The Army of the Indian Moghuls: Its Organization and Administration c14.2

c14.2

In spite of the almost complete silence of native authors, there is still evidence that up to the middle of the 18th century considerable bodies of Portuguese continued to be enlisted. For instance, we learn that Juliana d’Acosta, a Portuguese lady who held the office of matron of the harem, imported from Goa three hundred Portuguese, for most of whom she obtained employment (Gentil, “Mémoires”, p. 375). From the *Tārīkh-i-Muḥammadī* (year 1147 H.) we learn that “Julyā, a Farangi woman, a doctor and favourite of the deceased Shāh ʿĀlam (i. e. Bahādur Shāh) and of the reigning emperor, Mḥd Shāh, died at Dihlī in Rabīʿ i, 1147 (August 1734)”. Again, Father Tieffenthaler, a Jesuit priest from the Tyrol, spent about sixteen years between 1747 and 1764 as priest in charge of a community of Christians in the imperial service, who had settled down in the obscure town of Narwar, 108 miles south of Agrah, (Bernouilli, “Recherches sur l’Inde”, i, 175, and pp. 4, 5 of author’s preface).