The Army of the Indian Moghuls: Its Organization and Administration c13.27

c13.27

*Tūrah* or *Tobrah*. As part of this question of Bābar's use of guns in his battle against Ibrāhīm Lodī at Pānīpat, there arises a curious side issue about the meaning of the obscure word *tūrah*, توره, or *tobrah*, توبـره. First of all, which is correct, *tūrah* or *tobrah*? The latter form is that used by Nizām-ud-dīn, *Tabaqāt-i-Akbar Shāhī*, fol. 141*a*, followed by his friend, *ʿAbd-ul-qādir*, Budāonī, (Bibl. Ind. i, 334, line 4). It does not seem to be a scribe's error, for in that case it would not have been adopted by a contemporary, Budāonī, without any question. It is strange that Nizām-ud-dīn Bakhshī, a soldier, a man highly placed at Akbar's court, and living barely two generations from Bābar's time, should have misread Bābar's "Memoirs", from which, as is quite evident, he derived his information about the battle of Pānīpat. Yet all the other sources that I have been enabled to consult agree in giving the word as *tūrah*. I am indebted to Mr. H. Beveridge for many valuable notes on these authorities. An excellent manuscript of the Turkī *Bābarnāmah* owned by Mr. Sayyad Alī Bilgramī, fol. 264*b*, line 6, has *tūrā* twice in the same line; Ilminsky's Turkish text, p. 341, four lines from foot, has *tūrā* twice; the Bombay lithographed edition of the Persian text, p. 173, has *tūrah*. In the *Akbarnāmah* (Lucknow edition i, 74, line 2), Abul Fazl, who is here evidently using Bābar's "Memoirs", has *tūrah*. Then Erskine and Leyden, in their translation of the *Bābarnāmah*, p. 304, found the word to be *tūrah* in the manuscripts they used; and in a later work, "History of India", i, 433, Erskine practically adheres to this version. To sum up, there can be little doubt, I think, that the word Bābar used was *tūrah* and not *tobrah*.