The Army of the Indian Moghuls: Its Organization and Administration c26.17

c26.17

It is the same with Abul Faẓl’s long account of the siege of Chitor, (Lucknow edition) ii, from line 11 of p. 245, although in one place he says they made dīwār-i-gilīn-i-ʿāriz-i-mārpech, “serpentine, wide, earthen walls”; but he writes elsewhere that Akbar sat aloft upon a sābāt, which commanded the walls, and from thence he shot. How could a serpentine wall be a tower, from which a man shot; or a battering ram, as he elsewhere defines a sābāt to be? Abul Faẓl has misled Count von Noer “Kaiser Akbar”, i, 234—240, French edition, i, 165 (Horn 121) into asserting that a sābāt should “if possible command the walls”, that from “the top of the sābāt, cannon breach the walls of the fortress”. Then he speaks of the rolling of movable shields. Dr. Horn seems here, by a reference to the tūrah (see ante p. 142) to identify it with the sābāt. But I think the text of the Akbarnāmah ii, 243—254, Lucknow edition, leads to the conclusion that three things were employed by Akbar at Chitor, 1) a long and deep trench (sābāt), 2) movable shields to protect the workmen (tūrah), and 3) a high erection commanding the walls (sībā).