The Army of the Indian Moghuls: Its Organization and Administration c13.25

c13.25

*ʿArābah*. Does Bābar by this word mean nothing but a cart, or does he include in it the field piece also? The question is an interesting one. When recounting his preparations for the battle of Pānīpat in April 1526, Bābar, “Mémoires”, P. de C., ii, 161, tells us that he ordered his men to bring as many *ʿarābah* as they could, and they collected seven-hundred. These were bound together with strips of hide, and in the intervals palisades of some sort (*tūrah*) were erected, the whole forming a kind of stockade or field protection. How, then, should we translate here the word *ʿarābah*? Literally it is, of course, cart; and for that literal version Pavet de Courteille, ii, 273, and Dr. Horn, 28, give their vote. On the contrary, Leyden and Erskine, “Memoirs of Baber”, 304, prefer to render the word by “gun-carriage” and in other places “gun”. Sir Henry Elliot follows suit, “Mah. Hist.”, vi, 468, adding the curious assertion that “Bābar had no light pieces at Pānīpat”. Pavet de Courteille admits that a cart (*ʿarābah*), being used to transport a field piece, could also be described as a “gun-carriage”. But the main objection to this rendering is, in his opinion and that of Dr. Horn, the improbability that Bābar had 700 cannon of any sort at Pānīpat; or that in another instance, given by Bābar, the Persians could have had 2000 pieces, the word used being in both cases the same, that is, *ʿarābah* (P. de Courteille, “Mémoires”, ii, 161, 376). Elphinstone, “History”, 363, following W. Erskine in his later work on Bābar and Humāyūn, i, 433, writes, “linked his guns together by ropes of twisted leather”.