomas Roe, 2:382. 14 Pietro della Valle, The Travels of Pietro della Valle in India, trans. G. Havers, ed. Edward Grey, 2 vols (London: Hakluyt Society, 1892), 1:30. 13

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wrote mostly from his own experience and the information he had gathered from the local inhabitants. As such, his observations reflected the way the Mughal emperors were perceived by some sections of the subjects and visitors of the empire. There is also a huge corpus of literature that demonstrates that the Mughal state actually implemented the inclusivity and cosmopolitanism it professed so eloquently in literary and visual rhetoric. It shows that Mughal ruling ideology and political culture were both extremely eclectic and the court thrived on its patronage of diverse social and religious communities.15 It was primarily because of such 15

This body of literature is too large to be cited here. The important works include M. Athar Ali, ‘Sulh-i Kul and the Religious Ideas of Akbar,’ in M. Athar Ali, Mughal India: Studies in Polity, Ideas, Society, and Culture (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008), 158–72; M. Athar Ali, ‘Translations of Sanskrit Works at Akbar’s Court,’ in Ali, Mughal India: Studies in Polity, Ideas, Society, and Culture, 173–82; M. Athar Ali, ‘The Religious World of Jahangir,’ in Ali, Mughal India: Studies in Polity, Ideas, Society, and Culture, 183–99; M. Athar Ali, ‘The Religious Environment under Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb,’ in Ali, Mughal India: Studies in Polity, Ideas, Society, and Culture, 209–15; Katherine Butler Brown, ‘Did Aurangzeb Ban Music? Questions for the Historiography of His Reign,’ Modern Asian Studies 41, no. 1 (2007), 77–120; Satish Chandra, ‘Jizyah and the State in India during the Seventeenth Century,’ in Satish Chandra, Essays on Medieval Indian History (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2009); Satish Chandra, ‘The Religious Policy of Aurangzeb during the Later Part of His Reign–Some Considerations,’ in Chandra, Essays on Medieval Indian History, 325–45; Supriya Gandhi, ‘The Prince and the Muvahhid: Dara Shikoh and Mughal Engagements with Vedanta,’ in Religious Interactions in Mughal India, Dalmia and Faruqui, eds., 65–101; Nurul Hasan, ‘Aspects of State and Religion in Medieval India,’ in Religion, State, and Society in Medieval India: Collected Works of S. Nurul Hasan, ed. Satish Chandra (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008), 63–78; Iqtidar Alam Khan, ‘Akbar’s Personality Traits and World Outlook: A Critical Reappraisal,’ Social Scientist 20, no. 9/10 (1992), 16–30; Christopher Minkowski, ‘Learned Brahmins and the Mughal Court: The Jyotisas,’ in Religious Interactions in Mughal India, eds Vasudha Dalmia and Munis D. Faruqui (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2014), 102–34; Audrey Truschke, Culture of Encounters: Sanskrit at the Mughal Court (New Delhi: Allen Lane, 2016); Harbans Mukhia, The Mughals of India (Oxford and Victoria: Blackwell Publishing, 2005); Eva Orthmann, ‘Ideology and State-Building: Humayun’s Search for Legitimacy in a Hindu–Muslim Environment,’ in Religious Interactions in Mughal India,

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inclusiveness that Mughal rulers gradually emerged as the markers of legitimacy even among various non-Muslim local communities. Kumkum Chatterjee has shown that in Bengal, Mughal invaders were initially perceived as demonic intruders. However, imperial rule gained acceptance gradually. By the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Mughal authority itself became a prime legitimizer for local religious cults.16 Similar tendencies are visible in western India. Audrey Truschke points out that Jain authors from the Tapa Gaccha sect used Akbar’s royal authority to elevate the position of religious monks such as Hiravijaya within their own community.17 In the sphere of military expansion, the importance of this ideology can be seen in the fact that Mughal armies were open to ally with anyone at the local level—irrespective of that person’s identity—as long as that alliance forwarded the cause of imperial expansion. The previous chapters have demonstrated this. This inclusivity of Mughal universal sovereignty resonated with that of several other early modern empires. Karen Barkey has argued that Ottoman empire-building revolved around a similar ideology and process of incorporation and assimilation of different political groups ‘avoiding much of the contestation assumed in the European model of state-making’18 Peter Purdue argues that the Qing espoused a similar openness in China in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He observes that their ‘ethic of inclusion, offering all who committed a proper place in a universal moral order’, set them apart from their

eds Vasudha Dalmia and Munis D. Faruqui (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2014), 3–29; John F. Richards, ‘The Formulation of Imperial Authority under Akbar and Jahangir,’ in Kingship and Authority in South Asia, ed. John F. Richards (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), 285–326. 16 Kumkum Chatterjee, ‘Goddess Encounters: Mughals, Monsters and the Goddess in Bengal,’ Modern Asian Studies 47, no. 5 (2013), 1–53. 17 Audrey Truschke, ‘Setting the Record Wrong: A Sanskrit Vision of Mughal Conquests,’ South Asian History and Culture 3, no. 3 (2012), 373–96. 18 Karen Barkey, Bandits and Bureaucrats: The Ottoman Route to State Centralization (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1994), 1–2. Also see Karen Barkey, ‘Islam and Toleration: Studying the Ottoman Imperial Model,’ International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 19, no. 1/2 (2005), 5–19.

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Ming predecessors, whose ‘ethnically oriented policy’ created an empire meant primarily for the Han Chinese.19 Consequently, while the Ming had shut themselves off from the Mongol invaders of Inner Eurasia, the Qing sought more active engagement with the latter. They were even prepared to absorb these nomads into their empire if they were ready to submit.20 Perdue argues that it was this broad-based inclusivity of their universalist imperial ideology that helped the Qing state conquer more territory than any other Chinese dynasty till then. It is important to note that several alternate political paradigms existed in South Asia in contestation with the official Mughal one. Throughout the medieval and early modern periods, prominent ideologues such as Ziauddin Barani and Maulana Abdul Qadir Badauni professed a view that Muslim sovereigns should first and foremost safeguard the interest of Islam and the Muslim community in South Asia. Writing in the fourteenth century, Barani urged the Sultans of Delhi to wage jihād (holy war) on the kāfirs (infidels) of Hindustan and not rest till the dar ul-ḥarb (land of turmoil) of al-Hind had been converted into dar ul-Islam (land of Islam). Muzaffar Alam notes that in the specific confessional context of South Asia, where majority of the population was non-Muslim, the Sultans never found such an orthodox outlook suitable to be adopted as political agenda.21 The Mughal emperors too grasped the reality of the situation and never showed any interest whatsoever in modelling their governance on such a narrow political vision. Instead of seeing themselves as devout and militant protectors of the Sunni faith waging relentless jihād to annihilate or convert all kāfirs, they found it more profitable for their imperial project to ally themselves with whoever at all was willing to acknowledge their suzerainty.

19

Peter Perdue, ‘Why Do Empires Expand?,’ in Asian Expansions: The Historical Experiences of Polity Expansion in Asia, ed. Geoff Wade (Oxon and New York: Routledge, 2015), 31–51, see 44. 20 For the most detailed analysis of Qing engagement with the Inner Eurasian nomads, see Perdue, China Marches West. 21 Muzaffar Alam, The Languages of Political Islam in India (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2004), 35–43. Also see Raziuddin Aquil, In the Name of Allah: Understanding Islam and Indian History (New Delhi: Viking, 2009), 49–75.

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It is against this backdrop that discussions on the Mughal conceptualization and legitimization of war and political violence need to be situated. Not much has been written about Mughal military culture and its relationship with imperial ideology.22 John Richards made the initial advances in this field. Among other things, he wrote about how the Mughal court sought to discipline its diverse military elite and forge them into a loyal imperial corps.23 Rosalind O’Hanlon has written extensively on how notions of military masculinity and the martial body shaped ideas of manhood and service at the imperial court.24 In more recent years, there has also appeared some important work on the perception and narrativization—especially in the vernacular—of Mughal conquests in the region.25 In the present chapter, I explore the ways in which the Mughal court conceptualized and legitimized war and military violence, and how they thought about the political and military opposition they

22

In fact, cultural and ideological dimensions of war have not attracted much scholarly interest for pre-modern South Asia. Recent important works include Kaushik Roy, Hinduism and the Ethics of Warfare in South Asia: From Antiquity to the Present (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012); Upinder Singh, Political Violence in Ancient India (Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London: University of Harvard Press, 2017), especially 244–366. 23 J.F. Richards, ‘Norms of Comportment among Imperial Mughal Officers,’ in Moral Conduct and Authority: The Place of Adab in South Asian Islam, ed. Barbara Daly Metcalf (London, Berkeley, and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984), 255–89. Also see Gommans, Mughal Warfare, 56–64. 24 Rosalind O’Hanlon, ‘Manliness and Imperial Service in Mughal North India,’ Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 42, no. 1 (1999), 47–93; Rosalind O’Hanlon, ‘Kingdom, Household and Body: History, Gender and Imperial Service under Akbar,’ Modern Asian Studies 41, no. 5 (2007), 889–923. Also see Rosalind O’Hanlon, ‘Military Sports and the History of the Martial Body in India,’ Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 50, no. 4 (2007), 490–523; Rosalind O’Hanlon, ‘Issues of Masculinity in North Indian History: The Bangash Nawabs of Farrukhabad,’ Indian Journal of Gender Studies 4, no. 1 (1997), 1–19. 25 Truschke, ‘Setting the Record Wrong’; Chatterjee, ‘Goddess Encounters’; Cynthia Talbot, ‘Justifying Defeat: A Rajput Perspective on the Age of Akbar,’ Journal of Economic and Social History of the Orient 55, no. 2/3 (2012), 329–68.

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encountered. I will also unravel how they narrated victories and defeats as well as how all this related to imperial ideology and ethics. This was done using a variety of avenues. Elaborate imperial chronicles, spectacular paintings commissioned at the court, magnificent architectural spaces—all were important sites for the constant performance of Mughal kingship. These different types of literary, visual, and built texts had substantial variations amongst themselves. Yet, in terms of both form and content, they all shared the basic urgency of legitimizing the Mughal claim to universal rule. This they did through a laudatory narration of the exploits and achievements of the empire. In effect, they embodied the official articulation of Mughal imperial ideology in various forms. They presented to the imperial elite, its subjects, and sometimes also its imperial rivals what Terry Eagleton has called ‘a version of social reality which is real and recognizable’.26 According to him, this sort of ‘social reality’ is responsible for the production of an imagined unity in the face of political opposition. He continues that it acts as an ‘organizing force’ that forms a collective human consciousness on the basis of their lived experience. Eagleton concludes by saying that in the process, it is this ‘social reality’ that ‘seeks to equip them with forms of value and belief relevant to their specific social tasks and to the general reproduction of the social order’.27 Imperial court etiquette and norms of behaviour sought to discipline the bodies of Mughal officers, commanders, and soldiers by similar means. In the process, they sought to transform this heterogeneous population into one united corps of loyal servants upholding the imperial agenda. At the same time, these texts conveyed to this group a version of socio-political order they could accept, propagate, and fight for. Drawing upon Eagleton once again, we can think of this entire discourse embodied in the diverse imperial texts ‘as a complex network of empirical and normative elements, within which the nature and organization of the former is ultimately determined by the requirements of the latter’.28

26

Terry Eagleton, Ideology: An Introduction (London and New York: Verso, 1991), 15, 223. 27 Eagleton, Ideology, 15, 223. 28 Eagleton, Ideology, 23.

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I seek to explore how Mughal political ideology engaged with military matters by studying how imperial chronicles represented war and conquest. Imperial biographies, autobiographies, and dynastic histories were a chief vehicle for articulating and propagating this ideology. Written by the emperors, their commanders, or their chroniclers, this corpus of literary texts was voraciously read by successive generations of members of the imperial family, the aristocracy, as well as a class of Mughal subjects who aspired to join the imperial secretarial ranks. Apart from Akhlāq-i Nāṣirī, which comprised a central part of the advanced school curriculum under Akbar, Abul Fazl’s Akbar-nāma and Inshā were also included in this curriculum subsequently.29 Rajeev Kinra’s recent work on Chandar Bhan Brahman—a scribe who served the Mughal court from the 1630s through the 1660s—indicates that the reading and re-reading of these texts over decades within these circles led to a considerable dissemination of the official discourse of Mughal universal sovereignty within this secretarial class.30 The writings of Mirza Nathan—the Mughal commander who served in Bengal and Assam mainly under Jahangir—bear evidence to the fact that it had also percolated to the junior ranks of the military aristocracy by the early seventeenth century. Keeping in mind the importance of these chronicles in articulating as well as constituting imperial ideology, let us now proceed to study some of them closely and seek to map the ideological climate of war and conquest at the Mughal court. MUGHAL POLITICAL CULTURE AND NASIREAN AKHLA ¯Q

Muzaffar Alam points out that throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Mughal norms of governance were deeply influenced by a particular strand of Perso-Islamic normative texts (akhlāq). A cornerstone of this body of scholarship was Nasiruddin 29

Muzaffar Alam, ‘The Pursuit of Persian: Language in Mughal Politics,’ Modern Asian Studies 32, no. 2 (1998), 317–49, see 326–7. 30 Rajeev Kinra has studied the works of Chandar Bhan Brahman in great details in his recent monograph. Rajeev Kinra, Writing Self, Writing Empire: Chandar Bhan Brahman and the Cultural World of the Indo-Persian State Secretary (California: University of California Press, 2015), see especially 95–158.

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Tusi’s thirteenth-century Persian text Akhlāq-i Nāṣirī. Tusi’s ideas can be traced back to the tenets of Aristotle’s Nicomachea. In the Mughal Empire, knowledge of Nasirean akhlāqs spread through the circulation of both Akhlāq-i Nāṣirī as well as other works such as Akhlāq-i Humāyūnī and Mau‘iẓah-i Jahāngīrī that closely followed and extended Tusi’s ideas. Alam points out that Tusi’s text was one of the several important works that Abul Fazl recommended be read out regularly to Akbar. The latter, in turn, instructed his officials and commanders to read this work closely. Alam informs us that Nasirean ethics and political philosophy exerted a deep influence on Mughal political thought. This is evident from several texts produced and intellectual projects undertaken at the imperial court.31 A letter written by Abul Fazl that summed up a ‘royal code of conduct and a working manual’ for Akbar’s sons, commanders, and officials is a case in point. Using it, Alam argues that at one level such important imperial documents articulated concerns that were framed by Nasirean akhlāq. In addition, they also spoke in a language that borrowed heavily from the Nasirean vocabulary and literary style.32 It must be noted that several other normative paradigms of political philosophy coexisted in Mughal South Asia. Yet, as far as the long-term self-fashioning of the empire was concerned, the most important and enduring influence was that of the Nasirean akhlāqī tradition.33 Alam sums up this argument by observing that ‘the unmistakable imprint of Nasirean ethics that one discerns is thus not simply on the norms or principles of governance but on a very wide area of Mughal politico-cultural life’.34 If we turn our gaze towards how military matters were represented in Mughal chronicles, we find a similar imprint of Nasirean akhlāq. What the proper duties of a ruler are, under what circumstances should war be undertaken, what political protocols were to be followed before the initiation of hostilities, how political and military opponents should be engaged with—the way all these issues were discussed in Mughal imperial biographies and autobiographies makes it

31 32 33 34

Alam, Languages of Political Islam, 61. Alam, Languages of Political Islam, 61–4. Alam, Languages of Political Islam, 81–114, 141–89. Alam, Languages of Political Islam, 70–1.

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abundantly clear that Nasirean ethics was one of the prime shapers of the imperial discourse on war in the period under study.

THE IDEA OF KINGSHIP

At the heart of this discourse was the conceptualization of a universal empire and the role of the sovereign therein. Abul Fazl describes the emperor as the fountainhead of justice, and the protector of harmony and equilibrium in the world. This association of princely rule and the administration of justice is one of the most enduring themes of political philosophy across Eurasian societies. The Perso-Islamic tradition that Nasiruddin Tusi belonged to was particularly strong and consistent in its emphasis on this association. Tusi’s work upholds justice as the highest form of virtue and locates it at the core of human well-being and prosperity. He also points out that being just was the most important quality that a ruler must possess, since ‘in justice lies the order of the realm [qawām-i mamlukat ba-ma‘dalat būd]’.35 Tusi assigns justice a very special place among various virtues. He argues: Plato has also said that the centrality of justice is not like the centrality of other virtues, because both peripheries of justice are tyranny [har dū t̤araf-i ‘adālat jaur ast], whereas in no other virtue do both peripheries coincide in one vice. His exposition is as follows: tyranny is both the quest for excess and the quest for deficiency, for the tyrant [ jā’ir] seeks excess for himself and deficiency for others, in respect of whatever is beneficial; again, in the case of what is harmful, he seeks deficiency for himself and excess for others. But justice is equality [adālat tasāwī ast], and on the two peripheries of equality lie excess and deficiency; therefore both peripheries of equality are tyranny. Moreover, whereas each virtue, from the standpoint of centrality, requires equilibrium, justice is general, comprehending all equilibria.36

Mughal imperial texts drew upon Tusi’s arguments about the idea of justice. Mughal emperors are consistently portrayed in Mughal texts as approximations of the just ruler idealized in Tusi’s akhlāq. Narrating an incident involving Akbar, Abul Fazl describes how, on 35 36

NT, 304/230. NT, 143/104.

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his way from Kabul to North India in 1589, the emperor discovered that a man had ‘dishonoured’ a peasant’s daughter. Akbar is said to have felt obliged to dispense justice immediately. He had the offender capitally punished. It was further discovered that one Sharif Khan, the son of an imperial calligrapher, had also been involved in the crime. Not deterred by the fact that the man was related to an imperial officer in his own employment, the emperor also had him severely punished.37 Similarly, Jahangir records in his autobiography that one of the first things he did after his accession was to fasten a ‘Chain of Justice [zanjīr-i ‘adl]’. The chain, he wrote, was made of pure gold and held sixty bells. It stretched across the breadth of the Yamuna from the walls of the Mughal fort at Agra to a stone post on the other bank of the river. He declared that anybody in pursuit of justice ‘might come to this chain and shake it so that its noise might attract [Jahangir’s] attention’.38 In several of the allegorical paintings commissioned at Jahangir’s court, this chain makes an appearance. Once again, there are stories about the emperor administering justice in public. For instance, this is the instruction Jahangir says he gave the army sent to punish his own rebel son Khusrau: If he will go in no way on the right road, do not consider a crime anything that results from your action. Kingship regards neither son nor son-in-law [salt̤anat khẉeshī (lit. kinsman) wa farzandī bar namī tābad]. No one is a relation to a king [ki bā-shāh khẉeshī na-dārad kasī].39

The emperor was making a statement here. It was meant for all the potential readers of his autobiography, who would have mostly belonged either to the imperial family or to the ranks of the aristocracy. To them, Jahangir was declaring that in the Mughal realm not even the members of the royal family were beyond the justice that he was there to uphold. He also writes that he regularly participated in dispensing justice himself. Edward Terry, who visited North India during Jahangir’s rule, observed that ‘the great Mogul [would] fit himself as judge in any matters of consequence that happen[ed] near unto

37 38 39

AN, 3:569/861. TJ, 1:3/7. TJ, 1:24/52.

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him: and there [were] no malefactors that [lay] more than one night in prison, and many times not at all’.40 He then goes on to describe two instances when Jahangir sentenced two offenders to death himself. He also specified the exact ways in which the capital punishment was to be carried out.41 Jahangir also records several incidents where he had asked prisoners to be brought in front of him, so that he could display his commitment to justice by pardoning their offence and freeing many of them.42 We will come back to this point about the centrality of justice in kingship as conceptualized by Tusi and Abul Fazl. For now, let us carry forward our exercise of studying how closely the projected image of the Mughal emperor was based on the prototype of the ideal ruler of Nasirean akhlāq. An interesting metaphor that Tusi uses to describe the role of the ideal king is that of a physician. He writes: ‘That person truly deserves to rule as king who is capable of treating the world when it falls sick, and of undertaking to maintain its health when it is well. The king is the world’s physician [malik t̤abīb-i ‘ālam būd].’43 A physician cures the maladies of the human body by diagnosing the root of the problem and by administering medicine. Similarly, the king was supposed to cure the maladies of the body politic through his benevolent yet strict rule and his administration of justice. This Nasirean metaphor of the king as a physician resonates in Mughal akhlāqī as well as historical texts. This is exemplified by Baqir Najm-i Sani, the author of a seventeenth-century Mughal akhlāqī text. He points out that a physician listens to the patient’s version of the symptoms patiently, diagnoses the disease, and then cures it. Similarly, rulers must listen to the grievances of people, look into the reasons behind their problems, and then devote themselves to solving them. He stresses that ‘the emperor is like a physician [pādshāh ḥukm-i t̤abīb dārad] and the petitioner [subject] like a patient. If the patient does not fully explain his condition, the physician cannot apprehend his case’.44 Abul Fazl too 40

Terry, Voyages, 353–4. Terry, Voyages, 362–4. 42 Jahangir writes about such an incident from 1618, during his visit of the fort of Ranthambhor. (TJ, 2:256–7/59–60.) 43 NT, 302/228. 44 MJ, 46, 148. 41

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repeatedly uses this physician metaphor to describe Akbar through phrases such as ‘physician of the world [ t̤abīb-i rozgār]’ and ‘doctor of the universe [ḥakīm-i āfāq]’.45 In one place he narrates that by visiting the shrine of Shaikh Muinuddin Chishti in Ajmer, Akbar ‘understood the pulse of the age [nabẓ-shinās-i rozgār], devised such a cure for those sick persons, there came no dust from such earth-questing to sully the skirt of his grandeur’.46 He also describes Akbar on several occasions as performing miracles and healing human illnesses that even physicians could not cure. What the Mughal ideologue implies is that the emperor was far superior to the ordinary doctor. There was no contest between the worldly knowledge of the physicians and the ‘gift of God’ of Akbar.47 Harbans Mukhia points out that Abul Fazl tempered the absolutist image of the emperor with ‘paternalistic generosity and the spirit of forgiveness’.48 Once again, the genealogy of these traits can be traced back to the Nasirean ethical paradigm where generosity ranks right after justice, as a quality desirable in the ideal sovereign. There are several instances cited in Mughal texts about emperors making public statements about their generosity. In 1605, for example, three Rajputs of the Khachhwa house took up arms against imperial officers and were eventually killed. Jahangir writes that his own officers demanded serious punishment for the offenders. They reminded the emperor that had such acts been carried out in the Uzbeg realm, the ‘whole family and connections of that band of men would have been destroyed [silsila wa qabīla-i ān jamā‘at rā bar mī andāzand]’.49 However, Jahangir decided to display his magnanimity instead of his vengeance. He retorted saying ‘justice demands [muqtaẓā-i ‘adālat nīz ast] that many shall not be chastised for the fault of one’.50 45

AN, 3:198/280. AN, 3:164/232–3. 47 AN, 3:212/298–9. One is immediately reminded of Marc Bloch’s discussion of the beliefs surrounding the healing power of the touch of the medieval English and French monarchs. (Marc Bloch, The Royal Touch: Monarchy and Miracles in France and England, trans. JE Anderson [New York: Dorset Press, 1989].) 48 Mukhia, The Mughals, 54. 49 TJ, 1:13/30. 50 TJ, 1:13/30. 46

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In another instance, Akbar pardoned the Baluchis and called back the army that he had sent against them. Justifying this action, Abul Fazl says that Akbar does not behave like the ‘rapacious and greedy who make stumbling an excuse for subjugation [bahāna-i mālish], and do not rest without shedding blood and heaping up wealth [ jazz ba-rekhtan-i chūn wa andokhtan-i māl na-āsāyīnad]’.51 The idea that is highlighted once again is that the Mughal sovereign does not intend to use violence randomly or to fulfil his own selfish motives. His decision to unleash violence is tempered by his inclination to shower generosity on anybody who is willing to submit to him. One could continue highlighting more parallels between the way kingship is conceptualized by Tusi and by the official Mughal discourse, but that would be belabouring the point. The thing to note is that the deep influence of Nasirean akhlāq, which Muzaffar Alam found in the case of Mughal political culture, was also equally dominant for the ways in which Mughal literary texts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries conceptualized kingship.

KINGSHIP AND JUSTICE

Let us now return to our discussion about justice. We have earlier seen Tusi argue that justice is the highest form of virtue, especially for kings. He legitimizes this by locating justice at the heart of social order and by linking justice with the notions of equilibrium and unity.52 He writes: As regards signification, the word ‘Justice’ denotes the idea of equivalence [musāwāt]; but to conceive of equivalence without regard to unicity [waḥdat] is impossible. Now, inasmuch as unicity is particularized and distinguished as the remotest rank and the highest degree of superiority and perfection … so, the nearer one is to unicity the nobler one’s existence [har chi ba-waḥdat nazdīk-tar wa khūd u sharīf-tar].… Now, just as unicity necessarily implies superiority (indeed, is the cause of

51

AN, 3:240/343. The translators of Akhlāq-i Nāṣirī use ‘unicity’ rather than ‘unity’ to express the idea of being or comprising one, or the state of being united as a whole and complete entity. 52

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Thus, Tusi argues that replacing multiplicity by unity is a thing of merit in itself, since that is the principal way of ensuring the prevalence of justice in society. It is the method of the establishment of unity in society which then brings the king into the picture. Akhlāq-i Jalālī—a fifteenth-century normative text inspired by Akhlāq-i Nāṣirī and presented to Babur—argues along similar lines. It highlights that ‘the maintenance of equity and reference to it, can only be effected by the ascertainment of a mean’.54 However, the author continues, determining this mean is extremely difficult and it is necessary to take recourse of divine law, since the origin of all unity lies in ‘the Supreme and Holy Divinity’.55 In order to ensure the determination of the mean and the maintenance of equity on its basis, mediation56 of somebody then becomes necessary.57 This can be none other than the just king (pādshāh-i ‘ādil).58 The author argues that it is for this reason that god has selected the king (ḥaẓrat ḥaqq-i pādshāh rā bar gazīd) and equipped him with a sword (ta’yīd-i u ba-shamshīr farmūd).59 This was done, the author continues, so that ‘whosoever should be incompliant with the equation of money, seeking more than his right, and overstepping the path of rectitude, with this trenchant sword he may be enabled to bring them to order’.60 In turn, this would help establish and preserve unity in the world. In the domain of politics, the duty of the king is to guide the people of the world towards pledging 53

NT, 131/95. AJ, 57/126–7. 55 AJ, 57/126–7. 56 The translators of Akhlāq-i Nāṣirī use ‘intermediacy’ instead of ‘mediation’. 57 AJ, 57/126–7. 58 AJ, 57/127. 59 AJ, 57/127. 60 AJ, 57/127. 54

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their political allegiance to a single person—himself, since he alone has been chosen by god—and thereby eliminate multiplicity of allegiances and motives. Abul Fazl borrows this entire argument from Tusi. In the Akbar-nāma, he writes that the efforts of great rulers ‘are devoted to the production of unity, and to the removing the dust of complexity by the water of simplicity’.61 As one of such great rulers, his patron’s ‘whole thought is to accept the obedience of mortals so that multiplicity [manshūr] may become unity [paiwast], and that mankind in general may have repose’.62 In Akhlāq-i Nāṣirī, Tusi lays a lot of emphasis on this idea of the sovereign as the one who dispenses justice by bringing unity and harmony among mankind. One passage is worth quoting at length here: The just man [‘ādil kasī] is the one who gives proportion and equivalence [munāsibat wa musāwāt mī-dahad] to disproportionate and inequivalent things [chīz-hā-i nā-mutanāsib wa nā-mutasāwī] … Such a person finds it easy to appraise himself of the nature of the middle-point so as to repel the peripheries therefrom.… The determiner of the middle-point in every case, so that by knowledge thereof the repulsion of [other] things may be effected in equilibrium, is the Divine Commandment. Thus, in reality, the positor of equality [tasāwī] and justice [‘adālat] is the Divine Commandment, for God [exalted be mention of Him!] is the source of unicity.63

Elsewhere, he calls the just ruler an ‘arbitrator in equality [‘ādil ḥākim]’ and a ‘vice-gerent of the Divine Law’, whose duty it was to remove anomalies and mischiefs.64 Through such a proposition, kingly rule thus becomes an instrument necessary for determining the middle point, and thereby enabling the establishment of equivalence and justice in society. Dispensing justice is conceptualized as the inherent obligation of the sovereign, not an occasional favour that his rule might or might not bring to the world. In the seventeenth century, the Mughal scholar Baqir Najm-i Sani reiterated this idea. 61 62 63 64

AN, 3:518/791. AN, 3:240/343. NT, 133/97. NT, 135/99.

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He wrote that if divine favour chooses somebody to be a ruler, he must value this decision and ‘hold the empire dear and venerable’. He continues: In systemizing rules and in maintaining their procedures [ẓawābit̤-i qawā‘id wa ḥifz̤-i marāsim], he must exert the utmost care to achieve justice [‘adl] and impartiality [inṣāf ]. If the judge [ruler] does not regulate the affairs of the people, a clandestine rebel, abetted by tyranny, will destroy the lives of the nobility and plebian alike. If the light from the candle of justice does not illuminate the somber cell of the afflicted, the darkness of cruelty [z̤ulmāt-i z̤alm] will blacken the entire country just as it does the hearts of tyrants [at̤rāf wa aknāf-i mamlukat rā chūn dil-i sitam-kār-ān tīra sāzad].… Therefore, rulers must consider that they occupy the throne in order to dispense justice, not to lead a life filled with pleasure. They must consider justice [‘adl] and equity [inṣāf ] as the means to survival of their rule [mūjab-i baqā’ī-i salt̤anat], permanence of their fame [dawām-i nām-i nekū], and reward in the hereafter [iḥrāz-i s̤awāb ākhirat]. To them, nothing should be more binding than pursuit of the people’s welfare.65

In sum, we note that the image of the ideal ruler as portrayed by several important Mughal chroniclers and political thinkers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries very closely followed what Tusi wrote on the subject. The ideal ruler was to devote himself to dispensing justice in order to safeguard the interest of the weak and prevent the powerful from oppressing them. He was to remove the malice of multiplicity of allegiances by firmly establishing unity in the world. He was to be merciless and unforgiving towards criminals. At the same time, he was not to allow the thirst for vengeance cloud his judgement or withhold his capability of being forgiving and generous. His power and authority was to be used in service of mankind and not for fulfilling his own selfish ends. These findings support the arguments of Linda Darling, who has extensively worked on the idea of the ‘circle of justice’ in West Asian political philosophy. Darling has argued that the association between justice and kingship remained strong under all of the great Mughals. According to her, this was especially 65

MJ, 45–6/147–8. Emphasis mine.

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true for Akbar, Jahangir, and Shah Jahan, although it wielded some influence before and after them as well.66 Normative texts such as Akhlāq-i Jalālī and Mau‘iẓah-i Jahāngīrī laid down these norms at a theoretical level. In his imperial biography, Abul Fazl elucidated the same norms using the figure of Akbar as an example. In this sense, Akbar-nāma was meant as much as a commissioned imperial biography as a normative text—something like a parable—for future generations of the empire.67

WAR AS MORAL COMPULSION

Within such an ideological paradigm, the sovereign bore a grave responsibility. Harbans Mukhia points out how in Abul Fazl’s imagination, the sovereign’s absolute power was tempered by his ‘responsibility to establish absolute peace among his subjects through the practice of non-discrimination, and to bring about tranquility and prosperity through paternalist care’.68 Problems usually arose when rival political powers, whose allegiance the Mughals sought, would often be rather reluctant to bow down to the them. Not unsurprisingly, what the Mughal state perceived as paternalist care, the rival powers interpreted as aggressive imperialism. In many cases, these rivals would refuse imperial suggestions seeking their submission quite flatly. This elicited great surprise and annoyance from the Mughal chroniclers, who remained firmly convinced of the divinely ordained mission and the eventual victory of their patron state. Faced by such instances of what appeared to be essentially strange acts of ‘insubordination’ to the Mughals, conquest did not remain a princely whim. It became a moral compulsion. If they were to fulfill their kingly duties on earth on the lines suggested by Tusi, they did not have an option 66 Linda Darling, ‘“Do Justice, Do Justice, For That is Paradise”: Middle Eastern Advice for Indian Muslim Rulers,’ Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 22, no. 1–2 (2003), 3–19, see 8–12. 67 For this reason, it was included in the school curriculum that produced the scribal class of the Mughal Empire in the seventeenth century. (Alam, ‘The Pursuit of Persian’, 326–7.) 68 Mukhia, The Mughals, 52.

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but to wage war against their adamant rivals. Articulating such a vision, Abul Fazl writes: Conquest is the great rule of rulership and governance [mihīn āyīn-i farmān-rawā’ī mulk-gīrī wa kishwar-sitānī-st], and by the observance of this glory-increasing practice, the distraction of plurality places its foot in the peacefulness of unity, and the harassed world composes her countenance.69

Elsewhere he calls upon ‘justice-loving princes not [to] be satisfied with the countries of which they are in possession’. He urges them to conquer other territories as they are a ‘necessary function and duty of the hour [lāzim-i fit̤rat wa farẓ-i waqt]’ as well as a ‘choice form of Divine worship [‘ibādat-i guzīda]’.70 Justifying Mughal wars in this way, he writes elsewhere: The sole idea [hamagī basej] of wise kings is day by day to refresh the garden of the world [chahār chaman-i gītī] by the streams of justice [jūy-bār-i ma‘dilat], and assuredly this design is accomplished whenever extensive countries come into the hands of one who is just and of wide capacity [har chand farāwān mulk ba-dast-i yaka az farākh ḥauṣalagān-i dādgar dar ayad]. And when an empire has been civilized by an enlightened and just ruler, and the people thereof—small and great—sit in the shade of tranquility, it is unavoidable [nā-guzīr] that such a prince should cast a profound glance [zharf nigāhī] on the deeds of neighbours who have taken the path of dissimulation. He must look closely [dūr-bīnī] in order to perceive if their former conduct can be brought into line with love and order, and if they can be induced to treat their subjects properly. If they do not, then justice requires that they should be punished, and there land taken from them [war na āyīn-i dādgarī ān-kah lūkhta mālish dihand wa būm bāz satānand].71 69

The use of the word āyīn is crucial here. Annette Beveridge translated it as ‘rule’. F. Steingass says that it could also translate as ‘institution’, ‘rite’, ‘custom’, ‘cannon’, ‘usage’, ‘prescription’, and so on. All of these words give a strong sense of compulsion, or at least, obligation. Clearly, conquest was not seen as an optional hobby of princes; in the Mughal ideological universe, it was the norm and the supreme duty of kingship. (AN, 3:198/280.) I have modified Beveridge’s translation here. Emphasis mine. 70 AN, 3:86/122. Translation of the phrase ‘lāzim-i fit̤rat wa farẓ-i waqt’ is mine. This idea of conquest and imperial rule being conceived by the Mughals as a form of worship of god is also pointed out by Mukhia. (Mukhia, The Mughals, 51–2.) 71 AN, 3:474/715. Emphasis mine.

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This is an extremely important passage that links the Mughal court’s legitimization of aggressive military campaigns with the dynastic ideology. Conquest and governance are shown to be not enough in themselves. They are depicted as only an intermediate stage before further expansion—necessitated by the royal, moral, and ethical compulsion of fulfilling the duties of kingship—was undertaken. This moral compulsion was further magnified by the universalist pretensions of the Mughal emperors. This is where the Mughals assimilated Nasirean akhlāqī recommendations with their eclectic aspirations of universal rule. Harbans Mukhia points out that in Abul Fazl’s imagination—which animated Mughal imperial ideology for several generations afterwards—the Mughal emperor was seen as the paterfamilias of the universal family of humans. He was seen as a benevolent, just, and strict father figure. He bore the divine mandate of establishing and preserving order and peace in the world and guiding humanity towards the bliss of loyalty and true enlightenment.72 Although in reality the Mughal emperor ruled over the inhabitants of his limited territories, theoretically his dominion was supposed to encompass the entire universe. For this reason, he could not but concern himself with the welfare of all mankind. Giving this idea expression, Abul Fazl writes: The totality of the firmly-based [sic] energy of the sovereign of our auspicious age is directed towards enabling the inhabitants, both great and small, of every country [sākinān-i har diyār az khurd wa buzurg], to worship God in accordance with their capacities, and to make harmony between them their outward and their inward condition, and to arrange that they do not extend the foot of propriety beyond their carpet, nor indulge in self-worship and self-exaltation.… In the case of every country to which the lord of the earth has led his armies, and of every tribe which has felt the shade of his world-conquering troops, his sole purpose has been to improve the condition of that country or to educate that tribe [tamāmī-i nahmat-i jahān-ārā iṣlāḥ -i ḥāl-i bilād wa hidāyat-i ān guroh būd].73

In sum, Mughal thought about the legitimization of war closely adhered to the Nasirean akhlāqī recommendations. Aspirations to

72 73

Mukhia, The Mughals, 50–4. AN, 3:69/96. Also see AN, 3:188/264. Emphasis mine.

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world conquest—derived from a variety of sources discussed earlier— also shaped this. Defined in such a way, a persistent moral compulsion to expand constantly was built into the Mughal logic of kingship from the very beginning. Official literature justified this as something unavoidable in order for justice to prevail, order to be restored, people to prosper, and evil to be eradicated. Mukhia highlights that for Akbar, ‘the reference point of conquest lay in establishing peace, justice, and relieving the subjects of a territory of oppression of the existing ruler’.74 Upinder Singh’s work shows that this conceptualization of war as a compulsion and an inherent part of kingship was not uncommon among the various cultures of war in ancient India.75 What was perhaps new in the Mughal case was the deep association between the waging of war and the fulfillment of the function of kingship as the upholder of justice. Phillip Wagoner and Richard Eaton have recently pointed out that the conceptualization of kingship within the Sanskrit cultural cosmopolis did not accord the central position to the notion of justice. This was a doctrine that emerged primarily from ideas of kingship in ancient Iran. It was reinvented in Islamicate Persia by the mid-eleventh century. Following the Turko-Afghan invasions and rule of North India in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, this doctrine disseminated across South Asia.76 Nasiruddin Tusi produced one of the most sophisticated articulations of this idea in thirteenth-century Iran. Through their intellectual borrowing from Tusi’s political philosophy, the Mughals gave this idea an enduring centre stage in their political and military culture. Against this larger backdrop, the following section looks more closely at the language imperial chronicles employed to legitimize

74

Mukhia has not followed up this insightful observation with a detailed survey. (Mukhia, The Mughals, 50–1.) 75 Singh, Political Violence in Ancient India, 244–366. 76 Richard M. Eaton and Phillip B. Wagoner, Power, Memory, Architecture: Contested Sites on India’s Deccan Plateau, 1300–1600 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, [2014] 2015), 24–6. For a comprehensive survey of the relationship between the ideas of justice and governance, see Linda Darling, A History of Social Justice and Political Power in the Middle East (London and New York: Routledge, 2013). For the career of the idea of the circle of justice in South Asia, see Darling, ‘Do Justice, Do Justice’.

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individual invasions of neighbouring territories. From the examples discussed, it becomes clear that throughout the period under study, imperial discourse of justifications of invasion and conquest were deeply shaped by the Mughal conceptualization of war-making as the kingship’s moral obligation.

JUSTIFYING INVASIONS UNDER AKBAR

One of the first kingdoms to fall to Akbar’s armies was Malwa. Justifying this invasion, Nizamuddin Ahmad puts the blame squarely on Baz Bahadur, the sultan of Malwa. The Mughal commander points out that instead of governing his kingdom, Baz Bahadur indulged in ‘unlawful and vicious practices [ham-wāra ba-lawāzim malāhī ishtighāl mī-numāyīnad]’.77 Another chronicler, Muhammad Arif Qandahari goes a step further and says that Baz Bahadur was ‘carrying on administration just as a donkey, employed to dig and carry mud’.78 Nizamuddin argues that this neglect of state affairs allowed ‘tyrants and oppressors’ to exploit the poor and meek, and resulted in the destruction of the populace and the desolation of the land. According to Nizamuddin, this upset Akbar greatly. He declared that the ‘honour of empire demanded [ghairat-i salt̤anat muqtaẓá], that the country of Malwa should come into the possession of the servants of the powerful [Mughal] state, and become the resting place of peace and safety’.79 The point to note here is that Nizamuddin did not see the alleged self-indulgence of a ruler or his inability to deliver good governance as a problem of one individual only. Instead, what he highlights in his narrative is how this affected the wider order of things and the fate of his subjects. The justification of the expedition sent against Daud Khan Karrani, the Afghan chieftain of Bihar and Bengal, can be cited as another example. Justifying the invasion, Abul Fazl argues that Daud’s father Sulaiman Karrani ‘always remembered his position, and paid the respect of obedience’ to Akbar.80 Consequently, the Mughal emperor 77 78 79 80

TA, 2:151/251–2. Emphasis mine. TQ, 66/95. TA, 2:151/251–2. Emphasis mine. AN, 3:69–70/96–7. Emphasis mine.

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had never felt the need to treat him harshly. However, Daud had strayed from these duties.81 Abul Fazl says that Akbar could not but intervene when Daud ‘stretched his foot beyond his condition and became an element of disturbance in the country’.82 Nizamuddin Ahmad mentions that Daud assumed the title of badshah and provoked the Mughals by destroying a fort that a Mughal commander had recently built.83 The chroniclers then unanimously argue that all this made the Mughal emperor feel that the chastisement of that group (ta’dīb-i ān guroh) and the preservation of the condition of the subjects of that region (murā’āt-i aḥwāl-i ra‘āyā-i ān diyār) was his moral obligation as a just ruler.84 Through such a narrative, the imperial chroniclers first project an image of the ‘proper’ order of things. In such an order, rulers such as Sulaiman Karrani would remember their ‘proper’ place in the political universe over which the Mughal emperor presided. They would express at least outward submission by regularly paying tributes and publicly acknowledge Mughal suzerainty.85 After this, Daud Khan is projected as the villain who upset this ‘proper’ order of things by neglecting his duties as a Mughal subordinate and by transgressing his limits. Once again, such an explanation is supplemented by a narration of how Daud’s actions were not only an instance of individual insolence, but how it adversely affected the people over whom he ruled. Under these circumstances, the duty of the Mughal emperor was twofold. First, as the upholder and protector of order in a political society in which everybody was to stay in one’s assigned position, Akbar needed to teach Daud a lesson in discipline and performance of one’s duties. Second, as the benevolent nurturer of the common people, he required to improve the condition of the ‘subjects’ who lived in the territories over which Daud ruled. The invasion of Daud’s territories thus became the logical conclusion of Akbar’s obligation to fulfill both these duties.

81 82 83 84 85

AN, 3:69–70/96–7. Emphasis mine. AN, 3:69–70/96–7. Emphasis mine. TA, 2:281–2/429–30. AN, 3:69–70/96–7. Translation mine. This image is also projected by Arif Qandahari. (TQ, 189/222.)

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Abul Fazl uses the same logic to justify the imperial invasion of Kashmir in 1585–6. He highlights how the ruler of Kashmir had betrayed Mughal benevolence towards him, chosen ‘the path of presumption’, neglected the duties of kingship, and given into selfindulgence.86 In the face of a Mughal invasion, Yaqub Chak, the son of the ruler of Kashmir, emerged as the leader of the resistance for a section of the Kashmiri aristocracy. Abul Fazl’s narrative hence next focuses on how Yaqub’s rule was the embodiment of evil itself, thereby strengthening justification for the Mughal invasion of the Srinagar Valley. The list of allegations against him is a long one. Abul Fazl begins by saying that Yaqub ‘increased in presumption and became refractory [bad-gohar nakhwat afzūda sar-tābī pesh girift] and fell into improper desires [nā-sazā khwāhish-hā]’.87 Abolishing the treaty with the Mughals, he is said to have conferred upon himself the title of Shah Ismail. Abul Fazl also alleges that Yaqub, much like Baz Bahadur, ‘did not do the work of the world [kār-i dunyā na-sākhta]’.88 Instead, he is said to have derived pleasure from participating in religious disputes, oppressing his subjects, and victimizing Sunni Muslims.89 The narrative hence creates a villain, one who has disturbed the social fabric by not fulfilling his kingly obligations. Once this was done, the stage was then set for the narrative to eulogize the invasion which was destined to restore order and harmony as well as bring the inhabitants of Kashmir under the watchful eyes of the just Mughal emperor. Similar literary strategies are used repeatedly by the chroniclers to legitimize most of the invasions undertaken under Akbar.90

JUSTIFYING INVASIONS IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

Narratives of wars that transpired under Akbar’s successors demonstrate the longevity of these literary strategies. They also demonstrate that this formula could coexist with references to other more specific 86

AN, 3:474/715. AN, 3:502/762–3. 88 AN, 3:502/762–3. 89 AN, 3:502/762–3. 90 See, for example, the cases of Idar and Orchha. (AN, 3:198–9/280, 209–10/294–5.) 87

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causes. The best instance of this is the way chroniclers narrate the invasion of Balkh and Badakhshan under Shah Jahan. One biographer of the emperor justifies the expedition by blaming the ruler for the poor governance of the Uzbeg territories and the consequent social chaos therein. He writes: Of late, however, Turan being beset by internal strife, the Uzbegs and the Almans had begun to extend the hand of oppression by spilling the blood of Musulmans, defaming them and making them prisoners. Moreover, it had reached the ear of the cherisher of justice that Nazar Muhammad Khan was so involved in his own affairs that he was unable to defend the adherents of Islam from the violence of that ill-mentioned tribe. Therefore, inasmuch as it is an essential duty [zimma-i pādshāhān-i dīn-parwar farẓ-i ‘ain wa ‘ain-i farẓ ast] to restore the rights of the injured and oppressed [dād-rasī-i maz̤lūmān-i sitam kashīda], His Majesty determined to dispatch Prince Murad Bakhsh with an army … for the purpose of conquering Balkh and Badakhshan, and coercing the infidel Uzbegs and Almans.91

In addition, the chronicler refers to Balkh–Badakhshan as the ‘hereditary dominions [mamlukat-i marūs̤ī]’ of the emperor. In such a narrative, the generational ambition of conquering the much-haloed dynastic ‘hereditary dominions’ conveniently dovetailed into the ethical imperatives of the emperor. The latter included the duty of the ‘cherisher of justice’ to punish the Uzbegs and the Almans for oppressing the common people as well as to teach Nazar Muhammad Khan a lesson or two about the responsibilities of kingship. One needs to note that the idea of Mughal imperial rule being tied down by the responsibility of providing the oppressed and distressed (maz̤lūmān-i sitam kashīda) with retributive justice (dād-rasī) continued strongly well into the mid-seventeenth century, when Shah Jahan’s biographers wrote. Azfar Moin has recently pointed out that the idea of the Mughal emperor being the ‘millennial sovereign’ was an enduring theme of Mughal imperial ideology. Notwithstanding many shifts and changes within this theme, it continued to dominate Mughal political imagination well into the reign of Aurangzeb.92 91 92

SN, 408/335. Moin, The Millennial Sovereign.

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We have found another trait. This is the conception of the Mughal emperor as the benevolent paterfamilias whose actions were inspired by Nasirean akhlāqī recommendations about punishing the evil and protecting humanity. It was yet another resilient marker of Mughal kingship, articulated in a large number of Mughal texts during the period under study. On the one hand, the biographer portrays Shah Jahan—under whom Mughal kingship had taken a slow turn towards a somewhat more rigid version of Sunni Islam—as the dīn-parwar (protector of faith). On the other hand, he resorts to the Nasirean rhetoric of justice and order to justify his patron’s duties. It is also important to observe here that the order in which the righteous Mughal king would ‘chastise’—or guide to the ‘right path’—oppressing tyrants and incompetent rulers was not random. At all times, it would be mediated by several other considerations. They included—but were not limited to—political priorities, strategic concerns, economic motives, and military pragmatism. Hence, at times, even ‘outward’ submissions of certain rulers could be accepted as satisfactory. The case of Sulaiman Karrani of Bihar presents such an example. Abul Fazl writes explicitly that Sulaiman’s submission was ‘outward’. Yet, the chronicler argues that Akbar considered this outward submission (ṣūrat-i it̤ā‘at-i z̤āhirī) to be as good as real obedience ( farmān-bardārī-i bāt̤inī).93 This indicates clearly that Sulaiman’s submission was not perceived as sincere enough. Yet, it was the difficulties of waging war in distant Bihar he had faced early in his reign that prevented Akbar from giving the Afghan chieftain a taste of the divinely ordained Mughal medicine of military invasion at this time. The Afghan kingdom was attacked only when Mughal control over the heart of North India had reached a certain degree of stability. This tendency continued in the seventeenth century. There are instances when the mere submission of tribute would be considered enough to prove one’s commitment to the Mughal cause. This was the case with the raja of Kachar, for example, during the reign of Jahangir. Given the material constraints of actually conquering Kachar and unfurling the proverbial banner of Mughal justice there, 93

AN, 69/96–7.

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the empire had to make do with the acceptance of lip service on the part of the ruler.94 At the same time, there were several instances where such token submissions were considered inadequate and military operations continued till a ruler had been captured, disciplined, and brought to the imperial court. The case of Raja Parikshit Narayan of Kamrup is a good example.95 This once again supports the point made earlier about the fact that while the Mughal court conceptualized and narrativized war through the lens of Nasirean ethics, various other factors such as political pragmatism and military calculation also constantly shaped the military choices of the empire. The question that inevitably arises next is about those rulers or chieftains who dared to oppose imperial expansion. How did the Mughal chronicles represent them? This is the subject of the next section.

REPRESENTING ADVERSARIES

Mughal emperors believed that they were divinely ordained to conquer all the world and enlighten it through their just and benevolent rule. For them, this was obvious and they expected that it would be so for everyone else around them too. Within the imperial ideological paradigm, this was the norm. Mughal armies were to conquer their way around and all other rulers were to bow down to the power of the Mughal emperor, which was nothing short of divine will itself. Akbar articulated such a worldview when he communicated to Burhan Nizam-ul-Mulk, the ruler of Ahmadnagar, that ‘great kings who embark upon the conquest of the world and mankind, want nothing from the chiefs of principalities except obedience and sincerity’.96 Anybody who would challenge them, refuse to acknowledge their suzerainty, or even behave in a manner that the Mughals deemed improper, would oppose god’s will. Any sort of opposition, from within or from without, to Mughal rule was perceived as an abnormality—an unacceptable failure to recognize the imminent course of history. 94 95 96

BG, JS61:165b–166a/1:325–6. BG, JS60:114a–114b/240–1. MA, 64–5.

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It was a potential threat to the Mughal world order and hence needed to be neutralized.97 Mughal chroniclers attributed such abnormality to several factors. It could be the result of the sheer misfortune of their opponents. Abul Fazl articulates this idea graphically in one passage: When fortune is darkened [chūn bakht tīragī pazīrad], the lamp of wisdom grows cold, and safety is sought in nothingness, and repose in loss. Obligations of old standing are placed in the privy chamber of oblivion. The weight of desires, and the levity of wrath, cast the man headlong into the dark ravine of failure.98

He explains that such misfortunes are, in fact, part of manifest destiny. ‘Sound reason is withdrawn’, he writes, ‘from those for whom the time of retribution has arrived, and their eyes of warning become dim’.99 In some cases, Mughal chroniclers argue that the fault did not lie with the ruler per se. He was, in fact, a victim of evil counsel. This logic has often been used to explain several incidents of insurgency and acts of defiance. The following passage, reflecting on the rebellion of one Muzaffar Husain Mirza of Gujarat is a case in point. It reads: [M]any who are sensible and far-sighted are changed from good to evil by the companionship of those disordered ones [ṣuḥbat-i īn sholīda rāyān], so that peace ends in discord.… Involuntarily he assumes the character of his companions, and approves in himself what has excited disgust when seen by him in his contemporaries. The case of Mozaffar Husain M. is a new instance of this as he, though of noble nature and clear soul, wrought his own downfall by association with the wicked [ham-zabānī-i ham-rāhān-i tabah].100

Here the primary adversary is said to have been swayed by the counsel of those around them and thereby made themselves victims 97

Harbans Mukhia mentions that the worldview of the Mughals was teleological, but does not go into much details about this aspect. (Mukhia, The Mughals.) 98 AN, 3:329–30/483. 99 AN, 3:329–30/483. 100 AN, 3:213–14/301.

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of the circumstances. The implication is that by allowing evil advice cloud their better sense of judgement, they demonstrated the lack of their moral fibre and personal resolve. They were, in fact, unfit to rule and needed to be punished by the righteous Mughal sovereign. A much more serious offense was when the opponent was considered to be negligent of his princely duties. The case of Baz Bahadur, which has been discussed earlier in detail, is an instance of this.101 The greatest offense lay with those adversaries who were perceived to be challenging Mughal authority intentionally. A few of the standard phrases used to describe them are ‘ignorant [bī-dānish]’,102 ‘audacious [tahauwur]’, ‘futile [bāt̤il]’, ‘one whose purpose is destruction [tabāhbasech]’,103 ‘makers of counterfeit [‘iyār-i qalb]’, users of ‘manipulated balances [nā-rāst mīzān]’,104 ‘ringleader of sedition [sar-i guroh-i shorish]’, and ‘root cause of the sickness of terror [māya-i dard-mān-i āshob]’,105 ‘mad [shorīda maghaz]’,106 or that they were working under ‘presumption and ignorance [khud-bīnī wa kār-na-shināsī]’107 or out of ‘shortsightedness [kotāh-bīnī]’.108 These various descriptions keep recurring in different combinations in contemporary narratives about this type of adversaries. Mughal writers argue that it was the audaciousness, foolishness, or ignorance of the rulers that prevented them from recognizing the natural order of things. At the same time, it was their ‘shortsightedness’ that prevented them from realizing that in the long run, Mughal armies were destined to prevail over them. That is why their resistance was ‘futile’ to begin with. The metaphors used to describe the acts of defiance, insurgency, or rebellion often graphically convey the sense of something abnormal happening and the natural order of things getting disturbed. This was a way for Mughal chroniclers to make the readers sympathetic to the imperial cause. Regions are repeatedly described as becoming polluted by the ‘dust of 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108

TA, 2:151/251–2. AN, 3:198/280. AN, 3:319/467. Translation mine. AN, 3:320/469. Translation mine. AN, 3:321/470. Translation mine. AN, 3:322/473. Translation mine. AN, 3:299/442. AN, 3:318/466.

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opposition [gard-i khilāf]’109 or ‘dust of strife [ghubār-shorish]’.110 It was the creation of this image of the abnormal that helped imperial writers portray Mughal armies as merely restoring normalcy by marching in and settling down the dust or arousing the adversary ‘from his infatuated slumbers and [guiding] him to the school of auspiciousness [az khẉāb bad-mastī bīdār sākhta rah-namāy dabistān-i sa‘ādat pazīrī gardad]’.111 In the conflicts that ensued, however, results did not always go in favour of the empire. The following section explores how Mughal chronicles narrate victory and defeat in war. We will see that while the narrativization of military victories as the unfolding of manifest destiny was rather smooth and convenient, explaining decisive defeats— such as those that befell imperial armies in Balkh, Qandahar, or Assam—could put imperial biographers in a rather tight spot.

NARRATING VICTORY AND DEFEAT

In the Mughal political paradigm, victory of the imperial armies was the natural order of things. It called for no surprise at all. In fact, the narrative of imperial expansion was imagined as a sequential unfolding of one victory after another. Voicing such a vision, Akbar indicated to Raja Ali Khan, the ruler of Khandesh, that ‘innumerable victories’ were inscribed on his ‘fortunate forehead and were written in his horoscope’.112 Hence, the victory of Mughal armies was certain and only a matter of time; one only needed to wait to witness the playing out of a script that had already been written. Victory was projected to be the conjunction of three factors—divine favour, the fortune of the Emperor, and the valour of the imperial armies. So convinced were the chroniclers by such a vision that they would often express surprise at the fact that their adversaries put up a resistance against them at all. The case of Mirza Jani Beg exemplifies this. When he continued to resist the Mughal invasion of Thatta 109

AN, 3:341/500. AN, 3:345/508. 111 Here, the reference is towards Rana Pratap Singh, the ruler of the Rajput state of Mewar. (AN, 3:173/244.) 112 MA, 56. 110

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even after suffering a defeat in a battle in 1592, Abul Fazl blamed the zamīndār’s ‘arrogance and self-complacency’, which, he argued, made the zamīndār consider his previous defeat at the hands of the imperial army ‘accidental [nā-gahānī]’.113 For the Mughal ideologue, this was a matter of ridicule, because as the Mughal court saw it, Jani Beg’s first defeat was not a matter of chance at all; it was merely a chapter in the saga that was destined to end in Mughal victory. It was the setbacks of imperial armies that were much more difficult to comprehend and explain for Mughal chroniclers. Written mostly years afterwards with the advantage of hindsight, their treatment varied between defeats of the two types—those that were eventually followed by victory and those which were not. In the case of the former, the narrator would have it relatively easy. He would mostly say that defeat befell the Mughal forces on one particular day since victory had been reserved by god or fate for another occasion. In a typical example, having failed to storm a rebel fort in Kamrup, Mirza Nathan justifies Mughal setbacks saying that ‘the conquest of the fort was not ordained to be made on that day’.114 The other sort was trickier to handle. One strategy was to gloss over it or refer to it extremely briefly. This is what several Mughal chroniclers did to suppress the embarrassing series of failures of Mughal armies to capture the fort of Qandahar between 1649 and 1653. Inayat Khan, for example, writes about the moment the Mughals finally admitted defeat in an extremely dry way. He simply states that the army under Prince Dara Shikoh had to withdraw due to the pressure of circumstances. The chronicler highlights that since the siege had lasted more than five months, the ammunition of the army had run out. Winter had set in, and there was no forage or provisions left to feed either the soldiers or the animals. On top of this, Rustam Khan had already lifted the siege of Bust, reached Qandahar with his army, and was ready to head back to North India. None of the other Mughal commanders were prepared to stay on any longer either. Under the pressure that resulted from these circumstances, Dara Shikoh was 113

AN, 3:613/938. BG, JS61:182a/1:374. The siege continued for several more days. In the end, the garrison deserted the fort and escaped, leaving it for the Mughals to occupy. (BG, JS61:184b/1:381.) 114

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forced to lift the siege.115 The disastrous military defeat of the prince is thus reduced merely to an unfortunate product of adverse conditions. Writing years after what actually was a massive case of losing face for the empire, Inayat Khan knew that this was the moment when the Mughals had decisively forfeited Qandahar to the Safavids. He dealt with this embarrassment of his patrons by pretending that the object of the embarrassment—which, in fact, was one of the coveted forts of Mughal imperialism—simply did not exist anymore. Qandahar is hardly mentioned ever again in the rest of the chronicle as something the empire strove to possess. In handling the other military disaster of the mid-seventeenth century—the debacle in Balkh and Badakhshan—Inayat Khan pretends that things never got out of hand for the Mughals. Even when they had to scamper back to North India with their lives, it was they who were in control. Describing the moment when Nazar Muhammad Khan forwarded a thinly disguised demand to take his dominions back from the Mughal army of occupation, Inayat Khan describes how Shah Jahan ‘looked with favour’ at the Uzbeg ruler’s proposal. He continues that from the very commencement of the invasion, Shah Jahan had actually intended to ‘rid [Balkh] of the thorns of turbulence and anarchy’ and give it back to Nazar Muhammad Khan.116 The chronicler then proceeds to admonish Nazar Muhammad Khan for not having taken his kingdom back earlier and for running away towards Khurasan. According to Inayat Khan, Shah Jahan issued an order after this. Here he directed Prince Aurangzeb to deliver Balkh and Badakhshan to Nazar Muhammad Khan, ‘provided the latter would come and have an interview with him’.117 The prince was expected to salvage some prestige for the empire by rebuking the Uzbeg ruler for his activities which the Mughals deemed highly improper. However, Nazar Muhammad Khan foiled even this plan and made a mockery of the political ritual by sending his grandson— who was a minor—in his own stead. Aurangzeb, who felt thoroughly insulted and angered by Nazar Muhammad’s move, wanted to prolong the negotiations until the Uzbeg ruler had been personally humiliated. 115 116 117

SN, 571/493. SN, 469/393. SN, 470/394.

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However, his commanders reminded him of the difficulties they would have to face if they were to delay their return march to North India any further. Under the pressure of adverse circumstances, the Mughals had to swallow their pride and head back.118 Inayat Khan’s narration is again extremely matter of fact here. In some cases, such as in the military disaster in Assam in 1615, chroniclers chose to play down the issue of the military defeat by highlighting the bravery and valour with which Mughal soldiers supposedly fought their way to martyrdom. In the previous instance, Nathan’s description of the moment of defeat is sprinkled with expressions such as the following: ‘[T]he imperialists also relying on the True Lord and the fortune of their master and Qibla, their temporal Lord [Emperor Jahangir], fell upon the enemy and made them fuel for the fire of hell.’119 Elsewhere he writes: ‘[T]he intoxicated heroes considered their loyalty to be only another name for martyrdom and again and again with great exertions they sallied forth, and thrice gave battle without caring for the stiffness of the struggle.’120 Once death at the hands of the opponent had been interpreted not as an ordinary demise but martyrdom, there was no shame is highlighting how Mughal soldiers were overpowered and killed during the engagement. In some cases, the victory of the opponent was delegitimized by alleging that the latter had actually deployed unfair tactics, or by blaming the difficult nature of the terrain or climate which impacted the performance of the Mughal army. For example, in order to justify the limited success of imperial troops in Assam and Kashmir, contemporary texts repeatedly highlight how both the Kashmiris and the Ahoms fought dishonourably and attacked under the cover of night. Chronicling Mir Jumla’s invasion of Assam in 1662–3, Shihabuddin Talish first narrates in detail how the valour of the Mughal troops forced the Ahoms to flee into the forests and hills of Assam. He then proceeds to contrast this with what happened as soon as the monsoon rains arrived. The Ahoms took undue advantage of the difficulties that the Mughal army started facing due to the heavy showers and the floods, came out of their refuge, and started attacking Mughal 118 119 120

SN, 475/399–400. BG, JS61:190a/1:397. BG, JS61:190a/1:397.

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outposts. The Ahom tactic of attacking Mughal outposts at night was undoubtedly clever and militarily sound; it caught the imperial troops off guard. Talish, however, depicts this as something heinous. To this end, he records in detail instances when his compatriots became victims of the repeated Ahom night-attacks that actually terrorized the imperial army of occupation stationed in Assam throughout the monsoon of 1662.121 The case of the Mughal retreat from Balkh is similar. I have mentioned in Chapter 2 that when Mughal troops headed towards Kabul in 1647, the Alman and Hazara cavalries attacked them repeatedly and decimated their ranks. In an effort to justify this discomfiture, Inayat Khan portrays the tactic of the adversary as unfair. He argues that they wrong-footed the Mughal troops while they were already struggling to cope with the heavy snowfall and bitter cold.122 The strength of the opponent’s army would regularly be magnified in order to make Mughal losses look unavoidable. Justifying the Mughal defeat by the Ahoms on one occasion, Nathan narrates how the Ahoms were equipped with firearms and poisoned arrows. He describes how each volley would rain ‘twenty to thirty thousand arrows and shots’ down on the Mughal army like ‘showers of rain and hailstones’.123 Next, we will explore how Mughal chroniclers discuss the issue of military ethics in the context of imperial military campaigns. In the following section, I will argue that the way Mughal armies are depicted to have initiated offensives, conducted military engagements, and treated their adversaries afterwards was once again substantially shaped by Nasirean ethics. ETHICS AND THE CONDUCT OF WAR

In Akhlāq-i Nāṣirī, Nasiruddin Tusi lays down very detailed guidelines about when and how the just prince should launch an offensive against another ruler. Tusi writes that the initial step for the prince should be to try and win over his enemies through persuasion, so that 121

See, for example, TT, 87, 94–5. SN, 478–80/402–3. 123 BG, JS61:190a/1:398. The mix of concrete numbers and vague rhetoric to drive the point home is notable here. 122

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the need for war does not arise (‘ba-muqātalat wa muhārabat muḥtāj na-gardad’).124 War might be started only when such peaceful methods had failed. The prince was to make sure that he had ‘only Pure Good and the quest of the Faith’ in his heart and did not want ‘superiority or domination’ for himself.125 Tusi continues to argue that a state could wage war on its enemies under six conditions. [F]irst, that the enemy be evil in his essence and that there is no feasible way of reforming him; secondly, that one sees no escape for oneself from his attack in any way save by suppression; thirdly, that one recognizes that if the enemy gain victory he will do more than one will oneself commit; fourthly, that one shall have witnessed and open intention and effort on his part to make away with one’s goods; fifthly, that in suppressing him, one shall not be characterized by any vice like treachery and perfidy; and finally, that no reprehensible consequence be expected for such action, either in this world or the next.126

By laying down these detailed recommendations, Tusi projected war as the last resort. It was to be initiated only when all other methods had failed and the adversary had not shown any sign of ‘reform’. It is interesting how these recommendations perfectly match military economics. War is expensive business where a state’s longterm investments in personnel, animals, and technology run the risk of annihilation in a very short span of time. Hence, all states have usually tried to avoid war and settle disputes through peaceful negotiations. However, given the extreme frequency of warfare throughout human history, what becomes so striking is how frequently such negotiations must have failed. Hence, waging war as a last resort was not entirely a novel idea that Tusi forwarded. What is worth noting is the language he used and the moral-economy within which he located such decisions. Contemporary texts unanimously argue that Mughal rulers and commanders sincerely adhered to this Nasirean principle of war as a last resort. They never forget to mention that before attacking any neighbouring ruler or chieftain, Mughal troops always sought to 124 125 126

NT, 311/235. NT, 311/235. NT, 338/255–6.

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persuade him to submit through peaceful negotiations. The following passage, written by Abul Fazl, narrating the dispatch of a Mughal army against the Baluchis in late sixteenth century is a typical example. He writes: As the leaders of that tribe [of Baluchis], owing to their innate savagery and ill-fatedness, had turned away their heads from obedience and had not paid proper respect … [an army was] sent off to that country. They were first to guide them by wisdom-conferring counsels, and if these were not effectual they were to enlighten their darkness by the flashes of the sword.127

This tradition continued well into the seventeenth century. Mirza Nathan goes to great lengths to narrate how this line was toed in the Mughal military operations in eastern and northern Bengal in early seventeenth century. In one example, Nathan writes that on the eve of sending an expedition against Khwaja Usman of Bokainagar, Islam Khan Chishti and his commanders agreed to first write to Usman, admonishing him. If Usman was to submit to Mughal authority, he would be forgiven; if not, the imperial army would invade his land.128 Nathan tells us that as per this decision, a letter was drafted addressing Usman, ‘every word of which was a closet of peace’.129 It reasoned that the ‘well-being of both the worlds’ and the ‘main spring of better days’ for both him and his people would ensue immediately if he were to get over his ‘self-conceit and arrogance’ and bow down to the authority of ‘the protector of the world’.130 In the face of such diplomatic pressure that combined the hope of getting a share of the empire’s increasing resources and a threat of entering into serious armed conflict with a powerful state, many zamīndārs and rulers felt it wise to submit and accept Mughal suzerainty. This is what the Baluchis, for instance, did when Akbar sent an army against them in the previous instance. Abul Fazl notes happily that violent means did not need to be adopted in teaching them a lesson about loyalty to the empire. He observes that the 127 128 129 130

AN, 3:235–6/335. BG, JS60:62b–63a/1:159. BG, JS60:62b/1:159. BG, JS60:62b/1:159.

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‘sound of the approach of the world-conquering troops aroused the slumberers [ghunūd-gān-i pindār] and guided them to good service’.131 If such diplomatic posturing would be rejected, war would follow sooner or later. The chronicles give the impression that imperial armies always preferred to engage their enemies out in the open in frontal combat. For the Mughal court, this was the honourable thing to do. This is something that Shah Jahan’s biographer Abdul Hamid Lahori calls jang-i ṣaff.132 Apart from the akhlāqī recommendations about honourable war, Mughals also knew that it was in such forms of engagement that their main strength lay. Whenever the enemy would refuse to do this and resort to night-attacks, surprise attacks, hit-andrun tactics, use the cover of jungles and rains, and so on, Mughal texts would brand them as deceitful, treacherous, duplicitous, and cowardly. Nasirean ethics recommended that if the enemy would surrender and seek pardon in the course of a war, the righteous soldiers were to treat him with generosity—the noble quality that ranked next only to justice.133 Imperial chronicles usually discuss in details how this was precisely the way Mughal armies behaved. Well into the second half of the seventeenth century, when—under Aurangzeb—Mughal imperial ideology adopted a Sunni Islamic garb, these Nasirean recommendations were still upheld by the chronicles. Harbans Mukhia also points out that the image of the Mughal emperor as the justice-dispensing and caring paterfamilias endured through the greater part of Mughal rule.134 At times, precedence would be drawn from Islamic religious texts to justify the same action. For example, describing the treatment of defeated Ahom soldiers by Mughal troops, Shihabuddin Talish invokes Quranic verses not to contradict what Nasirean ethics recommended, but to bolster it.135 131

AN, 3:239–40/342. The phrase stands for a military encounter where both the parties involved first draw up their forces in proper battle array and then engage in frontal combat. 133 NT, 338/255. 134 Mukhia, The Mughals, 52–4. 135 TT, 31. 132

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Contemporary Mughal texts were always enthusiastic in stressing that in the course of military campaigns, imperial armies would go to great lengths to ensure that the life and property of the common people was not harmed. Commanders are said to have frequently issued categorical orders to this effect. The Assam campaign of 1662–3 is a case in point. Shihabuddin Talish writes that Mir Jumla, the commander, had an imperial decree issued at the very outset, instructing his soldiers ‘not to plunder the property and not to be cruel to the women and children of the local inhabitants’.136 Talish claims that Mir Jumla enforced this rule with such severity that during the entire period of the invasion, ‘none of the officers or soldiers had the courage to cast covetous eyes on the property and women of the people of Aasham’.137 The chronicles narrate several instances where Mughal soldiers—found guilty of violating such decrees—were expressly brought to justice and punished publicly. One such incident is described by Talish from the time of the Mughal occupation of Kuch Bihar in 1661. Some soldiers of the imperial army had defied a similar farmān forbidding the infliction of any harm to the life and property of the people of the city. They were immediately arrested and presented before Mir Jumla. Talish writes that as a punishment, ‘an arrow was passed through their respective nostril. The stolen goods were hung round their neck and they were paraded through the entire town’.138 It was obviously in the interest of the empire and its chroniclers to exaggerate the role of such decrees in shaping the behaviour of imperial soldiers and keeping them on the righteous route prescribed by Tusi. How much were these ethical norms actually observed in the heat of campaigns and away from the watchful eyes of imperial supervisors is debatable. It is likely that vernacular sources would tell a different story about the conduct of Mughal soldiers in the countryside in the course of prolonged military campaigns. For our purpose, however, it is important to note that Mughal chroniclers would like us to believe that imperial commanders regularly resorted to such methods to protect the interest of the common people and that they were 136 137 138

TT, 31–2. TT, 31–2. TT, 13.

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generally successful at it. After narrating the incident cited earlier, for example, Talish goes on to boast about how Mir Jumla’s prompt, strict, and public dispensation of justice restored the faith of the Kuch people in the Mughal army and encouraged the ones who had run away from their homes to return.139 However, notwithstanding such claims of the fairness of Mughal armies in dealing with defeated adversaries and general populations, references to the perpetration of atrocities are not entirely uncommon, even in Mughal texts. In fact, imperial chroniclers write about several occasions when invading armies burnt down entire villages, terrorized peasants, enslaved common people, and killed enemy soldiers even after they had surrendered. One suspects that there must have been a much larger number of cases of such violence which went unrecorded or purged out of the narratives whose main aim was to glorify Mughal military operations. Against the backdrop of the present section on how Nasirean ethical recommendations shaped the representation of the conduct of the Mughals in times of war, it then becomes interesting to ask how the empire justified such acts of violence and how they reconciled them with the agenda of projecting imperial armies as the embodiment of justice and benevolence. In probing these questions, the following section argues that once again, it was their brand of universalist imperial ideology—filtered as it was through the lens of Nasirean ethics—that helped Mughal chroniclers justify such acts.

ETHICS AND ACTS OF VIOLENCE

Mughal armies usually welcomed into their ranks anybody who surrendered and was willing to serve the emperor. Imperial chronicles justified this action by comparing this kind of adversary with someone who had been woken up from the slumber of ignorance or somebody who had strayed from the righteous path and had been guided back. However, in the cases where clashes were violent and prolonged, and the adversary persistently refused to bow down to Mughal authority, imperial armies could seek to destroy him. In such cases, the chronicles

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TT, 13–14.

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usually portray him as someone who was innately evil and had little prospects of becoming a loyal subject or ally. While various factors determined the final course of action, chroniclers always had the advantage of hindsight to provide post facto justification of whatever action was taken. They could always fall back upon Tusi and cite the first out of his six reasons for severely punishing an adversary which was ‘that the enemy be evil in his essence and that there is no feasible way of reforming him’.140 The case of Chitor is a good instance of this. This Rajput fort fell to a protracted Mughal siege in 1568. Akbar—who was leading the campaign himself—not only decided to finish off the defending garrison, but also ordered a mass slaughter (qat̤l-i ‘āmm) of the population.141 Abul Fazl justifies this by saying that the garrison—and the common people who allegedly had lent them support—had been adamant in their rejection of the friendly overtures and stern threats of the Mughals. They were, therefore, innately evil and could not be cured or taught to be loyal. As such, justice demanded that these people be massacred. Abul Fazl observes that when Alauddin Khalji had conquered the fort in the thirteenth century, such an act of violence had not been necessary, since the Rajput resistance had not been so broad-based and persistent.142 Campaigning armies would often take to plundering villages and terrorizing people. This was especially done in cases where they feared that their adversaries enjoyed wide support of the local population or the local zamīndārs. Apart from lending military support, the latter could also often be responsible for supplying the local ruler—who the Mughals had attacked—with food and other essential resources. In these cases, alongside pursuing the principal adversary, imperial

140

NT, 338–9/255–6. AN, 2:313–24/464–77; MT, 2:105–8; TA, 2:223–5/352–5; TF, 2:229–32; TQ, 109–15/148–53. 142 The decision of the massacre in 1568 must also have been fuelled by the young emperor’s desire to make a political statement through such a mass slaughter. He probably also wanted to send a strong message to the defiant and fugitive Rana Uday Singh of Mewar, who had earlier turned down friendly Mughal overtures, garrisoned Chitor, and fled away. However, this is not something that Mughal texts mention. (AN, 2:323/475.) 141

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armies would also direct their violence against these people to dissuade them from supporting the local ruler and thereby resisting Mughal expansion. Mirza Nathan’s memoirs provide us with a particularly large number of such examples from the Mughal campaigns in Kuch Bihar and Assam. The reason behind this large number of such incidents in the text is probably twofold. First, the fact that Nathan was involved in several of these raids himself in some capacity or the other meant that he saw the unfolding of the campaigns from a proximity unmatched by imperial chroniclers. The latter would often be located far away from the site of the action. As opposed to the overviews they offer, Nathan’s version provides us with a far more detailed account and a ground-level view of the day-to-day events. Second, writing out of his own volition, Mirza Nathan’s account was relatively more honest in its narration of events than those of the biographers writing in an emperor’s employment. Compared to Nathan, the latter’s compulsion of masking atrocities committed by Mughal armies and presenting their activities in good light must have been much more compelling. Consequently, Nathan’s text seems to offer one of the closest available approximations of the actual realities of Mughal campaigns. To take an instance, Nathan narrates that on their way to Dhubri in Assam in 1612–13, he was sent at the head of a detachment to raid the areas of Bhitarband and Bahirband. He writes that he was instructed ‘to bring the ryots under control; failing that he was to bring them as captives and drive them away from their lands’.143 Nathan records that he carried out these orders to the last word. He notes that his soldiers ‘did not allow the natives any respite even to drink water, for a period of four days and nights’.144 Many were imprisoned, their property looted, and animals seized. This severe action forced the local zamīndārs to submit to the imperial army. They were allowed to remain in their territories only upon promising that they would not oppose the Mughal advance.145 After consolidating their base in 143 144 145

BG, JS60:110a/1:230–1. BG, JS60:110a/1:230–1. BG, JS60:110a/1:230–1.

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Hajo and Pandu in Kuch Bihar, Mughal armies tried to subjugate the ‘Eighteen Rajas’ of the Himalayan foothills. After conquering Rani, there was serious raiding and plundering according to Nathan’s narrative. All the forts of the raja were destroyed. Nathan records that Mughal troops executed all those who resisted them. The rest were imprisoned. The soldiers and crew of the imperial fleet, who had had to suffer during the campaign due to shortage of food supplies, compensated for their hardship by looting and plundering the local villages.146 Such widespread violence was seen as a part of the Mughal mission of establishment of justice and social order in the world. Normative texts produced during the first half of the seventeenth century support such a view. Baqir Najm-i Sani, for example, writes: If punishment and chastisement are nonexistent, [state] affairs will be in ruin … If the sword of retribution [tegh-i siyāsat] is not drawn from the scabbard of vengeance [niyām-i intiqām], the roots of rebellion [bunyād-i fitna] are not eradicated and the basis of oppression [asās-i sitam] is not undermined. If the debris of tyranny [khas wa khāshāk-i bī-dād] is not burnt in the fire of [imperial] wrath [ātish-i qahr], the seedling of repose will not flourish in the garden of hope.… Therefore, rulers should display mercy of God toward the virtuous and the reformers, and the wrath of God toward the evildoers and the seditious.147

It was convenient for the empire that there was no telling where the ‘roots of rebellion’ or the ‘basis of oppression’ should be located. There was a great deal of merit in using such vague categories. Any measure of raiding, plundering, enslavement, or massacre that strategic concerns could deem necessary could also dovetail into this provision created by the akhlāqī tradition. In the Mughal courtly universe, these two logics—the logic of realpolitik and the logic of the akhlāq—were inseparable. There was no disagreement between them. The flexibility of the Nasirean akhlāqī tradition meant that the norms could be variously interpreted by the chroniclers

146 147

BG, JS61:197a/1:419. MJ, 46–7, 148–9.

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to mean different things at different points of time to suit the imperial agenda. *** Azfar Moin has recently pointed out with reference to the reign of Humayun that in early modern South Asia, astrology was an ‘important intellectual tradition’ that majorly shaped the way the world was perceived and people went about their business.148 Mughal chronicles are filled with references of emperors and commanders taking the advice of astrologers at every step, before setting off on expeditions, on the eve of launching an invasion, and so on. Equally important for us is what Moin observes about the importance of dreams in early modern societies. He argues that the importance of dreams as ‘emotive metaphors’ and ‘powerful propaganda tools’ lay in their being a ‘social fact’. Both astrology and dreams were, in fact, important cultural resources that helped the Mughals specifically, and premodern societies in general make sense of the world around them.149 Echoing a similar argument, Ali Anooshahr writes that the narratives one internalizes since childhood also profoundly shapes the way an individual experiences reality later on in one’s life. Reality itself is created through one’s interpretations and actions. As such, both the ways in which Babur led his life in the real world and represented it in his autobiography were shaped by the narratives that he had read and internalized religiously since his childhood.150 Anooshahr argues that having consumed a huge corpus of heroic and kingly lore about ghazā’ (religious war), Babur began to write about his life as the classic unfolding of the life of a ghāzī (religious warrior). At the same time, he began to model his behaviour in actual life on what he perceived should be that of a ghāzī. Anooshahr writes that Babur’s ‘experience of the place was conditioned by these accounts, his actions were informed by them, and his language of description bore their mark’.151 148

Moin, The Millennial Sovereign, 29. Moin, The Millennial Sovereign, 73. 150 Ali Anooshahr, The Ghazi Sultans and the Frontiers of Islam: A Comparative Study of the Late Medieval and Early Modern Periods (London and New York: Routledge, 2009), 16–17. 151 Anooshahr, The Ghazi Sultans, 36–7. 149

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This resonates with my previous argument about the relation between Mughal imperial ideology and the impulse for war-making. Rather than taking an instrumentalist view and looking at ideology simply as an excuse for justifying military expeditions, I have reasoned in this chapter that it is more useful to look at this relationship along the lines suggested by Terry Eagleton.152 The ideological climate of war and conquest at the Mughal court was profoundly shaped by the Nasirean akhlāqī tradition. Mughal political society was one that voraciously fed on Nasirean ethics. The original text Akhlāq-i Nāṣirī was supplemented by other later works such as Akhlāq-i Humāyūnī and Akhlāq-i Jalālī that elaborated on and expanded Tusi’s ideas. Collectively, this body of scholarship equipped the Mughal state with the ideological wherewithal for conceptualizing as well as articulating issues of power, kingship, war, and conquest.153 It helped sovereigns and chroniclers come up with a version of social reality that the Mughal court assiduously propagated through various means. Brought up on the reading and re-reading of the Nasirean texts, emperors and their chroniclers conceptualized and portrayed the Mughal sovereign as the embodiment of the Nasirean ideal king. One recalls, in this respect, a few lines written by Jahangir in his autobiography: For the care of the people of God At night I make not mine eyes acquainted with sleep; For the ease of the bodies of all I approve of pain for my own body. [ba-har nigāh-bānī-i khalq-i khudā shab na-kunam dīda ba-khẉāb āshnā az bī āsūdagī-i jumla tan ranj pasandam ba-tan-i khẉeshtan]154 152

Eagleton, Ideology. There were admittedly other parallel ideological paradigms and cultural resources that the imperial court drew upon. These included Indic ideas of digvijaya, Sufistic notions such as that of insān-i kāmil, and Sunni Islamic worldviews. After all, Mughal imperial ideology was never static; it was, in fact, immensely complex, eclectic, and dynamic. However, in view of the preceding discussion, it is difficult to deny that the Nasirean akhlāqī tradition exerted a very strong and enduring influence on it. 154 TJ, 2:232/14. 153

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These lines—themselves a vigorous proclamation of Mughal imperial paternalism and ideas of universal sovereignty—suggest that Jahangir was fashioning himself along the lines of the ideal ruler depicted by Tusi, much like the way Anooshahr argues Babur fashioned himself in conformity with the heroic lore he grew up reading. This is not to say that myriad other factors such as strategic considerations and economic calculations did not motivate the state to undertake military expansion; rather, it means that these considerations and calculations themselves were understood through the categories laid down by imperial ideology. One of the biggest advantages that this ideology bestowed on the Mughal state was its flexibility. On the one hand, the linking of military violence with the category of justice meant that the Mughal state could legitimize making war against anybody and everybody in the name of this abstract concept. Any act of perpetration of military violence—or the restraint of it—could be justified as something that justice demanded. On the other hand, the projection of the Mughal emperor as the benevolent and paternalist universal sovereign committed to the cause of ṣulḥ-i kul155 meant that he was open to forging alliances with almost anybody, irrespective of their race, religion, and other denominations. This strong accommodative and inclusive orientation of Mughal statecraft has also been brought out by the works of Farhat Hasan and Munis Faruqui.156 Jos Gommans, however, has stretched this argument to the opposite extreme. Here, he draws upon Andre Wink’s ideas about fitna, or the dynamics of building, switching, and breaking political alliances.157 Gommans contends that big military triumphs only had

155

Defined as ‘universal peace’, this is a doctrine developed at Akbar’s court. For details, see Ali, ‘Sulh-i Kul and the Religious Ideas of Akbar’. 156 Faruqui, Princes of the Mughal Empire; Hasan, State and Locality in Mughal India. 157 The concept of fitna was introduced in South Asian historiography by Andre Wink in the 1980s, mainly to explain Maratha state-formation. (Andre Wink, ‘Sovereignty and Universal Dominion in South Asia,’ Indian Economic and Social History Review 21, no. 3 [1984], 265–92; Andre Wink, Land and Sovereignty in India: Agrarian Society and Politics under the Eighteenth Century Maratha Svarajya [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986].)

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a symbolic value for Mughal empire-building. Spectacular victories such as those in the battles of Panipat (1526, 1556) and Khanua (1527) merely served as trump cards in a political game largely dominated by forging and switching alliances.158 To say that wars and military violence played only a marginal or symbolic role in Mughal empire-formation is problematic. The instances of long-drawn violent conflicts involving very large number of combatants and casualties are simply too many to ignore. However, what is indeed borne out by contemporary texts is that the Mughals fought more to force their adversaries into submission and co-option, than their outright destruction. Building their empire in a multiethnic and multi-religious land such as South Asia, this inclusivity ushered in the forging of a highly diverse and cosmopolitan polity. At the same time, the empire must have benefitted from the projection of the sovereign as the defender of justice and that of military violence as a means of his establishing it. Linking war to the interest of a specific community might have created fissures in their cosmopolitan empire. However, the conceptualization of military violence as a means of defending the abstract idea of justice helped motivate the extremely heterogeneous armies of the empire throughout the period under focus.

158

Jos Gommans, ‘Warhorse and Gunpowder’ in India, c. 1000–1850,’ in War in the Early Modern World, 1450–1815, ed. Jeremy Black (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), 105–27.

CONCLUSION

This book has offered a fresh interpretation of the history of Mughal empire-building in early modern North India. It has done so using war as the primary vantage point. In the first part of the book, we have seen that constant negotiations with diverse environmental conditions of different parts of North India made Mughal warfare and territorial expansion an extremely heterogeneous and dynamic process. In the second part, I have made three main arguments. First, I have pointed out that war-making was a massive enterprise that entailed as much of combat as of complex logistical operations. These involved various organizational and managerial activities that kept the state occupied throughout the year. The execution of these activities squarely relied on very large numbers of non-elite and non-combatant populations. They served as the logistical workforce that produced the infrastructure necessary for combat to happen. Second, we have seen that imperial military frontiers emerged out of the combined failure of Mughal armies to control routes of communication, negotiate environmental conditions, tackle the diverse military techniques of their different adversaries, and find enough allies at the local level. We have also noted that these frontiers did not resemble the closed bounding lines of modern times, ones that envelope the territory of a political entity. Rather, these limits of the empire were signified by forts that stood on open routes of communication that radiated outward beyond Climate of Conquest: War, Environment, and Empire in Mughal North India. Pratyay Nath, Oxford University Press (2019). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199495559.001.0001

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the imperial domains. Finally, I have highlighted that Mughal political ideology looked upon war-making as an unavoidable means for making their ideal of universal sovereignty a reality. To this end, the state utilized the philosophical resources of Nasirean akhlāq to create a sophisticated political discourse. This revolved around the figure of the Mughal emperor as the divinely ordained monarch destined to conquer the world and enlighten all of mankind with his benevolence, justice, and knowledge. These points have several implications for our understanding of the nature of Mughal imperialism in early modern North India. The following two sections highlight them.

WAR AS PROCESS

The present book forwards a new explanation for the rise of Mughal military power in North India. Contrary to the existing historiography, I have argued that neither firearms nor the warhorse won the Mughals their wars single-handedly. The coordinated deployment of mounted archers, heavy cavalry, field artillery, and handguns did give their armies a decisive advantage on the field. However, since they fought only a few big battles, the benefit they could reap out of this was rather limited. Similarly, their ability to capture big stoneforts through arduous sieges undoubtedly helped them conquer central and western India, but was not sufficient in other theatres of conflict.1 Rather than any single factor, I have argued that Mughal military success derived from the interplay of a host of factors. Imperial armies showed remarkable flexibility and adaptability in negotiating the diverse environmental and military conditions across the different theatres of war. Their military achievements also owed enormously to their success in mobilizing thousands of quasi-military labourers as well as in channelizing their labour to produce military infrastructure for the empire. During the period under study, the state was also 1

As discussed earlier, it is Streusand who forwards the more sophisticated explanations of Mughal conquest in terms of the coordinated deployment of multiple wings in the field and their ability to take forts through long sieges. (Streusand, The Formation of the Mughal Empire.)

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able to generate enough monetary resources to ensure this. They managed to co-opt a huge part of the local chieftains of North India into their imperial project. This enabled them to harness the material and cultural resources of these chieftains to feed the territorial ambitions of the empire. On the logistical front, they gained from the fact that the Banjaras largely took care of feeding imperial armies on the march in much of North India. This relieved the Mughal state of a major concern. Also, the fact that imperial armies succeeded in controlling important networks of communication meant that they could move their armies around effectively over a large region. Their control over some of the best equestrian resources of the world also helped them in this respect. Finally, they succeeded in devising a very sophisticated, flexible, and accommodative ideology of conquest and governance. This allowed them to legitimize violence not in terms of the interest of any particular community, but the universalist and abstract notion of justice, which could be interpreted differently in different circumstances. Collectively, all these factors contributed to a remarkable degree of military adaptability. It was this military adaptability that empowered the Mughals to successfully negotiate the widely divergent environmental and military conditions of the huge landmass of South Asia. In the early sixteenth century, their main strength was executing masterful cavalry maneuvers and deploying the new state-of-the-art wagon laager tactics in the wide open plains of the Indo-Gangetic Basin. However, as they advanced further, they were greeted by changing environmental conditions and military techniques. In response, they learnt to fight amphibious campaigns with large war-fleets in Bengal and Assam, move troops and artillery across the difficult mountains and passes of Kashmir and the Himalayas, and successfully capture formidable stone fortresses through longdrawn arduous sieges in central and western India. Rather than thinking of the rise of Mughal military power in terms of any one single technology, it is far more historically accurate to understand this process through the dynamics of this military adaptability.2 2

Kaushik Roy has made a somewhat similar argument in explaining the rise of British colonial power in South Asia. He uses the term ‘military synthesis’. Countering Geoffrey Parker’s suggestion that the Military Revolution

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In this book, I have also sought to respond to Jeremy Black’s proposal of writing the history of early modern warfare while going beyond the Military Revolution debate.3 In this vein, I have analysed Mughal war-making on its own terms. I have also found his suggestion about investigating the nature, causes, and implications of heterogeneity in warfare useful.4 In the first two chapters of this book in particular, we have noted that heterogeneity appeared in Mughal warfare because of the diverse circumstances within which campaigns unfolded. These included environment, military techniques of the adversary, and distance from the political heartland of the empire. As a result, tactics, strategy, deployment of technology, logistical concerns, urgency of striking alliances with the local chieftains—everything varied very widely across the different theatres of war. Because of this, it was never possible for the Mughal state to develop a standard set of military and logistical practices once and for all, which could then be deployed as a finished product everywhere. Instead, the state had to be constantly on its feet. It had to respond to the changing needs of various military operations. All this makes it quite impossible to find a single Mughal ‘way of war’, simply because such a thing never existed in reality. Instead, Mughal warfare should be seen as an uneven collection of multiple military practices, each adaptive and evolving depending on specific historical contingencies. It is also important to ask how the case of the Mughals compares with the military history of other early modern empires. The general consensus is that Mughal South Asia was at par with other parts of the world, especially Europe, in terms of technology in the sixteenth

empowered western Europe to conquer vast parts of the rest of the world, Roy argues that much more important in this respect was how British armies constantly negotiated with local conditions wherever they went and modified their military techniques accordingly. (Kaushik Roy, ‘Military Synthesis in South Asia: Armies, Warfare and Indian Society, c. 1740–1849,’ The Journal of Military History 69, no. 3 [2005], 651–90.) Also see, Kaushik Roy, War, Culture and Society in Early Modern South Asia, 1740–1849 (London and New York: Routledge, 2011). 3 Black, Beyond the Military Revolution. 4 Black, War and the Cultural Turn.

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century. However, it lagged behind in the seventeenth.5 In response, I would like to point out that too often historians take the state of the development of military technology as a marker of the progress of a polity. This is one of the reasons why the question of whether or not different non-European powers were at par with Europe in terms of military technology during the early modern period is so fervently debated. Lack of technological innovation or adaptation is interpreted as a sign of stagnation for a culture. Under such circumstances, questions such as why Mughal armies did not shift from matchlocks to flintlocks in the seventeenth century or why Indian gunners could not transition from making heavy bronze cannons to lighter cast iron cannons get connected to larger arguments about civilizational progress and decline. In turn, they are used to explain why it was the West that conquered the Rest, and not the other way round. However, in this book we have noted that even when the Mughals did have the latest military technologies in the sixteenth century, there were various other factors such as logistics, finance, and terrain that often restricted their deployment. At the same time, even when Mughal artillery technology had become backward in the seventeenth century in comparison with its European counterpart, the Mughal Empire did continue to grow in size and wealth.6 These findings support Jeremy Black’s argument that questions about the evolution of technology cannot be addressed without taking into account the myriad factors that perpetually shape its production, dissemination, and use. On the basis of the arguments made in this book, it needs to be emphasized that military technology needs to be studied not in isolation, but within the immediate context of military campaigns and their various contingencies. In turn, such an approach can help us problematize the tendency of drawing a direct correlation between the state of military technology and the level of progress of a society. Let us return to the military comparison between the Mughals and other contemporary empires. One needs to note that unlike the Russian and the Chinese empires, the Mughals never had to tackle 5 Khan, Gunpowder and Firearms; M Athar Ali, ‘Political Structures of the Islamic Orient in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,’ in Medieval India, ed. Irfan Habib (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992), 129–40. 6 This is something that de la Garza also points out. (De la Garza, The Mughal Empire at War, 192.)

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predatory nomadic adversaries of Central Eurasia in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Consequently, they never felt the need to invade Central Eurasia in order to neutralize such threats, something that both the Muscovites and the Qing did.7 In fact, as Andrew de la Garza points out, unlike almost all the other early modern empires, the Mughals never faced any serious threat of invasion in the period under study.8 The Ottomans locked horns with the Hapsburgs in Central and Eastern Europe. The Safavids vied with the Ottomans in West Asia and the Uzbegs in Central Asia. The Manchu invasion swept away the Ming state in front of it. However, the Mughals did not have to engage with any of these major Eurasian empires. The only big war with the Safavids lasted for six years (1648–53) and the Mughals lost. Between Sher Shah dispossessing Humayun of his empire around 1540 and the rise of the revamped Maratha state in early eighteenth century, there was no power in South Asia that managed to create a trans-regional threat for Mughal territorial control. This was an important factor that shaped the Mughal military experience. The nature of interaction of Mughal armies with European adversaries was also variegated. On the one hand, the former prevailed over Portuguese troops in Gujarat in the second half of the sixteenth century and destroyed their settlement in Hugli in 1632. On the other, they failed to negotiate the Portuguese naval slave-raids in south-eastern Bengal for the better part of the seventeenth century. As such, a clear picture of superiority of one against the other does not emerge during the period under focus. What does go to the credit of the Mughals is that they were one of the first early modern empires to operate in and achieve considerable success across several different environmental zones.9 Thanks to their remarkable military adaptability, 7 For details, see Michael Khodarkovsky, Russia’s Steppe Frontier: The Making of a Colonial Empire, 1500–1800, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002; Peter C Perdue, China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia, Harvard: Harvard University Press, 2009. 8 De la Garza, The Mughals at War, 184. 9 The Ottomans were another power that managed this alongside the Mughals in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, although arguably the Mughals covered more diverse ground. The Muscovites and the Manchu encountered similar hurdles while conquering Central Eurasia in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

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their armies fought with varying degrees of success from the rainforests of Assam to the arid zone of Qandahar and Balkh, from the foothills of the Himalayan Mountains to the rivers and marshes of the Bengal Delta. This was no small feat in the early modern world. STATE AS PROCESS

The various discussions of this book suggest that rather than thinking of the Mughal state in terms of rigid structures, it is more fruitful to conceptualize it as a collection of dynamic processes. We have seen that imperial expansion did not comprise a unilateral victorious march of the Mughal war-machine. Rather, it unfolded through the complex interplay of a variety of factors. Making war in different theatres brought its own set of challenges. In addition to mobilizing troops and arming them, there were a range of other tasks that had to be fulfilled. For instance, fighting in Bengal and Assam meant that the state had to devote itself to activities such as getting war-boats built, arranging for the amphibious transportation of supplies, mobilizing thousands of boatmen to crew the war-boats, planning in advance for withdrawing before the monsoon floods, and gathering war-elephants for both transport and combat. Sending an expedition to Qandahar implied that the state had to first mobilize and send out workmen to remove snow and level the roads, dispatch foraging parties to gather food for the soldiers and animals, find ways to transport the artillery over very long routes, race against time to finish military operations before the onset of winter, and so on. The fact that the Mughal state usually managed to fulfill all these tasks and make war with reasonable success in the various theatres across South Asia is itself indicative of its adaptability. At the ideological level, the biggest element of flexibility of the state was the ease with which it legitimized military violence. Its emphasis on the abstract idea of justice as the cornerstone of kingship and empire allowed it to constantly seek and forge alliances with a wide range of chieftains irrespective of their race, religion, and social status. It also allowed both the perpetration and restraint of large-scale violence, especially against civilians, according to the demands of the situation. Similarly, the findings of this book also strongly suggest that we can benefit much from using the category of post-nomadism to unravel

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the Mughal imperial experience, but only when we see it as a dynamic and evolving state of being. Mughal post-nomadism responded constantly to the different conditions within which it operated. Over time, it gradually shed several nomadic traits one by one.10 Aside from the various other fields of Mughal life, elements of this process of sedentarization are also noticeable in the domain of warfare. In terms of tactical importance on the Mughal battlefield, the nomadic military legacy of the mounted archer and his evasive tactics slowly yielded space to the close combat tactics of heavy cavalry and war-elephants in the course of Akbar’s reign. Later, when the Uzbeg and Alman light cavalry used mounted archery and evasive tactics against Mughal armies in Balkh in 1646–7, the latter did not have mounted archers of their own who could repel these attacks. Instead, the imperial forces responded mainly with shock charges from their heavy cavalry and war-elephants as well as with their matchlock fire. Over the period under study, Mughal armies also recruited increasing numbers of infantry, mainly in the form of archers and matchlock-men. This had the double advantage of neutralizing a part of the armed peasantry of North India and diverting that military resource towards furthering the imperial cause. In the process, Mughal armies transitioned from being the swift, cavalry-centric, small war-band of Babur to the sluggish, big, infantry-heavy armies of the seventeenth century. All this helps us look at Mughal post-nomadism as a constantly evolving condition. I have also sought to rethink the location of military violence within the broader process of Mughal empire-building. The findings presented in this book supports the work of Farhat Hasan in that imperial expansion happened much more by way of absorption and accommodation of the local and regional elite than their outright destruction.11 As I argued in Chapter 5, the imperial court conceptualized war not as a way of destroying its adversaries, but rather as an unavoidable means of subjugating and co-opting them. The imperial court understood that it could gain more out of this because this approach gave them the chance of using the co-opted adversary’s

10 11

I have discussed the details of this in the introduction. Hasan, State and Locality in Mughal India.

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resources to feed its own imperial project. However, this does not imply that war was not as important to empire-formation as the politics of alliance-building. Contemporary texts clearly suggest that frequent and violent wars still comprised an integral part of territorial expansion. This was primarily because a lot of the zamīndārs put up very stiff resistance against Mughal expansion even if many of them ultimately surrendered. In other words, the Mughals fought violent wars very frequently, but not as much to exterminate the adversary as to make him join the imperial project. At the end of the day, war and diplomacy went hand in hand for the empire. Without the real threat of military violence, negotiations would have failed to win over allies. Without the forging of alliances—which injected new cultural, material, and diplomatic resources into the empire—perpetrating military violence successfully in different corners of the subcontinent would have been much more difficult for the imperial armies. In hindsight, it seems clear that this strategy worked quite well in vast parts of North India. The role of the zamīndārs in the process of Mughal territorial expansion and control remained vital. We know that the Mughal state always tried to move around its commanders and armies across the empire every few years to prevent them from growing local roots and harbouring rebellious ambitions. However, this also meant that Mughal armies often did not get the time to develop and nourish specialized military skills required for operating in particular regions. Upon its transfer to a new region, an imperial army had no option but to depend on co-opted local zamīndārs for helping it negotiate the specific environmental, military, logistical, and political conditions of their immediate surroundings. The rate of success of Mughal armies across South Asia indicates that these zamīndārs fulfilled this function remarkably well. As Chapter 4 of this book indicates, where military campaigns could not gather the support of the local zamīndārs, imperial expansion and control faltered. The work of Chetan Singh, Muzaffar Alam, and Farhat Hasan has already highlighted the importance of zamīndārs in the career of the Mughal Empire.12 More research needs to be done to understand

12

Alam, The Crisis of Empire in Mughal North India; Hasan, State and Locality in Mughal India; Singh, Region and Empire.

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the layered contribution of this social group to the process of imperial military campaigns. Based on the present book’s exploration of the relationship between war and the state, it is also possible to engage with Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam’s provocative question about whether the Mughal state was a ‘Leviathan or paper tiger’.13 I would argue that at least militarily, it could be both, depending on which region and time in question. The performance of Mughal armies was the best at the heart of North India, the region I studied in Chapter 1. This was one—though undoubtedly not the only—reason why this area emerged as the political heartland of the empire over the course of the sixteenth century. Here, the presence of the state might not have been exactly Leviathan-like, but one has to note that notwithstanding recurrent peasant rebellions, its control remained quite firm until the late seventeenth century.14 Beyond this North Indian heartland, conquering the outlying regions of Sind, Gujarat, Kashmir, Bengal, and Odisha proved to be much more difficult, expensive, and timeconsuming. Yet, in the end, the integration of these regions into the broad social, economic, and political rubric of the empire did happen. However, the nature of this integration remained comparatively tenuous, contested, and in the end, incomplete. Further away, intensive campaigns in Assam, Balkh–Badakhshan, Qandahar, and the Afghan region bore little fruit, and repeatedly ended in costly military disasters. In large parts of these marginal areas, the empire must indeed have been perceived as nothing more than a ‘paper tiger’. Finally, the present work shows the usefulness of the analytical category of war in studying the history of empire. I have argued against the traditional narrow conceptualization of warfare in terms of technology, battles, and army organization. Instead, I have focused on teasing out the myriad ways in which the processes of war-making, stateformation, and empire-building overlapped with each other. The study of 13

Alam and Subrahmanyam, Mughal State, 2. Even here, the work of Chetan Singh and Muzaffar Alam show that the empire had to take into account the interest of the local elite, who ultimately benefitted greatly from joining the Mughal regime and ended up subverting the empire itself. (Singh, ‘Centre and Periphery in the Mughal State’; Singh, Region and Empire; Alam, Crisis of Empire in Mughal North India.) 14

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military logistics has highlighted that far from being the creation of the mounted aristocracy alone, a large part of imperial military expansion was the result of the labour of the non-elite—and even non-combatant—workforce of South Asia. This helps problematize the conceptualization of the empire as largely an elite project. The discussion on the formation of military frontiers has revealed the actual dynamics of imperial expansion—controlling routes, commanding forts, and garnering local support. Combat helped the empire achieve this and vice versa. The exploration of the cultural climate during war at the Mughal court has uncovered the deep connections between how the Mughals thought about kingship, empire, and military violence. To return to one of the opening thoughts of this book, this shows that rather than being the occasional abnormal rupture, war was an integral part of the empire’s quotidian life. As such, more research on the dynamics of Mughal warfare with a broad-based analytical approach bears the potential of furthering our understanding of the empire that profoundly changed the course of South Asian history.

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INDEX

Abdul Baqi, 211–13 Abdul Hamid Lahori, 104, 262 Abdul Qadir Badaoni, 158, 230 Abul Fazl, 16, 22, 40, 42, 77, 80, 86–8, 122, 147–8, 157, 164, 172, 174–5, 181, 191–2, 223, 234, 237–9, 265; on absolutist image of the emperor, 238; Akbar-nāma, 233, 241; on dispatch of a Mughal army against the Baluchis, 261; on emperor as the fountainhead of justice, 235; on glory of Mughal kingship, 227; justification of invasions under Akbar, 247–9; royal code of conduct and a working manual, 234; on rule of rulership and governance, 244 accidents, during river crossings, 156–7 acts of violence: in case of Chitor, 265; ethics of war and, 264–8; mass slaughter (qat̤l-i ‘āmm), of the population, 265; post facto

justification of, 265; six reasons for, 265 Adam Khan, 17, 192–3 administration of justice, 235, 237 adversaries, representation of, 252–5 Afghan kingdom, 251; local collaboration and resistance in, 192–9 Afghan amirs, 168 Afro-Eurasia, arid zone of, 6(map) Agoston, Gabor, 162, 162n197 Agra, 3, 5, 14–15, 17, 20–1, 26–7, 30, 49, 52, 94, 130, 140, 153, 158, 172, 183, 236 agrarian societies, 8 Ahoms, 190; Ahom kingdom, 219; capturing of elephants, 145–6; conflict with Mughals, 73–4, 219; invasion of Guwahati, 219; invasion of Mughal Kamrup, 68; night-attacks on Mughals, 73; siege of Mughal garrison of Hajo, 70; technological gap with

Index Mughals, 71; See also Assam, invasion of Akbar, Emperor, xxii, 193, 196, 243; accession to throne, xxxviii, 4, 5n6; alliance with Rajput rulers, 30; Attock fort, building of, 181; campaigns against Ghakkar tribesmen, 16–17; campaigns against Mirza Muhammad Hakim, 115, 178; contribution in bringing about technological innovations, 49; elephant hunts, 141; Gangetic Basin, conquest of, 17–22; Garha Katanga, conquest of, 27–8; ‘gift of God’ of, 238; gunpowder artillery, use of, 43–5; invasion of Gujarat, 31; justification of invasions under, 247–9; loss of Qandahar fort, 22; Malwa, conquest of, 23–7, 247; march from Agra to Kabul, 172; military expeditions of, 5, 16–22; Mughal victories under, xxix; performing miracles and healing human illnesses, 238; reconquest of North India, xxxviii; territorial expansion under, 5; use of war-elephants in battle against Uzbeg rebels, 37; victory in battle of Panipat (1556), 4, 32; voyage from Agra to Patna, 158; war as moral compulsion, 246 Akbar-nāma, 43, 44n124, 188, 226, 233, 241, 243 Akhlāq-i Humāyūnī, 234, 269 Akhlāq-i Jalālī, 240, 243, 269 Akhlāq-i Nāṣirī, 233–5, 240–1, 259, 269 Ali Khan, Raja, 255 Ali Quli Khan, 21–2, 32, 36 Allami Sadullah Khan, 101

311

alliance-building, for Mughal state-formation, xxxi, 43n123; in Balkh–Badakhshan region, 106; with Baluchis tribesmen, 197–8; in Bengal and Assam, 199–206; difference of opinions, 214; with Ghakkar tribesmen of Punjab, 192–4; informal alliance, 213; with local zamīndārs, 66; mutual hostility and distrust in, 213; politics of, xxxv, 280; secret pacts, 212 ‘Amal-i Ṣāliḥ, 95–6, 98 ambush warfare, 103, 190 amphibious warfare, of Mughals, 60, 62, 69, 157n180, 158n181 animal-economy, of Mughal Empire, 131–2; camel, 146–7; cattle, 147–8; elephant, 143, 146; horse, 134, 139; mule, 148 Arakan kingdom, 126, 214; amphibious warfare, 61; Mughal invasion of (1617), 58–60, 62–3; naval expeditions against Bengal, 61; nexus with Portuguese, 61, 160 Aravalli Hills, 9, 13, 23, 187, 189 armoured heavy cavalry, 33 artillery, 49; field artillery, 32–5, 43, 53, 131n54, 147, 273; fitted on war-boats, 63; gaj-nal (elephant gun), 131n54, 139; light field artillery, 147; Mughal technology, 276; shutūr-nal (camel gun), 131n54, 146–7; siege artillery, 44–5, 90, 96, 123; ẓarbuzan (big cannon), 42, 44, 123 artillerymen, of the garrison, 96, 122 Asaf Khan, 28 Ashoka, King, 171 Asiatic Islamic empires, xxx

312 Assam, invasion of: Ahom siege of the Mughal garrison of Hajo, 70; Ahom tactic of attacking Mughal, 259; alliance-building and, 199–206; Dhubri, siege of (1613), 70; environmental effects on, 67–74; first Mughal invasion (1615), 68; fourth Mughal invasion (1669), 69; key points of military contest, 69; military disaster of Mughals (1615), 68, 258; Mir Jumla’s invasion (1662–3), 68, 71, 164, 258, 263; Mughal preparation for, 173; naval defeat of Mughals, 68; Raja Ram Singh’s invasion (1669), 69; Saraighat, battle of (1671), 69; second Mughal invasion (1636), 68; third Mughal invasion (1662–3), 68, 164, 258, 263 Aurangzeb, Emperor, xxii, 46, 110, 163, 187, 223, 257; Badakhshan and Balkh expedition (1647), 101–2; invasion of Qandahar, 91, 96, 181; military operations in Deccan, xxxviii autobiographies, xxxvii, xxxix, 58, 132, 156, 209, 233–4, 236, 268–9 Awadh, siege of (1567–8), 38, 42, 44 Babur, Emperor, 129, 140, 179, 240; amphibious battles fought by, 158n181; death of, 4; march against Afghan sultanate of Lodis, 3; Uzbeg Khanate, 3; victories in battles fought in Delhi and Agra, 3 Bādshāh-nāma, 104 Bahadur Khan, 16, 37, 104, 106, 213 Bahadur Khan Hijliwal, 213

Index Bahāristān-i Ghaybī, 185n56, 199–200, 209, 213 Murad Bakhsh, 54–5, 105, 110, 250 Balkh–Badakhshan invasion (1646–7), xxvin16, 99–108, 179, 250; Alman and Hazara cavalries, 259; ambush warfare, 103; clearing of snow at the Tul pass, 104; environmental challenges faced during, 55–6, 104, 107–8; imperial matchlockmen and rocketeers, 103; map of, 100(map); military challenge associated with, 102–3; Mughal debacle in, 257, 259; nomadic cavalry tactics, 102; preparations for, 173; projectile weapons, use of, 103; resistance against Uzbeg attacks, 102–3; Tang Shahr pass, crossing of, 108; Uzbeg evasive mounted tactic, 102 Baltistan–Skardu region, Mughal invasion of (1636–7), 85, 88 Baluchistan, 93–4 Banjaras, 148, 274; grain-supplying nomadic merchants, 81; Mughal armies reliance on, 150; overland trading activities of, 149 Baqir Najm-i Sani, xxiv, 237, 241, 267 bāra bhuyān, war-fleet of, 159, 204 Barkey, Karen, 229 Baz Bahadur, 25–7, 36, 52–3, 247, 249, 254 beasts of burden, 125, 138–9, 146–8, 165, 204 Bengal, conquest of: alliance-building and, 199–206; amphibious warfare, 60, 62; Arakanese raids, 61; campaign by Humayun (1538–9), 57; campaign during Jahangir (1608–1612), 57, 184;

Index environmental impact on, 56, 57–67; fortress warfare, 64; Ganga–Brahmaputra Delta and, 59(map); matchlock-men, deployment of, 63; mud forts, efficacy of, 64; riverine channels of communication, 63; riverinfested eastern delta, 60; Tanda and Rajmahal cities, 60; war-boats, use of, 60, 63; warelephants, deployment of, 65; wars of attrition, 205 Bhadurias, 46 Bhagirathi River, 58 Bhakkar, invasion of (1571), 76–80, 94, 157–8, 174, 178 Black, Jeremy, xxxiii, 275–6 boat-construction projects, 158 boatmen, 63–4, 126–9, 204, 278 Brahmaputra Basin: Brahmaputra River, 69, 173, 176, 185; environmental effects on Mughal army in, 67–74; hardships while navigating through thick forest, 72; map of, 70(map) bridges, Mughal, 153–7; accidents during river crossings, 156–7; boat bridges, 154; bridgebuilding activities, 103–4, 156; groups of, 154; permanent stone bridges, 154; regularization of, 156; rope bridges, 154; wooden bridges, 154 Bundelkhand, Mughal domination over, 8–9, 27–8 camels, use of, xl, 66, 104, 108, 116, 131, 131n54, 138, 146–8, 155, 166, 173 cavalry warfare, use of, xxv, 32, 36–7; in Akbar’s initial conquests, 50–2;

313

in Babur’s battles, 51; battle tactics of, 48, 51; heavy cavalry charge, 51; military impact of, 50; mounted archery, 51 Central Eurasian arid zone, 6, 7, 14 Central India, map of, 23(map) Chambal River, 9, 17, 24 Chatgaon, port of, 62, 157, 160–1 Chitor, siege of (1567–8), 42, 44, 52; acts of violence in, 265 Chunar, siege of (1535), 22, 42, 158n181 cosmopolitanism, idea of, 226–8 counter-insurgency operations, xxii, 68, 153; against Afghan tribes, 178 dākhilī troops, 130 Dara Shikoh, 256; invasion of Qandahar, 91, 93 darwāza (gateway), 217–18 Daud Khan Karrani, 143, 183, 204, 247–8, 251 Deccan Plateau of Peninsular India, 8–9, 15, 24 Delhi, xxxviii, 3–5, 13–15, 20–1, 23, 26, 29, 49, 52, 94, 116, 131, 142–3, 153 Deloche, Jean, 48 Dhaka, 62, 65, 69, 74, 160, 183–6, 211, 215 Dhubri, siege of (1613), 69–70, 185, 215, 266 Dilzak Afghans, 117, 197 dīn-parwar (protector of faith), 251 direct assault, method of, 45, 65 Divine Law, 240–1 draught animals, 116, 124, 139, 155 Durgavati, Rani, 28, 36, 52–3

314 Eagleton, Terry, 232, 269 environmental challenges, faced by Mughal army: adaptation to, 71, 87; in Arakan (1617), 60; in Balkh and Badakhshan (1645–8), 54–6, 99–108; in Bengal (1608–12), 56, 57–67; in Brahmaputra Basin, 67–74; due to rains, 58; dynamics of, 56; in Gingee (1689–97), 56; hardships while navigating through thick forest, 72; in Himalayas, 82–91; in Lower Indus Basin, 74–82; military challenges associated with, 57; Pir Panjal pass, 86, 88; in Qandahar, 91–9; rivers and forests, 58 equilibrium and unity, notions of, 239 ethics of war, 259–64; acts of violence and, 264–8 Eurasia, geography of, 6–10 European cartography, 225 European naval power, rise of, xxxviii farākhnā (highway), 217 Faruqui, Munis, xxxv, 109n231, 111, 221–2, 270 Ibrahim Khan Fath-Jang, 142, 213 faujdārs, 125, 142 Febvre, Lucien, 207–8 field artillery, 32–5, 43, 53, 131n54, 147, 273 fīlkhānās, 124 firearms: Akbar’s contribution in development of, 49; innovation of, 49; use of, 32 fitna (politics of shifting alliances), 43n123, 270n157, 280 food supplies, 81, 148, 150, 267 foot-archers, 46, 51

Index fortifications, techniques of, 45–50 fortress warfare, xxxix, 64, 79 forts: role of, 177–82; Asirgarh fort, 24–6; Attock fort, 101, 148, 181, 197; Bandhu fort, siege of (1594), 83; brick forts, 176n25; Chauragarh fort, 28; fort-building See trace italienne model, for fort-building; Kabul fort, 177; Lahore fort, 177; Mankot, fort of, 15, 38, 44, 82, 90, 192; mud forts, See mud forts; Multan fort, 177; Qandahar fort See Qandahar fort; Sehwan fort, 75, 77–8, 80–1, 174; stone forts, 53, 64, 183, 274 frontiers of Mughal empire, 167; acts of expansion at, 210; concept of, 171, 216–20; emergence of, 206–8; historiography of, 169; imperial orders for expansion of, 210; as limit of imperial authority, 209–16; natural frontier, 207–8; nature of, 170; physical nature of, 169; role of fortifications in defending, 169; of separation, 169; of settlement, 169 frontier warfare, 209 gaj-nal (elephant gun), 131n54, 139 Ganga–Brahmaputra Delta, 23, 59(map) Ganga River, 9, 13, 17–18, 20, 22, 37, 57–8, 153, 158 Gangetic Basin, 9, 14, 28; major sections of, 17; Mughal conquest of, 17–22 Gangetic Delta. See Ganga– Brahmaputra Delta Garha Katanga, Mughal conquest of, 27–8, 141; military strategy used in, 36–7

Index garrison towns, 11, 177–82 de la Garza, Andrew, xxv, 119–20, 276n6, 277 Ghaggar River, 13 Ghaghara River, 17, 18, 153, 158n181 ghazā’ (religious war), 268 ghāzī (religious warrior), 268 Ghiyas Khan, 202 Ghoraghat town, 69, 183, 184, 215 ghurābs, 63, 80n103 gift-economy, of Mughal empire, xxxvii, 138 Gommans, Jos, xxix, xxv, xxx, 7, 14, 56, 99, 119–21, 131, 171, 220 Gujarat Littoral, 15, 50 Gujarat, Mughal invasion of, 31 gunpowder weaponry, use of, xxv, 40; in Akbar’s initial conquests, 43–5; in artillery, 48; conquests in North India by, 44; impact of, 50; in mining, 48 Guwahati, 185, 219–20 Gwalior, 15, 26–7, 38, 44, 130 Habib, Irfan, xix, xxiin5, 49, 149, 156n175, 161 Haldighat, battle of (1576), 52 handguns, 43, 46–7, 49, 80, 90, 95, 273; deployment of, xxix; handgun-bearing infantry, 33n84, 34 harkarā (postal runner), 163 Harshavardhana, King, 14 Hasan, Farhat, xxxiv, 221, 270, 279, 280 Hasan Khan Bachgoti, 21, 36 Hazara tribe, 106, 108, 259 heavy cavalry, use of, xxix, 32–7, 43, 51, 53, 102–3, 273, 279 Heesterman, J.C., 8, 171, 217, 220

315

Hemu (Afghan commander), 35 Himalayan campaign, impact of climate on, 82–91; Bandhu fort, siege of (1594), 83; Kangra, invasion of (1615), 83; Kishtwar expedition of 1620, 86; Mankot fort, siege of (1557), 82–3; Mughal’s main areas of campaign, 82; Nagarkot, siege of (1573), 83; Srinagar Valley, Mughal invasion of, 83–4; Tibet-i Khurd (Little Tibet), invasion of (1636–7), 85 horses. See warhorses horse-trade, 131, 133, 139 Humayun, Emperor, xxxviii, 22, 179, 192; accession to throne, 4; death of, 4; defeats against Sher Khan Sur, 4; invasion of Delhi, 4, 14–15; invasion of Hindustan, 10, 13; military expedition of, 10–11, 13; retake over the city of Delhi, 4 Husain Khan Jalair, 21 ideal king, role of, 237–8, 269 Ihtimam Khan, 129, 201 imperial authority, limits of, xxii, xli, 200–1, 209–16 imperial biographies, of Mughal emperors, 87, 233–4, 243, 255 imperial rule, idea of, xxvi, 227–33, 250 imperial self-image, 225 imperial territorial expansion, limits of, 206 Inayat Khan, 88, 95, 98, 102, 105, 108, 140, 256–9 inclusivity, of Mughal rule, 227–33, 271 Indo-Gangetic Divide, 9, 28, 36, 274; cities located in, 27;

316 economic and strategic value of, 13; imperial cities of, 153; Mughal’s hold over, 15; political importance of, 14 Indus River, 9, 11, 16, 75–81, 94, 101, 134, 153, 172, 174, 182, 192, 194, 197, 207 information-gathering apparatus, in Mughal Empire, 161–4; harkarās (postal runners), 163; local road guides, 162; narratives of campaigns, 162; rāh-barān, 163; scouts (qarāwulān), 163; spies, 162 innovation, of Mughal firearms, 49 inshā, 233 Iqtidar Alam Khan, 46–7, 49 Isaac, Benjamin, 217 Islam Khan Chishti, 61, 67, 159, 184, 261 jāgīr (land assignment), 16; practice of assigning, 21 jāgīrdārs, 172, 195 Jahangir, Emperor, 151, 156, 163, 187, 212, 223–4, 227, 262; administration of justice, 235–8; autobiography of, 269; Deccan campaigns of 1615, 197; dustūru ’l-‘amal (rules of conduct), 172 Jaisalmer, 30–1, 76–8, 94, 147 Jai Singh, Raja, 107 Jalala Tariki, 195–6 Jalalabad, 101, 129, 179 Jam, battle of (1528), 34 jang-i ṣaff, 262 Jani Beg, 77, 79–82, 198, 255–6 jihād (holy war), 230 justice, administration of, 234–6; under Akbar’s rule, 235–6, 239; centrality of, 237; Chain

Index of Justice (zanjīr-i ‘adl), 236; by Divine Law, 240–1; under Jahangir’s rule, 235–6; kingship and, 239–43; Tusi’s idea of, 235 justification of invasions: under Akbar, 247–9; in seventeenth century, 249–52 Kabul, 13; annexation of, 178 Kabul fort, 177; geopolitical significance of, 217 Kachar, raja of, 184, 215–16, 251 kāfirs (infidels) of Hindustan, 230 Kalinjar, siege of (1569), 39, 44, 52, 142 Kamal Khan Ghakkar, 17, 17n40, 192–3 Kamrup, xxxviii, 65, 67–9, 126, 138–9, 163, 176, 188, 204–5, 210–12, 214–15, 218, 252; Kuch insurgency in, 214 Kangra, invasion of (1615), 82–3, 194 karorī, 129 Kashmir and Western Himalayas, 84(map) Kashmir, invasion of (1585–6), 84–8, 156, 174, 178, 249 Khaibar Pass, 182, 197 Khanua, battle of (1527), 34, 271 Khwaja Kamgar Husaini Khan, 224 Khwaja Usman, 36, 63, 65, 126, 200, 203, 261 king as a physician, metaphor of, 237–8 kingship, Mughal, 224; Abul Fazl views on glory of, 227; centrality of justice in, 237, 239–43; concept of, xli, 235–9; duties of, 245; in early modern world, 225–7; and imperial rule,

Index 227–33; inclusivity of, 227–33; performance of, 232; political culture of, 227–33; on role of ideal king as physician, 237–8; on war as moral compulsion, 243–7 Kishtwar expedition (1620), 85–6 Kolff, Dirk, 46, 121 Kuch Bihar, Mughal occupation of (1661), 72, 126, 135–6, 138, 144, 150, 158–60, 184, 194, 205, 213–15, 263, 266–7 Kuch insurgency, 150, 164, 214 De Laet, Johannes, 11, 76, 136, 177, 198 Lahore, 11–12, 16, 49, 76–7, 82, 93–4, 97, 101, 105, 134, 177–9, 182, 192, 197; Lahore fort, 177; as Mart of India, 177; as most principal cities for trade, 177 local road guides, 162–3 Lodi sultanate of Delhi, 3, 15, 143 logistics. See military logistics Lower Indus Basin: amphibious warfare, 79; Bhakkar, invasion of (1571), 76–7; close-quarter fighting on the river, 80; environmental effects on Mughal army in, 74–82; fighting across riverine spaces, 79; food supplies, 81; fortress warfare, 79; Kirthar Range, 93; map of, 75(map); in modern Pakistan, 93; Mughal campaigns in, 76; projectile weapons, use of, 80; Thatta, invasion of (1591–2), 77–9 Malwa: Malwa Plateau, 15; Mughal conquest of, 23–7, 141, 247; Sultanate of, 24, 28

317

manṣabdārs, xxii, 55, 211 Man Singh, Raja, 66, 143, 158; appointment as ṣūbadār of Bengal, 60; victories in Orissa (1590–3), 60 Manucci, Niccolao, 46, 124, 160, 178, 187, 198 mass slaughter (qat̤l-i ‘āmm), of the population, 25, 265, 265n142 matchlock-bearing infantry, 32, 45–50, 51, 63, 96, 159 Mewar, kingdom of, 31; rebellion against Mughal occupation (1679–81), 187 Middle Ganga Basin, 17–18; eastern part of, 19(map); western part of, 18(map) military aristocracy, of Mughal Empire, xxiii, 120, 233 military campaigns, of Mughals, 10; in Balkh and Badakhshan, See Balkh–Badakhshan invasion; Bhakkar, invasion of (1571), 76; course and dynamics of, xxvi; dynamics of, xxix; in Gangetic Basin, 17–22; in Garha Katanga, 27–8, 36; in Kashmir, 249; in Kuch Bihar, 263; legitimization of aggressive, 245; in Malwa, 23–7, 36; military labour market, role of, 122; nature of, xl; in North India, 3; against Portuguese, 277; in Punjab, 10–17; road-building and, 172–4 military conflict, xxii; dynamics of, xxvi; routes of communication as sites of, 174–6; Second Battle of Panipat (1556), 10, 15, 35 military conquests, of Mughals, xxxix; of Balkh and Badakhshan, 250; of Bundelkhand, 28;

318 of Chitor, 30; co-option and conquest in the West, 28–31; of Gangetic Basin, 17–22; of Garha Katanga, 27–8; of Gorakhpur– Jaunpur belt, 20; of Kashmir, 249; of Malwa, 23–7; of North India, 3, 9; of Punjab, 10–17; of Ranthambhor, 30 military culture, of Mughal emperors, 231 military disasters, in Mughal history: in Assam, 67–74, 258; in Balkh–Badakhshan invasion, xxvin16, 99–108, 250, 257; in Bengal, 57–67; in Kashmir, 82–91, 156, 174, 178, 249; in Lower Indus basin, 74–82; in Qandahar fort invasion, 91–9, 256–7 military infrastructure, of Mughal Empire, 152–64; boats, 157–61; bridges, 153–7; informationgathering apparatus, 161–4 military intelligence, xl, 51, 71, 120, 162, 165 military labour market, 46, 119, 120–30; categories of, 130; definition of, 121–2; duties of labourers, 124; for execution of Mughal military campaigns, 122; for mobility of people and soldiers, 121; payment to labourers, 130; quasi-military labourers, 273; workmen, recruitment of, 129 military labourers, 122–6, 129–30, 173, 273 military logistics, xxviii, 56, 128, 149, 276, 282; definition of, 120; dimensions of, 119; importance of, xxv, 118; for state-formation, xl

Index military mobilization, xxxiv, 51, 77, 118; imperial bases of, 77 military power of Mughals, 273–4; factors in the rise of, xxv Military Revolution hypothesis, xxxii–xxxiii, 274–5 military success of Mughals, xxix; factors behind, xxx; in Punjab, 10–17; Second Battle of Panipat (1556), 10 military techniques, of Mughals, xxxiv, xl, 31; in battles after Panipat, 36–8; in battles for North India, 32–6; cavalry tactics, 32; direct assault, method of, 65; elephant charge, 37–8; firearms, use of, 32; gunpowder weaponry, xxv, 40, 43–5; interplay of environmental factors and, 189–92; matchlocks, mines, and fortifications, 45–50; mounted archery, deployment of, 32, 37; naqb zadan (mining), 39–40; sābāt̤, use of, 40–1; of sapping and mining, 39; in sieges and imperial expansion, 38–43; wagon laager tactics, 32–5 military technology, development of, xxivn11, xl, 39, 46, 276; defensive technology, 64 mines, construction of, 39–40, 45–50 Mir Jumla, 68, 71, 145–6, 160, 173, 258, 263 Mirak Bahadur Jalair, 216 Mirza Muhammad Hakim, 115, 178 Mirza Nathan, 58, 60, 126–9, 146, 150, 159–60, 163, 185, 188, 209–13, 233, 261, 266 modern warfare, history of, xxxiii, xxxiv, 275 Moin, Azfar, 250, 268

Index Monserrate, Father, 116, 152, 154–5 mounted archery, deployment of, 32–3, 53; in Babur’s battles, 51; in Balkh–Badakhshan expedition, 102; in battles of Panipat and Khanua, 34; close combat tactics of, 51; nomadic military legacy of, 279; Uhar, battle of (1612), 51; against Uzbeg rebels, 37 Mubariz Khan, 216 mud forts, 64–5, 127, 183, 190, 204; use of war-elephants for demolishing, 65 Mughal Empire, xxviii, 24, 124, 221; alliance with Rajput rulers, 30; decline of, xxxix; domination over Bundelkhand, 28; formation of imperial frontiers in, xl; frontiers of See frontiers of Mughal empire; political culture of, 227–33; versus Russian and Chinese empires, 276 Mughal imperial: court, 217; ideology, 232–3, 245, 250, 262, 269 Mughal miniature paintings, 43, 44n124, 48, 224 Mughal state-formation and empire-building, 271; by alliancebuilding See alliance-building, for Mughal state-formation; interpretation of, xxvi; nature of, xxv–xxvi; processes of, xxviii, xli; by using warfare, xxvi Mughal war-making, imperial narratives of, xxv, xxxii, xxxiv, xl, 120, 128, 165, 275 Muhammad Arif Qandahari, 247 Muhammad Salih Kambo, 95–6 Mukarram Khan, 203, 212, 213 Mukhia, Harbans, 238, 243, 245–6, 262

319

Multan, 11–12, 16, 22, 76, 93–4, 97, 177, 179–81, 198; Multan fort, 177 Muzaffar Alam, xxxiv, 230, 233, 239, 280–1 Nagarkot, siege of (1573), 83, 86, 90 naqb zadan (mining), 39–40 Narmada River, xxxviii, 24–6, 146 Nasirean akhlāq, xli, 233–5, 269n153; Mughal political culture and, 233–5 Nasiruddin Tusi, 233–5, 237, 239–40, 246, 259, 270; political philosophy of, 246; on role of ideal king, 237; on six conditions for waging war, 260 naval battle, 157 Nazar Muhammad Khan, 54, 102, 106–7, 250, 257 night-attacks, on Mughal army: in Kashmir, 90; on royal thanas in Assam, 73 Nizamuddin Ahmad, 26, 39–41, 77, 86, 163, 168, 247; principle of war as a last resort, 260 nomadic pastoralists, tribes of, 148 Orchha, kingdom of, 28, 249n90 Ottoman Empire, xxx–xxxi, 32–4, 41, 43, 47, 49, 79, 229 Panipat, battle of: first (1526), 271; mounted archers, deployment of, 34–5; Mughal tactics in, 35–6; second (1556), 4, 10, 15, 32, 35–6, 271 Parikshit Narayan, Raja, 65, 137, 202, 215, 252 Pelsaert, Francesco, 162, 188 Pir Muhammad Khan, 25–6 Pir Panjal pass, 83–4, 86, 88

320 political alliance-building. See alliance-building, for Mughal state-formation political culture, of Mughal Empire, 227–33; Akhlāq-i Nāṣirī and, 233–5 political insurgency, 194–5 Portuguese: naval slave-raids, 61, 160, 185, 186, 277; nexus with Arakanese, 61, 160 Pratapaditya, Raja, 63, 200–2, 204 Pratap Singh, Rana, 31, 187–8 projectile weapons, use of, 62–3, 80, 103 Punjab, 5, 9, 21, 28, 36, 50, 52, 76–8, 82–3, 86, 101, 115, 134, 140, 151–2, 177–9, 192–3; as Mughal bridgehead to North India, 10–17; Punjab Basin, 12(map) Qandahar fort, 78, 129, 174, 177–8; attempt to retake, 179; environmental challenges faced by Mughal army, 98–9; failures of Mughal armies to capture, 256–7; food crisis (1595) in, 98, 151, 180n42; garrisons posted in, 180; geopolitical significance of, 217; importance of, 22, 180–1; map of, 92(map); Mughal invasion of, 78–9, 96; Mughal–Safavid war (1649–53) over, 91, 178; Mughal siege of, 91–9, 150, 181; Multan– Qandahar route, 94; routes connecting to North India, 93; Safavid army besiege of, 22, 180; technological gap with Mughal army, 95 Qasim Khan, 49, 85, 87, 89, 110, 172–3, 203, 210–14, 212, 216 Qing dynasty, xxxi, 225, 229–30, 277 Quetta, 78, 93, 181

Index Rajmahal, 60, 62, 160, 183–4 Ranthambhor, siege of (1569), 29–31, 38–9, 42, 44–6, 52, 90, 123 Raushaniyyas, 177, 195; Mughal antagonism against, 195 Rawal Bhim, 77 Richards, John, xxii, xxxvi, 170, 231 riverine channels of communication, 63, 126, 176, 190; efficacy of mud forts in controlling, 64 road-building: importance of, 124, 171; levelling of roads for troop movement, 172; and Mughal military campaigns, 172–4; network of, 172; See also routes of communication Roberts, Michael, xxxii Roe, Thomas, 177, 227 Roman Empire, 32–4, 217 routes of communication, 78, 218; in Afghan region, 174–5, 177–82; Agra–Gwalior–Sironj–Sarangpur route, 27; in Bengal region, 175–6, 182–6; connecting Assam with Rajmahal and Dhaka, 184; connecting North India with Iran, 180; consequences of failure to control of, 186–9; control of, 174, 176, 182–6, 220; Dhaka–Sherpur–Ghoraghat– Dhubri route, 69; failure of Mughal armies to control, 272; and fate of campaigns, 186–9; interplay of environmental factors and, 189–92; Khaibar route, 175; Lahore–Kabul route, 179, 182; Lahore–Multan– Bhakkar–Sibi–Dhadhar route, 97; military techniques and, 189–92; Mughal imperial frontiers

Index and, 171; Multan–Qandahar route, 94; riverine channels of communication, 176, 183; sarāys (rest houses), establishment of, 172; as sites of military contest, 174–6; Tanda and Rajmahal belt, 183; waterways, 176 Rukn Khan Lohani, 21, 36 Rustam Khan, 106, 141, 256 sābāt̤, use of, 39–42, 45, 122–3 Safavid Empire, 91, 180, 219; firepower, 95; Safavid army, 22, 34, 95; war with Mughals, 91, 95, 178 safety and security, ideas of, 175, 182n48 Saqi Mustaid Khan, 163, 219 Saraighat, battle of (1671), 69 sarāys (rest houses), 172 Sarkar, Jadunath, xxii, 219 sar kob technique, 42, 123 Satrajit, Raja, 200, 203–4 separation, frontiers of, 169 settlement, frontiers of, 169 Shah Abbas II, 91, 99 Shah Beg Khan, 174–5 Shah Ismail, 34 Shah Jahan, Emperor, 22, 54–5, 138, 149, 173, 179, 223–4; capture of Baltistan–Skardu region, 85, 88, 101; as dīn-parwar (protector of faith), 251; invasion of Balkh and Badakhshan under, 250, 257; Qandahar expedition (1653), 94 Shah Shuja, 62, 137n85, 138, 160 Shaikh Muinuddin Chishti shrine, Ajmer, 238 Shaista Khan, 62, 144, 157, 160–1 Shaykh Kamal, 202, 213, 215 Sher Khan Sur, 14; victories over Humayun, 4

321

Shihabuddin Talish, 71–3, 138, 145–6, 160, 164, 258, 259, 262–4 shutūr-nals (camel gun), 131n54, 146–7 Sibi, conquest of (1594–5), 78, 94, 181 siege artillery, 44–5, 90, 96, 123 siege-crafts, 79 siege warfare, military techniques used in, 38–43; Chitor, siege of (1567–8), 42, 44; naqb zadan (mining), 39–40; Ranthambhor, siege of (1569), 39, 44–5; sar kob technique, 42; siçan yolu trenches, 41; trenches and mines, building of, 118 siegeworks, construction of, 41, 46, 53, 164 Sikandar Sur, 15–16, 82 social order, Mughal mission of establishment of, 232, 239, 267 social reality, notion of, 232, 269 South Asia, geographical framework of, 6–10 Srinagar Valley, Mughal invasion of, 82–90, 110, 249 stone forts, proliferation of, 53, 64, 183, 274 Streusand, Douglas, xxix, 5, 36, 38, 43, 46–7, 52–3 Subrahmanyam, Sanjay, xxxiv, xxxvi–xxxvii, 225, 226, 281 ṣulḥ-i kul, 270 Sultan Mahmud, 76–7 Sultans of Delhi, 131, 230 Surat, 26, 149, 227 Sylhet, 126, 184–5, 204, 212, 216 Tanda, Mughal occupation of (1574), 60, 183, 184n53 Tang Shahr pass, crossing of, 108

322 Tarikis (religious sect), 175, 195 Tavernier, Jean-Baptiste, 64, 71, 93, 134, 137, 142, 149 technological gap, between Mughals and Ahoms, 71, 95–6, 99 technological innovation, 43, 49, 276 territorial expansion, xxii, 43, 109, 186, 206–7, 216, 221, 272, 280; process of, xxix Terry, Edward, 131n54, 135, 151, 177, 232, 236, 269 thāna-dārs, 103, 182, 185n56 thānas, 73–4, 176, 182, 186 Thar Desert, 6, 8–9, 29, 76, 146 Thatta, invasion of (1591–2), 76–81, 178, 198, 255–6 de Thévenot, Jean, 133 Tibet-i Khurd (Little Tibet). See Baltistan–Skardu region Timurid Turks, 225 trace italienne model, for fortbuilding, 49 transport of water, to the emperor, 152n158 tribesmen: Afghan, 190; Afridi, 197; Baluchi, 16, 197–8, 239, 261; Ghakkar tribesmen, of Punjab, 16–17, 174, 192–4; Yusufzai tribesmen, 181, 190, 194–6 Tripura kingdom, 184; Mughal invasion of, 185n56 Tukaroi, battle of (1575), 51–2 Turkman, Khusrau Beg, 106 Uhar, battle of (1612), 51, 65 unity in society, establishment of, 240 universal sovereignty, idea of: Chinese, 225; Mauryan ideology of, 171; Mughal version of, 225–6, 232, 270; Turko-Mongol, 225

Index Upper Ganga Basin, 17, 18(map), 36 Ustad Ali Quli, 21–2, 32, 36 Uzbeg army, 34, 109; ambush warfare, 103; attack on Mughal thāna of Khanabad, 103; evasive mounted tactic, 102, 110; war against Mughals, 102–3 victories and defeats, narrativization of, 232, 255–9 wagon laager tactics, 32–5, 37, 274 waqā’i‘-nawīs (news reporter), 216 war-animals, in Mughal North India, xxiii, 131–48, 192; beasts of burden, 125, 138–9, 146–8, 165, 204; camels, use of, 131n54, 146–8; cattle and mules, 146–7; economy of See animaleconomy, of Mughal Empire; elephants, xxxi, 35, 37, 51, 125, 139–46, 204; horses, xxxi, 131, 132–9; mobilization of, 119, 124; procurement of, 119; upkeep of, 124 war, as moral compulsion: for Akbar, 246, 247–9; aspirations to world conquest, 245–6; justification of See justification of invasions; legitimization of, 245–6; Mughal concept of, 243–7 war, as process, 273–8; ideology of conquest and governance, 274; Mughal ‘way of war,’ 275; rise of Mughal military power and, 273 war-boats, xxxi, 62, 79, 81, 126, 155, 157–61, 211; artillery fitted on, 63; boat-construction projects, 158; in campaign in eastern Bengal, 159; consolidation of Mughal power due to, 159;

Index development of, 157; in invasion of Bengal, 60; in Mir Jumla’s invasion of Kuch Bihar and Assam, 160; naval battle, 157; naval resources, 158–9; number and variety of, 159; supply of, 157; war-fleet, deterioration of, 160 war, conduct of, 259–64; as last resort, 260; moral compulsion for See war, as moral compulsion; six conditions for, 260 war-elephants, xxxi, 35, 37, 51, 65, 128, 131n54, 139–46, 204; areas for obtaining elephants, 140; as beasts of burden, 139; capturing of elephants, 145–6; Central India’s status as a prominent provider of, 141; for delivering shock charge, 139; for demolishing enemy mud forts, 65; deployment in battlefields, 139–40; gaj-nal (elephant gun), 131, 139; management of, 146; places for procurement of, 141; prime sources of, 143; sarfil (herb), 146; shock charge, 35, 51, 65, 131, 139, 279; as tributes extracted from zamīndārs, 142; upkeep and training of, 125; use of, 139; value of, 145; as warmounts, 139 warfare, of Mughal Empire: conquest of North India, 3, 9; imperial ideology and, xxvi; invasion of Balkh–Badakhshan (1646–7) See Balkh–Badakhshan invasion (1646–7); military

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techniques and See military techniques, of Mughals; for stateformation and empire-building, xxvi; theatres of, xxxix–xl; warhorse as the main driving force of, xxxi war-fleet, deterioration of, 160 warhorses, xxxi, 131, 132–9; Arabi horses, 132–3; battleworthiness of, 132; classes of, 132–3; equestrian breeds of, 139; Gut horses, 136; horse-breeding grounds, 134–5; horse-trade, 131, 133; Iraqi horses, 134; Kachchhi horse, 135, 139; qualities determining value of, 132; in royal stables, 133; Tanghan horses, 135–9; Turkish horses, 136 war supplies, 148–52; food supplies, 81, 148, 150–1, 267; water procurement, 151 weapons of sedentary societies, 110 Western India: map of, 29(map); Mughal conquest of, 28–31 workmen, recruitment of, 129 world domination, idea of, 225 Yaqub Chak, 85, 87, 249 Yamuna River, 9, 13, 17, 20, 24, 153–4, 158, 236 Yusuf Chak, 84–6 zamīndārs, xli, 66, 130, 141, 164, 192, 201, 204, 206, 213, 256, 265; North Indian Hindu, 226 ẓarbuzans (big cannons), 42, 44, 123 Ziauddin Barani, 230

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Pratyay Nath is assistant professor of history, Ashoka University, Sonipat. Before this, he was assistant professor of history (ad hoc) at Miranda House, University of Delhi. He is a historian of early modern war and empire. His latest publications include ‘Narratives of Akbar’s Sieges and the Construction of Mughal Universal Sovereignty,’ in The World of the Siege: Representations of Early Modern Positional Warfare, eds. Jamel Ostwald and Anke Fischer-Katner (forthcoming); ‘“The Wrath of God”: Legitimisation and Limits of Mughal Military Violence in Early Modern South Asia,’ in A Global History of Violence in the Early Modern World, eds. Peter Wilson, Erica Charters, and Marie Houllemare (forthcoming); ‘Through the Lens of War: Akbar’s Sieges (1567–69) and Mughal Empire-Building in Early Modern North India,’ South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies (2018). He is currently co-editing two volumes: one in English that explores the meanings of ‘early modernity’ for South Asian history and another in Bengali that studies the intellectual history of history-writing in South Asia. At Ashoka University, he teaches courses on Mughal history, histories of medieval and early modern South Asia, and global histories of early modern warfare, kingship, and empires.

About the Author

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He earned his PhD and MPhil from Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He completed his Masters from University of Calcutta, West Bengal, and his Bachelors from Presidency College, Kolkata, West Bengal.