Climate of Conquest
War, Environment, and Empire in Mughal North India
Pratyay Nath
1
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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 23
1.6 Western India 29
2.1 The Ganga–Brahmaputra Delta 59
2.2 The Brahmaputra Basin in Assam 70
2.3 The Lower Indus Basin 75
2.4 Kashmir and the Western Himalayas 84
2.5 Qandahar 92
2.6 Balkh and Badakhshan 100
ABBREVIATIONS
AA 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).
AB Ahom Buranji, ed. Surya Kumar Bhuyan (Guwahati: Department of Historical and Antiquarian Studies, 2010).
AD Ahom Buranji, (1648–1681 AD), ed. Sharat Kumar Datta (Guwahati: Department of Historical and Antiquarian Studies, 2010).
AG 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).
AJ 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).
Abbreviations
AK Muhammad Kazim, ‘Ālamgīr-nāma, ed. Maulvi Khadim Husain (Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1868).
AN 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).
AS Muhammad Salih Kambu, ‘Amal-i Ṣāliḥ, ed. Ghulam Yazdani, 3 vols (Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1923).
BG 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).
BL Abdul Hamid Lahori, Bādshāh-nāma, ed. Maulawis Kabiruddin and Abdul Rahim, 2 vols (Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1867–8).
BN Zahiruddin Muhammad Babur, Bāburnāma: Memoirs of Bābur, trans. Annette Susannah Beveridge, 2 vols (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt. Ltd, 1998).
DB Surya Kumar Bhuyan, ed. Deodhai Ahom Buranji (Guwahati: Department of Historical and Antiquarian Studies, 2001).
FA Ishwardas Nagar, Futuhat-i Alamgiri, trans. and ed. Tasneem Ahmad (Delhi: Idarah-i Adabiyat-i Delli, 1978).
FI Shihabuddin Talish, Fathiyyah-i Ibriyyah, trans. Jadunath Sarkar, in Jadunath Sarkar, Studies in Aurangzib’s Reign (Calcutta: Orient Longman, 1989), 115–47.
HN Gulbadan Begum, The History of Humāyūn or HumāyūnNāma, trans. A.S. Beveridge (Delhi: Low Price Publications, 2006).
IJ Motamad Khan, Iqbālnāma-i Jahāngīrī, ed. Maulawis Abd al-Haii and Ahmad Ali (Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1865).
KB Surya Kumar Bhuyan, ed. Kamrupar Buranji (Guwahati: Department of Historical and Antiquarian Studies, 1987).
MT 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).
MA 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).
MJ 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).
MK Khwaja Kamgar Husaini Ghairat Khan, Ma’āsir-i Jahāngīrī, ed. Azra Alavi (Bombay: Asian Publishing House, 1978).
ML 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).
MM Saqi Mustaid Khan, Ma’āsir-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).
NT 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).
SN 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).
TA Khwajah Nizamuddin Ahmad, Tabaqāt-i Akbarī, ed. Brajendranath De, 3 vols (Calcutta: Asiatic Society
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).
TB Zain Khan, Tabaqāt-i Bāburī, trans. Sayed Hasan Askari (Delhi: Idarah-i Adabiyat-i Delli, 1982).
TF 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).
TJ 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).
TQ 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).
TV 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).
TS 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).
TT 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
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,
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
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.
(tālibān-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.
ClimateofConquest:War,Environment,andEmpireinMughalNorthIndia. Pratyay Nath, Oxford University Press (2019). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199495559.001.0001
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.
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).
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
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.
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.
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
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).
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
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
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.
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).
