The Army of the Indian Moghuls: Its Organization and Administration c25.9

c25.9

*Technical words.* I insert here such technical terms connected with fortification as I have come across in my reading. The names for a fort were *ḥiṣār* (Steingass 421), ḥaṣīn (id. 422), qalʿah, qilʿah (id. 984), and H. garh. A small fort or redoubt was a qalʿahchah (Steingass, 985) or garhī. To be invested was maḥṣūr or maḥṣūn shudan: to invest was maḥāṣarah kardan. The walls were collectively bnrj o bārah, the former word meaning a bastion, a tower, (Steingass, 170) and the latter, the curtain, the walls, fortifications (id. 142). The Central Asian word for the curtain of a fort was badan, see Mujmil-ut-tārīkh baʿd Nādirīyah, p. 79, line 13. The battlements were kungur, kungurah, (St. 1056); the ditch was khandaq. Faṣīl in the dictionary (St. 931) is defined as breastwork inside a fortification, an entrenchment, wall, rampart; but I believe that strictly speaking it meant the platform running round the inside of the wall, on which the guns were mounted, or from which the defenders fired. (J. Shak. 1494). It is apparently what Europeans call the terre-plein (Lake, 113, Voyle, 428). Safīl (Shak. 1292) was a vulgar form of the same word. Ashob, fol. 284a, speaks of the Chhatah-i-qilaʿh at Shāhjahānābād. I cannot find any meaning for this. Is it only chhat, the Hindī for roof? The word khākrez in Mujmil-ut-tārīkh baʿd Nādirīyah, p. 78, line 12, meaning "foot of the wall", "the glacis", does not seem to have been in use in India.