Oh, West is West, East is East, and they will not leave their places, Until Heaven and Earth appear at the Last Judgment of the Lord.
But there is no East, and there is no West, that the tribe, homeland, clan, If the strong with the strong face to face at the edge of the earth stands up?
("Ballad of West and East". R. Kipling)
In 1987, in the publishing house "Polymya" in Belarus, my first book was published: "From everything at hand." She had a circulation of 87 thousand copies and, nevertheless, she sold out in two weeks! It was a pleasure to work with the editor, but due to her engineering background, she sometimes asked me rather strange questions. For example, “Do you know exactly what to write about the Mughal Empire? Maybe the Mongols? Where to check? " I replied that in TSB and that was the end of it, especially since I knew who they were. But I wanted to know more about them than the TSB and the textbooks of that time reported. And it turned out that later I met the English historian David Nichol, who specialized in the culture of the East, and he gave 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 VO readers as well.
He begins with an explanation of the term and writes that often the word "Mongol" is written in English as "Mughal" or "Mogul", and today it also means … an oligarch. But this is, in fact, their name in Persian, and it was this transliteration that got into the English language. As for Babur, the founder of the Mughal dynasty, he was of Turkic-Mongolian origin from the clan Timur-i-Lenk (Tamerlane) from his father's side and Genghis Khan's from his mother's side. Although Babur did not like being called a Mongol and preferred to be known as a Turk, the name "Mughal" "stuck" to the rulers of his family and the subsequent representatives of the dynasty became known in Europe as the Great Moguls.
Indian helmet from the Deccan province, 17th century Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
The reign of the Mughals in India has not always been favored by historians. During the British rule of India, the Mughal period was often portrayed as barbaric. Some modern Indian historians also criticize the Mughals for trying to keep India from British conquest, that is, from progress and civilization. But why this is so is understandable. After all, they in turn were foreign conquerors, and represented the Muslim minority among the dominant Hindu majority of the population of India for many centuries.
In fact, the spread of Islam in India took place long before Babur's invasion of this subcontinent. Muslims have been part of the ruling elite in northwestern India for nearly a thousand years. In northern and central India, many of the local military aristocracy also belonged to Persians, Afghans, or were of Mongol 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 from 1605-1615. British Museum, London.
The troops that met the Mughals in northern India were armed and staffed in about the same way as those of the neighboring Muslim states. Moreover, by the beginning of the 16th century, Turkish influence was especially strong in the army of Gujarat, a coastal region that had especially strong trade ties with the Middle East, from which it received firearms.
Indian (Muslim) armor from the Deccan province, XVII century. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
The situation in southern 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 conversion to Islam opened up career opportunities for everyone. Even in the Muslim states of the Dean, only a small portion of the ruling elite was properly Muslim. Mughal Hindu subjects quickly took advantage of the situation and managed to get to the very top.
State of the Great Mughals
At the end of the 15th century, Babur, who had previously fought for power in Samarkand, by coincidence was forced to direct his military aspirations to the south, where he achieved success. In the battles of Panipat in April 1526 and at 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 Mughal rulers, however, adopted many aspects of the life of the Hindu kingdom, in particular the extraordinary ritualization of court life. Mughal palaces and costumes impressed not only Europeans with their splendor, but even the rulers of neighboring Iran and the Ottoman Empire - who were, at least, not poorer than them.
Paradoxical as it may sound, the indigenous peoples of India lived better in the hands of these alien Mongols than in the hands of local Hindu rulers. Of course, they enslaved many Dravidian forest tribes, but the Hindu Marathi would simply kill them. As for the army, at first it was based on the traditions of the Timurids, but after they created their state in India, Muslim and Hindu military traditions were very much mixed in it. In particular, the number of paid professional warriors has increased significantly.
Miniature from Zahir ad-Din Muhammad's manuscript "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 him. Muslim-Sikh hatred, which continues to this day, also began in the era of Jahangir. Shah Jahan's reign was magnificent, but beneath that splendor lay many serious problems for the Mughal empire. Under his successor, Aurangzeb, the northern and western parts of Afghanistan fell away from her, as they were too far from Delhi to receive adequate military support. Within five years after his death, the empire collapsed into the abyss of civil war, uprisings and disintegration. Nevertheless, the prestige of the Great Mughals was so high that it outlived their real power and power for a long time.
In the early 18th century, the Mughals of Delhi were at war with Afghans from the west and Maratha Hindus from the south. The followers of the new religion, the Sikhs, also claimed military dominance. More and more there were local independent princes who had their own armies. Well, then what was left of the Mughal empire was under British protection; but, as they say, this is a completely different story.
Miniature from Zahir ad-Din Muhammad's manuscript "Babur". Scene of the Battle of Panipat. Walters Museum.
For his contemporaries, Babur seemed an incomprehensible person, since he did not have specific national affections, but attractive: a brave, cheerful, poet, writer, he had much in common with the condottiers of Renaissance Italy, but if this is understandable to us, Europeans, then for the people of the East it was more than unusual.
Babur's first troops were small and consisted of Turkish, Mongol, Iranian and Afghan troops. Babur's cavalry was organized according to the Mongol model, that is, it consisted of tumens led by tumandars - a structure that has changed little since the time of the Mongol armies of Genghis Khan.
Indian chain mail armor 1632 - 1633 Weight 10.7 kg. Metropolitan Museum.
The main strength of Babur's army lay in the excellent discipline and tactics he learned from his first Uzbek enemies. Babur could strengthen discipline with fierce punishments, but he rarely used this in practice. In his detailed autobiography of Baburname (literally "Babur's Book") he gives interesting details about what his army was like. The elite, of course, was the cavalry, which used horse armor. Wick muskets were widely used, from which they fired, hiding behind wooden shields on supports.
He won some victories by using horse archers to pursue the enemy in the traditional way. Baburname also describes the sending of messages by spies from the enemy's camp, which they attached to arrows and sent to their own at night. During the siege of horses, Babur's warriors could feed leaves mixed with wet shavings - a technique unknown before him.
Akbar's reforms
The son of the padishah Humayun (son of Babur) Akbar was probably the greatest Mughal ruler. He was distinguished by religious tolerance and even tried to unite Islam and Hinduism in a new religion of his own composition, which he called "Divine Faith." Akbar also reorganized the army. He decided that now it will 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 the officer ranks. Well, the main idea is that promotion in rank will depend on merit, and not on nobility. But the reforms were difficult. During the invasion of the Deccan in 1599, for example, the army almost mutinied because the money did not reach it, and the soldiers had to almost starve.
Officer ranks
In accordance with the new structure of Akbar's army, it had 33 officer ranks. All were Manzabdars, but the highest were Manzabdars 10000, 8000 and 7000 (designation of rank), appointed by the ruler himself. At the same time, the three oldest were of the princely family. The rest went from higher to lower, and it is clear that a person with a lower rank could not command where a person with a higher status should have done it. Each status had to be supported by a certain number of horses and other animals: so the Manzabdar 5000, 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 Akbar to shoot a gun. Akbarman 1602 - 1604 British Library, London
To further confuse the issue of ranks, a second number was added, which gave an idea of the real military obligations of this officer: this way a person could be known as Manzabdar 4000/2000 or 3000/3000. The first number was his zat or original military status, the second savar was a number indicating his true obligations.
During the reign of Akbar, all Manzabdars 500 and above were called worlds, from the Arab emir. Some worlds had specific responsibilities, such as Mir Bakhshi, who acted as quartermaster general at the head of the army, and paid money to the troops. Another important chief was Mir Saman, who oversaw all military arsenals, workshops and warehouses.
Akbar also introduced a complex rotation system, according to which the army was divided into 12 parts, each of which was at the court for a year. One of the 12 other units carried out a security service for one month every year. Finally, there was another level: the four main divisions of the army were divided into seven small units, each of which was responsible for guarding the palace one day a week. Senior officers were required to attend regularly at court, and when the emperor was in the army, they were required to appear at his headquarters every morning and evening. Thus, he hoped to avoid a conspiracy, because it was very difficult to raise soldiers to perform under such a system.
One of the most fundamental changes Akbar introduced was the payment of salaries. In theory, all manzabdars could receive their money directly from the central treasury. In reality, the system was very complex, and there were many factors that affect how much each person received. So the top-class officer Manzabdar 5000 received 30,000 rupees a 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 kind of horses he had, that is, the breed the horse was, the higher the salary. All ranks, including the Manzabdars, could receive salary allowances or cash prizes for good behavior. Accordingly, for each title, a document was issued that was kept in the archives of the palace, and a copy of it was given to the officer.
Interestingly, in the Mughal army, the size of the military contingents was determined by the rank of the Manzabdars, and whoever had a higher rank led more troops. It is known about the youngest of the soldiers that among them were "the rider of one horse", "the rider of two horses" and "three horses".
The Mughal army also consisted of provincial and auxiliary units. The empire itself consisted of large suba provinces, subdivided into many small regions of the Sarka, where there was a local force for the maintenance of order, the chiefs of which were appointed from Delhi. Each sarkar consisted of small areas of pargan or mahal, from which taxes were collected. The Kumaks were a local police force that was recruited from a wide variety of backgrounds.
As for the size of the Mughal army, it is very difficult to calculate it. For example, Babur's army in Afghanistan in 1507 numbered no more than 2,000 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 17th century, Aurangzeb may have had 200,000 cavalry. But the number of manzabdars can be determined with great accuracy, because they were all recorded. In 1596 there were 1803, and in 1690 no less than 14449. In 1648, Shah Jahan discovered that his army consisted - on paper - of 440,000 men, including 200,000 cavalry, and 8,000 ordinary manzabdars, 7,000 elite ahadis. 40,000 infantry and artillerymen, as well as 185,000 horsemen from contingents of various princes and nobles.
(To be continued)
