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Nature of Gunpowder Artillery in India during the Sixteenth Century – a Reappraisal of the Impact of European Gunnery

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2009

Iqtidar Alam Khan
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Extract

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.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , April 1999 , pp. 27 - 34
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1999

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References

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

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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

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11 Cf. Cipolla, Carlo M., Guns and Sails, pp. 22–3Google Scholar and Tout, T.F., op. cit., p. 682.Google Scholar

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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

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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

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