The Army of the Indian Moghuls: Its Organization and Administration c13.31

c13.31

As a military term, what then was a *tūrah* or *tūrā*? In the passage having reference to the battle of Pānīpat, Pavet de Courteille, “Mémoires”, ii, 161, translates “sorte de palissades”. In his “Dictionnaire Turc-Oriental”, 225, the same author defines the *tūrah* as pieces of wood and iron bound together with chains and hooks, behind which the soldiers took shelter. The word appears in other places in Bābar’s memoirs. For instance, "the infantry marched in front, their *tūrah* raised in the air" (P. de C., i, 150, Ilminsky, p. 86, six lines from foot, Erskine, 74), and "orders were given to prepare *tūrah* and ladders, and also all that is necessary for the *tūrah*, without which a town cannot be taken by assault" (id. ii, 328). The exact kind of thing intended is thus left extremely vague, as is shown by Pavet de Courteille's alternatives ("Mémoires", ii, 328) "sorte de palissades ou de boucliers". Perhaps Bābar employed the word in a shifting, somewhat elastic sense, applying it to anything coming under the general meaning of "a shelter" or "a protection". I suppose it was usually what European military writers would call a mantlet (see Lake, "Sieges", 216, note). Apparently the same sort of thing was used by the Mahrattahs at the siege of Karnāla in 1670, where "they advanced by throwing up . . . . boards which they carry before them", Grant Duff, 110, quoting the Bombay Records. Quatremère, "Histoire des Mongoles de la Perse", i, 337, note, also holds that the *tūrah* was "une sorte de mantelet", relying on three passages in the *Zafarnāmah*, two in the *Ḥabīb-us-siyar*, and one respectively in the *Matlaʿ-us-saʿdain* and the *Akbarnāmah*¹.