David Nicole on the Mughal Warfare (part of 1)
Until Heaven and Earth appear on the Last Judgment.
But there is no East, and the West does not exist, that the tribe, the motherland, the family,
If a strong man with a strong face to face at the edge of the earth gets up?
("The Ballad of the West and the East". R. Kipling)
In 1987, in the publishing house “Polymya” in Belarus, I published my first book: “From all that is at hand”. Its circulation was 87 thousand copies and, nevertheless, it sold out in two weeks! It was a pleasure to work with the editor, but due to her engineering education she sometimes asked me rather strange questions. For example, “Do you know exactly what to write the empire of the Great Moguls? Maybe - the Mongols? Where to check? ”I replied that it was over in TSB and that was all over, especially since who they are, I knew. But I wanted to know more about them than what TSB and the textbooks of that time reported. And it turned out that I later became acquainted with the English historian David Nicholas, who specialized in Eastern culture, and he presented me his book “Mughul India 1504 - 1761 (Osprey, MAA-263,1993), from which I learned a lot of interesting things. I hope that what is stated in it will be interesting for readers of VO.
He begins with an explanation of the term and writes that often the word "Mongol" is written in English as "Mughal" or "Mogul", and it also today means ... an oligarch. But this is, in fact, their name in Persian, and this transliteration has got into English. As for Babur, the founder of the Mogul dynasty, he was of Turkic-Mongolian origin from the clan Timur-i-Lenk (Tamerlane) by the father and Genghis Khan on the mother’s side. Although Babur did not like it when he was called Mongol and preferred to be known as a Turk, the name “Mughals” “stuck” to the rulers of his family and subsequent members of the dynasty became known in Europe as the Great Mughals.
Indian helmet from the province of Dean, XVII. Metropolitan Museum, New York.
The Mughal rule in India was not always favored by historians. During English rule in India, the Mughal period was often depicted as barbaric. Some modern Indian historians also criticize the Mughals for trying to keep India from the British conquest, that is, from progress and civilization. But why is this so clear. After all, they, in turn, were foreign conquerors, and were a Muslim minority among the dominant Hindu majority of the population of India for many centuries.
In fact, the spread of Islam in India occurred long before Babur’s invasion of this subcontinent. Muslims were part of the ruling elite in northwestern India for almost a thousand years. In northern and central India, many members of the local military aristocracy also belonged to Persians, Afghans, or were of Mongolian origin. India had close ties not only with neighboring Afghanistan, but also with western Iran, Iraq, and even eastern Turkey.
Babur Detail of a miniature 1605 - 1615. British Museum, London.
The troops who met the Mughals in northern India were armed and manned in much the same way as the neighboring Muslim states. Moreover, by the beginning of the 16 century, Turkish influence was particularly strong in the army of Gujarat, a coastal region that had particularly strong trade relations with the Middle East, from which it received firearms. weapon.
Indian (Muslim) armor from the province of Dean, XVII. Metropolitan Museum, New York.
The situation in South India was different, for here the Muslim conquest took place relatively late. The indigenous population here was strictly divided into military and non-military castes, but the conversion to Islam opened up the possibility of career growth for all. Even in the Muslim states of the Dean, only a small part of the ruling elite was actually Muslim. Hindu Mughal subjects quickly took advantage of the situation and managed to get to the very top.
Great Mogul State
At the end of the 15 century, Babur, who had previously fought for power in Samarkand, by coincidence, was forced to send his military aspirations to the south, where he achieved success. In the battles of Panipat in April 1526 and under Khanua in 1527, Babur, using cannons and guns, defeated the local rulers and, having achieved success, moved the center of the new power to Agra.
The Mogul rulers, however, adopted many aspects of the life of the Hindu kingdom, in particular, the extraordinary ritualization of court life. Mughal palaces and costumes amazed not only Europeans with their magnificence, but even the rulers of neighboring Iran and the Ottoman Empire - who, at least, were not poorer.
Paradoxically, the indigenous peoples of India lived better in the hands of these alien Mongols than in the hands of the local Hindu rulers. Of course, they enslaved many Dravidian forest tribes, but the Hindu Marathi would simply have killed them. As for the army, at first it was based on the traditions of the Timurid, but after they established their state in India, the Muslim and Hindu military traditions in it were very mixed. In particular, the number of mercenaries from paid professional warriors has significantly increased.
Miniature from the manuscript Zahir ad-Din Muhammad "Babur". The final scene of the Battle of Kandahar. Walters Museum.
The decline of the Mughal state began when the padishah Jahangir rebelled against his father Akbar, and the son of Jahangir subsequently rebelled against himself. The Muslim-Sikh hatred, which continues to this day, also began in the era of Jahangir. The rule of Shah Jahan was magnificent, but under this magnificence hid many serious problems of the Mughal Empire. Under his successor Aurangzeba, the northern and western parts of Afghanistan fell away from her, as they were too far from Delhi to receive proper support by military force. For five years after his death, the empire collapsed into the abyss of civil war, rebellion and collapse. Nevertheless, the prestige of the Great Moguls was so high that it endured for a long time their real power and authority.
At the beginning of the 18 century, the Delhi Moguls waged war on Afghans from the west and Hindu Marathas from the south. The followers of the new religion, the Sikhs, also claimed military rule. More and more local independent princes were becoming, having their own armies. Well, then what remained of the Mughal empire was under British protection; but as they say, this is a completely different story.
Miniature from the manuscript Zahir ad-Din Muhammad "Babur". The scene of the Battle of Panipat. Walters Museum.
Babur seemed obscure to his contemporaries because he had no specific national affections, but attractive: a bold, funny, poet, writer, he had much in common with the Renaissance Italian condottieries, but if it was clear to us Europeans, then than unusual.
The first troops of Babur were small and consisted of Turkish, Mongolian, Iranian and Afghan troops. Babur's cavalry was organized according to the Mongolian pattern, that is, it consisted of tumenov led by tumandars — a structure that has changed little since the times of the Mongol armies of Genghis Khan.
Indian mail and plate armor 1632 - 1633 Weight 10.7 kg. Metropolitan Museum.
The main strength of Babur’s army was the excellent discipline and tactics that he had learned from his first Uzbek enemies. Babur could increase discipline with ferocious punishments, but he rarely used it in practice. In his detailed autobiography of Baburname (literally “Book of Babur”), he gives interesting details about what his army was. The elite, of course, was the cavalry, which used horse armor. Wick muskets were widely used, of which they fired, hiding behind wooden shields on props.
He won some victories using horse archers to pursue the enemy in the traditional way. Baburname also describes the sending of messages by spies from the camp of the enemy, which they attached to arrows and sent at night to their own. During the siege, Babur's warriors could feed the leaves mixed with wet shavings - a technique unknown to him.
Reforms Akbar
The son of the padishah Humayun (son of Babur) Akbar was probably the greatest Mughal ruler. He was distinguished by tolerance and even tried to unite Islam and Hinduism in the new religion of his own composition, which he called “Divine Faith”. Akbar also reorganized the army. He decided that now she would consist of professionals, paid directly from the treasury. The land had to be divided in such a way that the land holding would support the new military structure. First of all, Akbar decided to streamline officer ranks. Well, the main idea that the increase in rank will depend on merit, and not on nobility. But the reforms were difficult. During the invasion of the Dean in 1599, for example, the army almost rebelled, because the money did not reach it, and the soldiers almost had to starve.
Officer ranks
In accordance with the new structure of Akbar's army, there were 33 officer ranks in it. All were manzabdars, but the highest were manzabdars 10000, 8000 and 7000 (rank designation), appointed by the ruler himself. In this case, the three eldest were of the princely family. The rest went from higher to lower, and it is clear that a man with a low rank could not command where a man with a higher status had to do. Each status had to be maintained by a certain number of horses and other animals: so 5000 manzabdar, for example, had to have 340 horses, 90 elephants, 80 camels, 20 mules and 160 carts. Manzabdar 10 was supposed to have four horses.
Humayun (son of Babur) teaches young Akbara to fire a rifle. Akbarman 1602 - 1604 British Library, London
To further confuse the issue of titles, a second number was added, giving an idea of the actual military obligations of this officer: this could be a man known as 4000 / 2000 or 3000 / 3000 manzabdar. The first figure was his zat or original military status, the second savard - a figure indicating his true obligations.
During the reign of Akbar, all manzabdars of 500 and above were called worlds, from the Arab emir. Some worlds had specific duties, such as Mir Bakhshi, who acted as a quartermaster general at the head of the army, paid money to the troops. Another important boss was Mir Saman, who oversaw all military arsenals, workshops and warehouses.
Akbar also introduced a complex system of rotation, in accordance with which the army was divided into 12 units, each of which was at the court year. One part of the 12 other parts for one month each year carried a security service. Finally, there was another level: the four main units of the army were divided into seven small units, each of which was responsible for the guard at the palace one day a week. Senior officers were to be regularly present at the court, and when the emperor was in the army, they should appear at his headquarters every morning and evening. Thus, he hoped to avoid a conspiracy, because it was very difficult to raise a soldier to speak with such a system.
One of the most fundamental changes introduced by Akbar was the payment of salaries. Theoretically, all manzabdars could receive their money directly from the central treasury. In fact, the system was very complex, and there were many factors influencing how much each person received. So the top-class officer Manzabdar 5000 received 30.000 rupees per month. Accordingly, the lower ranks received less, but many senior officers had ikta estates, which, however, were not inherited. The salary of an ordinary rider was based on what horses he had, that is, what the thoroughbred was a horse, the higher the salary. All ranks, including manzabdars, could receive allowances to salaries or cash prizes for good behavior. Accordingly, for each title a document was issued that was kept in the archives of the palace, and its copy was handed to the officer.
Interestingly, in the Mughal army, the size of the military contingents was determined by the rank of manzabdars, and who had a higher rank, he led more troops. About the youngest of the soldiers it is known that among them were "rider of one horse", "rider of two horses" and "three horses".
The Mughal Army also consisted of provincial and auxiliary units. The empire itself consisted of large provinces of suba, subdivided into many small areas of Sarka, where there were local law enforcement forces whose chiefs were appointed from Delhi. Each Sarkar consisted of small pargan or mahal areas, from which taxes were collected. The cumaks were local police forces that were recruited from people of different backgrounds.
As for the size of the Mughal army, it is very difficult to calculate. For example, Babur’s army in Afghanistan in 1507 had no more than 2000 people. By the time of Babur’s fifth invasion of India, this number may have grown to 15,000 or even 20,000. By the end of the 17 century, Aurangzeb might have had 200 000 cavalry. But the number of manzabdars can be determined with great accuracy, because they were all recorded. In 1596, they were 1803, and in 1690, no less than 14449. In the 1648 year Shah Jahan discovered that his army was - on paper - of men 440000, 200000 including cavalry, and ordinary manzabdarov 8000, 7000 elite Ahadith, 40000 infantry and artillery, as well as a contingent of riders 185000 different princes and nobles.
(To be continued)
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