The Army of the Indian Moghuls: Its Organization and Administration c11.s1.27

c11.s1.27

Quiver. The Persian name is tarkash: but I have found the Arabic word ja‘bah used once on fol. 59b of the Farrukhnāmah of Shekh Muhammad Mun‘im, Ja‘farābādī (4th year of Farrukhsīyar). It was generally a flat case, broad at the mouth, one side straight and the other sloping to a point, provided with a strap for carrying over the shoulder. This broad shape is due apparently to the fact that the quiver was used to hold the bow as well as the arrows, see plate xvii in B. M. Addl. 5254 (Rieu, 780), and the plate in Valentyn, opposite iv, 304. There must have been, however, separate bow-cases, *qirbān*, for they are named as well as the *tarkash*, or quiver, in Kāmwar Khān’s entry of the 21st Zūl Qa‘dah 1134 H. In the India Museum are five specimens, Egerton, Nos 367, 369 (p. 108), 460 (p. 115), 601, 602 (p. 130). Of these one is of an unusual shape, namely, cylindrical. Common quivers were covered with leather, more costly ones with blue or red velvet, and these were often embroidered on one side in gold or silver. These covers sometimes were applied to strange uses. During Humāyūn’s exile in Persia (1544), Shāh Tahmāsp folded up his carpet, so that no one could share any portion. Humāyūn would thus have been forced to sit on the bare ground, when one of his followers took off the ornamented cover of his quiver, tore it open and spread it as a seat for his master, Erskine, “Baber and Humāyūn”, ii, 294. The quiver is No. 16 of the *Āīn* list, i, 110, and it appears as figure No. 15 on plate xii. One of a slightly different shape from the usual pattern is given in Egerton’s plate i (p. 24), copied from that in Langlès’ “Monuments.” Here the quiver is the same width all the way down, having one side straight and the other shaped in two crescent-like curves.