[Pramāṇa](https://indike.org/pramana/) › [Studies](https://indike.org/pramana/ins) › [Polity, law and society](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity) › [The Army of the Indian Moghuls: Its Organization and Administration](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.irvine-1903) › c19 # The Army of the Indian Moghuls: Its Organization and Administration c19: Chapter XVII The Army of the Indian Moghuls: Its Organization and Administration c19 - **Language:** English ### Chapter XVII ### [c19.1](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.irvine-1903.c19.1) Each soldier seems to have had the shelter of a tent, even if it consisted only of a cotton cloth raised on two sticks. The kinds of tents were numerous, from the \*rāutī\*, a mere low awning, up to the huge imperial tents. The \*Āīn\*, i, 54, names twelve different kinds of tents. I have just spoken of one of these, the \*Rāutī\*, and of another, the \*Gulālbār\*, not a tent but an enclosure, I shall speak further on. The \*sarāpardah\* N°. 11 also is a screen and not a tent. From a perusal of the passage referred to, coupled with plates x and xi, it is fairly easy to understand what each of these tents was like. The \*Shamiyānah\*, N°. 9, is still known and in common use; the name may be from \*shām\*, evening, that is an awning for use in the evening, or from \*shāmah\* (Steingass, 725), a veil. The \*khargāh\*, N°. 8, (Steingass, 456) are spoken of by Bernier, 359, note 4, and 362, where he says they are folding tents with one or two doors, and made in various ways; he calls them "cabinets", and leads us to infer that they were set up inside the large tents. The emperor and the great nobles were provided with tents in duplicate, one set being sent on to the next camping ground while the other set was in use (Bernier, 359). The tents thus sent on were known as the \*pesh-khānah\* (literally "advance-house"). ### [c19.2](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.irvine-1903.c19.2) Camp, description of. The laying out of the emperor's camp, a plan continued to the last, is described in the \*Āīn\*, i, 47, and is shown with more detail in plate iv. In the centre was the imperial enclosure of canvas screens 1530 yards long, and about one fifth of that distance in breadth. It was divided across in its length into four courts. Over the entrance, which faced in the direction of the next march, was the drum-house (\*naqār-khānah\*), in the second court was the audience tent, in the third a more private hall, and in the fourth the sleeping tents. Behind was a place for Akbar’s mother, while outside and still more to the rear were the women’s apartments, surrounded on all four sides by guards. Along the outside of the enclosure were ranged on each side the \*kārkhānahs\*, or departments of the household and arsenal, about ten tents on each side. Still further away and towards each corner, the tents of the guards were erected. Outside the gate of the enclosure were the elephants and horses with their establishments on one side; and the records, the carts and litters, the general of artillery, and the hunting leopards on the other. A description of Jahāngīr’s camp will be found in Cambridge, “War”, Introd. v, who quotes it from Sir Thomas Roe’s journal, the chief impression produced on the ambassador’s mind being that of immense size. ### [c19.3](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.irvine-1903.c19.3) A good account of the mode of pitching an imperial camp is to be found in Bernier, 360, 361. First of all the Mīr Manzil selected a fit spot for the emperor’s tents. This was a square enclosure 300 paces each way. The whole of this was surrounded by screens (\*qanāt\*), seven or eight feet high, secured by cords to pegs and stayed by poles fixed at an angle, one inside and one outside, at every ten paces. The entrance was in the centre of one of the sides. On each side of the gate (Bernier, 363) were two handsome tents, where were kept a number of horses ready saddled and caparisoned ¹. In front of the entrance was a clear space, at the end of which stood the \*naqār-khānah\*, or station for the drums, trumpets and cymbals. Close to it was the \*chaukī-khānah\*, or tent of the officer on guard for the day. ### [c19.4](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.irvine-1903.c19.4) ¹ This is, no doubt, what we read of so often under the name of the \*jilau\*. ### [c19.5](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.irvine-1903.c19.5) Round the enclosure were the imperial bazars, through which a street led from the gate in the direction of the next day's march, marked out by long poles, which were surmounted by yak tails and placed at 300 paces from each other. The princes and great nobles pitched their camps at various distances, sometimes of several miles, from the emperor's tents. Each was surrounded by the tents of his men and his own bazar, the only order observed being that the chief's tents must face towards the imperial Public Audience-hall (Bernier, 366). Bernier estimates, 367, that where there was ample space for spreading, ‘Ālamgīr's whole camp would have measured about six miles in circumference. The bazars were marked out (Bernier, 365) by long poles surmounted, as already said, by the tails of the great Tibet cow “which have the appearance of so many periwigs”. ### [c19.6](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.irvine-1903.c19.6) The camp is thus described by Catrou, French ed., 4to, p. 128, 12mo, iv, 40, 57, possibly borrowing from Bernier, although he professes to have the Venetian, Manucci, as his authority: “The camp where this numerous army rested was laid out daily in the same manner, so far as the nature of the ground permitted. A great enclosure was roped off of square shape, and this was surrounded by a deep ditch. The heavy artillery was ranged from distance to distance and defended the approaches. The emperor's palace was placed in the centre of the camp. This also was square in shape and the light artillery was disposed all round it. The tents of the generals, of a much less height than those of the emperor, were pitched in the different quarters of the camp. The sutlers and traders of all sorts had streets assigned to them. To sum up it may be said that Aurangzeb dragged in his train a travelling city as large and as peopled as his capital”. ### [c19.7](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.irvine-1903.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. ### [c19.8](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.irvine-1903.c19.8) Colour of tents. The tents of the emperor, his sons, and grandsons were of a red cloth, called \*khārwah\*, a stout canvas-like cotton cloth, dyed red with the root of the \*āl\* plant. Round the emperor’s tents was the enclosure called the \*gulālbār\*. Some of the great nobles such as the vice-gerent (\*wakīl-i-mutlaq\*) or the chief minister, (\*Jamdat-ul-mulk\*) were allowed \*patāpatī\* or striped tents, one red stripe and one white stripe alternately. \*Patī\* is H. for a strip of anything, (\*Mirāt-ul-Iṣṭilāḥ\*, fol. 27\*b\* and Bernier, 366). The latter writer on p. 362 seems to imply that the imperial tents also were striped outside, but as his phrase is “ornamented with stripes”, perhaps the two statements are not absolutely conflicting. ### [c19.9](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.irvine-1903.c19.9) \*Gulālbār\*. The name of the screen which Bernier speaks of as being put up round the emperor’s tents was the \*Gulālbār\*. It is mentioned in the \*Āīn\*, i, 45, 54, but a fuller description will not be out of place, since the word frequently appears in histories, and it is well to have a definite idea of what is meant. \*Gulāl\* in Hindī means “red” and \*bār\*, “anything in the nature of a wall which prevents entrance or passage through it”. Thus the whole word is equivalent to “Red Wall”. Before Akbar’s time the tents of the Gurgānī kings were surrounded by a rope called the \*tanāb-i-qūruq\* (lit. “the rope of hindrance”). In Akbar’s reign the \*gulālbār\* was devised. It was formed out of bambus coloured red and held together by leather straps like a net-work (\*jālī\*), and so made that it might be extended or gathered up at will. Its height was three \*gaz\*, or about eight feet, and it had two gateways to the front and one on the side where the harem tents stood. This screen was erected round the imperial tents, which were styled collectively the \*Daulat-khānah\* (literally, Abode of Prosperity). Outside it a ditch was dug, and red flags, an attribute of sovereignty, were displayed on poles (\*Mirāt-ul-Iṣṭilāḥ\*, fol. 203\*a\*). ### [c19.10](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.irvine-1903.c19.10) \*Jālī\*. The word \*jālī\* is similarly met with in reference to the precincts of the emperor’s tent. The derivation is from H. \*jāl\*, a net, and it means lattice, grating, network. From the passage quoted in the last paragraph and another in the same book, we see that this network (\*jālī\*) was the \*gulālbār\* under another name. But a European observer, who probably had seen an emperor’s camp, says the \*gulālbār\* was the outer paling fifty yards from the \*qanāts\*, or cloth screens seven feet high, which enclosed the emperor’s tents (\*Seir\*, i, 159, note 120). For \*gulālbār\* Khūshḥāl Chand in one place, Berlin Ms. 495, fol. 1010\*a\*, uses \*ṣalābat-bār\* “majestic-enclosure”: and Ashob, fol. 196\*b\*, claims it as the invention of Ṣalābat Khān¹, Mīr Ātash to ʿĀlamgīr, gulāl-bārah being nothing more than a popular name. Ashob gives a minute description of its construction; this differs in details from that of Anand Rām given above. The tents of princes continued to be protected by the old device of a rope, which still bore the name of tanāb-i-qūruq, or rope of prohibition (Mirāt-ul-I.). ### [c19.11](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.irvine-1903.c19.11) ¹ According to the Ma,āsir-ul-umarā, ii, 742, Khwājah Mīr, Khwāfī, (Ṣalābat Khān) was made Mīr Ātash in the 23rd year of ʿĀlamgīr, then removed, but reappointed in the 25th year; he died in 1103 H. (the 36th year). The Tārīkh-i-Muḥammadī says he died in 1104 H. Neither the Ma,āsir-ul-umarā nor the Ma,āsir-i-ʿĀlamgīrī makes any mention of his having invented the gulāl-bār. ### [c19.12](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.irvine-1903.c19.12) Rahkalah-bār. This word is literally rahkalah, field-piece, plus bār, enclosure. It was the park of artillery arranged at the entrance of the imperial quarters, or round them, as a protection against attack. The quarters of the Mīr Ātash were at the imperial gateway (Dānishmand Khān, entry of 4th Zu,l Hijjah 1119 H., and Bernier, 363). ### [c19.13](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.irvine-1903.c19.13) Harem women with armies (Horn, 57). On all campaigns a harem of women with their attendants seems to have accompanied the emperor and the chief men. On the day of battle these women were put on elephants and carefully guarded by the force forming the rear guard, which was posted at some distance behind the centre, where stood the emperor or other chief commander. Many references might be quoted in illustration of this statement. The habit of being followed by a harem might be justified in cases where the camp was the only home, for perhaps years at a time. But the practice was the same even on short campaigns. For instance, the redoutable Ghāzī-ud-dīn Khān, ʿImād-ul-mulk, who became wazīr at sixteen years of age and had deposed two emperors before he was five and twenty, was born in his maternal grandfather, Qamr-ud-dīn Khān’s, camp. This noble, who was Muḥammad Shāh’s wazīr, was then on his way to Mālwah on an expedition against the Mahrattas. Wilks, ii, 38, writes as if it were a peculiar weakness of the particular noble, that the Nizām of Ḥaidarābād was in 1768 “accompanied in the field by his favourite wives”. But in so doing Nizām ‘Alī was only following the usual practice of Moghul commanders. --- Source: [https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.irvine-1903.c19](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.irvine-1903.c19) · Pramāṇa