The Army of the Indian Moghuls: Its Organization and Administration c7.2

c7.2

False musters were an evil from which the Moghul army suffered even in its most palmy days. Nobles would lend each other the men to make up their quota, or needy idlers from the bazaars would be mounted on the first baggage pony that came to hand and counted in with the others as efficient soldiers. Great efforts were made to cope with this evil, and in the earlier times with some success. In the later reigns, notably from the middle of Muḥammad Shāh’s reign (1719—1748), all such precautions fell into abeyance, amid the general confusion and ever-deepening corruption. By 1174 H. (1761) the system had so entirely disappeared from the ṣūbah of Aḥmadābād, that clerks acquainted with the rules could not be found there (*Mirāt-i-Aḥmadī*, ii, 118).