The Army of the Indian Moghuls: Its Organization and Administration c14.11

c14.11

Some writers, Mīrzā Muḥammad, for instance, in his Tārīkh-i-Muḥammadī, invariably use for an artillery officer the word mink-bāshī where others use Hazārī. Ghulām ʿAlī Khān, Muqaddamah-i-Shāh ʿAlam-nāmah, fol. 64a, also uses that word. Kām Rāj, Āʿzam-ul-ḥarb, fol. 120b, uses both Mink-bāshī and Hazārī in the same sentence. The two are equivalent in meaning, for mink-bāshī is the Turkish for “Commander of 1000” (mink, 1000, bāsh, head), See Horn, 14, 136, (Taimūr’s Ordinances, Davy and White, 231). Of course, this and the other Turkish terms for commanders of various ranks must have been known to and used by the Moghuls up to the time that Bābar conquered India. But it does not seem as if the Turkish words passed into the official nomenclature of Hindūstān. In that country all the ranks (manṣab) were known by their Persian aud not by their Chaghatāe Turkish names. Apparently the Āīn-i-Akbarī (at least, judging from Blochmann’s translation) makes no use of the word Mink-bāshī. From this I infer that the word came into India with the Turks from Constantinople, who were the chiefs and leaders in the Indian artillery during the earlier Moghul period. As the services of these and of Europeans, who were also employed, were much prized, they may have been accorded at first the rank of commander of 1000 (i. e. *mink-bāshī* or *hazārī*), and although, as the Indians themselves grew more familiar with the working of artillery, the estimation and market value of an artillery officer diminished, the original name of *Hazārī* or *Mink-bāshī* may have stuck to the office, after the rank denoted thereby had ceased to belong to it. This designation of *Hazārī* explains the epithet in Blacker, “War”, 340, applied to the Mahratta *qila‘hdār* or commandant of Mandlak (Central India), viz. Ṣāḥib Rāe Hazārī, or as Blacker spells it, Hazeree. Possibly also Pogson’s “Lulloo Hoozooree”, commandant of Ajaigarh in Bundelkhand, ought to be *Hazārī* (“Hist. of the Boondelas”, 135).