The Army of the Indian Moghuls: Its Organization and Administration c12.s1.45

c12.s1.45

*Ḥuqqah-i-ātash*. Horn, 29, refers to Budāonī, i, 376, line 7 from bottom, but I think it must be, i, 371, 372. (Ranking, 482). It was at the siege of Kālinjar in Bundelkhand in 952 H. (1545—1546). Sher Shāh stood near the wall and ordered *ḥuqqah* to be thrown into the fort. By chance one of these struck the wall and coming back with force broke in pieces, and the fragments falling on the other *ḥuqqahs*, set fire to them and blew up Sher Shāh. This passage does not show whether they were bombs fired from a mortar or thrown by the hand; but it is clear that they must have been one or the other. It shows that the projectile itself was called *ḥuqqah*, a name derived no doubt from some resemblance in shape to the ordinary *ḥuqqah* used in smoking. Steingass, 426, has *ḥuqqah-i-ātash*, a kind of rocket used in war. *Ḥuqqah* were used in 1044 H. (1634—5) by the defenders of Dhāmonī in Bundelkhand, *Bādshāhnāmah*, i, part 2, p. 108. The Central Asian word for the same thing seems to have been *qārorah*, see *Mujmil-ut-tārīkh ba‘d Nādirīyah*, p. 78, line 13. We meet with another mention of these *huqqah* in an account of an assault on Dīg by Najaf Khān’s troops in 1191 H. (1777), see Khair-ud-dīn Mḥd, *‘Ibratnāmah*, i, p. 425. The Rohelahs scaled the wall by digging their knives into it and helping each other up, then *hiṣārīyān, ḥairān-i-nairangī-i-rozgār, sabūchahā o ḥaqqah-hāe bārūt bar sar-i-shān mī andākhtand*. “The garrison, harrassed by the instability of fortune, threw on their heads small pots (*sabūchah*) and *huqqahs* of gunpowder”. This goes to show they were hand-grenades. The same author, i, 75, speaks on an earlier occasion of the garrison of Paṭnah in 1173 H. (1759) resisting an assault by *sabūchah-i-bārūt*. There are some farther remarks on the *huqqah* under the head of Sieges.