The Army of the Indian Moghuls: Its Organization and Administration c14.5

c14.5

*Mīr Ātash*. At the head of the artillery was one of the great officers of state, the *Mīr Ātash* (Lord of Fire), or *Daroghah-i-topkhānah* (Superintendent of the Cannon department). Sometimes, as in Jahāndār Shāh's reign (1712), we read of two such officers, one at the head of all the artillery, and the other in special command of the light artillery attached to the emperor's person. These men were *manṣabdārs*, graded in the usual way according to their services or the favour in which they stood. But the rest of the men on the establishment of the imperial artillery were paid direct from imperial funds, and in this respect were treated differently from the main body of the army, which consisted almost entirely of cavalry, men dependent upon and paid by the chief under whose banner they enlisted. There were, as we know, some bodies of cavalry in direct pay of the emperor, such as the Aḥadīs, the Wālā Shāhī and so forth. But all the rest of the men so paid, matchlockmen, artillery-men and artificers, including such an unmilitary class as cotton-carders and such like, seem to have been lumped together under one head as Aḥshām. One point that these men had in common appears to have led to this incongruous classification. They were all borne on the imperial treasury pay-rolls, and paid direct therefrom as persons in the immediate employ of the emperor, and not entertained through any chief or manṣabdār, to whom their pay could be disbursed.