The Army of the Indian Moghuls: Its Organization and Administration c19.7

c19.7

Some of the tents were of an enormous size. These was one made by order of Shāhjahān which bore the name of Dil-bādil (Generous Heart). When Bahādur Shāh ordered this tent to be erected at Lāhor in the year 1711, five hundred tent-pitchers and carpenters were employed for one month in putting it up, and in so doing several persons were killed (*Mirāt-ul-Iṣṭilāḥ*, 218*b*). Kāmwar Khān, entry of 4th Sha‘bān 1123 H. (16th Sept. 1711), says this tent cost 50,000 rupees. A later writer, *Seir*, i, 25, note 32, says the emperor’s camp was about one and a quarter miles in circuit, it contained one hundred and twenty tents, some of them big enough for several hundreds of men, and the largest might admit two thousand or three thousand. All this was surrounded by a *qanāt*, or wall of cloth six feet high, outside which is a paling which surrounds the whole: and it is betwixt these two enclosures that live the guards. Further off, there is another paling, and here, too, in the intermediate space reside guards and people attached to the imperial household, such as chairmen, watermen, or taper-bearers. See also Cambridge, “War”, Introd. v, for an account of Nāṣir Jang’s camp in 1750, over twenty miles in circumference. There is also a good description of a native camp in Wilks, i, 292, referring to the year 1752, where he tells us of the motley collection of cover, from superb tents down to ragged blankets; tents and animals all intermixed; the only mark of order being the flags set up by each chief, the only regularly laid out lines being those of the traders’ booths or shops.