We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 September 2009
The opening line of Abu'l Faẓl's notice in Ā'īn-i Akbarī on “top” (gunpowder artillery) describes it as “a wonderful lock (qufl-i shiqarf) for securing the august edifice of royalty (iqbāl sarā-i jahānbānī) and a key (kulīd-i dilkushā) to the door of conquest (darwāza-i kishwarsitānī)” He then proceeds to claim that except for the Mediterranean/Ottoman territories (Rūmistān), in no other place was gunpowder artillery available in such abundance as in the Mughal Empire. These statements cannot be brushed aside as simple rhetoric. On the contrary, they may well be perceived as reflecting the significance gunpowder artillery had come to acquire with regard to two important matters, namely, (a) strengthening of central authority and (b) rapid military conquests leading to the annexation of vast territories.
1 Ā'in-i Akbari, i (Lucknow, 1893), p. 82.Google Scholar
2 For a detailed discussion of this evidence see my articles, “Early use of cannon and musket in India: A.D. 1442–1526”, Journal of Economic and Social History of the Orient, XXIV, Part II (1980), pp. 158–64Google Scholar and “Firearms in Central Asia and Iran during the fifteenth century, and the origin and nature of firearms brought by Babur”, Proceedings of Indian History Congress,56th session,Calcutta,1995, pp. 435–8.Google Scholar
3 Rauẓat al-ṣafā, vi (Lucknow, 1891), p. 242.Google Scholar
4 For references to the use of ra'd/kamān-i ra'd in the Persian texts written in India during fifteenth century see, Ḥakīm, Shihāb, Ma'āsir-i Maḥmūd Shāhī, edited by Ansari, Nurul Hasan (Delhi, 1968), pp. 38, 87Google Scholar and Gāwān, Maḥmūd, Riyāẓul-Inshā', edited by Chand, Shaikh (Hyderabad, 1948), p. 72. My comments on this evidence may be seen in “Early use of Cannons and Musket in India, A.D. 1442–1526”, cited in n. 2, pp. 162–4.Google Scholar
5 Manucci, Nicolas, Storia do Mogor, tr. Irvine, W., i (London, 1907–1908), pp. 150–1.Google Scholar For the use of the term “metal” in the contemporary European records to denote “hardened copper or brass” see Tout, T.F. in English Historical Review, XXVI (1911), p. 682.Google Scholar
6 Fitzclarence, , Journal of a Route Across India, 1817–18,Google Scholar cited by Irvine, William, The Army of the Indian Moghuls (reprint, Delhi, 1962), p. 115.Google Scholar
7 Ā'in-i Akbarī, i, p. 83.Google Scholar For a more accurate translation of the relevant passage see Habib, Irfan, “Akbar and technology” in Akbar And His India, ed. Habib, Irfan (Delhi, 1997), p. 142.Google Scholar Cf. Khan, Iqbal Ghani, “Metallurgy in medieval India – the case of the iron cannons”, Proceedings of the Indian History Congress(45th Session at Annamalainagar)(Delhi,1985), pp. 488–9. In his view, one way of forging barrels described by Abu'l Faẓl was also applicable to wrought-iron cannons.Google Scholar
8 Cf. Lal, Hira, Descriptive List of Inscriptions in the Central Provinces and Berar (Nagpur, 1916), p. 73.Google Scholar
9 Cipolla, Carlo M., Guns And Sails in the Early Phase of European Expansion, 1400–1700 (London, 1965), pp. 23–4.Google Scholar In the beginning, iron guns in Europe were mainly made by smiths “from bars of wrought-iron welded into crude tubes which were further strengthened by thick iron hoops shrunk over the tubes”. See also Tout, T.F., op. cit., p. 682.Google Scholar
10 The Travels ofLudovico di Varthema 1503–1508, tr. Jones, J.W. and Badger, G.P. (London, 1863), pp. 50–1.Google Scholar
11 Cf. Cipolla, Carlo M., Guns and Sails, pp. 22–3Google Scholar and Tout, T.F., op. cit., p. 682.Google Scholar
12 According to Djurdjice Petrovic (”Firearms in the Balkans on the eve of and after the Ottoman conquests of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries” in War Technology and Society in the Middle East, ed. Parry, V.J. and Yapp, M.E., London, 1975, pp. 175–6),Google Scholar artillery in the Balkans during the fifteenth century consisted of cannons that were larger than those of the preceding century. That subsequently this tendency to make large cannons spread to the Ottoman Empire is indicated by the presence of mortars, including wrought-iron ones, in the Ottoman artillery during the first quarter of the sixteenth century. For references to one such gun, a wrought-iron muzzle loading cannon made in 1516 and to an inventory of Ottoman cannons including wrought-iron mortars present at Jedda in 1525, see Guilmartin, J.F. Jr, Gunpowder And Galleys: Changing Technology And Mediterranean Warfare at Sea In The Sixteenth Century (London, 1974), p. 11, n. 5.Google Scholar
13 Rauẓat al-ṣafā, vi, p. 242.Google Scholar
14 Cf. Bābur-Nāma, (Vaqāyi'), ed. Mano, Eiji (Kyoto, 1995), pp. 487–8,Google Scholar and Beveridge, A.S., The Bābur-nāma in English (reprint, London, 1969), pp. 536, 588.Google Scholar
15 See Guilmartin, , Gunpowder and Galleys, p. 11 for reference to a Portuguese account commenting that Salman Reis's artillery in the Red Sea which included wrought-iron mortars was of Ottoman origin. His own assessment is that from sixteenth century standards these were “first-class guns fired by first-class gunners”.Google Scholar
16 The Travels of Ludovico di Varthema, 1503–1508, p. 262.Google Scholar
17 Cipolla, Carlo M., Guns and Sails, p. 28. According to a contemporary Italian text cited by the author, already by 1494, French armies invading Italy were carrying light guns, all cast in bronze which “were drawn by horses with such dexterity that they could keep up with the marching speed of army”. These guns were “shot at very short intervals”.Google Scholar
18 On ẓarbozans, compare Bābur-nāma in English, pp. 569, 656.Google Scholar A.S. Beveridge has translated the term ẓarbozan as “culverine”. For William Irvine's brief notice, see The Army of the Indian Moghuls, p. 113.Google Scholar
19 Habib, Irfan, “The technology and economy of Mughal India”, The Indian Economic and Social History Review, XVII, No. 1, p. 19.Google Scholar Compare also Khan, Iqbal Ghani, “Metallurgy in medieval India” in The Technology in Ancient and Medieval India, ed. Roy, Aniruddha and Bagchi, S.K. (Delhi, 1986), p. 74 where, in addition to the primitive nature of bellows, the inefficiency of “Indian furnaces” is also ascribed to the “refractory nature” of clay as well as continued reliance on wood charcoal.Google Scholar
20 Parker, Geoffrey, The Military Revolution (Cambridge, 1988), p. 128.Google Scholar
21 Travels of Thevenot and Careri, tr. and ed. Sinha, S.N. (New Delhi, 1949), p. 62.Google Scholar
22 ‘Abbās Khān Sarwāni mentions Sher Shāh's requisitioning of all the copper available in the market as well as in the households of troopers in the form of utensils for making cannons (deg-hā) during the siege of Raisen in 1543 (Tārikh-i Sher Shāhī MS., India Office, Ethe 219, f. 95a). Again during the siege ofKalinjarin 1545, according to 'Abdullāh, Sher Shāh made four thousand cannons (deg-hā-i ātishbāzī) each one of which weighed four mann, one Akbarī mann being equal to 5.32 lbs. (Tārikh-i Dāwūdī, ed. by Rashīd, Shaikh 'Abdur, Alilgarh, 1954, p. 158).Google Scholar
23 The Travels of Ludovico di Varthema, 1503–1508, p. 262.Google Scholar
24 Bābur-Nāma (Vaqāyi'), ed. Mano, Eiji, p. 488;Google Scholar Beveridge, A.S., Bābur-nāma in English, p. 536.Google Scholar
25 Compare Qaisar, Ahsan Jan, The Indian Response to European Technology and Culture (A.D. 1498–1707) (New Delhi, 1982), p. 47. While reproducing Varthema's passage containing this statement, Qaisar fails to grasp its real import.Google Scholar
26 An anonymous account by “a Florentine nobleman” of Vasco da Gama's landing at Calicut was printed by Giovanni Battista Ramusio (1485–1557). It speaks of an Indian pilot who accompanied Vasco da Gama to Lisbon in 1499. This Indian pilot is reported to have told the author of the account that “foreign” ships had landed in Calicut eighty years before (i.e. in 1419). These ships carried “bombards” which were much shorter than “the modern one”. Twenty or twenty-five of these ships returned every two or three years. Cf. Partington, , History of Greek Fire and Gunpowder (Cambridge, 1960), pp. 222–5.Google Scholar Compare, Digby, Simon in The Cambridge Economic History of India, i, c. 1200–c. 1750, ed. Raychaudhuri, Tapan and Habib, Irfan (Cambridge, 1982), p. 150: “ In the decades immediately before the arrival of Vasco da Gama knowledge of firearms was spreading around the Indian Ocean and in the isles of Indonesia”.Google Scholar
27 Needham, Joseph, Science and Civilization in China, Vol. V, Part 7 (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 290–2.Google Scholar
28 Habib, Irfan, “Technology and barrier to technological change in Mughal India”, (presented at Symposium on “Problems of Acclimatization of Foreign Technology”,Tokyo,25–8 February 1980),Google Scholar Indian Historical Review, V, Numbers 1–2, p. 166.Google Scholar
29 Cipolla, Carlo M., Guns and Sails, p. 27: “By the middle of the fifteenth century the core of the European artillery was represented by huge bombards of wrought-iron”.Google Scholar
30 For a detailed notice on Malik Maidan, see Cousins, Henry, Bijapur and Its Architectural Remains (Bombay, 1916), pp. 29–31.Google Scholar Compare Irvine, William, The Army of the Indian Moghuls, p. 124.Google Scholar
31 'Abdu'l Qādir Badāūni, Muntakhab ut Tāwārīkh, i, ed. by Ali, Ahmad, Ahmad, Kabir al-din and Lees, W.N., Bib. Ind., p. 412.Google Scholar Some of Islam Shāh's guns were so large that each one of them was dragged by one to two thousand men. Cf. Akbar's letter to Mun'im Khan entitled Fatḥ Namā-i Gujarāt, MS., Maulana Azad Library, AMU Aligarh, University Collection, Persian, Akhbār, No. 171, where Akbar mentions fifty large Islam Shāhi cannons (top-i kalān-i Islām Shāhī) still present at Agra around 1572. For an English translation of the document see my book, Political Biography of a Mughal Noble: Mun'im Khān Khān-i Khānān, 1497–1575 (New Delhi, 1973), pp. 125–30.Google Scholar
