The Army of the Indian Moghuls: Its Organization and Administration c26.15

c26.15

Allowing for a certain amount of obscurity and vagueness in the native historians, we may, I think, assert that, so far, the meaning of sābāt is tolerably plain. It was a trench begun at some distance from a fortress, deep and wide enough to conceal the workers, the excavated earth being thrown up on each side to increase the protection. In rocky soil it may have been necessary to form the protecting wall of material, such as planks, trees, or earth, brought from elsewhere; but in most instances the obvious and easy method was to dig a trench in the ground, and use the earth from it to heighten the sides. But a sābāt was not a tower or erection, built up from the surface of the ground. If Abul Fazl had not thrown the subject into confusion by his use of the word sābāt in the Akbarnāmah, the meaning of the word would be clear enough. But he persists in using it as the name for a temporary tower, or a battering ram, as he explicitly says in ii, 261, last line, (Lucknow edition), describing the siege of Ranthambhūr in the 14th year, 22nd Ramazān 976 H. The besiegers of Ranthambhūr came to the conclusion that the fort could not be taken without recourse to sābāt, kih sarkob-i-gardan-kashān bāshad. As to this siege Nizām-ud-dīn fol. 212a, also uses the word sābāt, but enters into no details. Budāonī, ii, 107 (Lowe, 111), follows Nizām-ud-dīn very closely.