The Army of the Indian Moghuls: Its Organization and Administration c13.28

c13.28

It is a little difficult to account for Nizām-ud-dīn making such a mistake. Perhaps finding a word *tūrah*, of which he did not know the meaning he altered it into the more obvious term, *tobrah*, a nose-bag. Although he thus obtained a word more definite in meaning than the other, one asks in astonishment how leather nose-bags could be converted into breast-works or palisades or shields? Here the ingenuity of *ʿAbd-ul-qādir*, Budāonī, comes to the rescue. In his *Muntakhab-ut-tawārīkh*, Bib. Ind., i, 334, line 4, which is almost word for word a copy of Nizām-ud-dīn, and therefore of the *Bābarnāmah*, he writes "between each pair of carts (*ʿarābah*), six or seven nose-bags (*tobrah*) full of earth (*pur-i-khāk*) were arranged”. Being furnished by Nizām-ud-dīn with the word *tobrah*, a nose-bag, he at once invented the earth with which he filled them, in order to make the use of such an unsuitable article somewhat more plausible. Of nose-bags there must have been plenty in an army consisting nearly entirely of cavalry, but even four thousand nine hundred of them (700 × 7) would furnish a very sorry protection to the soldiers, and if filled with earth could not be carried “raised in the air” as the *tūrah* occasionally was. Sir H. M. Elliot, “Mahomedan Historians”, vi, 469, accepts Budāonī’s version as quite satisfactory, and as affording a gratifying explanation of the use to which the nose-bags were put: see Dr. Horn, 74, 75, who gives the references just quoted, which I have verified. Colonel Ranking, i, 439, I am glad to see, takes the view that I do, namely, that *tobrah* is a wrong reading for *tūrah*. The difficulty about carrying in the air also throws doubt on D. Price’s (“Retrospect”, iv, 678) and H. Beveridge’s (*Akbarnāmah* i, 242) rendering of “gabion”; although in fairness, one is bound to admit that this word fits better than any other the description of the *tūrah* as used by Bābar at the battle of Pānīpat.