Military Transition in Early Modern Asia, 1400–1750: Cavalry, Guns, Governments and Ships 9781780937656, 9781474210836, 9781780938134

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Military Transition in Early Modern Asia, 1400–1750

Bloomsbury Studies in Military History Series Editor: Jeremy Black Bloomsbury Studies in Military History offers up-to-date, scholarly accounts of war and military history. Unrestricted by period or geography, the series aims to provide free-standing works that are attuned to conceptual and historiographical developments in the field while being based on original scholarship. Published: The 56th Infantry Brigade and D-Day, Andrew Holborn (2010) The RAF’s French Foreign Legion, G.H. Bennett (2011) Empire and Military Revolution in Eastern Europe, Brian Davies (2011) Reinventing Warfare 1914–1918, Anthony Saunders (2011) Fratricide in Battle, Charles Kirke (2012) The Army in British India, Kaushik Roy (2012) The 1711 Expedition to Quebec, Adam Lyons (2013) Britain, Germany and the Battle of the Atlantic, Dennis Haslop (2013) Forthcoming: The Role of the Royal Navy in South America, Jon Wise (2014) Reassessing the British Way in Warfare, Keith McLay (2014) Scotland and the British Army 1700–1750, Victoria Henshaw (2014) The D-Day Landing on Gold Beach, Andrew Holborn (2014) Australasian Propaganda and the Vietnam War, Caroline Page (2015)

Military Transition in Early Modern Asia, 1400–1750 Cavalry, Guns, Governments and Ships Kaushik Roy

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc LON DON • OX F O R D • N E W YO R K • N E W D E L H I • SY DN EY

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square London WC1B 3DP UK

1385 Broadway New York NY 10018 USA

www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2014 Paperback edition first published 2015 © Kaushik Roy, 2014 Kaushik Roy has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: HB: 978-1-7809-3765-6 PB: 978-1-4742-6403-7 ePDF: 978-1-7809-3813-4 ePub: 978-1-7809-3800-4 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Series: Bloomsbury Studies in Military History Typeset by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. Printed and bound in Great Britain

Contents Preface Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations List of Maps Introduction 1 The Culture of Warfare in Asia before 1500 2 Battles and Campaigns of the Asian Armies and Gunpowder Technology: 1500–1750 3 Siege Warfare and Siege Artillery in Asia 4 Naval Warfare by the Asian States 5 Military Systems and Societies of Asia Conclusion Glossary Notes Bibliography Index

vi vii viii ix 1 11 43 89 127 161 197 202 205 250 272

Preface Today, West Europe is no longer the foremost dominant power block in the world. USA remains the world’s sole superpower, especially in military terms; however, its economy is decelerating slowly but steadily. The economic and military rise of China, and to a lesser extent India, and the increasing discontent in the Islamic block of countries across the Afro-Asian region make it necessary to have a multicultural, rather than Eurocentric, history in general and military history in particular. With the relative decline of West Europe, it makes sense now to analyse how and why West Europe became dominant (militarily in our case) during the early modern era. Hopefully, this work will provoke, on the one hand, regional specialists to come up with military studies of different parts of premodern Asia and, on the other hand, proponents of the global history approach to initiate further studies on the comparative and interlinked history of warfare in Eurasia.

Acknowledgements I wrote this book in two distinct climatic zones of Eurasia. The first part was written in the picturesque, wintry, snowy, sparsely populated town of Aarhus in Denmark and the second part was finished in my hometown, the hot, dustsprinkled, densely populated, lively city of Kolkata in India. I have accumulated many debts of gratitude in writing this volume. First and foremost, thanks to Professor Jeremy Black, who encouraged me in the first place to write this monograph. Then, correspondence with Professor Steven Wayne Lee put me on track. Discussions in several evenings at Kolkata, in the house of my teacher Professor Rajat Kanta Ray, were enlightening indeed. Thanks to Professor Sabyasachi Bhattacharya for clarifying some of the economic issues. My friend Vasileios Syros deserves credit for bringing certain materials to my notice. Among my Indian students, thanks to Moumita, Arka and Dipanjan for locating some of the books I required. I taught a course in the Global History Programme at Aarhus University, Denmark, in the autumn of 2012 and the present book is based partly on that course. Thanks to Jeppe, my friend and the course coordinator, and among the students especially Ida, Soren, Marko and Byron, who never failed to ask critical questions. In early February 2012, in a seminar at the Department of History and Culture, Aarhus University, I spoke about the failure of China and India to catch up with the West in the eighteenth century: special thanks to my friend Professor Niels Brimnes and Haagen for raising some critical issues. A portion of the book was published in a 2012 issue of International Area Studies Review. I acknowledge my debt to Professor Scott Gates, the editor of this journal, and the unknown referees for forcing me to rethink some of the statements that I had earlier made rather rashly. I have not forgotten the unknown referees of Bloomsbury for their valuable comments, and certainly Claire at Bloomsbury deserves praise for supporting the project when I discussed it with her in 2011. Lastly, very special thanks to my wife, who, despite a demanding university teaching career, kept the ‘home fires burning’. Kaushik Roy Kolkata, 2014

List of Abbreviations C3I

Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence

COIN

Counter-insurgency

EIC

East India Company

GDP

Gross domestic product

NATO

North Atlantic Treaty Organization

ORBAT

Order of battle

RMA

Revolution in military affairs

List of Maps Southern Central Asia

x

Constantinople, 1683

xi

Central Asia and China, circa 1600

xii

Mughal–Safavid Frontier, circa 1640

xiii

Manchu and Mughal Empires, circa 1700

xiv

Deccan, circa 1750

xv

x

Maps

Miles 0 100 200 Riv er J axa rte s(S yr Da ry a

Aral Sea

300

400

500

)

Caspian Sea

KIZIL KUM The Red Sands

•

•

Tashkent

xus er O Riv

Khira

•

•

AN

• Merv M

U ND

r

•

Herat

ur

gh

HI

ab

Kabul

Hari Rud

IS TA

N

•

Kandahar

N

A

FG

H A

REGISTAN

Persian Gulf Gwadur

•Quetta

BAL SIN UCHIST D AN

Kirman The Sand Country

• Ksist

•

Karachi

Southern Central Asia

•

Peshawar

SUL E

Hamum Swamp

•

SH

KU

IMA

PERSIA

DESERT OF OMAN

•

N

GREAT SALT DESERT

•

Balkh

ve

•

Teheran

Ri

S RA O • KH Mashhad

PAMIRS

) ya ar

River Atrek

•

Khokand

Samarkand

Bokhara (A mu D

Arabian Sea

R

r ive

j s utle du er S In Riv

GREAT INDIAN DESERT

Maps

xi

Bosphorus Xyloporta Gate

GOLDEN r HORN na ha

Tower of Galata

r ou rb Ha P n us Seraglio PERA e o n i h i Gate of the Caligarb t ia tr a ia ri BLACHERNAE of Point Pe St os ga ram ca phor te of e i s of od un Gate of Imperial te Ga te e Dr the P ebra Pro St. Barbara Ga Palace PHANAR Ga Th Gate Eis Pegas Kerkoporta Postern f he f t te o rta H Gate of Church of PETRION (PortaPutei) o Gate of Xylokerkon a o Eugenios St. Mary ate G P S G Church Pammacariston Church of LI in St O of John St. P Church of PETRA Horaia Gate Gate of Theodosia Plataea Trullo ROChurch of St. Saviour Church of Gate of Charisius St. John Gate Church of AC St George of the Chora St. John in de Cornibus Christ Petra Mangana Church of Christ Pantepoptes Church of St Irene Pantocrator Church of Church Church of Church of the Holy 5th Military of the St. George St Mary Hodegetria Holy Apostles Forum of Wisdom (St.Sophia) Gate (Military Gate LIGHTHOUSE Theodosius Forum of MES of St Romanus) E (M MESOTEICHION Gate of the IDD Constantine LE) Lighthouse STREET Old River Gate Lycu Imperial Hippodrone s Palace Civil Gate of Nea St. Romanus Basilica Gate of the Boucoleon Contoscalion Harbour Forum of Harbou r of 4th Military Gate the Bull Julian Harb our of of Forum Contoscalion Arcadius Harbour of Gate of Rhegion Eleutherius Gate of St Aemilianus Church of St. Mary in Blachernae

3rd Military Gate

TR IU M PH AL

W AY

Gate of Blachernae

Sea of Marmora

0

½ Miles

Constantinople, 1683

1

C JUR

Turfan Qarasbarb

Aral Sea

SOGDIANA Samarkand MARCIANA

EK B Surkh Z Kotal U

Kucha Kashgar Yarkand Niva S Khotan

Balkh(Bactria)

Dunhuang ng

a Hu

Miran

HE

NS

xii

MONGOLS

Ho

R.

Tanehow

Loyang Changian

MING

BACTRIA Cbitrac

Chilos

Skardu

EMPIRE Maps

SAFAVIDS

MUGH

AL EMPIR E

Central Asia and China, circa 1600

APPROXIMATE BOUNDARY OF EMPIRES

Maps

xiii

CENTRAL ASIA

KHIVA

Turkestan Range Samarkand

Bokhara

N

Ox

us

(A

m

u

Da

ry

a)

Kunduz

AK

W

BA

DA K

Balkh Mazar-i-Sharif

Punjdeh

HS HA

U Z BE K S

Chitral ak Pass u Khaw ir Dir sj h n y an Pa alloeghm lak Bagram v L gdaJalalabad Ja Kabul Kabul

AR

nd

Bamian Safed Koh

Tirick Mir

Kush

KU

N

Hi

k

wa

LOGAR nde

rra

Ku

Ghazni

SAFAVIDS

Khybessr Peshawar Pa Kohat

a Gh IA T KHOST K A

m

P

JAB

Herat

N

HA

N

Merv

Bannu

PUN

FARAH Farah

Takht-i-Suleiman

Kandahar

Ft. Sandeman

Zhob

Chaman Pishin Quetta Bolar Pass Sibi

HELMAND

M

U

Multan

G

H

u nd

I

0

A

L EM PI

s

Kalat BALOCHISTAN

100

200 Km

INDEX MUGHAL ATTACKS SAFAVID COUNTER-ATTACKS Mughal–Safavid Frontier, circa 1640

RE

xiv

Maps

P

P AN ST

S

T

E

DS MA NOMONGOLIA

E

TURKESTAN

Sea of Japan

CHINA

I AN H G

Yellow Sea

TIBET MANCHU EMPIRE

AF

NEP AL

INDIA MUGHAL Arabian EMPIRE sea

East China Sea MYANMAR

South China Sea

APPROXIMATE BOUNDARY

Bay of Bengal

IN DIA N

N O CEA

N

Manchu and Mughal Empires, circa 1700

0

1000 cm

Maps

xv

da ma Nar

•

• Pannan Pauru•

MA

M EM UG PI HA RE L

Nasik

Ajanta • • • Bhokardan

TR ASH HAR

•Ter • Sannatha •

• • Dharamakota Nagarjuna • • Masaulipatnam • Konda Ghantasala • Bhattiprolu

Krishna

A ra ad bh a ng Tu

Mah ana di • Udaygiri

Penn ar

ARABIAN SEA

BAY OF BENGAL

Kave • ri

Kodumanal Palghat P. Kodangallur •

• Karur• •Uraiyur • Sittanavasa Madurai• Korkai •

Deccan, circa 1750

MARATHA ATTACKS

Introduction

A time traveller without any knowledge of history looking at the planet earth in 1500 would never have dreamt of making a bet that the relatively sparsely populated and not so agriculturally fertile region known as West Europe1 would dominate the world in another 300 years. Rather, the time traveller would have made a bet that either the Ming Empire of China or the Ottoman Empire in West Asia would dominate Eurasia. However, by 1800, the world map had changed drastically. An extraordinary thing had happened: the comparatively small maritime states of West Europe had established large empires from their coastal enclaves along the rim of Eurasia during the late eighteenth century. By then, the gargantuan, sedentary, bureaucratic empires of Asia had already disintegrated or were in the process of terminal decline. How had all this come about? Starting with the racial geographical theories of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,2 historical scholarship in the mid-twentieth century focused on economic aspects in order to explain the West European ‘miracle’. Until the late medieval age, argue the proponents of this thesis, the European economy was an agrarian economy but backward (unproductive) when compared with the agrarian economies of Asia centred around the fertile river valleys. The Black Death due to plague and the crisis of the manorial economy resulted in the fencing of the common fields (especially in England), the enclosure movement and the rise of capitalist agriculture, which in turn provided the surplus fuel for the Industrial Revolution in West Europe.3 Both at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels, professors of history departments drilled into their students the debate about transition from feudalism to capitalism. It seems that this transition did not occur in Asia, or occurred late or the process remained incomplete. So, Asia lagged behind the West. Besides the causes behind the rise of the West to global hegemony, timing is also important. When exactly did the West start to run faster than the rest? Felipe Fernandez-Armesto in his global history claims that in the 1490s, certain developments enabled the West to overtake the rest in the long run. The West until that date was economically very poor, unlike China and the Islamic

2

Military Transition, 1400–1750

Mediterranean Civilizations. Hence, the West had the incentive to explore the oceanic routes. This in turn resulted in the discovery of the New World, where the West European powers displaced indigenous civilizations and developed plantation and ranch economies. The wealth generated in the New World enabled West Europe to compete and finally overtake Asia in the early modern age.4 The role of the conquest of the New World is also highlighted by Kenneth Pomeranz in his breakthrough book. Pomeranz claims that the core regions of China and West Europe were significantly similar in economic terms until 1800. However, the resources of the New World to an extent aided the Atlantic economies to experience the industrial breakthrough.5 David Day in a recent book writes that explorations by the West Europeans, surveys and cartography aided the conquest of the ‘other’ by the West. Nevertheless, writes Day, military and commercial measures, besides mapping the world, enabled the West to establish its claim over the ‘rest’.6 The present monograph argues that the verdict of the game for global dominance was also shaped by the military responses of the Asian powers between 1500 and 1750. And secondly, instead of discontinuity in the last decade of the fifteenth century, there was more continuity between the late medieval and early modern eras. Furthermore, there is no linear correlation between economic and military prowess. One example is the hegemonic position enjoyed by the Habsburg Empire until the late nineteenth century despite its weak economy, or the military prowess of Prussia in spite of its backward economy. A contrasting example would be the poor military strength of Bengal Nawabi in the mideighteenth century despite its booming economy. It cannot be denied, however, that the military supremacy of the Western world remains one of the defining features of the present-day world. When and how the military rise of the West started remains a hot topic of debate among scholars. The crucial issue is the quantum of military superiority enjoyed by the West over the ‘rest’ in the early modern era (i.e. the period roughly from 1500 to 1750). During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, West European historians focused on the supremacy of the West Europeans in decisive battles both on land and sea over the Afro-Asians. The West European supremacy was traced back to their superiority in the fields of tactics and discipline, which in turn was linked to unique West European moral strength and character.7 In the late twentieth century, military historians came up with a more sophisticated explanation in order to explain the rise of the West over the rest. While one group of historians argued that West Europe experienced a Military Revolution or a series of Military Revolutions between 1500 and 1750, another

Introduction

3

group of scholars claimed that instead of a Military Revolution, a Military Evolution occurred.8 The Military Revolution concept, first introduced by Michael Roberts in 1956 in the context of West European warfare, remained comparatively unknown among the historians dealing with extra-European issues until Geoffrey Parker elaborated this concept and linked it to his argument about the rise of the West vis-à-vis the rest in his 1984 Lees Knowles lecture, and published it as a book in 1988. Strangely, none of the scholars debating for and against Military Revolution made much mention of Carlo M. Cipolla’s work, which came out in 1965.9 Cipolla, originally an economic historian, without using the heuristic device of the Military Revolution, made a case that superior field cannons and ocean-going ships gave supremacy to the West in Afro-Asia.10 Cipolla’s Gunpowder Revolution thesis is actually elaborated and appropriated by the proponents of the Military Revolution thesis. In recent times, concepts such as Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA), Military Technical Revolution, etc. have been introduced to explain the West’s military triumph over the rest.11 Some Western scholars have even argued that a distinct Western Way of Warfare gave the West an edge in military affairs over Asia from the age of Classical Greece to Vietnam.12 Despite such differences among the experts on West European warfare, all of them agree that West Europe during the early modern era experienced substantial military changes. One of the crucial components of the early modern West European military transformation was the spread and development of gunpowder weapons both in land and sea warfare. Scholars disagree on the impact of the West European military transformation on the extra-European world. While some overemphasize the military superiority of the West Europeans in this period, others try to scale down the issue of substantial Western military superiority vis-à-vis the Asian states in the early modern era.13 The Military Revolution versus Evolution debate, like the Transition debate, smacks of Eurocentric bias. One always has to measure up against the West. What has happened in West Europe over the last 500 years seems to be the model that ought to have happened everywhere. The very absence of Westerntype developments in the extra-European world is regarded as examples or symptoms of backwardness. So, historians dealing with the extra-European world are always trying to find traces of feudalism, capitalism and Military Revolution, thus creating a hierarchical chart for assessing the comparative backwardness of those regions vis-à-vis the West. One can better understand the issue of Western military superiority in the early modern period if an evaluation of the ‘other’, i.e. the non-West, is

4

Military Transition, 1400–1750

done in a systematic manner without using the indices of West European civilization. In the sphere of economic history, Kenneth Pomeranz’s volume on why industrialization occurred in Britain and not in China comes to mind. Unlike the Military Revolution thesis, which is grounded in the Eurocentric view of history, Pomeranz gives more attention to China in explaining the rise of the modern world economy. In contrast, military historians up to date (one exception is Jeremy Black) have failed to give equal attention to the ‘rest’ in explaining the military ‘rise’ of the West. Compared with Parker, Cipolla and W. H. McNeill have given more attention to the non-Western world in their grand meta-narrative about the rise of the West. However, we need to move ahead of Cipolla’s assumption that the feudal social structure in Asia prevented the Asian rulers from giving up their swords and horses in favour of guns; or McNeill’s argument (written at the height of the Cold War) that all sorts of innovations occurred in the West because it favoured the free market economy while the nonWest (especially China) emphasized a command economy. McNeill substituted Soviet party bosses and the Stalinist command economy of the USSR in the Cold War era with the Confucian ethos-dominated mandarins of Ming and Manchu China in his analysis.14 Again, the simmering danger in Pomeranz’s work is that Eurocentric bias in economic history writing might be replaced by an emerging Sino-centric bias. In contrast, this book attempts to pay equal attention to the military strength of the four great agrarian empires that operated in different parts of Asia. Jeremy Black rightly says: ‘I certainly feel that a military history for the new millennium needs to devote due weight to Asia, the continent not only with the most people but also, in the twenty-first century, as in 1450–1600, with much military power’.15 This volume deals with the military dimension of the questionable ‘backwardness’ of Asia. A comparative study of the military systems of the ‘big Asian empires’ in four zones (China, India, Persia and the Middle East),16 including their military capacity, will throw light on the thorny issue of West European military superiority. And this is the objective of the present volume. The conquest of the New World and the economic transition gave the West adequate economic resources to challenge the Asian powers. Nevertheless, the result of the ‘game’ also depended on the evolving military capacity of the big Asian polities. Military capacity in our paradigm includes the quality and number of forces raised by the different polities and also takes into account the production of military hardware by the different states. This monograph attempts a comparative analysis of the armies and navies of the large agrarian bureaucratic empires of

Introduction

5

Asia, which were big powers in terms of political, military and economic strength before circa 1750. This book focuses on the question of how far the Asian polities were able to integrate gunpowder weapons into their military systems. The very usefulness of gunpowder weapons for conducting warfare in Asia is also addressed. And the relationship between the traditional dominant branch, i.e. cavalry, and the gunpowder weapons is also brought under the scanner. Marshall G. S. Hodgson emphasizes the importance of gunpowder in the functioning of the three Islamic empires (Ottoman, Safavid and the Mughals). He claims that artillery enabled the Islamic rulers to build up centralized bureaucratic military patronage states.17 In spite of Hodgson’s assertion, cavalry and land tenures remained important in these three Islamic entities. This book will try to find out the interlinks, if any, between the various Asian powers’ military systems. West Europe remains in the background as a referent. One of the strong points of this study is to highlight the connections between West Europe and Asia and also between different parts of Asia. So, to an extent, this volume is an exercise in ‘connected history’. Operational military history is given due attention because the role of contingent and conjunctural factors becomes clear when one studies battles and campaigns.18 Robert Citino, one of the foremost American historians of German military operations, rightly noted in an article published in 2007: ‘As historians in all fields seem increasingly willing to recognize the role of contingency, chance and even “chaos” in historical development, operational military historians find themselves in the unusual position of being well ahead of the scholarly curve: they have been talking about all these things for years’.19 The role of the goddess Fortuna is highlighted at various points in our analytical narrative in order to portray possible counterfactual scenarios. Hans J. Van De Ven rightly notes: ‘Counterfactual history cannot prove anything. But it is useful as a reminder that given outcomes were not necessary outcomes but that they nonetheless had enormous consequences’.20 Furthermore, the four Asian military systems and their performance both on land and sea are compared to see if any common pattern emerged in their warmaking due to the spread of gunpowder weapons. If the impact of firearms and artillery was different in these four cases, what were the reasons? Technology is certainly one of the crucial drivers of world history in general and military history in particular. However, J. F. C. Fuller overstates the role of technology when he asserts that tools and weapons of war constitute 99 per cent of victory and all the other physical paraphernalia of warfare including logistics, strategy, tactics, leadership, etc. constitute the other 1 per cent. Nevertheless, Fuller is on the right track when he writes that every improvement in weaponry

6

Military Transition, 1400–1750

produced a counter-improvement.21 Two historians of Renaissance Europe, Bert S. Hall and Kelly R. DeVries, criticize Parker’s Military Revolution model as being based on Renaissance military technology. They write that further unpacking of the concept of ‘Renaissance technology’ is required.22 Technology, claims Barry R. Posen, an American political scientist (security studies expert), never acts as a catalyst to doctrinal innovations. Military organizations graft new technology on to traditional doctrines. The influence of technology, writes Posen, is not direct but filtered through organizational biases and the views of the political elites. Military organizations, he continues, innovate under pressure from the civilian leaders or after suffering a crushing defeat. Left to themselves, military organizations tend to discourage innovations. The military elites who had reached the top positions by mastering the old doctrines have no incentive to encourage new ideas of warfare. States are rational unitary actors operating in a self-help manner to survive in the anarchic and competitive state system. The capacity of the state to innovate depends on the material resources at its disposal and political cohesion.23 Besides technology, culture is used as an analytical tool to explain the variations among the four Asian states’ military power. Culture is something more than cultural ethos. Culture is not merely the product of longue durée unchangeable mentality.24 And, culture can be changed at least partly through organizational mechanisms. Moreover, organizations have their own cultures also. Personnel bring their culturally inscribed dispositions and toolkits with them into the organization in which they operate. Thus, they link organizational culture with the broader social order in which the organization is operating. Embedded in this context, certain valued practices become the basis of legitimacy. The personnel manning an organization deploy this legitimacy as symbolic power to define the situation and shape future practices and interactions.25 Nicola Di Cosmo, a prominent historian of ancient China, writes that military culture means a discrete bounded system of conduct and behaviour to which the members of the military adhere, and comprises written and unwritten rules and conventions as well as distinctive values and symbols. And strategic culture is also part of the military culture. It involves a decision-making process that transcends the specific behaviour of the military people. Military culture also involves the accumulated and transmitted knowledge upon which those involved in making strategic choices, from both civil and military branches, base their arguments, validate their positions and examine a given situation.26 How military threats were understood was partly

Introduction

7

the product of strategic culture. The assessment and utilization of the material resources for addressing the military task was to a great extent shaped by strategic culture. Societal determinism is as faulty as cultural determinism. It must be noted that there is no linear connection between a particular category of social structure and the generation of a particular type of culture. And culture is not merely the by-product of ecology. We human beings do not merely live in a ‘constructed’ world: we also reshape it according to our worldviews. Culture in our context is defined loosely as the way people think and act in the world. So, culture includes an amalgam of religions/ideologies, social norms and ecology. One author rightly states that culture at times can also perform essentially instrumentalist functions. It can be imposed by a particular faction on others in order to maintain the status quo in governance. Culture could thus be an instrument for political mobilization of interest groups.27 Elucidation of the complex interactions between the social fabric, ideologies, politics and physical geography will help us to steer clear of ecological,28 cultural and social determinism.29 It is necessary to note that culture, as Wayne E. Lee states, is always subject to individual improvization.30 Besides technology and culture, this book takes into account the role played by important individuals, politics and diplomacy in generating military power. Parker’s Military Revolution model is partly Jominian in spirit as it concentrates on quantifiable indices. Black rightly warns us that instead of overemphasizing structural causes and hard technology, due attention should also be given to human agency and the political environment.31 The roles of individual agency, tortuous politics and diplomatic manoeuvrings, etc. are unquantifiable indices. Despite the present author being influenced by the recent ‘material turn’ in history writing, this volume takes into account the role of unquantifiable factors. What are the justifications for comparing these four major Asian powers? One factor common to our case studies is that the mounted steppe nomads from Inner Asia continuously threatened the sedentary empires in these four zones. Mounted archery remained a lethal threat to these sedentary societies. The complex interaction between mounted archery and the spread of gunpowder weapons will be studied. Again, the four Asian empires considered here are mostly landlubbers. A comparison of the Ottomans, Safavids and Mughals might give rise to the idea that the unique Islamic ethos explains these three states’ different military transition compared with that of West European military development.32 Hence, we have also included China in our comparative

8

Military Transition, 1400–1750

framework. Again, a comparison between China and India might give rise to the view that large demographic resources in these two countries could account for the unique pathways along which China and India moved as regards military developments vis-à-vis the West.33 However, our comparative model is not without problems. The Ottoman Empire was different from the Safavids, Mughals and Ming (1368–1644)/ Manchus due to the fact that only the Ottomans had to militarily confront the Europeans continuously across land and maritime frontiers. Again, unlike the Safavid, Mughal and Ming/Manchu empires, the Ottoman Empire, because of its substantial holdings in the Balkan, could be categorized as a Eurasian power. Muscovy/Russia is more of a European power rather than an Asian power. However, due attention will be paid to Eastern Europe, which in many ways was similar to Persia and the Middle East. Similarities exist as regards the terrain, presence of the nomadic threat and the primacy of cavalry warfare in these three geographical zones. Japan, except for its intervention in Korea and the coast of eastern China, remained over-isolated. The region north of the Hindu Kush (Balkh and Badakshan), due to its sparse population and semi-arid plateau, and despite the strenuous attempts of several warlords, did not experience a stable bureaucratic political regime for long. The mountainous rainforest of South-East Asia did at times witness the rise of agrarian bureaucratic empires. Nevertheless, South-East Asia because of its location was insulated from the Inner Asian mounted archers, and neither the terrain nor the climate favoured operation by large cavalry forces. Moreover, the absence of long, undulating plains also made South-East Asia unsuited for large-scale confrontations. So, these regions are excluded from our study. The chronological span of the comparative framework is also problematic. The Ottomans had an empire even before circa 1500. The Ottoman Empire came into existence roughly circa 1352. The Safavids dominated the Persian/Iranian plateau from 1510 onwards. The Mughals established their empire in the 1520s and the Manchus established themselves in the 1620s. Again, the Ottomans and the Manchus/Qing survived until the second decade of the twentieth century,34 but the Safavids and the Mughals collapsed during the first half of the eighteenth century.35 Despite these chronological irregularities, we have to make the best of a bad job. Historical scholarship ultimately depends on its sources. It would be superhuman to have command of the Arabic, Turkish, Persian, Urdu, Rajasthani, Modi Marathi and Chinese languages. This book mainly depends on translated

Introduction

9

primary sources and the innumerable scholarly works generated on each of these empires by their respective experts. Basically, it is a work of synthesis but attemts an original interpretation with a Eurasian focus. In regard to the Ottomans, the existing corpus of secondary literature is quite large but it mostly deals with Ottoman encounters with the Russians and the East and Central European powers. Much has been written about the Mughal and Safavid empires’ social and economic aspects but not about their military activities. However, we have a lot of contemporary chronicles and memoirs that detail Mughal military activities, but very few of them are known among non-medievalists outside India. Several European travellers’ accounts are available, but they have to be handled carefully. These travellers viewed the ‘Orient’ with Occidental bias and arrogance. Lastly, the bulk of the information is concerned with fighting on the land rather than on the sea or rivers. Chapter 1 provides an overview of the nature of warfare in these four regions before circa 1500. The objective is to see change and continuity in post-1500 period warfare, especially as regards the use of gunpowder technology. Chapter 2 analyses the role of firearms and field artillery in the land battles fought by these four empires during the period under review. Chapter 3 evaluates the role played by siege artillery in the sieges conducted by these four empires. Chapter 4 evaluates the role of gunpowder artillery in naval warfare. Naval warfare in our context also includes coastal and riverine operations. The first four chapters also evaluate how the cultural ethos of the ruling elites interacted with ground realities facing those empires as regards the integration of gunpowder weapons into their force structure. Chapter 5 charts how the evolution of military systems in the four empires was shaped by their host societies and economic factors. This chapter is organized around the social institution of timar, iqta and jagir/mansab. The last chapter analyses how the political and military trajectories of the three Islamic empires differed from each other as well as from Ming–Manchu China. Finally, the conclusion tries to come up with some long-term generalizations. Now, let us take a flashback at pre-sixteenth-century Eurasian warfare.

1

The Culture of Warfare in Asia before 1500

Despite the general view that warfare in the ‘East’ centred merely on cavalry and indisciplined infantry, certain variations were present as regards war-making in the different regions of Asia. The extent of the spread of gunpowder weapons and the pace at which the fire-spewing technology spread varied in the four regions of Asia (China, South Asia, Persia and West Asia). There exists no universal yardstick to judge the effectiveness of a particular piece of technology across different regions. The differing military structures of the four polities were the products of political exigencies, the nature of the opposing armies that confronted them and the varied physical geography in which they had to conduct warfare.

Warfare in China up to circa 1500 By the twelfth century, the regime in China could mobilize several expeditionary armies numbering more than a million men against an opponent.1 Kenneth Chase writes that service in the Ming Army was hereditary and so were the ranks within the brigades (a unit of 5,600 men) and in the smaller units.2 The southern Chinese polities were weak in cavalry but strong in infantry and naval forces. As a point of comparison, it may be stated that the south Indian polities were weak in cavalry but had large numbers of infantry and elephants. Again, compared with north China, south China was far less suited for cavalry operation due to the presence of many rivers and numerous canals.3 Similarly, the large rolling north Indian plain was more suited for cavalry operation compared with the mountainous Deccan and the marshy and swampy tracts of east India. In the pre-1500 era, the West European armies were not gunpowder heavy and most of the monarchies did not maintain large standing forces. In 1369 England, as the captains were indentured to the crown, the exchequer was

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Military Transition, 1400–1750

instructed to make payment to them. The exchequer gave the captains half the wages due for their intended companies immediately and handed over the rest of the money on embarkation of troops. The officials of the exchequer verified the number of the troops in the captains’ companies before embarkation. Between 1415 and 1450, the size of the English expeditionary contingent in France varied from 2,635 to 10,435 soldiers and the ratio of men at arms to foot archers varied from 1:3 to 1:9.4 By the early fifteenth century, continental West European states’ armies had pikemen. The operations of the pikemen required concerted actions that rested on drill and methodical training. This resulted in the rise of professional infantry much superior to the medieval levies. Unit cohesion and professionalism were linked to continuity and hence there was the requirement for permanent military service or a standing army.5 In central China, because warfare centred around walled cities situated on riverbanks, amphibious operations constituted an integral part of siege warfare. For instance, in June 1363, a Han Fleet carrying an army of 600,000 men moved down the Yangtze River, crossed the Poyang Lake, appeared to the south of the city of Nan-ch’ang (Ming base) on the banks of the Kan River and laid siege to it. We are told by sources that the Ming Fleet was 1,000 strong and had 100,000 soldiers and the big Ming ships had 100 crew each.6 Before the Ming Navy, the Song riverine navy was also capable of conducting siege warfare. The Song warships carried catapults, rams and protective screens.7 Besides a riverine navy, the Mings (1368–1644) also boasted of having a seagoing navy. Before the Mings, the Song Empire (960–1279) encouraged maritime commerce. Chinese merchants travelled to Southern Asia, frequented Indian ports and used the Coromandel and Malabar coasts as major transit points for their trips to the Persian Gulf.8 In 1132, the Songs established a permanent navy. The Song navy with 600 ships controlled the East China Sea from Fujian to Japan and Korea. The Songs invented the floating mariner’s compass.9 In the early twelfth century, Chinese ships more than 30 metres in length, with nailed hulls and multiple masts, a carrying capacity of over 100 tons and a crew of 60 each, frequented the seas around China.10 The shipwrights and seamen were enlisted from the coastal provinces of Guangdong, Fujian and Zhejiang.11 In 1403, ambassadors from the south Indian port city of Calicut arrived in China and presented horses as a tribute. The Calicut merchants were permitted to import pepper free from customs duties. Emperor Yong Le (r. 1402–1424) ordered the officials to build 250 ships for sending embassies to the countries of the Western Ocean. The Ming admiral Zheng He (1371–1433) led several

The Culture of Warfare in Asia before 1500

13

(probably seven) maritime expeditions to the Indian Ocean during the reign of Emperor Yong Le. There is some confusion regarding the dates of the various maritime expeditions that he conducted. In 1405, the fleet went to Calicut. According to one version, the imperial order for launching the expedition was issued in July 1405 and the fleet actually left China in January 1406. The pirate Chen Tsu-yi assembled his followers at Palembang and plundered the merchants. The piratical fleet was annihilated, the pirate leader was captured alive and the fleet returned in 1407. In 1407, the fleet visited Java, Calicut, Cochin and Siam (Thailand). In 1409, the fleet went to Ceylon (Sri Lanka). The ruler of Ceylon opposed the Chinese maritime expedition, he was captured and the fleet returned with him in 1411. Later, the king was allowed to return to his kingdom. In 1413/1414, the fleet visited Bengal and a Chinese expeditionary force participated in armed diplomacy in that kingdom. The fleet then went to Hormuz. In 1415, the fleet returned to China with the ruler of Malacca. In 1417, the fleet again visited Hormuz, Aden, Calicut and Java. In 1421, the fleet went to Hormuz again. In 1430/1431/1432, the fleet sailed for the last time. The countries visited included Champa, Java, Palembang, Siam, Ceylon, Calicut, Cochin, Hormuz, Aden and Mogadishu (coast of east Africa).12 The Chinese had heard about Europe from the Arab traders but were not interested in visiting that region. The land in the far west offered only wool and wine, which did not interest the Chinese.13 Chinese ship construction was characterized by the use of watertight bulkheads and several layers of external planking.14 During the first half of the fourteenth century, sea-going vessels constructed by the shipwrights from Scandinavia to northern Spain were clinker built. Their hulls were formed from shells of overlapping design built up from the keel, stem and sternposts and fastened at the edges. The nails that secured the planks were driven in from the outside, and on the inner face of each plank they were hammered flat or riveted, usually over a metal washer called a rove. Most of the frames were added at a later stage of construction as they were comparatively light. The principal loadbearing element in the structure was the shell planking. Cogs had flat bottoms and clinker sides.15 Vasco da Gama entered the Indian Ocean with four ships and 170 men. In one of the expeditions of Zheng He, there were 300 ships and 28,000 men. Another armada of Zheng He carried 37,000 men in 317 ships. The largest vessels in the Ming Fleet, known as the treasure ships, ranged from 1,500 to 3,000 tons in capacity while Vasco da Gama’s ships ranged from 70 to 300 tons. A treasure ship was about 400 feet in length, 180 feet in width, with nine masts and carried

14

Military Transition, 1400–1750

600 men. In contrast, Columbus’ Santa Maria was only 85 feet in length. Zheng He’s armada carried 180 medical personnel and 40 supply junks (carrying water and rice).16 Zheng He’s armada comprised five types of ship: treasure ship, horse ship, supply ship, billet ship and warship. A horse ship had eight masts, was 370 feet in length and 150 feet in width; a supply ship had seven masts, was 280 feet in length and 120 feet in width; a billet ship had six masts, was 240 feet in length and 94 feet in width. Warships had five masts each and were 180 feet in length and 68 feet in width. The above measurements are given in Ming feet, with a Ming foot being 2 per cent longer than a UK foot.17 However, Yong Le’s successor stopped these oceanic voyages. Overseas travels and maritime commerce were forbidden and the ships rotted in the harbours. Disobedient merchants and seamen were hunted down and within one century, Japanese pirates had attacked the coastal regions of China. We could speculate on several reasons for scrapping of the oceanic voyages. First, the Ming Empire’s main front remained the vulnerable northern frontier through which the steppe nomads had always attempted to penetrate into the fertile river valleys of China, from the dawn of civilization. In fact, it was the Manchus (Jurchens) from the borders of Korea rather than any oceanic threat posed by a maritime power that brought the Ming Empire to its knees in the mid-seventeenth century. As early as 8 January 1405, Amir Timur (b. 1336–d. 1405) mobilized 200,000 soldiers to attack China. Luckily for the Ming Dynasty, Timur died on 17 January so it made sense for the Ming Emperors to prioritize the northern land frontier and shift economic, demographic and military assets from the oceanic voyages in order to strengthen the defence of the main front. Secondly, tributes from kingdoms in the western ocean had been prestigious but the real economic returns from Zheng He’s oceanic voyages were not that high. Thirdly, a nascent commercial–naval nexus posed a potential threat to the Confucian ethos-imbued mandarin bureaucracy with its focus on land and the army. In accordance with Confucian thinking, trade and commerce were mean and debased forms of activities and nothing can be gained from contact with foreigners or strange unknown things.18 The mandarins hated the eunuchs as the latter were competing with them in the power game. And in Yong Le’s reign, a eunuch was in charge of the grand maritime enterprise. Overall, the Ming regime had to decide whether it wanted to be a continental power or a maritime power and it made strategic sense for the strategic managers at Beijing/Peking (the Forbidden City) to prioritize the continental aspects of ‘Chinese’ national security policy.

The Culture of Warfare in Asia before 1500

15

Back on land, the mounted archer was the ultimate weapon in the large, flat plains of Asia, at least until 1750. The nomads originated in Central Eurasia, which extends from Manchuria in the east up to Hungary in the west and from the southern edge of the Siberian forests in the north to the Tibetan Plateau in the south. From east to west, the grassy steppe is bordered to the north by the Siberian forest and marshy region of western Siberia. To the south, the steppe is bordered by high mountain ranges interspersed with deserts. In a clockwise direction, the mountain ranges are the Caucasus, Hindu-Kush, Pamirs and the Altai. The most fearsome deserts are the Taklamakan and Gobi, with a few oases in the central region of the Central Eurasian Steppe. Most of the rivers of Central Eurasia flow inward or into the frozen Arctic Sea. The lakes, although large, are isolated among deserts and high mountains. The Amu Darya and the Syr Darya flow from the high Pamir and the Tien Shan Mountains into the Aral Sea, embracing a desert between them. The irrigated regions are at Ferghana and the Tarim Basin, and a few towns around them such as Yarkhand, Takla Makan and Turfan. In the north, the Ili River Valley connects with Lake Balkash, which links the Zungharian Steppe with the Kirghiz–Kazakh Steppe. In Mongolia, from the region of Ulan Bator, the Orkhon and Selengge rivers flow north into Lake Baikal and the Kerulen River flows east into Hulun Lake in Inner Mongolia.19 So, geographically, the nomads mounted on their sturdy horses could easily launch attacks along the fertile river valleys, which constituted the core of the sedentary Asian empires. But, a sedentary army with considerable baggage failed to penetrate deep into the steppe. Besides logistical difficulties, armies of the sedentary states had little to conquer in the arid steppe. The nomads had no cities to speak of. They lived in yurts, which moved with their annual migration. A yurt is a cylindrical tent with a conical roof and a lattice work frame that has roof battens made of willow or juniper lashed together with leather thongs. The layers of felt insulate the inhabitants within from cold and wind. The apex of the roof remains open, where a circular compression ring holds the poles and lets the smoke out from the tent.20 Deep penetration by the sedentary armies into the arid plateau of Central Eurasia became possible only with the coming of modern communications in the nineteenth century. This region, also known as High Asia, rightly says Gerard Chaliand, was the geographical pivot of the ancient and medieval world and a zone of turbulence. In fact, the nomads remained important in world history until the 1750s. They could make or break the sedentary empires along the rimland of Eurasia. Eastern High Asia, that is Mongolia, was the home of the most dangerous nomads: the Turkic Mongols, and China had to bear the brunt of them for about 2,500

16

Military Transition, 1400–1750

years. Chaliand writes that Central Eurasia’s centre of gravity was the region between the rivers Kerulen, Orkhon and Selenga, north of modern Mongolia and south of Lake Baikal, the original homeland of the Turkic Mongols. The Tungus-Manchus lived further to the east. The steppe nomads could be broadly divided into two groups: the Indo-Iranians (Scythians of the ancient world about whom Herodotus speaks) who were the ancestors of the Turkic-speaking people (the Mongols and the Manchus), and the Uralo-Altaic people such as the Finns and the Hungarians (Magyars). By the end of the thirteenth century, most of the nomads of Central Asia were Islamized but the Mongols held on to a particular variety of Buddhism.21 The term, nomad, derives from nomas (wandering shepherd). Sheep provided them with wool, which was used for the felt of tents, and its skin was used for making winter clothes. The meat was consumed and its droppings were used as fuel. The milk from ewes was made into cheese. Oxen and cows functioned as draught animals. The horse was used as a means of transport, hunting and as mounts for war. Mare’s milk was used to make the nomads’ favourite drink, koumiss. And during emergencies, the nomads used to drink a bit of their mounts’ blood. Furthermore, horses were also exported to the sedentary Asian states in return for silk and tea from China, or for grain, iron and hard cash from India and Persia. During winter, the nomads moved from the uplands to the pastures in the plain, and in summer the migration was reversed.22 The steppe horses were small and sturdy, resistant to the winter cold and could survive on grass alone. The Mongol horses were no more than 1.30 m high and on average could cover 100 km per day.23 Galloping at a speed of 44 km per hour, shooting half a dozen arrows per minute in any direction from a recurved composite bow, the mounted archer was indeed a technological and tactical marvel.24 A bow made from a single material (like the English longbow) is a self-bow. When several layers or spliced wood of the same or related material are used, the bow is known as a reinforced or compound bow. In the compound bow used in the eastern part of High Asia, the end was made of horn. The arm of the bow had successive layers of wood or bamboo and sinew embedded in glue and the handgrip or belly was made of birch bark and lacquer. When a number of pieces of different materials are joined together to form the body of the bow, it is known as composite bow. When the shape of the bow follows the circumference of a greater circle or ellipse, it is known as a regular bow. When the shape of a bow changes its direction of curvature, it is known as a semi-reflex or reflex bow. From 200 CE, when bows were stiffened by plates of bone or antler in both the handle section and at the end of the limbs, the stiffened ends were acutely

The Culture of Warfare in Asia before 1500

17

reflexed to form ears. The reflexing of the ears gave extra leverage in a longer draw and an increased power output for the same draw weight (input) of the bow. In a composite bow, the horn component was applied to the central wood, bamboo or cane stave (often made of five or more lengths spliced together) on the belly or compression side. The carefully treated sinew soaked and laid in glue (a solution of gelatin) was applied to the back and it was protected by a layer of flexible tree bark such as birch. The whole leaf spring assembly was then lacquered or painted to provide protection against the weather.25 Composite bows used wood for range, horn for speed, sinew for penetration, glue for union, silk binding for firmness and lacquer for protection against frost and dew. The wood was cut and trimmed in winter, the horn was soaked and glued in spring, the sinew was prepared in summer and all three were combined in autumn. The Mongolian bowmakers soaked the horn in water in order to increase the flexibility and softness of the horn so that it would conform closely to the shape of the core during the gluing process. The back of the bow had glued sinew bound with silk. In the region north of China, bamboo was not easily available so wild mulberry wood was considered best. Sinew from the Achilles tendon of the moose or elk was highly valued. Later, tendons from the backs of the cattle were also used. Horn from the water buffalo and longhorned cattle were used. At times, horn from oxen, sinews from elk and glue from river fishes were also used. Glue was prepared by boiling hides and other animal tissues with water that was made slightly alkaline with lime. Glue made from cattle tendons attains a strength of 12,000 lbs/sq. inch, which is three to four times the shearing strength of most woods.26 The Central Asian nomads including the Mongols used composite bows. These were made from layers of horn, wood, sinew and glue. The range of these weapons varied between 300 m (effective range) and 500 m (maximum range). The crossbows used by the West Europeans had an accurate range of 75 m. The Welsh and English longbow of the fourteenth century had an effective range of 220 m. The nomads used thumb rings in order to pull the bow strings back. The thumb ring prevented strain on the thumb. The thumb rings enabled the archers to draw the bows much further with less strain. The thumb ring caused less drag on release of the arrow and thus enabled faster shooting. However, the composite bow became dysfunctional in damp weather.27 This climatic factor somewhat decelerated expansion of the use of mounted Islamic steppe archers in the high-rainfall marshy zone of north-east India. The characteristics of steppe nomadic cavalry tactics involved encirclement of the hostile force and then shooting from a distance, shooting in a backward

18

Military Transition, 1400–1750

direction while retreating (the famous Parthian shot) and finally feigning retreat and then launching a counter-attack. Each archer’s quiver carried about 40–60 arrows. Every Central Asian nomad while campaigning brought at least three horses.28 The Mings, Ottomans, Safavids, Ghaznavids and Ghorids used mounted archers. The steppe nomads had two types of cavalry: light cavalry, which comprised mounted archers who were unarmoured, and heavy cavalry, in which the lancers were covered with cuirasses made of plates.29 The Chinese used glue for making joints in the curves of bows and crossbows. They used fish glues, to which they were introduced by the people of north-east Siberia. The stave of the crossbow was constructed from horn, sinew, wood and glue in the same way as the composite bow. The stock was a plain piece of goodquality wood into which the trigger box was inset like tenon and mortice and which carried on its upper surface a groove for the arrow or bolt. The crossbow was not held vertically but horizontally, with the projectile resting on the stock.30 The Chinese infantry used both hand-crossbows and the screw-served version. Many crossbow bolts had barbed tips and the shafts were designed to break when one tried to pull them off.31 The Chinese infantry evolved drill for effective use of the crossbow. The three categories of drill involved were shooting, advancing and loading. The Chinese also introduced the trigger mechanism (bronze trigger) for the crossbow. Its origin can be traced back to the setting of animal traps. Use of the crossbow spread from China to the Islamic world and then to India. Due to its mechanical release and holding of the drawn bowstring, and the fixed relationship between bow and the latch due to the rigid stock, the range and penetrating power of the crossbow were greater than that of the mounted archer’s bow. While the range of the arm-drawn crossbow was about 500 m, the effective range of the bows used by the horse archers was 300 m. However, the infantry soldier using the crossbow was a static target while the mounted archer could utilize speed and mobility and had greater tactical flexibility and operational range. Again, drawing (arming) the crossbow was a very slow process and hence it was not a suitable defensive weapon against sudden attacks by mounted archers.32 The infantry of the Byzantine Empire also adopted crossbows between the thirteenth and the fifteenth centuries.33 However, the steel spring used in the European crossbow was never used in the Chinese versions.34 Crossbows were used by the Chinese infantry in both battles and sieges. The greatest land battle fought in China in the fifteenth century was at T’u-mu (1449). About half of the 500,000 soldiers of the Chinese Army perished in this encounter against the 20,000-strong Mongol cavalry of Essen (r. 1439–1455), leader of the Oirat or Western Mongols.35

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19

Gunpowder was invented in China circa 800 CE. By the 1100s, firearms were invented.36 Around the eleventh century, gunpowder-powered arrows and catapults were used in Chinese warfare.37 Bombs, grenades, flying fire lances (rockets) and fire lances (flamethrowers with bamboo tubes) were used during siege warfare in the thirteenth century.38 In 919 CE Chinese troops in the battlefield used flamethrowers, which worked with natural petroleum but, asserts Wang Ling, gunpowder was used as an igniter.39 By 1000 CE, the Chinese had several flame-throwing devices. In 1132, the Chinese were using long bamboo tubes filled with explosive powder and, by 1259, bullets were inserted into these tubes and ejected with the aid of gunpowder.40 It seems that the earliest representation of handguns in can be dated to 1128 CE. The Buddhist cave temples at Dazu in Szechuan, about 250 km north-west of Chungking, have sculptures showing handguns. The earliest Chinese handguns were vase shaped or bulbous. The earliest handguns like the early bombards (primitive cannons), which came soon afterwards, utilized the propellant power of highnitrate gunpowder. The Song Dynasty used handguns against the Jurchen Chin force, and Szechuan remained a part of the Southern Song Empire (1127–1279 CE) until the establishment of the Mongol Yuan Dynasty (1271–1368 CE). The data from a Chinese text that can be dated to 1044 show a nitrate content of 50 per cent in the gunpowder. However, another Chinese text that has been dated to 1350 shows a nitrate content of 75 per cent and above. Unless this proportion is reached, gunpowder cannot fully exert its propellant power. So, the first handguns appeared and then bombards were developed.41 The Song Navy used incendiary gunpowder weapons. In 1161, gunpowder bombs fired by catapults helped the Song Navy defeat the Jurchen Jin.42 Some of the Ming ships carried cannons. One naval gun manufactured between 1372 and 1373 weighed 15.75 kg, was 36.5 cm in length and had a muzzle 11 cm in diameter.43 The detonating effect of gunpowder required the use of saltpetre (the salt of rock). Friar Bacon’s (1214–1294) work, written before 1249, mentioned saltpetre. The Egyptians called saltpetre ‘Chinese snow’ and the Arabs described it as barud.44 Saltpetre and sulphur appeared in Chinese texts before the first century BCE. In contrast, in West Europe, saltpetre became known only in the thirteenth century CE. Ancient India knew of saltpetre, which was described as agnichurna (powder that creates fire), in old Sanskrit texts. In fact, Kautilya Arthasastra (composed between 300 BCE and 300 CE) speaks of using saltpetre, resin and other tree barks for creating poisonous smoke in order to disorient the enemy in the battlefield. The ancient and early medieval Indians used it for incendiary devices, but not for manufacturing gunpowder or using its propulsive

20

Military Transition, 1400–1750

force. A Chinese text, which can be dated to the seventh century CE, mentions that the people of north-west India were aware of the existence of saltpetre and its use in producing purple flames.45 In third century CE China, saltpetre and sulphur were mixed by alchemists.46 The Inner Asian nomads acquired gunpowder technology from the Chinese. In 1219, Chingiz Khan’s army used naphtha and incendiary weapons while taking the forts in Central Asia.47 Schlegel asserts that the Mongols became acquainted with cannons between 1232 and 1293.48 From 1253 onwards, the Mongol armies operating in Central Asia and in West Asia were equipped with various gunpowder devices that were used in siege warfare.49 The Mongols learnt their use from their Chinese foes. In 1272, during the siege of Hsiangyang, the Mongols introduced hui-hui pao, which was an explosive weapon.50 Nevertheless, the Mongols’ sterling weapon remained their mounted archery. Amir Timur’s army used gunpowder to set fire to mines while taking forts.51 Probably the Mongols and then Timur, during their campaigns in southern Russia, introduced gunpowder and use of other incendiary devices (if not guns). According to one tradition, the Russian forces encountered firearms in 1376 when they were besieging the city of Great Bolgar on the Volga River. On the banks of the Volga, archaeologists have found evidence of clay grenades being used from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Historians still debate whether the Russians learnt the use of firearms from their western neighbours or from their eastern neighbours like the Tatars. In 1380, the Russians used pischali (small-calibre guns). The German knights in Livonia started using cannons in 1382 and the Lithuanians did the same in 1384.52 We have some descriptions of field cannons manufactured in China during this period. One bronze cannon manufactured in March 1332 weighed 6.94 kg, had a length of 35.3 cm and the diameter of the muzzle was 10.5 cm. Another bronze cannon manufactured in 1351 weighed 4.75 kg, was 43.5 cm in length and had a muzzle diameter of 3 cm.53 By 1420, corned gunpowder had been developed in West Europe. It was manufactured in granules, which kept the components together and functioned as an effective propellant by providing the necessary energy without a dangerous peak in pressure. Again, the use of potassium sulphate rather than lime saltpetre helped to limit the propensity of the gunpowder to absorb moisture and deteriorate. In 1479 at Guinegate, Maximilian, Archduke of Austria (later Emperor Maximilian I, son-in-law of Charles the Bold), used Flemish pikemen (copied from the Swiss) supported by cannon and defeated a French Army that had gunpowder superiority.54

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21

The Chinese used molten baths of cast iron for carburizing wrought iron to steel. In West Europe, this technique was called the Brescian or Bergamasque process. The Chinese furnaces were shaped like inverted cones with upright bellows driven by horizontal wheels.55 By 1407, the Chinese had special units specializing in the use of guns and cannons. Large cannons were placed on carriages and were used for siege warfare while smaller ones were used in battle.56 Ming China (1368–1644) was also responsible for the spread of gunpowder technology to South-East Asia and then into eastern India through overland routes. Sun Laichen asserts that in May 1388, Ming troops resorted to volley fire from the infantry organized in three ranks against the army of Maw Shan (Luchuan). Besides handheld firearms, Ming troops also used cannons and rockets. In 1397, some Han Chinese soldiers deserted to the Maw Shan and aided the latter in manufacturing handguns and cannons. The Kingdom of Ava was hostile to Maw Shan. So, probably, the Mings provided firearms technology to Ava. Between 1505 and 1523, the Ahoms in Assam (north-east India) acquired gunpowder technology from the Chutiyas who lived between Assam and Tibet, while bans (handheld rockets) entered east India through Assam. The use of bans spread from eastern India to the Delhi Sultanate in north India and then to the Bahmani Sultanate in Deccan.57 The army of Jalaluddin Khalji (Sultan of Delhi, 1290–1296) had hawais (rockets). Iqtidar Alam Khan writes that by 1366, bans had spread from the Delhi Sultanate in north India to the Muslim polities in Deccan. The earliest reference to saltpetre as a component of gunpowder in a Persian dictionary compiled at Jaunpur in north India, can be dated to 1419–1420.58 However, arquebuses and cannons were absent in fourteenth-century India. This does not mean that the Delhi Sultanate Army was inferior in terms of military effectiveness compared with the West European armies, which possessed cannons and firearms. Gunpowder weapons were not very effective against fast-moving cavalry formations. Simply because cannons and handheld firearms became effective in the late eighteenth century, to give these weapon systems extra importance in earlier centuries would be an example of whiggish teleology.

Warfare in pre-1500 South Asia and Afghanistan The new techniques of siege warfare in the subcontinent were introduced by the Arabs in the early eighth century. The Arabs, during their conquest of Sind,

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imported manjaniqs by ships from Ajam (Iraq) to Debal (near Karachi) in Sind. The manjaniq was a catapult, and to operate each machine required 500 men. They were so heavy that they could only be transported by ship. The manjaniq was like a large cricket bat moving on a pivot. Men pulled back one beam (palla) so that the other beam moved forward and hit the ball. The manjaniq ball, known as sang-i-maghribi, was an artificially rounded piece of stone about the size of football. Masons chiselled the stones to give them round shapes. Probably, the Arabs had learnt the use of manjaniqs from the Byzantine Empire.59 The traction-trebuchet initially originated in China and its use was spread to Europe during the ninth century CE by the Arabs. It was a beam pivoted between two high uprights. When the beam was pulled at one end by a team of men, the other flew up until a missile was released in an arcing trajectory either from a cup or a sling. The pulling end of the beam was shorter by a ratio of 1:5 and the efficiency of the engine was increased by the use of a sling at the launching end.60 Muslim chroniclers speak of manjaniqs, maghribis and iradas interchangeably. Probably, they were mangonels, onagers, etc. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the mamluks used catapults against the Crusader forts. The weight of the catapult stones used against the fortress Arsuf was either 16, 20, 28 or 35 kg. The heaviest catapult stone weighted 78 kg. The siege engines used by the Franks were heavier than those utilized by the Baybars at Arsuf. The counterweight trebuchet of the Franks was able to hurl a stone weighing between 100 and 150 kg a distance of 150 m. The counterweight trebuchet used at the Siege of Hims (1248–1249) launched projectiles weighing 259 kg each.61 Mahmud Ghori of the Ghorid Dynasty of Afghanistan was responsible for the establishment of Islamic rule in the Indian subcontinent. In 1192, Mahmud Ghori invaded India. The total strength of Ghori’s army was 120,000 cavalry (both armoured and light), which included Turks, Tajiks and Afghans. The Rajput Confederacy was led by Prithviraj Chauhan, the Chahamana ruler of Ajmir. Ghorid diplomacy was at work, which also undermined the Rajput Confederacy. Bijoy Dev, the Raja of Jammu, aided Mahmud Ghori by sending a contingent of troops under his son. And Raja Jaichandra, the ruler of Benaras, was angry with Prithviraj because the latter had stolen his daughter, Sanjukta. So, Jaichandra’s force under Narsingh Deo attacked Govind Rai (Prithviraj’s brother and ruler of Delhi). In 1192, Ghori and Prithviraj confronted each other at the battlefield of Tarain. This battle is known in history as the Second Battle of Tarain. Mahmud Ghori decided to surprise his enemy by emphasizing on speed and mobility. He camped at a place three kos from Tarain. The baggage, non-combatants and all paraphernalia were kept in the camp and Mahmud advanced with 40,000 elite

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cavalry. Suddenly, he appeared before the Rajput force and took it by surprise. Ferista claims that the Rajput host numbered 300,000 cavalry and infantry, and 3,000 elephants. However, this must have been the theoretical strength that could be mobilized by all the Rajput polities in India. Muslim chroniclers were in the habit of exaggerating Hindu military strength in order to heighten the glory of the victorious Sultans. We can speculate that the Rajput Army was numerically superior to the Ghorid Army. As a point of comparison, at Hattin in 1187, 20,000 troops of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem faced 30,000 Islamic soldiers.62 Shah Nama of Isami describes the Hindu order of battle (ORBAT) in the following words: ‘On one side that valiant Hindu with a phalanx of ferocious elephants in the front took up his position, deep in the centre, together with all the seasoned Hindu warriors. The accursed Govind whose teeth the king had broken stood in the vanguard … To the left of Gobind stood Bhola, wazir of Rai. Badamsa Rawal took his stand on the right wing’.63 Speed and surprise unnerved the Rajputs. A stampede broke out among them. Mounted archery utilized by the Ghorid Army’s Turks (who used thumb rings) against the Rajput cavaliers equipped with khandas (straight swords) and bamboo bows was an essential factor behind the defeat of Prithviraj’s force. Prithviraj was captured while trying to escape on horseback and then executed.64 Qutubuddin Aibak was Mahmud Ghori’s principal lieutenant in India. In 1194, Mahmud Ghori and Aibak with 50,000 cavalry marched towards Benaras. Aibak commanded the advance guard of the Ghorid Army. Raja Jaichandra of the Gahadavala Rajput clan, ruling over north India, advanced with his army. Jaichandra relied on his contingent of 300 war elephants. The two armies met at Chandawar near the River Jamuna between Etah and Kanauj. The Gahadavalas were able to hold the onslaught of the Ghorid Army but when an arrow struck Jaichandra seated in the howdah, he fell from his elephant and died. His army became confused and Aibak exploited the momentary confusion and routed the Rajput force. Victory in this battle resulted in the expansion of the Ghorid dominion to Mungher in Bihar.65 By 1200, mounted archers with composite bows, rightly asserts Jos Gommans, replaced elephants as the principal military strike force in the Indian subcontinent.66 The armies of Mahmud Ghori and the early Delhi Sultanate comprised Turkish ghulams (military slaves) like the Egyptian Mamluk Sultanate’s army. Initially, the Caliph’s army consisted of Bedouin Arab levies and Arabs from North Africa (Maghrib) and Syrians, along with some Khorasanis (Khurasanis). The Bedouins were not shock troops for use in pitched battles but were light cavalry used for scouting, reconnaissance, foraging, raiding, harassing and pursuing the

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defeated foe.67 The Caliphate from Al Mutasim (r. 833–842) onwards depended on ghulams (ghilman/mamalik). They were mainly Turks from the south Russian and Central Asian steppes. The Turks were considered as the best warriors due to their horsemanship and skill in archery. However, Armenians, Greeks and Balkan Slavs were also inducted as ghulams. The Caliphate and later the rulers of the Caliphate successor states (Samanids, Ghaznavids, etc.) in Persia, Iraq and Afghanistan believed that the ghulams without any local ties would be more dependable than the local troops. Nevertheless, there was an exception. In the Saffarid Army, at least until circa 900, the ghulams were a minority. Recruits (free men) from the local landed classes in Seistan and Khorasan dominated the Saffarid Army. However, as the Saffarids became weaker, their territory shrank during the mid-tenth century, and the prospect of looting and plundering of foreign kingdoms vanished, the number of volunteers in the army fell and the proportion of ghulams increased. The Saffarids and the Ghaznavids recruited Hindus from India and also used elephants in war, like the Indians.68 Before the Ghaznavids, the Persians (Sassanid Empire) had used war elephants at the Battle of Al-Qadisiya (637) fought on the bank of River Euphrates against the Arabs.69 The very multiplicity of military traditions should make one aware of the danger of focusing only on one technique of war-making while constructing a master narrative of the evolution of warfare in different regions of Asia. The different military traditions competed with each other for supremacy in an endless struggle. Alauddin Khalji (Sultan 1296–4 January 1316) took steps to expand the size of his army in order to meet the Mongol menace, as well as to bring the whole of the subcontinent under his control. The administrative fabric of the Delhi Sultanate was the product of Turko-Mongol-Persian traditions laced with some Hindu practices. The iqta system became the crucial lynchpin of the Delhi Sultanate, especially as regards recruiting and maintaining a cavalry force. The big iqta holders were also provincial governors and they maintained cavalry contingents for maintaining law and order in their provinces, and also provided military aid to the central government in times of crisis.70 The principal income of the state remained land revenue. About 50 per cent of the gross produce was extracted as the state’s share. The Hindu village headmen (chaudhuris) and village accountant (patwaris) played an important role in collecting the land revenue. The pastoral communities had to pay grazing fees for their cows and buffaloes. In order to maintain a large army, Alauddin Khalji fixed the prices of essential goods in the vicinity of Delhi, where the bulk of the army was stationed.71

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For a particular campaign, the Sultan could detach a field force of 40,000 cavalry.72 The recruits were tested by the diwan-i-arz in archery and only those who passed the test were recruited. The ghazis were tested in horsemanship before being enlisted in the army. Several ghulams were trained as elite troops that conducted commando-style attacks.73 For conducting sieges, the Sultans maintained Hindu infantry known as paiks.74 It would be wrong to argue that the Islamic armies had no tradition of using infantry. The Dailamis, who were mountaineers from the Caspian region (somewhat like the later Swiss and Gurkha infantry), served as mercenary infantry both in the Sassanid and in the later Ghaznavid and Fatimid armies. The Dailamites were equipped with swords, shields and javelins (zupins).75 Razia Sultana (Iltutmish’s daughter) recruited Khokhars, Jats and Rajputs as early as 1240.76 The real threat to the Delhi Sultanate was posed by the Mongols from Central Asia. In 1296, Targhi entered India with 20,000 cavalry and advanced to Baran. But, he lacked siege engines to take the fort of Baran, and so had to beat a retreat.77 In 1299, Qutlugh Khwaja, the son of Dawa Khan of Transoxiana, invaded India. The Mongol Army encamped 4 km away from Delhi. The battle occurred at Kili, with Alauddin commanding the centre. Zafar Khan was in charge of the right wing and Nusrat Khan the left. Ulugh Khan was stationed behind Nusrat with a reserve. Akat Khan’s contingent comprised the vanguard of the Sultanate Army. Qutlugh Khwaja commanding the Mongol centre; Hijlak, the left wing; and Tamar Burgha, the right. Targhi, with a tumen, constituted the reserve. Zafar Khan attacked Hijlak, who then conducted a tactical retreat. As Zafar pursued Hijlak, Targhi’s reserve tumen attacked Zafar Khan from the rear. Simultaneously, Targhi also launched a counter-attack. Zafar’s contingent was wiped out to a man but in the process the Mongols suffered some 5,000 casualties. Technically, the Mongols emerged victorious but the tough fight given by a section of the Sultanate Army weakened their resolve. Two days after this battle, Qutlugh retreated. Knowing the Mongol proficiency for retreat and counter-attack, Alauddin did not pursue them.78 In 1305, Ali Beg and Tartak arrived at Amroha and Siwalik Hills with 40,000 cavalry. Malik Nayak (a Hindu convert to Islam and also known as Malik Kafur) commanded the 30,000-strong Sultanate force. On 20 December 1305, the two forces fought at Amroha. The Mongols lost some 20,000 horses in the encounter. Nayak emerged victorious in this battle and the two Mongol leaders were captured and executed.79 Under Alauddin Khalji, Ranthambhor, a principality in Rajasthan, was ruled by a descendant of Prithviraj Chauhan. Ulugh Khan and Nusrat Khan, two generals of Alauddin Khalji, were ordered to seize Ranthambhor. In 1299, as

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they besieged the fort, they discovered that, from the citadel, the Rajputs were hurling stones from siege engines at the besieging army.80 So, the manjaniqs, which the Arabs had introduced in Sind in the eighth century CE, gradually percolated and spread among the Hindu rulers. The eastern frontier of Sind and the western frontier of Rajputana overlapped each other. The defenders of Ranthambhor had many Mongol deserters and they used the huo chiang (a bamboo tube used for throwing fire ignited by gunpowder charge).81 It was a classic case of technology spreading from China to India through Central Asia, and the vehicle for this spread was the deserters and military mercenaries. Between the eleventh and the fifteenth centuries, several Sanskrit works from the east, north-west and south India mention the use of sulphur, charcoal and saltpetre in nalikas. These were probably for flamethrowers.82 By the thirteenth century, the asymmetry between the besiegers and the besieged had vanished. In other words, the technical advantage that the Arabs enjoyed over the Hindus in Sind in the sphere of siege warfare during eight century CE vanished during the Delhi Sultanate. Thus, under the Delhi Sultanate, sieges became protracted and the Sultans had to mobilize large armies in order to blockade the forts. And because of the seeming impregnability of the forts, when the central government at Delhi became distracted due to either civil war or Mongol invasions, both Hindu chieftains and Muslim nobles raised the standard of rebellion in their forts. Only with the coming of gunpowder artillery in the late sixteenth century would the military balance swing against the besieged. The Sultans of Delhi also constructed numerous forts in the subcontinent. They elaborated on Hindu defensive structures by importing elements of Persian architectural styles. One example was the transformation of the Devagiri Fort in Maharashtra into Daulatabad Fort between the thirteenth and the sixteenth centuries. Devagiri was initially constructed by the Yadava kings, Bilham and Jaitugi, at the end of the twelfth century. Alauddin Khalji occupied Devagiri and this city later became the temporary capital of Muhammad bin Tughluq. The whole city was surrounded by a massive rampart. Within the wall was the inner fort. Beyond it was the massive rock of the Devagiri Fort, scarped on all sides and surrounded by a deep moat. On its immediate right was a semi-circular water reservoir.83 M. S. Mate writes that cities and towns in pre-Islamic India were built near the sources of freshwater like lakes or rivers. However, Islamic towns fetched their own water with the aid of an underground network of channels. Most of the cities and towns built by the Delhi Sultans drew water from large wells

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or specially built reservoirs that were often 15 miles away. Water was carried from these sources through terracotta or stone pipes laid several metres below the ground surface. Air shafts, which served as filters, were provided at regular intervals. Intercepting tanks and wells were also constructed to allow the force of water to subside if it was coming from great heights.84 The Delhi Sultanate’s army reached its maximum size under Muhammad bin Tughluq. The total force under his direct control and including all his nobles’ contingents came to about 900,000 cavalry.85 For any given expedition (for instance, the Qarachil Expedition), Muhammad bin Tughluq was able to gather 80,000 cavalry.86 In 1206, during Chingiz Khan’s coronation, the Mongol Army had 95,000 men. Just to put things in perspective, it is worth noting that in 1219, Chingiz Khan launched some 150,000 cavalry against the Khwarazam Empire. According to one author, under Mongke Khan the Mongols had one million men under arms.87 The Delhi Sultanate Army was able to defeat the Mongol invaders repeatedly during the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. The Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt and Syria (1250–1517) was also able to check the Mongols. However, in contrast to the size of the Delhi Sultanate Army, the Mamluk army of Egypt remained quite small. The Royal Mamluks who constituted the backbone of the Egyptian Army never exceeded 12,000 men and the total size of the Egyptian Army came to about roughly 40,000 men.88 Under Firuz Shah Tughluq (Sultan 1351–1388) the size of the Delhi Sultanate Army shrank to 90,000 horsemen. Of these, 40,000 were ghulams. The boundary of the Delhi Sultanate had contracted as Deccan became independent and consequently the revenue base had also shrunk, which in turn explains the reduced size of the army.89 Firuz completely ruined the efficiency of the army by making military posts hereditary. Regardless of merit, the son succeeded to his father’s post. In the absence of a son, even the son-in-law succeeded to the post. Further, the iqtas also became hereditary under Firuz.90 Firuz maintained a pilkhana (elephant establishment) and a paigah (department for breeding of warhorses).91 However, the paigah-bred horses were not as good as the Turki horses imported from Central Asia through Afghanistan. And because of overdependence on elephants as the First Battle of Panipat would prove (see Chapter 2), the Delhi Sultans would have to pay heavily as in the case of Jaipal and Anandpal of the Hindu Shahi Dynasty, who were repeatedly defeated by Subuktagin and Mahmud Ghazni. On 20 September 1388, Firuz died. The size and training of the army further declined under Firuz’s successor Sultan

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Muhammad Shah. He commanded 50,000 cavalry. Of them, 20,000 were provided by various chiefs who were ready to change sides in accordance with political fortunes.92 Political treachery was not, however, limited only to the ‘Orient’. At the Battle of Bosworth in England on 22 August 1485, Richard III, the last Yorkist King (r. 1483–1485) and brother of Edward IV, was abandoned by the Stanleys whose troops had changed sides, while the units of his army under Henry, Fourth Earl of Northumberland, did not fight.93 Under the Sayyids, the royal standing army under the central government vanished. The Delhi Sultanate’s army became a tribal militia.94 Semi-independent Afghan chieftains provided ill-trained levies and these conglomerates lacked cohesiveness to tackle the ‘face of battle’. The decline of the already weakened Delhi Sultanate was accelerated when Amir Timur (r. 1370–1405) burst upon the scene. In 1396, Timur’s grandson Pir Muhammad captured Uchch and Dipalpur. Multan held out for more than 6 months. In the summer of 1398, Timur with his grand army started his march from Transoxiana. Timur’s objective, somewhat like Mahmud Ghazni, was to avoid lengthy sieges and to plunder India. However, if required, Timur’s army was capable of conducting siege warfare as well. The Mongols used black naphtha, which meant gunpowder. Timur knew the art of using gunpowder for mining fort walls. A gunpowder mine was laid at the fort wall and it set on fire. Timur reached the Pamirs and advanced to Kabul, then moved to Bannu and crossed the Indus on 21 September 1398. Pir Muhammad and Timur joined forces near the River Beas. On 7 November 1398, Timur reached Bhatnir. Then, he moved to Samana and to Kaithal (2 December) and on 11 December 1398 reached Delhi. The First Battle of Delhi occurred on 12 December 1398. Mallu Iqbal, Wazir of the Delhi Sultanate, advanced with 4,000 cavalry, 5,000 infantry and 27 elephants. This army was a far cry from the army of Alauddin, which had stopped the Mongols a century earlier. After a brief skirmish, Mallu retreated. Meanwhile, Timur took care to fortify his camp against a possible elephant charge. The Second Battle of Delhi occurred on 18 December 1398. Sultan Mahmud Tughluq and Mallu advanced with 10,000 cavalry and 40,000 infantry. They were easily beaten. On 20 December, Delhi surrendered to Timur. Timur stayed in Delhi for 15 days and then started his homeward journey. Between 26 January and 24 February 1399, Timur ravaged the territory between Haridwar and Jamuna. On 3 March 1399 Timur crossed the River Chenab and on 1 May reached Oxus.95 After Timur’s departure, Delhi was ruled by the Lodhi Sultans who controlled a small, divisive polity.

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Warfare in West Asia The Seljuq Turks from Central Asia conquered most of the Middle East by the eleventh century. During the Mongol invasion, many more Turks migrated into West Asia, resulting in transformation of the ethnic landscape. The Seljuq attacks in Anatolia also weakened the Byzantine Empire. The Seljuqs invaded Caucasia in the 1020s. At that time, this region was politically fragmented. The Arab tribes had settled in Caucasia from the eighth century onwards as part of the Caliphate’s defensive measure against the Khazar Empire of southern Russia and the Armenian lords.96 The Mongol invasion of Anatolia in 1243 weakened the Seljuq state and also resulted in further migration of the Turcoman population into Anatolia. The Turcomans settled in the frontier regions between the Byzantine and Seljuq territories. The Seljuqs failed to transform themselves from a Turkish tribal oligarchy to a centralized military despotic structure. Due to their seminomadic character, they never established a permanent capital. The tribal tradition of collective sovereignty and bid for autonomy by the Oghuz tribesmen weakened the Seljuq central government. The decline of Seljuq power resulted in the autonomy of the Turcoman tribes. The Ottomans started as a Seljuq vassal emirate facing the Byzantine Empire near the Gulf of Nicomedia.97 The Seljuq domain was divided into a dozen Turkish emirates known as beyliks. The smallest and least significant of these emirates was that of Osmanli (the sons of Osman), the Turkish name for the followers of Osman Gazi. Osman (Othman) belonged to the Oghuz/Oguz tribe. The tendency of the Mongol commanders to become autonomous of the Ilkhanid Government of Persia indirectly aided the rise of the Ottomans.98 Initially, the Ottoman land force was an army of light cavalry (akinci), which was assisted by a small number of irregular infantry of unmarried men (known as azab). Many of them were mercenaries and some were Muslim town dwellers. For siege warfare against the fortified Byzantine towns, the Ottomans realized that they needed a large, well-trained infantry. So, the Ottomans tried to create a militia of foot soldiers comprising the younger sons of the Osmanli horsemen. They were known as payada (equivalent to Delhi Sultanate’s piyada) or yayan.99 Either Sultan Orkan/Orhan (r. 1324–1362) in 1330 or Murad I (r. 1362–1389) established the Janissary Corps. Kritovoulos writes that Sultan Mehmet, the Conqueror/Muhammad II (r. 1451–1481), systematized the Janissary Corps within the Ottoman military machine. He increased the Janissaries’ pay and

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made them the shock troops of his army. The Janissari Corps initially comprised Christian prisoners of war. Many of them were forced to accept Islam and many voluntarily did so and were then inducted into this corps. Selim I (r. 1512–1520), in order to increase the size of the corps, imposed a levy on the Christian subjects to seize their male children to fill vacancies in the ranks of the Janissaries.100 Thus, unlike South Asia, a sort of military conscription came into being in West Asia and in the Ottoman-occupied Balkan. And the Janissaries constituted the core of the Ottoman standing army. John A. Lynn asserts that after the fall of Rome, Valois France was the first European power to establish a standing army in 1445. In the 1470s, the peacetime force maintained by the French monarchy had 14,000 soldiers. During the last quarter of the fifteenth century, the force varied between 20,000 and 25,000 men.101 During the late fourteenth century the Ottoman troops used arquebuses and cannons, this diffusion of technology probably having occurred during the Ottomans’ confrontation with the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt and the European polities in the Balkan.102 The word cannon is probably derived from canna (Latin), which means a cane or reed. Probably, hollow reeds were used with naphtha (or Greek fire), which was equivalent to the fire lances of the Chinese. A Florentine document dated 1326 mentions the manufacture of brass cannons and iron balls. An illustrated manuscript from England that can be dated to 1327 depicts a gun. In 1338, French cannons were charged with an ounce (about 30 g) of gunpowder. In the same year, in England cannons of brass and iron (built-up or wrought) were manufactured.103 T. F. Tout asserts that at Crecy (26 August 1346), field artillery was used Ribaudequins were wheeled vehicles that were used to transport the guns to the battlefield and were also used to transport siege guns. The Black Prince used artillery at the Battle of Poitiers (1356).104 During the second half of the fourteenth century, West European metal workers tried to construct very large guns, known as bombards. These shot stone cannonballs and were used for demolishing fortresses and city walls. Bombards were used in the sieges of Calais (1346) and Oudenarde (1382). The British Mons Meg of the fifteenth century weighed 14,560 pounds (about 6,600 kg), with a calibre of 20 inches (50 cm).105 The bombards were in operation from circa 1375 to the end of the fifteenth century. They were made of both bronze and iron, and the bore diameter of a bombard was generally greater than 30 cm. The bombard was manufactured in such a way that the barrel and powder chamber were permanently joined together and the powder charge and ball were loaded from the muzzle.106 However, gunpowder artillery did not supplant non-gunpowder siege artillery like mangonels and trebuchets in West Europe until the mid-fifteenth century.107

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Guns were made of iron and bronze. Iron guns were constructed with bars of wrought iron welded into crude tubes that were strengthened by thick iron hoops shrunk over the tubes. Iron was difficult to cast effectively and cast iron was liable to fracture. Bronze on the other hand was easier to cast and throughout West Europe craftsmen who cast bronze bells for the Church easily shifted to the manufacture of cast bronze cannons. Cast bronze ordnance was less susceptible to erosion. Furthermore, the process of casting made manufacturing of muzzle loaders possible, thus avoiding all the dangers and problems connected with breech blocks and obturation. Though iron was cheaper until an effective method for casting iron was discovered, bronze ordnance was considered superior to wrought iron guns. Wrought iron cannons had to be open at either end because it was almost impossible to make the barrel properly without a mandrel. The breech loader was impractical for powerful weapons until the nineteenth century, when adequate obturation solved the problem. The difficulties of the detachable breech block proved impossible in regard to the big guns. Attempting to screw the breech block into the breech was unsatisfactory because the heat generated by each explosion expanded the thread and for several hours until it cooled, the breech could not be unscrewed for reloading.108 Robert D. Smith argues that the cannon barrel in West Europe up to the mid-fifteenth century was made from long strips of iron, and that the staves were bound together with iron hoops. It is wrong to assume that the staves from which the barrel was made were welded together to form a tube over which the hoops were assembled. Smith writes that the hoops were not welded together, but were made to fit closely and butted together edge to edge. Over this, a single layer of hoops was assembled.109 Copper came from Hungary, Tyrol, Saxony and Bohemia. Tin, which was mixed with copper for making bronze, came from England, Spain and Germany. Carlo M. Cipolla asserts that until the middle of the fifteenth century, West European gun founders focused on increasing the size of their guns. Huge bombards of wrought iron, effective mainly for siege warfare, characterized West European artillery.110 In England, Southampton’s walls in the 1380s were the first in a series of artillery defences of the fortress. Gunloops were present in the north-east sector of the fortifications, where arrow slit embrasures were converted to accommodate small cannons. On the north of the royal castle, a new tower was constructed in the early 1400s. This tower had three embrasures with keyhole gunloops and a vaulted roof. In other areas, many old-style rectangular and rounded towers were provided with keyhole gunloops. However, at many sites around the British Isles, the fortifications included circular gunloops at the outer gates. Many towers were three-storied brick structures with a series of small gunloops distributed to

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give the maximum field of fire. These loops were not of the keyhole variety, but small cross-slits, which were not as effective as the former.111 During the 1474–1479 Castilian Civil War, cannons were used in large numbers in land warfare. Despite their increasing presence, handheld firearms and cannons were not truly decisive. However, the structure of Iberian forces was changing. Instead of lighting raids by cavalry, primacy went to the infantry and the methodical use of siege artillery became common. Furthermore, the size of the standing army rose to 60,000 men. However, cannons became decisive in the war against Granada, which started in the 1490s. In sieges, the big lombardas and the pederosas battered the walls, and the medium guns like pasabolante and cannon medio used anti-personnel fire against the repair crews and the gates of the cities and towns. The smaller guns like falconete, verso and ribadoquines were fired at the hostile infantry. The espignard handguns provided mobile fire support to the comparatively immobile big guns against hostile attacks.112 Cipolla claims that knowledge about guns spread from Spain to North Africa and then to the Middle East. The mamluks knew about cannons in the 1350s and 1360s.113 Though the mamluks knew about firearms, the elite mamluk cavalry considered the use of firearm as below their dignity. So, the use of firearms was confined to certain black units of low social standing. They were used in siege warfare, but never in field battles.114 In 1364, the Ottomans manufactured iron cannons in Asia Minor. In the 1380s, firearms were employed in Bosnia and Serbia and the Ottomans during their raids in these regions became acquainted with these new weapons. In 1386, Serbian contingents served in the Ottoman Army. Probably, the Serbian soldiers also functioned as the vehicle for the spread of gunpowder technology into the Ottoman Army. The Ottomans used guns against the Karamans in 1387, and in 1389 at Kosovo against the combined armies of Bosnia, Herzegovina, Serbia and Albania. In addition, Venetian and Genoese merchants, despite a papal ban, exported gunpowder weapons to the Ottomans.115 In Venice, cannons were cast on a large scale from the beginning of the fifteenth century. The Venetian government cannon foundry was in Brescia.116 The Republic of Ragusa (Dubrovnik) functioned as a channel for importing Italian arms and armour, which was then sold to Bosnia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Moldavia and Byzantine Greece. In 1351, Ragusa was importing firearms from Venice to defend itself from Hungarian attack. During the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, the Ottomans acquired the use of gunpowder weapons from the Hungarians.117

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By tapping the skills of the Anatolian maritime population that had been previously in the service of the Byzantine Empire, the Islamic warlords launched naval raids against the shores of the Christian kingdoms from the shores of western Anatolia from the late eleventh century. When the Ottomans absorbed the coastal regions of Anatolia during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, they incorporated these corsair communities into their state. This skilled eastern Mediterranean maritime community became the foundation stone of the Ottoman Navy.118 By 1346, the Ottomans took over north-west Anatolia and slowly spread into South-East Europe. The Ottomans captured Adrianople in 1357 and made it their capital. By 1368, they had conquered Bulgaria. In 1388, the Ottomans defeated the Serbs at Kosovo. In 1391, Ottoman Sultan Bayazid I forced the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaeologos (r. 1382–1417) to join the Ottoman expeditionary force as a vassal against the ruler of Sivas Kadi Burhan-al-Din Ahmad. Even in 1390, when Bayazid was fighting the Karamanids in the regions of Pontus and Phrygia, Manuel II was forced to aid the Ottomans.119 Constantinople was besieged unsuccessfully by the Ottomans in 1397. The Ottoman rise to power was delayed by a few decades due to the arrival of Timur, who defeated the Ottoman Sultan Bayazid at the Battle of Ankara (1402).120 However, a steady Ottoman revival began after the departure of Timur. In 1451, Sultan Murad, after a reign of 31 years, died. By this time, the Ottomans were again going on the offensive in West Asia. Mehmed/Mehmet, aged about 20 years, succeeded to the throne.121 In 1451, Mehmed decided to build a strong fortress on the Bosporus/ Bosphorus on the European side, opposite the Asiatic fortresses at the point where the strait is narrowest. The objective was to control the strait so that the Sultan could cross and campaign on both continents. During the spring, Mehmed sent 30 triremes which escorted the cargo ships carrying troops and building materials from Gallipoli to the Bosphorus. Mehmed himself crossed with a large army by land. The area in which the fortress was constructed, the strait, is only 1,800 feet (550 m) wide. The fortress was constructed with large stones, carefully selected and fitted together. The joints were strengthened with iron and lead. Massive towers were solidly constructed and raised to a great height. In addition to the smaller towers and bastions, the thick walls provided extra protection. The thickest part of the walls was 12 cubits wide and its height was 48 cubits. The shape of the fortress was triangular (a prelude to alla moderna because the shape was not circular, as common in Islamic forts?). And the sides

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of the right angle went up the ascent to the summit, each like an outwork with its tower projecting strong and large; and uniting the two transverse sides as well as guarding them. The two corners of the base along the shore, at each end of the side, were walled and were strengthened by other towers, smaller in size than those at the apices. The fortress was designed to control as much of the shoreline as possible where stone-hurling machines (guns and catapults) could be stationed. The stone-throwing machines were stationed close to the straits, so that they could destroy hostile ships. The thicker parts of the wall faced the sea to prevent possible breaching by bombardment from enemy ships. The battlements of the towers and the bastions were equipped with cannons and crossbows. The largest cannon, pointing to the sea, hurled large, rounded stones.122 The city of Constantinople occupies a peninsula triangular in shape, with slightly curved sides. Constantinople is situated at the southern extremity of this peninsula whose landward part is hilly country rising northward to an isthmus and then falling steeply to almost sea level. A continuous wall of broken craggy slopes faces Europe, nearly approaching the sea at either end, and at the southern end, facing a marine lagoon. At the northern extremity of the wall, the hill system curves up to the coastline while southwards, it develops its broken relief towards the Black Sea. It continues to the mouth of the Bosphorus, then falls steeply and then rises again steeply on the Asiatic shore. The sea approach to Constantinople, from both the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, lies across a narrow channel. The channel in the first case is 20 miles (32 km) long and in the second case 50 miles (80 km) long. The course across the Bosphorus is the more tortuous of the two and its shoreline is higher and steeper, almost like a chain of blind defiles.123 The land walls of Constantinople stretched from the Blachernae Quarter on the Golden Horn to the Studion Quarter on the Sea of Marmora like a convex curve and were some 4 miles (6.5 km) in length. The walls along the Golden Horn were 3.5 miles (6 km) in length and ran in a concave curve from Blachernae to Acropolis Point (also known as Seraglio Point), which faces northwards up the Bosphorus. From Acropolis Point to the Studion Quarter, the distance is about 5.5 miles (8.5 km) and the walls went around the blunt apex of the peninsula facing the entrance to the Bosphorus and then in a concave curve along the Marmora shore. The walls along the Golden Horn and the Marmora were single. Along the Marmora, they rose almost straight out of the sea. Eleven gates opened through these on to the water and there were two small fortified harbours. Along the wall of the Golden Horn, 16 gates opened towards the shore.124

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In order to protect the Blachernae Quarter, John Cantacuzenus had dug a moat through the silt, which ran directly under the wall. In 1204, the Franks and the Venetians penetrated Constantinople through the Golden Horn. Shoals and reefs provided protection to the Marmora walls. At the northern end, the Blachernae Quarter jutted out from the main defensive line. It was originally a suburb but in the seventh century, it was enclosed by a single wall. At its lower end, it was protected by John Cantacuzenus’s moat, which ran around the corner where the wall reached the Golden Horn. It was pierced by three gates: the gates of Caligaria and Blachernae and a small postern gate called Kerkoporta, at the angle where it joined the old Theodosian Wall. The Theodosian Wall ran from this point to the Sea of Marmora. It was a triple defensive structure. On its outside, there was a deep ditch, a foss, some 60 feet in width, sections of which could be flooded when necessary. On the inside of the ditch, there was a low crenellated breastwork, within which there was a passage some 40–50 feet in breadth, running along the whole length of the walls and known as the Peribolos. Then there rose the wall, known as the outer wall, 25 feet in height with square towers placed along it at intervals varying from 50 to 100 yards. Within this was another space known as the Parateichion, which varied from 40 to 60 feet in width. The inner wall was 40 feet in height, with towers, some square and some octagonal, about 60 feet in height, spaced to cover the interstices between the towers of the outer wall. This line of walls was penetrated by a series of gates, some used by the public and others reserved for the military. The Golden Gate was ranked as the First Military Gate. The Gate of Pegae (Silvira Gate) was known as the Second Military Gate. The Fifth Military Gate (Gate of Saint Kyriake/Military Gate of Saint Romanus) was on the floor of the Lycus River Valley. The section of the walls crossing the Lycus Valley was known as the Mesoteichion. From the Lycus Valley, the ground again rises. At the top of the ridge was the Charisian/ Adrianopole Gate/Polyandrion. The part of the walls that continued along the ridge to the Xylokerkon Gate, just before the junction with the Blachernae Wall, was known as the Myriandrion.125 During the earlier sieges of Constantinople, the Byzantine Empire had control of the nearby seas and they had to face the foe only on the landward side. And with their galleons and transport, they could reinforce the shoreline of both seas. In addition, their brisk trade and commerce brought them immense supplies and cash. But, in 1451, the Ottoman Turks dominated the water bodies around Constantinople. And the Byzantine Empire suffered from a shortage of money and manpower to garrison the entire city walls. Meanwhile, Mehmed collected his infantry and cavalry force from different parts of his dominions in both Asia

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and Europe. He drilled his soldiers. The personnel were equipped with bows, lances, slings, javelins and swords. For the infantry stationed on the front line, helmets, breastplates and great oblong shields lined on the outside with iron were provided.126 Kritovoulos says that Mehmed the Conqueror focused on his navy rather than the army for the upcoming siege of Constantinople. He ordered the construction of new triremes, and the damaged were repaired. Especially those ships whose caulking was leaking were taken care of. And he ordered the construction of special fast long ships, each with 30–50 rowers.127 Mehmed stationed a fleet (18 galleys, 60–70 galliots and 16–20 small crafts) at the entrance to the Golden Horn, in order to supplement his siege on land.128 Kritovoulos writes that at Gallipoli, the Ottoman Admiral Baltaoglou assembled 350 warships excluding the transports.129 On 2 April 1453, the first detachment of the Ottoman Army came in sight of Constantinople. The Byzantine Emperor ordered the bridges across the moats to be destroyed and the gates of the city to be closed. The Emperor also ordered a great boom to be stretched across the entrance to the Golden Horn Harbour. It comprised a chain fixed at one end of the Tower of Eugenius under the Acropolis and the other end to a tower on the sea walls of Pera, and it was supported on wooden floats. A Genoese engineer named Bartolomeo Soligo was responsible for its construction.130 The Sultan set out from Adrianople with his army and in 10 days reached Byzantium. He encamped opposite the Gate of Romanus. Kritovoulos writes that the Sultan had 300,000 combatants in addition to camp followers.131 In 1422, when Sultan Murad attacked Constantinople, the Byzantines concentrated their defence on the outer wall, which the Ottomans failed to breach. Giustiniani and the Emperor agreed that due to an inadequate number of defenders, it would once again be the proper defensive strategy. The inner wall could not be manned fully due to lack of troops. The damage done to the outer wall during the failed Ottoman siege of 1422 had already been repaired. On 5 April, the Emperor stationed himself with the best troops at Mesoteichion where the walls crossed the Lycus Valley. Giustiniani was on his right at the Charisian Gate and the Myriandrion. When it became clear that the Sultan would concentrate on Mesoteichion, then Giustiniani and his Genoese troops moved towards the Emperor and the defence of Myriandrion was taken over by the Bocchiardi brothers and their men. The Venetian Bailey, Minotto and his staff, took over the defence of Blachernae and the moat. Teodoro Caristo was in charge of the Caligarian Gate and the Theodosian Wall.132

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Between 1 April and 28 May 1453, the Turks reduced Constantinople with the help of bombards that were manufactured by the Hungarian and German gun founders. The bombards were made of brass without trunnions and carriages, and were laid upon hollowed pieces of wood with their breeches secured by large stones to prevent their recoil.133 The Ottomans had copper mines in Anatolia. Most of the bombards were manufactured near the site of operation.134 On 29 May 1453, Constantinople fell after a seven-week siege and the Byzantine Emperor died fighting.135 Constantinople probably had the strongest fortifications in contemporary Eurasia. The capture of Constantinople proved that the Ottomans were the masters of siege warfare. After the capture of Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire became the capital of the Ottoman Empire. The Osmanli Turks called their empire the Empire of Rum (Rome).136 The Ottomans immediately tried to spread their tentacles to the Balkans. In 1456, the Ottoman expedition to Serbia led by Mehmed II was defeated at Belgrade.137 The Moldavian Army comprised peasants who constituted the rank and file, and the leadership was provided by the landowner class. In addition, Stephen the Great (r. 1457–1504) had a personal guard recruited from the privileged landowners and some mercenaries. The Moldavians used horses as battlefield taxis but fought on foot. The men carried wicker work shields, wore padded garments and were equipped with clubs, axes, scythes, hooks, swords and lances. In addition, they had some primitive firearms. Gunpowder was imported from Lemberg and Brasov. In the battlefield, the Moldavians defended themselves with fieldcraft. They made use of gulai gorod like the Muscovites. In 1475, the Ottoman Army under Grand Vizir Suleiman advanced against the Moldavians. Near Vaslui, in the Valley of Barlad, the Ottomans were defeated. Decoy attack by the Moldavian covering force, sudden counter-attack by the vanguard and continuous pursuit of the retreating Turkish force by the mounted Moldavians, rather than gunpowder weapons, were the reasons behind Turkish defeat. In this battle, according to one estimate some 45,000 Turks died. The Ottomans returned in 1476. The Turks were able to capture some forts, but the spread of cholera and the logistical difficulties of the Ottomans again saved the Moldavians. The Turks were repeatedly defeated in 1485 and 1486.138 Though Ottoman expansion was checked temporarily on land, it continued by sea. In 1461–1462, the Island of Lesbos in the Aegean Sea fell to the Ottomans. The fortress of Mitylene surrendered after the Ottoman cannons had destroyed much of its walls.139 In 1480, Mesih Pasha launched an amphibious attack on Rhodes. During the Siege of Rhode in 1480, Mehmet the Conqueror ordered

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16 great guns 18 feet long and 24–30 inches in calibre to be cast on the spot. In 1481, Gedik Ahmad Pasha landed an expeditionary force in south-east Italy and captured the town of Otranto. Ottoman naval activities threatened Venetian control over the sea routes, which ran past the narrows at the mouth of the Adriatic Sea. However, both campaigns failed by the time Bayazid II had ascended the throne in 1481.140 The Ottoman naval activities proved to be a foretaste of things to come in the near future. Moreover, the Ottomans had to secure their land frontier in Anatolia/Asia Minor. Post-Mongol Persia and Iraq were ruled by two tribal confederations: Akkoyunlu (White Sheep) (1378–1507) and Qaraoyunlu (Black Sheep). They were Persianate Turkoman Confederations of Anatolia (Asia Minor) and Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan is the region in north-western Persia, below the Araxes River. The Akkoyunlu rulers strongly identified themselves with Persia’s cultural traditions and considered themselves to be Persian kings. By 1400, Timur had defeated Qaraoyunlu. After Timur’s departure, the Qaraoyunlu leader Kara Yusuf returned from Egypt and tried to re-establish his power. In 1467, Uzun Hasan (b. 1423; r. 1453–1478) of the Akkoyunlu Confederation defeated Qaraoyunlu leader Shah Jahan (not to be confused with the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan). In 1468, the Qaraoyunlu Confederation was destroyed. In the 1470s, Uzun Hasan’s army comprised Arabs, Kurds, Lurs and Persian troops.141 Uzun Hasan’s standing army under his direct control had 25,000 cavalry and 10,000 infantry. The total number of troops (including those under his chiefs) of Uzun Hasan came to about 100,000 cavalry and infantry.142 Towards the end of the fourteenth century, backwardly curved cavalry swords became common in Persia.143 In 1473, Uzun Hasan was at the height of his power. His realm extended from the River Euphrates in the west to Kirman in the east, and from Transcaucasia in the north to the Persian Gulf in the south.144 Sultan Mehmed II marched against him with an army some 100,000 strong. Venice decided to supply Uzun Hasan with firearms, cannons and technicians in return for military assistance against the Ottomans. Venice wanted a port in the Syrian or south Anatolian coast. Hence, Venice had a military alliance with Uzun Hasan. However, Uzun Hasan’s force failed to keep a rendezvous with the Venetian ships cruising along the shores of Asia Minor opposite Cyprus. As a result, at the Battle of Terjan (12 August 1473) Ottoman artillery mowed down the White Sheep cavalry and secured the southern shores of the Black Sea.145 In August 1473, Sultan Mehmet II again defeated Uzun Hasan at Otluk Beli in the Upper Euphrates with the aid of his powerful artillery.146 Overall, the Ottoman cavalry–artillery combine proved superior to the purely cavalry force of the Akkoyunlu.

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Though Uzun Hasan’s White Sheep Confederation was seriously weakened, another power was rising in Persia that would remain a thorn in the the Ottomans’ side until the early eighteenth century. The thirteenth-century spiritual leader, Shaikh Zahid Gilani (1216–1301), recognized Safi as his successor and married his daughter to the latter. The term, Safavid, was derived from Shaikh Safi. Safi claimed that he was a descendant of Prophet Muhammad through the Seventh Imam of the Shia, Musa Al Kazem (d. 799 CE). This claim was passed on to Safi’s descendants including Shah Ismail, the founder of the Safavid Dynasty. In the time of Shaikh Junaid, the Safavid Order was transformed from a purely mystical movement to one with political and military ambitions. Besides being a mystical leader, Shaikh Junaid was also a warlord with 5,000 Sufi fighters who were deeply motivated by the spiritual beliefs of the Safavid Order. In fact, Uzun Hasan had married Junaid’s sister, Khadija Begum. And the daredevil Safavid soldiers played a conspicuous role in Uzun Hasan’s defeat of the Qaraoyunlu. Junaid died in 1460 while fighting the Shirvans in the Caucasus. The mantle of Safavid leadership passed to Junaid’s son, Haidar. Haidar married Uzun Hasan’s daughter, Alam Shah Begum. Haidar emphasized military drills and martial arts among his Sufi followers. Before his death in 1488, Haidar had a dream that Imam Ali had ordered his followers to put on the 12-gore hat, with each gore representing one of the Imams of Shia Islam. From that time onwards, Haidar’s followers were known as Qizilbash (Turkic meaning redheaded ones). Haidar followed Junaid’s lead and campaigned deep in the Caucasus against Daghestanis, Circassians and Christian Alans (Ossetians). In 1488, Haidar attacked Shamakhi, the capital of Shirvan. The Shirvan Shah Farrukhsiyar appealed to the Akkoyunlu for military aid. The latter by this time was threatened by the rising power of the Safavid religio-political order. The Akkoyunlu leader Yaqub sent 4,000 soldiers and this aid proved decisive in defeating Haidar, who was killed at the Battle of Tabarasan (9 July 1488). Haidar had three sons: Ali, Ibrahim and Ismail (1487–1523). While Ismail emerged as the top gun, the Safavids were winning converts to their cause in Azerbaijan, Persia, Iraq and Anatolia. At the same time, the already weakened Akkoyunlu Confederation was ravaged by a civil war.147 In the meantime, the Ottomans clashed with the Mamluks of Egypt and Syria. And in 1490, during the confrontation with the Ottomans, the Mamluks used hand-gunners.148 On average, before 1500, the battles and campaigns in Persia (except those waged by Timur) were conducted by lesser numbers of soldiers compared with the battles and campaigns in pre-1500 South Asia and China.

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Virginia Aksan asserts that even during the fifteenth century, in the Ottoman ORBAT, the primary place was held by the elite infantry while the left and right wings of the crescent-shaped line comprised cavalry.149 The point to be noted is that in the Delhi Sultanate’s Army, infantry did not enjoy a privileged status. Thus, we see that the military ideas of the Islamic steppe nomadic mounted aristocratic elites ruling over four sedentary societies (Egypt, Persia, north India and Turkey/Asia Minor/Anatolia) were different. This was despite the fact that they possessed roughly the same cultural ethos. Hence, military historians should be careful not to fall into the trap of cultural determinism. Besides culture, geography and enemy force structure also shaped the military structure of Islamic polities. Nevertheless, cavalry remained an important constituent of warfare both for the Ottomans and for their opponents. From the Turkish nomads in the steppes north of the Black Sea, Muscovy imported 30,000–40,000 horses annually and the volume of Ottoman import of warhorses from this region was far greater.150 From the tenth century onwards, Muscovy’s frontiers expanded slowly. They constructed gorods (sites fortified with palisades of tree trunks).151 Muscovy’s rise was partly facilitated by the disintegration of the Golden Horde in south Russia. By the 1420s, Crimea had broken away from the Kipchak Horde and by the 1440s, Kazan on the upper Volga River had also become independent. The Kipchak Khanate was limited to the lower Volga around their capital, Sarai.152 In 1456, Vassily II of Muscovy defeated the army of Novgorod, which was strong in lancers, by making good use of mounted archers provided in part by the Tatar auxiliaries. The principalities in Russia, in imitation of the Byzantine cavalry, deployed armoured lancers (like the Rajputs). But, after the above-mentioned Muscovite victory, a shift occurred in the Muscovite cavalry from armoured lancers to mounted archers wearing padded hemp coats.153 In the late fifteenth century, the bulk of the Muscovite Army comprised cavalry. Some of the cavalrymen held hereditary estates, and the rest held service estates (pomeste). Service estates were held for the tenure of military service (somewhat like the jagirs of medieval India). When the holder of the service estate ended his service, the estate reverted to the state. The army was structured around polks (regiments) commanded by voevoda.154 Around 1500, the steppe nomads of Ukraine were less powerful compared with the nomads of Central Asia and Mongolia, for several reasons. because of several. First, internal fighting among the Ukrainian nomads had weakened them. Internal dissensions were also common among the nomads of Central Asia and Mongolia. However, the nomads of Ukraine were sandwiched between

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two empires: Muscovy to the north and the Ottoman Empire to the south. Second, geography aided these two empires to gradually annex the nomads of this region. From the south (the Black Sea) the Ottomans could project power into Crimea. And the Russians, by moving supplies along the rivers (Don, Dnieper, Dniester and Volga), could gradually annex the steppe land. In contrast, the Chinese, Indians and Persians did not have rivers running along the north–south axis to maintain communications and supply lines for their armies fighting against the steppe nomads of Mongolia and Central Asia. By 1475, the Ottomans had taken control of Kaffa and annexed the Crimean coast and the foothills between Inkerman and Kaffa. In 1484, the capture of Kilia and Akkerman established Ottoman control over the western coast of the Black Sea as far north as Dniester. Thus, the Ottoman province of Silistria bounded the Crimean Khanate to the west. An Ottoman garrison was established at Azov (Tana) near the mouth of the Don at the Sea of Azov. This post bounded the Crimean Khanate on its eastern border. In addition, Ottoman garrisons were established within the khanate at Perekop, Gozlev, Arabat and Yenikale.155 The Crimean Khanate, which was a vassal of the Ottoman Empire, continued to fight Muscovy until the mid-eighteenth century.

Conclusion Gunpowder weapons were in use in pre-1500 West Europe, West Asia and in China. However, firearms and cannons were not the dominant elements shaping warfare. In the vast plains of Asia, cavalry armies remained the principal strategic asset, and horse archers constituted the most important tactical element shaping the dynamics of battle. Certain changes were taking place in both the western and eastern halves of the Eurasian landmass. While in the western part the heavy feudal cavalry was replaced by pikemen and firearms-equipped infantry, in South Asia mounted archers displaying operational mobility and tactical ingenuity established their dominance over the elephant–paik–centric armies of the Hindu rajas. And ironically, the great naval adventures of the Asian states (Cholas of India and Ming Armada of China) were ending just as the West European intrusion into the Indian Ocean was beginning. In West Asia, gunpowder infantry and cavalry were equally important in fighting battles and conducting campaigns. The period from the sixteenth century onwards would decide which powers would dominate the Eurasian landmass and how important cavalry and gunpowder would be in combat. And this is the subject of the next chapter.

2

Battles and Campaigns of the Asian Armies and Gunpowder Technology: 1500–1750

The general observation by the majority of military historians is that from 1500 onwards, West Europe experienced the age of gunpowder armies. Let us see how the four Asian polities adapted their traditional military systems to this new challenge and adopted gunpowder weapons. In the period under review, the West European armies were transformed from pike-wielding infantry supported by arquebusiers and matchlock men to infantry equipped with flintlock muskets supported by mobile light field artillery. The rectangular formation of the pikemen gradually changed to the linear formation of the flintlock-equipped infantry in the battlefield. However, this format of force structure lacked universal validity. As this chapter will show, in the early modern era, armies of the big Asian ‘four’ integrated gunpowder weapons along with their ‘traditional’ warmaking techniques as required by the physical geography of different theatres in which they operated and the force structures of the different types of enemies whom they confronted. Moreover, to avoid technological determinism, due attention is given to the morale, training and organizational aspects of the Asian armies. Furthermore, their effects on the conduct of campaigns are evaluated. We will start with West Asia and then move in a counterclockwise direction.

The Ottoman Army and its opponents At the beginning of the sixteenth century, most of the Ottoman Army comprised timar-based cavalry and the kapikulu (sultan’s standing army). The latter comprised Janissaries (elite infantry), gunners, gun carriage drivers, armourers and salaried cavalry. The devsirme/devshirme (collection) system (literally, tribute of blood)1 continued to operate. Under this system, young Christian boys were collected and then Ottomanized and inducted as slave soldiers of Islam.

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In this way, the Ottoman slave soldiers had several commonalities with the military slaves (ghulams) of the Mamluk Sultanate and other Muslim polities of the post-Caliphate era. Under Sultan Suleiman (1520–1566), the Janissaries numbered 20,000 elite troops. While the strength of the timar-based provincial cavalry varied between 50,000 and 90,000, the kapilulu had some 15,000 men.2 By 1609, the Kapikulu Suvarileri (Household Cavalry) had 20,869 men.3 The force structure of the opposing armies exercised a mutual and dialectic effect. In order to counter the Ottoman timar-based light cavalry, the Venetians deployed stradiotti (irregular light cavalry).4 The Grenzer (light infantry) and hussar (cavalry) were raised by the Habsburgs to fight the Ottomans. And the Ottomans also utilized German and French mercenaries plus deserters to raise disciplined-firepower heavy infantry.5 Rhoads Murphey says, ‘ … between 1400 and 1700 guns remained an essential but in themselves insufficient part of the Ottomans’ formula for military success’.6 This statement requires some qualification in the context of multi-tasking and the geo-strategic environment in which the Ottoman Army operated. David R. Jones in an article asserts that between 1500 and 1800, Muscovy initiated two Military Revolutions: one for fighting the Turks and another for combat against European powers. The Military Revolution directed against the Turks was cavalry-centric and geared for mobile warfare, while the Military Revolution initiated for fighting in West Europe pivoted round firearms-equipped infantry.7 As we will see in the course of this chapter, the reality is much more messy and complicated. By 1512, Muscovy deployed infantry armed with matchlocks.8 This, however, does not mean that Muscovy neglected cavalry. In fact, Muscovy’s cavalry force underwent upgradation with time. For instance, the Reconnaissance Regiment was first mentioned in 1524. This unit provided a light cavalry screen in front of the Advanced Regiment for reconnaissance and security.9 The Ottomans fused gunpowder technology within their traditional methods of war-making and thus generated a lethal compound. In the spring of 1514, the Ottoman Sultan Selim I (r. 1512–1520/1522) organized a force of about 200,000 men to invade Persia in response to the establishment of the Shia Safavid state in 1501 by Shah Ismail I (r. 1501–1524).10 As a point of comparison, the French and Imperial Habsburg armies in the Picardy campaigns of 1543–1544 had 30,000 men each.11 Paul E. J. Hammer claims that in the early modern period (1450–1660), due to manpower and logistical constraints, the European armies numbered between 10,000 and 20,000 effectives.12 In December 1500 at Gulistan, Shah Ismail’s 7,000-strong army destroyed Farrukhsiyar’s 27,000-strong army and the latter were all killed.

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The Ottomans could no longer neglect the Shia ideological-cum-military threat developing on their Eastern Front.13 In eastern Anatolia, many Qizilbash and other tribal elements had pro-Safavid tendencies that were manifested during the 1511–1512 Takkalu rising.14 The total strength under Ismail comprised 60,000 cavalry supplied by the following tribes: Shamlu (originally from Syria), Rumlu (originally from Rum/Anatolia), Ustajlu, Takkalu, Dhul-Ghadr, Afshar and Qajar.15 The core of Shah Ismail’s cavalry comprised Turkoman Qizilbash who were organized in accordance with their tribal configurations. The troopers wore steel armour and shields, which were manufactured at Shiraz, and their mounts were also armoured. The troopers were equipped with maces, curved swords (Shamshir), daggers, lances, bows and arrows. Besides the Qizilbash, Ismail’s army also included Persians, Azerbaijanis, Kurds and Taylish warriors.16 The Ottoman and Safavid armies clashed at Chaldiran, some 80 miles northwest of Tabriz.17 At the Battle of Chaldiran (22/23 August? 1514), the Ottoman troops armed with firearms and artillery crushed a Safavid force. The Safavid Army mainly comprised cavalry equipped with swords and lacking gunpowder weapons.18 Douglas Streusand writes that the wagenburg (wagon fortress) technique was adopted by the Ottomans from the Hungarians who, in turn, had adopted it from the Hussites.19 The Ottomans stationed musketeers behind the gun carriages, which were linked together with chains. Mortars of various size were placed over the gun carriages. Sinan Pasha, who commanded the Ottoman right wing, brought into action 200 cannons and 100 mortars and delivered the fatal blow.20 In 1241 at the plain of Mohi, Bela, while fighting the Mongols, drew up his wagons around the camp and chained them for protection. The Mongol cavalry could not break through the wagons and then used catapults to destroy the wagon laager.21 Unlike the Mongols, the Safavids at Chaldiran did not possess catapults. Selim I’s wagon laager was more deadly than that of Bela because unlike the latter, the former deployed gunpowder weapons within the wagon fortress. So, even if the Safavids had used catapults, it is doubtful whether these would have been effective against the cannons and mortars deployed by the Ottomans behind their linked wagons. Bausani notes that rad-andaz (thunder thrower) first appeared in Persia in 1387. Robert Elgood interprets rad-andaz as explosive grenades. Towards the end of the fifteenth century, some cannons were manufactured at Herat.22 Shah Ismail was aware of the use of gunpowder weapons in warfare. In fact, before Chaldiran, gunpowder weapons were used by the Safavid force. Haidar had used cannons during his Siege of Gulistan in 1488. In his 1504 campaign, Ismail had deployed muskets.23 Shah Ismail sent for cannon and gunpowder experts

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from Venice in 1502 and 1509. In 1516, a small corps of artillerymen and men equipped with arquebus were formed. A post known as tufangchi-bashi meaning commander of the handheld firearms equipped infantry came into existence.24 In 1516, the Ottoman Army during their retreat from Tabriz, while crossing the Araxe River, lost some cannons. The Shah retrieved them and then ordered 50 copies to be made. From the Ottoman camp, 20 Janissaries deserted and they became instructors in the Safavid Army. The Shah ordered the production of 2,000 arquebuses. By 1517, the Safavid Army boasted of some 3,000–4,000 arquebuses. The arquebus and artillery in Shah Ismail’s army were serviced by the Ottoman deserters and the Portuguese. However, the Qizilbash tribal leaders who had the right to raise their own troops and garrisoned several forts despised gunpowder weapons. So, for infantry and artillery, the Shah had to recruit men from Shirvan, the Caspian principalities and Georgia.25 At Chaldiran, Shah Ismail did not bring his gunpowder weapons probably because he wanted to emphasize speed and mobility to achieve surprise over the Ottomans. Hodgson writes that even during Chaldiran, the Safavids had artillery but it was not used in the battle against the Ottomans because the cannons were deployed in fighting against the Uzbeks.26 In November 1510, the Uzbeks were defeated at Takhtan by a Safavid force consisting of 40,000 cavalry. Safavid victory was due to judicious use of tactical reserve rather than that of gunpowder. The numerically inferior Uzbek force was also fooled by a feigned Persian retreat and was caught in an ambush. Finally, in this battle, the Persians had the advantage of occupying the higher battleground.27 Since gunpowder weapons were not very useful against the dispersed, fastmoving Uzbek cavalry, which posed the principal threat to the Safavids, the latter did not have a strong incentive to create a firepower-rich, albeit lumbering, army. However, this did not mean that the Safavids totally neglected gunpowder weapons. The Safavids acquired gunpowder technology from the Portuguese and in 1528 defeated the Uzbeks, who lacked gunpowder weapons. In 1528–1529, Shah Tahmasp’s force in Khorasan included a unit of Turkish infantry equipped with arquebus. Against the Uzbeks, the Safavids used the Rumi technique of matchlock men deployed behind the carts. Shah Tahmasp (1524–1576) hired some Ottoman artillerists.28 According to one estimate, in 1525, the Safavid Army had 400 cannons and between 10,000 and 15,000 muskets.29 Under Shah Abbas I (1587–1629), the Safavid Army comprised an artillery contingent of about 500 guns.30 Shah Abbas I used arquebus in his conquest of Mazandaran in the 1590s. During the 1610s, the Safavid Shah requested gunpowder weapons from Britain through the British East India Company (EIC).

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In 1613, he requested arquebus from Venice. In 1629, 2,000 tufangchis (musketequipped mounted infantry) were sent to protect Khorasan/Khurasan against the nomads. The Chief Minister of the Safavid Empire, Muhammad Beg (1654–1661), was interested in arquebus.31 Muhammad Beg was Shah Abbas II’s Grand Vizier/ Vizir. He was so enthralled by a firearm presented by the French traveller Tavernier (it could fire twice without reloading) that he ordered it to be dismantled and copied.32 Nevertheless, the mainstay of the Safavid force remained their cavalry. Niccolao Manucci provides an eyewitness account of the Safavid cavalry force: ‘These reviews are held twice a year; each time they last three days … We saw the cavalry enter at one side of the plain and march out at the other. The soldiers, forty thousand in number, were mostly clad in mail, and bore maces; some squadrons had lances, others bows and arrows, others matchlocks. All were mounted on good and swift horses, and carried standards bearing devices’.33 The Mughal and Persian cavalry troopers’ armour were more or less the same. It comprised of a shirt of mail over which was buckled a cuirass of four breast-pieces and back plates with side plates, called Char-aina. The trooper wore an arm guard on each forearm, with that on the right arm longer than that on the left hand because the right hand was not protected by a circular shield. The head was covered by a hemispherical helmet with a nasal piece and a curtain of mail hanging from the sides and back.34 Probably as a result of defeat at the hands of the Safavids, the Uzbek chiefs acquired technicians who could cast guns. Between 1510 and 1540, the Ottomans aided the Uzbeks in manufacturing hand-held firearms that shot copper and iron balls.35 The Ottomans’ strategy was to arm the Uzbeks as a counterweight to the Safavids. With the conquest of Mosul in 1515, the Ottomans burst into Iraq (Mesopotamia/Ajam). Control over northern Iraq was necessary to protect Anatolia with its nomadic Turcoman tribes. By this time, Baghdad, the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate (751–1258), had fallen to the level of a provincial town. The southern district of Basra was valued as a potential entrepôt for the Indian Ocean trade and as a base for further imperial expansion south into the Persian Gulf region.36 After his victory at Chaldiran, Selim, instead of pursuing the defeated Safavids, turned against the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt–Syria on his southern front. Probably Selim realized that in the dry, mountainous, roadless region of Persia, his combined infantry/artillery force would not be able to intercept and destroy the mounted Safavid army. The relatively slow-moving Janissaries were also not very effective against their mobile Safavid opponents. Also, the Janissaries were not very willing to fight against fellow Muslims. The Muslim Janissaris, as Bektashi dervishes, were susceptible to the Sufi mysticism of the Safavids.37 In 1516, the Ottoman Sultan Selim marched against the

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Mamluk Sultanate (1250–1517) in Syria. Ottoman field artillery combined with political treachery among the mamluks gave victory to the former.38 The defeated mamluks of Egypt were inducted in the Ottoman Army because both sultanates used slave soldiers. And the mamluks, even when they were not Turkish born, spoke the Turkish dialect. Meanwhile, the Safavid Army was reviving. In January 1518, Selim appointed a special governor for the Syria–Mesopotamia border region, whose duty it was to watch movements of the Safavid Army. In February 1518, the Viceroy of southern Syria was also ordered to collect information about the movements and activities of the Safavid force.39 Shah Abbas I reorganized and increased the size of the Safavid Army. The Georgian Allahvardi Khan was made commandant of the Safavid Army in 1598. Probably he and Shah Abbas were advised by Sir Robert Shirley (who was later given the title of Master-General against the Turks) and Anthony Shirley (who probably gave some input as regards the formation of musketeer units).40 The regular militia of the provinces were under the provincial governors and maintained by tuyul land grants, and were partly mounted and had 58,289 personnel. In 1586, the Qizilbash tribal cavalry with their distinctive red headgear numbered between 60,000 and 80,000 horsemen. Shah Abbas reduced their number to 30,000. From the revenue of the state land (khassa), Abbas maintained tufangchi (mounted musketeers) recruited 12,000 men from the Persian peasants. They used smooth-bore muskets and rode horses, mules and camels in order to deal with the fast-moving Turkish raiders from Central Asia. In 1598, a Persian Army of 30,000 men including 12,000 soldiers equipped with harquebus (which was a foot longer than the European muskets) defeated the Uzbeks at Khorasan. Mounted musketeers were used by the Mughals from the time of Emperor Shah Jahan (r. 1628–1658) onwards. The royal slave corps, comprising converted Georgians and Armenians and whom Shah Abbas called ‘my Janissary cavalry’, numbered another 10,000 men. The artillery branch comprised 12,000 personnel, but Abbas II (d. 1666) disbanded this corps.41 It would be simplistic to categorize Abbas II as a reactionary. The Russian armoury at Tula, which was established in 1595, also supplied cannons to Persia. It may be mentioned here that in 1602, the Safavid force equipped with cannons supplied by Muscovy was defeated by the Uzbeks near Balkh. Nevertheless, Shah Safi (1629–1642) requested armourers and a cannon maker from the King of England. The Safavid attitude towards gunpowder remained ambiguous. The Persians were able to manufacture very good gun barrels.42 Table 2.1 gives an idea of the structure of the Safavid Army.

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Table 2.1 Safavid army, from the time of Shah Abbas to Shah Hussein Unit

Number of men

Standing (regular) army

Ruler

Remarks

Shah Abbas They were disciplined and paid by the crown

Foot soldiers

12,000

Cavalry

12,000

Equipped with muskets

Artillery corps

12,000 personnel with 500 cannons

Imperial guards

200

Shaikh Safi

600

Abbas II

Qizilbash

80,000

Shah Abbas Tribal cavalry raised by the clan chiefs in lieu of land assigned to them

Qorchis

30,000

Disbanded by Abbas II

Acted as bodyguards

Irregular army

Irregular infantry; they had some Zamburaks with them

Source: James B. Fraser, An Historical and Descriptive Account of Persia from the Earliest Ages to the Present Time: With a Detailed View of Its Resources, Government, Population, Natural History and the Character of Its Inhabitants, Particularly of the Wandering Tribes; Including a Description of Afghanistan and Baluchistan (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, Tweeddale Court, MDCCCXXXIV), pp. 298–9; Robert Elgood, Firearms of the Islamic World in the Tareq Rajab Museum, Kuwait (London: I. B. Tauris, 1995), p. 118.

Intermittent war and peace characterized the Ottoman–Safavid relationship. In 1555, the Ottomans and Safavids agreed to stop fighting and accept each other’s sphere of influence under the Treaty of Amasya.43 However, border raids continued. In 1591, the Ottoman and the Safavid concluded the Treaty of Istanbul.44 The Qasre-Shirin (Zohab/Zuhab) Treaty of 1639 between the Ottoman Empire and Safavid Persia established a sort of stability that continued up to 1722. In accordance with this treaty, parts of Armenia, Dagestan, Georgia along with some important cities like Mosul, Najaf, etc went to the Safavids. The Ottomans received the western areas of Transcaucasia and Baghdad.45 Compared with the Ottomans’ Eastern Front, their Western Front (South-East Europe) was probably more important to the policy makers at Constantinople. As far back as the early fifteenth century, Turkish raiders appeared at Mottling (Mettika) in Carniola in 1408 and then incursions into Carinthia, Styria, etc. followed. After 1463, Ottoman raids in these regions became an annual feature. After the death of Matthias Corvinus in 1490, the Hungarian-Croatian Kingdom

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declined and it failed to function as an effective barrier to Turkish expansion. In the spring of 1521 and again in 1522, Croatia, Carniola and Styria suffered under Ottoman marauders.46 Under Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent (r. 1520–1566), the Ottoman Empire reached its zenith. In 1526, the artillery and Janissaries of the Ottoman Army defeated the badly organized Hungarian Army under King Lajos II at Mohacs.47 Turkish spies had been active in Hungary. Along the borders of Hungary, the Turkish commanders received instructions from Constantinople to reconnoitre its roads, rivers and mountains. At Mohacs, the Ottomans concentrated some 150,000 troops. Most of them (some 120,000) were mounted and the rest were primarily Janissaries. The Ottomans enjoyed 2:1 numerical superiority over the Hungarians. The battle was fought on a front that was five to six kilometres wide and lasted for a minimum of three hours. Initially, the battle went in favour of the Hungarians. When the Rumelian Army was on the plain of Mohacs and preparing to camp, the Hungarian artillery started to fire and the Hungarian right wing under Tomori (Commander-in-Chief of the Hungarian Army) charged. The Hungarian right wing aimed at the centre of the Rumelian Army. The Hungarian infantry moved towards the right flank of the Rumelian Army where the Janissaries and the artillery were stationed. As the unprepared Rumelian Army was caught by surprise and started to retreat, Tomori sent a message that ‘victory is ours’ and requested the Hungarian King to order a general attack including the reserve. Meanwhile, the Ottoman cannons opened up on the Hungarian reserves (or second-echelon troops). While the Hungarian high command was dithering whether to launch a general attack or not, the Ottoman Central Army under the Sultan debouched from the hills and the Janissaries started firing at the Hungarians. The Janissary musket fire by this time was also supported by the Rumelian Army. Tomori died at this point and the Hungarian cavalry fell back. Meanwhile, the troops under the Hungarian King were attacked by both the Rumelian and Anatolian armies. The mercenary Hungarian infantry formed a quadrangle or square formation and continued to resist until the end. The Hungarian Army had ceased to exist: the king, 7 prelates, 28 magnates, 500 nobles, 4,000 cavalry and 10,000 infantry all lost their lives.48 The Ottomans advanced to Guns (Koszeg) in 1532. In the 1530s, the Ottomans exercised power in central Hungary through their vassal ruler John Zapolya. Zapolya died in 1540 and Ferdinand I attacked Buda. In 1541, the Vilayet of Buda was constituted and direct Ottoman rule was imposed in

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this region. Zapolya’s infant son John Sigismund was appointed as the Ottoman vassal in Transylvania, and Suleiman retained control of the central part of Hungary. By 1566, when Suleiman died, the Ottomans had consolidated their rule in Hungary and the region north of the River Drava and lower Danube was organized as a sancak. The Vilayet of Temesvar (Timisoara) was established in 1552 in response to Ferdinand’s attempt to gain control of Transylvania. Suleiman’s successor, Selim II concluded a peace treaty with the Habsburgs at Edrine in 1568 enabling the latter to be free to pursue the Counter-Reformation. This peace treaty was renewed in 1576, 1584 and 1591. Between 1568 and the outbreak of full-scale war in 1593, the Ottoman–Habsburg border in Hungary was characterized by sporadic raids and counter-raids, which historian Caroline Finkel describes as kleinkrieg (small war).49 By the sixteenth century, the infantry regiments (recruited from the Rumelians and the Circassians) constituted an important branch of the Ottoman Army.50 The Circassians, especially from the time of Shah Abbas I, also became an important constituent of the Safavid Army. Gunhan Borekci asserts that even before the Dutch devised volley firing, the Janissaries had used this technique in East Europe. During the Ottoman campaign against the Hungarian Fortress of Esztergom in 1605, the Janissaries employed volley firing. The Ottoman infantry, organized in three lines, were adept in volley firing from at least 1597 onwards. As early as 1596, the Janissaries were drilled twice a week in Istanbul. Even in 1583, against the Safavids, Osman Pasha’s Janissaries equipped with muskets drew up in three ranks behind the cannons and fired continuously. The origins of this technique can be traced back to the Battle of Mohacs in 1526. During this battle, the Janissaries were organized in nine ranks and they fired and reloaded and fired again in a systematic manner. Borekci concludes that at Mohacs the Janissaries probably resorted to rapid fire by consecutive ranks, which culminated in volley firing by the turn of the next century.51 In 1538, Moldavia became a vassal state of the Ottoman Empire and its south-eastern corner between the Dniester and Pruth rivers was annexed to the Ottoman Pashalik (Province) of Silistria.52 Besides the Balkan, the Ottomans also had to secure their Northern Front. North of the Black Sea lived the Crimean Tatars whom the Ottomans had attempted to transform into a subordinate khanate in order to check the rising power of Muscovy further north. Between June 1502 and February 1503, the nobles of the Great Horde based near the Volga River submitted to the Khan of the Giray/Giri Dynasty. The Giray Khan ruled over the Tatars of Crimea. The

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submission of the Great Horde nobles resulted in the migration of Turkish tribes to Crimea. This made possible migration of the Nogay/Nogai Tatars, the eastern neighbours of the Great Horde, into the thinly populated steppe land on both sides of the Volga. During the first half of the sixteenth century, a number of these Nogay tribes passed under the control of the Crimean Khans, who settled them near the Kuban River in the steppe just adjacent to the Crimean Peninsula. The power of the Crimean Khans increased as a result of these developments. And Crimea had towns, ports and also trade connections with Moldavia, Asia Minor and Egypt.53 Muscovy and the Crimean Khanate had a sort of alliance between 1470 and 1509. This alliance enabled the khanate to exact heavy tribute from Poland-Lithuania and also enabled Muscovy to annex territory from PolandLithuania. However, this alliance between Muscovy and the Crimean Tatars did not last long. The Crimean Tatars raided Muscovy and Poland-Lithuania during harvest time in order to forage and plunder for several weeks. The aim of the raids was not destruction of the enemy army but capture of captives and livestock. Even snow did not cause the raiders any trouble. They equipped their horses with leather stockings in winter and as a result the mounts were capable of crossing the deepest of rivers. In the spring of 1552, Khan Dvelet Giri 1 (r. 1551–1577) led a large army in southern Muscovy and, with the guns supplied by the Ottomans, bombarded Tula. However, the arrival of Muscovite reinforcements from Kashira and Kolomna forced Dvelet Giri to retreat down the Murava Trail. Ivan IV then concentrated his force against Kazan, which fell on 2 October 1552.54 Ivan ‘the Terrible’ (1530–1584) reorganized his army in 1552. He introduced the streltsy, who were infantry recruited from free men for life and equipped with arquebus. Most were married and ultimately, like the Janissaries, formed a separate body in which the profession of arms became hereditary. They were armed and equipped in the West European fashion. Initially, they were paid in roubles for their housing arrangement, uniform, food and yearly pay. Later, the government started giving them land and allowed them to pursue other trades in order to supplement their income. Towards the end of Ivan’s reign, they numbered 12,000 of whom some 7,500 were garrisoned in Moscow. As a matter of fact, the bulk of the Janissaries in peacetime were also garrisoned in Istanbul. Ivan also set up a permanent force of artillerymen who were divided into gunners, fort artillerymen, grenadiers, artificers and a special corps of arquebusiers.55 The arquebusiers took log walls with them to the battlefield, which were mounted on wheels of skis and from behind these, shot at the enemy. While the cavalry protected the flanks, the infantry from behind the guloi gurad discharged their

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arquebus and then the cavalry went for the kill with their sabres.56 The Russian infantry tactics were somewhat similar to the Ottoman and Mughal infantry’s technique of taking shelter behind chained carts and firing arquebus from static wooden tripods. All these developments do not mean that Ivan neglected the cavalry. In 1578, during the campaign against Lithuania, the Czar had 39,681 combatants and more than half of this force comprised cavalry provided by the Tatar auxiliaries and boyars. So, it would be wrong to argue that cavalry was important for the Muscovites in their campaigns against the Crimean Khanate but not against the East European powers. The Muscovite cavalry was equipped with curved Turkish swords (equivalent to the Kalachuri sword of the Ghorids and Ghaznavids and Shamsher sword of the Ottomans), bows and arrows. Only some of the Muscovite cavaliers had pistols or long muskets. Some of the troopers had battleaxes, daggers and lances. Only a few noblemen wore cuirasses. Unlike the Polish cavalry, which like the cavalry of the West European medieval knights and Rajput cavalry were geared for charge and close-quarter combat, the Muscovite cavalry-like steppe nomadic light cavalry was characterized by its mobility, large operational range and harassing attacks.57 In the last two decades of the sixteenth century, Henri IV’s French Cuirassiers (heavy cavalry) adopted the closed order of the Reiter, but were trained to charge with the sabre and used their pistols during the ensuing melee. However, handheld gunpowder weapons of the horsemen were not that effective. In the 1520s, with the development of the wheel-lock pistol, the heavy cavalry adopted this weapon. The German Reiter made wide use of it the French adopted it in 1544 and the British in 1547.58 During the last quarter of the sixteenth century, about 10 per cent of the Suvaris (in the Ottoman Kapikulu) started using firearms. Since the Suvaris had many former Janissaries in their ranks, they were able to absorb firearm technology more easily than the sipahis/spahis.59 The Muscovite Army was noted for constructing field fortifications. They used portable defence shields made of wooden planks in which holes were bored for the musket barrels. With the aid of Western craftsmen and technicians, Ivan IV started manufacturing serpentines, falconets, etc.60 Cannon founders trained in Germany introduced the latest Western-style cannons to Muscovy.61 However, Ivan’s army was not invincible against the Tatars. In 1571, Khan Dvelet Giri invaded Muscovy with an army of 40,000 Crimeans, Nogais and Circassians and burnt much of Moscow. This raid resulted in the death of 80,000 inhabitants and some 150,000 were carried away as captives. In 1592, the Tatars burnt the suburbs of Moscow again when the Muscovite force was engaged against the

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Swedish Army. As late as 1633, when the Muscovite force was engaged against the Poles in recovering Smolensk, the Crimeans and the Nogais raided Kashira and Serpukhov.62 Not only Muscovy, but eastern Europe too had a Tatar problem. The Crimean Tatars who invaded Poland-Lithuania during the early sixteenth century numbered 10,000–20,000 warriors. By mid-century, the Tatar raiding force had risen to 30,000 men. In the 1630s, when the Khan himself took the field and enjoyed the support of his Nogai confederates, an army of 80,000 could be assembled. In 1621, Khan Dzhanibek Giri led 50,000 men to reinforce the 250,000 Turks who marched to Khotin in Polish Ukraine. In order to rein in the Crimean Tatars, Muscovy supplied the Don Cossacks with cash, grain, powder and shot. The Don Cossacks remained independent of Muscovy until 1671.63 And with time, the army of the Crimean Khanate also registered some changes. The standing army of the Khan comprised 2,000 foot musketeer organized along Janissary lines, which were supported by some field guns. However, most of the army comprised light mounted archers, which were nomadic tribal cavalry mobilized by the karachi beys, the chiefs of the four nomadic tribes who resided on the steppe above Perekop. Gunpowder was manufactured at Kaffa and firearms were produced at Bakchisarai. Wheel lock muskets were very rare. In general, the cavalry relied on short reflex bows whose range and rate of fire were greater than the muskets. Furthermore, the muskets were very difficult to handle from horseback. The cavalry also carried sabres and lances for closequarter combat. Some troopers wore chain mail hauberks and iron helmets. The stirrups were set high and they urged their horses with whips rather than spurs.64 Like the Mongol Army, the Crimean Khanate’s Army was also a sort of ‘people in arms’ long before West Europe discovered this formula during the French Revolution. Every able-bodied male aged between 15 and 70 was mobilized. The villages and tribes were decimally organized (like the Mongol Army) and the details of the units were recorded in registers. The basic military unit was the kos, which comprised 10 men. The tribal officers were commanders of 10, 100, 1,000 and even 10,000 men, Each tribe had a banner. The mobilization time was between two and four weeks. The motivation for going to war was to conduct gaza (religious war) as well as the chance for pillage and plunder. Each warrior took two to three mounts. And like most nomadic armies, the logistical baggage was minimal. Each trooper carried a few pounds of roasted millet and meat and lived mostly by foraging. The journey from Perekop to Moscow took about 55 days. The Khan’s infantry and artillery were carried on carts, and the latter were organized as wagenburg in the battlefield.65

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For cavalry, the Ottoman military establishment, besides mobilizing timarbased troopers, also relied on auxiliary cavalry provided by the nomadic chiefs from north of the Black Sea. In both 1543 and in 1566, these chiefs sent cavalry contingents to Hungary in support of the Ottomans. The Nogais were a tribal confederation that went back to the days of the Golden Horde. They pastured their livestock on the steppe in the Don–Volga–Ural region. The Nogai Khans had been influential in the Khanate of Astrakhan until the Khanate was captured by Muscovy in 1554. Then, the Nogais were divided into two camps. The Ulu or Great Nogais were partly coerced into the Muscovite orbit and the Little Nogais entered the Ottoman-Crimean Khanate orbit.66 However, these nomadic confederations were capable of harnessing substantial military strength against their opponents. From the late sixteenth century, tension escalated along the Ottoman Western Front. Between 1593 and 1606, the Ottoman Army conducted annual campaigns against the Habsburgs in Hungary. In the spring of 1594, the Habsburgs initiated a two-pronged attack with Archduke Matthias, brother of Rudolf, besieging Estergon (Esztergom, a fort that commanded the Danube) and General Teuffenbach attacking Hatvan. The Ottoman central government met the challenge by mobilizing military assets from Anatolia and Crimea. About 5,000–6,000 Janissaries from Damascus were sent to Hungary. The Syrian musket men were the best in the Sultan’s army. Musketeers also came from Algeria and Tunisia. The reinforcements sent from Istanbul resulted in the failure of Teuffenbach’s attack. After relieving Estergon, the Ottomans themselves continued to advance and took the fortresses of Tata and Samartin (Szent Marton). The Ottomans also occupied Gyor (Yanik), which was further west on the Danube than Estergon. Gyor became the seat of a new Ottoman vilayet. Khan Giray arrived with reinforcements from Crimea and occupied Papa. Sinan Pasha’s force laid siege to Komran (Komarom). This was the maximum extent of Ottoman advance.67 After consolidating their position in upper Hungary in late 1594, the following year the Ottomans concentrated on the lower Danube against their former vassals in Transylvania, Moldavia and Wallachia. In 1594, these vassals had requested Habsburg aid against the Ottomans. These principalities provided the Ottoman Empire with raw materials and foodstuffs. Further, the Ottomans needed to control these principalities in order to secure their logistical lifeline, which extended from Istanbul to Varna by boats along the Danube and then by carts to Hungary. When Sinan Pasha died in April 1596, Damad Ibrahim Pasha was appointed as Grand Vizir. In 1596, Sultan Mehmed III himself participated

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in the campaign. The Ottoman strategy was to mobilize all possible resources and pitch them into a massive clash against the Habsburgs. Confrontations between the Ottoman and Habsburg troops occurred at Lipova, Temesvar, Vac and Hatvan. The fortress of Egri (Eger) fell to the Ottomans. This fortress provided the Habsburgs access to Transylvania. The decisive battle occurred at Mezokeresztes between the Ottoman field army and the Habsburg relief force under Archduke Maximilian. This battle was closely contested but, in the end, the Ottomans emerged victorious. In north-west Hungary, the Ottomans were able to repel a Habsburg attack against Yanik.68 During the 1596 campaign against the Habsburg and Transylvanian forces, the Ottoman order of battle (ORBAT) comprised gun carts chained together (Chaldiran style), and the Janissaries equipped with arquebus deployed behind them. The right wing of the infantry line comprised sipahis from Rumeli and Temesvar and the left wing comprised sipahis from Aleppo, Karaman, etc. Sultan Mehmed III was surrounded by his household cavalry. The cavalry constituted the vanguard while the beasts of burden and baggage brought up the rear. The Ottoman Army enjoyed cavalry superiority in the East European theatre, and the German cavalry of the Habsburgs had no answer to the Ottoman light cavalry’s technique of attacks, retreat and counter-attacks.69 However, the Ottomans were unable to exploit their staggering victories over the Habsburgs due to the threat of a two-front war. In 1603, Shah Abbas marched north-west of Persia to reconquer territories in the Caucasus. The Safavids had lost these territories to the Ottomans in 1590. The Ottoman–Safavid War lasted to 1612. In December 1603, Sultan Mehmed III died and Ahmed I acceded to the throne. Due to the Safavid attack, two military commands were created. In the summer of 1604, the Western Military Command against the Habsburgs arrived at Lala Mehmed Pasha. In 1605, Transylvania came under Ottoman control. In 1606, during the peace negotiations, despite the demands of two-front warfare, the Ottomans had the upper hand against the Habsburgs.70 During the Habsburg–Ottoman War fought in Hungary between 1593 and 1606, the weaponry and organization of the Habsburg units were similar to the forces fighting in Flanders. About 75 per cent of the Habsburg military personnel deployed were infantry equipped with firearms. The Hungarian Heyducks and the garrison soldiers who supplemented the royal Habsburg Army also had firearms.71 The war in Hungary centred around the objectives of controlling various fortresses. And in such semi-static encounters, firepower-armed infantry played an important role. From the late sixteenth century, the timar cavalry was gradually replaced by firearms-equipped infantry. Unlike the West European armies, which relied largely on foreign mercenaries and thus gained from cross-

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fertilization of ideas, the Ottoman Army did not use foreign mercenaries on a large scale. However, at times it did utilize foreign troops who deserted to the Ottoman side. During the Ottoman–Habsburg Long War (1593–1606), the Habsburg mercenary garrison at Papa near Lake Balaton in Hungary mutinied and surrendered to the Ottomans. In 1600, the Papa garrison comprised French, Walloons, Germans and Hungarians. The French and Walloon mercenaries of the French garrison, comprising 1,200 men, mutinied due to the Habsburg Government’s failure to pay them. They arrested the Hungarian garrison commander and disarmed the Hungarian and the German troops. The mutineers carried on a correspondence with the Turkish authorities. On 24 June 1600, a Habsburg imperial relief force was beaten back by the rebels. Meanwhile, the Pasha of Bosnia and the Grand Vizir carried on correspondence with the rebels and paid them their arrears along with some extra pay. Compared with the elite Janissary infantry, the mutineers received a higher daily wage from the Ottoman bureaucracy. The mutineers, after joining the Ottoman side, accepted Islam and served with distinction in many campaigns. In 1601, the erstwhile mutineers fought against the Habsburgs with the Ottomans in Belgrade, Budapest, etc. In 1608, they were deployed in Moldavia and in 1610 probably participated in the campaign against the Safavids. One could speculate that these mutineers, armed with muskets and arquebus, played an important role in transferring the skills and techniques of gunpowder-equipped infantry warfare to the Ottoman military machine.72 In Hungary, a quarter of the Ottoman soldiers were Turks. The rest were Muslims of Slavic origin, Bosnians, Croatians and Serbians.73 In order to supply its detachments with gunpowder, the Ottoman Empire established powder mills in different parts of the empire. The most important mills were in Istanbul, Cairo, Baghdad, Aleppo, Yemen, Bor (Karaman), Thessalonica, Gallipoli, Belgrade, Buda and Temesvar. Saltpetre was manufactured in Egypt (especially in Cairo), Syria (in the regions between Hawran and Leja), Lebanon, Palestine and Iraq (Basra). In Asia Minor, saltpetre was found in Nigde, Malatya, Larende, Icel and in the region of Van. In the Balkan part of the empire, saltpetre was found in Thesalonika, Morea, and Karasu in Crimea. The powder mill at Bor got its supply of saltpetre from Larende, Kayseri, Develu, Konya, Sarkisla, Aksehir, Aksaray and Bedok Ozi.74 Overall, the Ottoman Empire had all the necessary mineral deposits (except tin) for manufacturing gunpowder and gunpowder weapons. In total, there were 25 gunpowder mills and 19 cannon foundries (excluding smaller temporary facilities).75 Gabor Agoston claims that the Ottomans remained self-sufficient in the production of gunpowder until the end of the seventeenth century.76

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The Ottoman military machine evolved a bureaucracy and also developed functional specialization to meet the varied challenges. One of the subdepartments was known as the Cebeci Ocagi (hearth of armourers/armourer corps). Their duty was to manufacture weapons including firearms, armour, trenching tools and related combat equipment for the Janissaries. They were also responsible for repairing broken equipment and storing it in peacetime. In peacetime, all weapons and armour remained in the depots. The Janissaries were given access to the weapons during campaigns and during battle training. The Cebecis issued weapons, armour and ammunition (300 rounds per musket) during the onset of a campaign and then collected them after the battle. From the storage depots to the combat zones, the Cebecis transported the arms and armours. The personnel strength of the Cebecis rose from 451 in 1514, to 789 in 1567 and to 3,000 in 1598 (excluding personnel in the border fortresses and provincial Cebeci units). The armourer corps was organized in 38 ortas (regiments). The strength of the field artillery corps rose from 250 in 1453, to 1,204 in 1567 and to 2,827 in 1598 (excluding personnel in the border fortresses and provincial artillery units). The personnel of the field artillery corps were organized into ceemats of approximately 100 whose size later rose to 250. The First Ceemat was 500 strong and divided into five topcubasi (companies). By 1687, there were 72 ceemats. The artillery corps selected the best personnel from the Acemi Ocagi. The sakrids (artillery novices) underwent four to five years of training in the field before being inducted into the vacancies arising. And after becoming soldiers, they had to participate in mandatory training of two days per week under the supervision of master gunners. In the post-Mehmed II era, the artillery corps comprised two principal branches: cannon foundries and field artillery units. The first cannon foundry was established at Edrine and later transferred to Istanbul, becoming known as Tophane-i-Amire (the Imperial Cannon Foundry). It remained the biggest foundry to the end of the Ottoman Empire. Field casting operations remained under the control of the Tophane (and at times under the local foundries) until the formation of an expeditionary cannon foundry company in 1667.77 The Janissaries also used primitive hand grenades from the 1560s.78 The Chinese had these much earlier. In siege warfare, the Janissaries used cylinderbarrelled heavy matchlock muskets with a firing tube 130–160 cm long. In field battles, they used muskets 120–135 cm long that weighed between 3.5 and 4 kg, could be fired from a kneeling or standing position and did not require bipods or tripods. Though from the late sixteenth century, flintlock muskets/fusils with Spanish miquelet locks were manufactured in the Ottoman Empire, the

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Janissaries continued to use matchlock muskets even in the seventeenth century. The Ottomans also used combination locks, which in West Europe after 1688 became known as Vauban locks.79 The Janissaries from the late sixteenth century suffered from both technical and organizational problems. The Ottomans failed to create adequate military staff. Furthermore, at the lower levels, there was a gross shortage of officers. As the strength of the Janissary regiment rose from 100 to 700 in the seventeenth century, the number of officers did not increase and remained static at five per regiment. In an attempt to create more non-commissioned officers, more odabasi were upgraded to officer positions.80 By the early seventeenth century, due to pressure from the Habsburgs in Hungary, the Ottoman Government increased the number of Janissaries and also hired sekbans (arms-bearing infantry from the vagrants of the subject populace).81 Between 1567–1568 and 1680, the strength of the Janissary corps rose from 12,798 to 54,229.82 However, the Ottomans faced trouble in expanding their Janissary corps. By the early sixteenth century, the devsirme was unpopular with the landlords as it resulted in the loss of hardy peasants. Those who hid away young boys in their houses, villages or timars were threatened with punishment. Orders were issued in 1621, 1622 and in 1666 implying that khas and waqf land did not enjoy immunity. The raiya were to present their sons to the recruiting officers for inspection whether they were living in the towns, villages, timars, khas, waqf or mulk land.83 Besides combat troops for the field armies, who were recruited permanently, the Ottomans also required garrison troops in order to protect the borders and for internal policing. The latter were recruited temporarily. The demand for extra manpower equipped with muskets was due to the requirement of the Ottomans to combat the Habsburgs in Hungary. Most of the devshirme levies for the Janissaries were recruited from Bosnia. From the early seventeenth century, the demobilized musket men recruited from Anatolia became brigands and participated in what is known as Celali rebellions. However, demobilized musketeers were not present in sufficiently large numbers in Bosnia and Albania to create such disturbances.84 But two things were clear: multitasking by the Ottoman Army had stretched its resources to the maximum. The principal prop of the Ottoman military machine, the Janissaries, were showing several fault lines, and the Ottomans were unable to increase the strength of the Janissary corps by significant numbers. Besides the inadequate size of disciplined gunpowder-equipped infantry, the Ottomans encountered trouble also in the sphere of field artillery from the late seventeenth century. The Ottoman field guns were manufactured with

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poor-quality brass, and were of numerous bores and sizes. The Ottomans failed to organize homogeneous batteries. Standardization aided a rapid, regular and predictable rate of fire. But this point should not be pushed too far. Jean de Gribeauval (1715–1789) was appointed Inspector General of the French Artillery in 1776. Then, he standardized specifications: 4-, 6-, 8- and 12-pounder cannons and 6-inch howitzers in eight-gun batteries. Gabor Agoston notes that from the 1680s onwards, the European field artillery pieces were more mobile compared with their Ottoman counterparts. This was because for more than a century before the 1680s, the Ottomans had concentrated on conducting siege warfare against the Habsburgs. Hence, the Ottomans focused on developing siege rather than field artillery. But, after the 1680s, the Hungarian front witnessed successive land battles in which the Habsburg field artillery displayed an edge over its Ottoman counterparts.85 The traditional branch of the Ottoman Army was also malfunctioning by this time. Virginia H. Aksan writes that campaign records after 1700 indicate rising rates of desertion among the timariots. They failed to report for military service. Decline in agricultural revenue caused unhinging of the timar system.86 The increasing combat effectiveness of the Habsburg Army and the entry of a new player, Muscovy, in greater strength from the mid-seventeenth century resulted in the slow but steady shift of the military balance against the Ottomans. It was exactly at that time that the West and Central European polities were setting up permanent armies. After the Thirty Years War (1618–1648), the regiments raised by Albrecht von Wallenstein (1583–1634) became the nucleus of the Habsburg’s permanent military force. After signing the Peace of Westphalia, Ferdinand III (r. 1637–1657) established the first peacetime standing army of the Habsburg monarchy. In 1649, he issued a decree that of the 52 regiments raised during the war, 9 infantry (including both pike and musket) and 10 cavalry (1 dragoon and 9 cuirassiers) were to be maintained permanently. The lessons of the Thirty Years War, as well as the Turkish threat on the Eastern Front and the resurgence of France under Louis XIV, prevented disbandment of all the units raised during the war. From 1627, Ferdinand reserved the right to maintain offensive military forces by the crown only. In 1654, Leopold I deprived the Austrian estates of their right to refuse the exacting of extraordinary taxes by the Vienna Government for military provisioning. Leopold also took over, from the regimental proprietors, the right to appoint regimental colonels, and the death of a regimental colonel did not result in the disbandment of that particular regiment.87 M. D. Feld claims that firearms replaced pikes partly for the same reason they had replaced the crossbow and longbow. Firearms economized on training. It

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took years to produce a skilled archer in a sedentary society and a generation to raise a cohesive body of pikemen. A body of musketeers could be drilled into shape in a few months. The Dutch method of using firearms by the infantry was part of a system and not based on the use of individual weapons. The principal elements of the system were mechanical standards of performance and inculcation of the habit of obedience.88 The invention of the bayonet (circa 1680) resulted in the replacement of pikemen by musket-equipped infantry. And this further raised the combative effectiveness of the West European armies in closequarter battle.89 In Britain, all the new regiments raised from 1689 had flintlock muskets. Towards the end of the seventeenth century, one-quarter of the British Army comprised cavalry. Under Duke of Marlborough, the cavalry functioned as a shock force geared to charging and relying on shock tactics rather than as mounted infantry. The British cavalry, like the Rajput cavalry, depended on cold steel. However, Marlborough also had light mobile field artillerythat could manoeuvre in the battlefield and could be used to exploit any breaching of the enemy’s centre.90 Overall, the Ottomans, due to the pressure of fighting the Habsburgs in South-East Europe, had more firearms-equipped infantry than the Mughals and the Safavids. In the second half of the seventeenth century, the Ottomans had about 40,000 Janissaries. The proportion of foot to cavalry troops on average was 1:2, but this changed in favour of infantry with the passage of time. For instance, in 1715, Grand Vizir Silhadar Ali Pasha’s force deployed against the Venetians had 87,520 infantry and only 22,844 cavalry. This 4:1 infantry: cavalry ratio (in the Habsburg Army the ratio was 3:1)91 was absent in the Safavid and Mughal armies. In the seventeenth century, Muscovite cavalry replaced its composite reflex bows (i.e. made of wood, bone and sinew held together with fish glue; a bow in which only the ends recurve is known as a recurve bow; and a reflex recurve bow is a type of recurve bow that when unstrung reverts to a c-shape in the opposite direction to which it is strung) with carbines (light muskets that could be used on horseback) and pistols. Carbine was definitely not technologically superior compared with the composite reflex bow. While reloading a carbine, the cavalier had either to stop his horse or even to dismount. In the 1670s, a carbine was effective up to 10 paces (25 feet). The pistol could only be fired once and was effective over only a very short range. In contrast, a mounted archer could dispatch between 6 and 15 shots per minute at an effective range of between 350 and 500 yards. Donald Ostrowski claims that, until the midnineteenth century, the composite reflex bow was superior to handheld firearm

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in terms of accuracy, range and number of shots that could be fired from horseback. It was not technological superiority in firearms (it had none vis-àvis mounted archery) but decline in the skill of horse archery that resulted in the replacement of mounted bows with firearms. Again, compared with mounted archery, skill in using the musket was easier to acquire. So, replacement of composite reflex bows by handheld firearms enabled the ruler to increase the size of his army. Furthermore, there was a noticeable decline in the skill required to manufacture good bows and arrows. The spread of firearms among the Muscovite horsemen also occurred because of a shift in the tactical use of cavalry. Mounted archery was suited to a cavalry force geared for hit-and-run attacks and conducting ambush. However, the Muscovite cavalry used swords and firearms as its tactical role shifted to frontal assault, defending the slow– moving, handheld firearms-equipped infantry formations and conducting mopping-up operations in the final stages of the battle.92 Only in 1715 had Muscovy standardized its infantry firearms.93 By the early eighteenth century, the military balance shifted slowly but steadily against the Ottomans in Ukraine. In 1732, we find an Ottoman grandee who was a proponent of reform claiming that Peter the Great’s (r. 1682–1725) military reforms were responsible for the whittling away of Ottoman gains in the region north of the Black Sea. By 1738, the Ottomans had lost the Black Sea littoral and the Crimean state, which hitherto had been an Ottoman client state with a large Muslim population. The Muscovite armed forces expanded massively, rising from 92,000 men in 1630 to 164,000 in 1680. In addition, some 50,000 Ukranian Cossack cavalry would be mobilized at a later date. By the mid-eighteenth century, asserts Gabor Agoston, the Muscovite Army outnumbered the Ottoman Army.94 Between 1700 and 1750, the size of the Muscovy Army increased from 170,000 to 200,000 men.95 When the RussoTurkish War (1768–1774) began, Muscovy deployed 60,000 troops on the Polish Front and in Moldavia and 40,000 in Crimea. Later, 24,000 irregular cavalry (mostly Cossacks and Kalmuk) arrived at the Crimean Front. In 1769, the Ottoman Empire had at its disposal 60,000 Janissaries, 100,000 irregulars (cavalry and infantry) and 100,000 cavalry of the Khan of Crimea. In 1771, the regular Ottoman standing army numbered 62,611 men. About 35,000 Ottoman troops came from Egypt to Crimea.96 The Habsburg Army also expanded substantially during this period. Between 1650 and 1790, the effective strength of the Austrian Army rose from 33,000 to 314,800.97 All these developments had serious repercussions for the Ottoman western and northern fronts. Let us now shift the focus further to the east.

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Land warfare in South Asia and Afghanistan In 1502, the Uzbek chieftain Shaibani Khan could mobilize some 60,000 Uzbek soldiers. His personal force comprised some 30,000 cavalry.98 He was the most powerful man in Central Asia. Shaibani forced Zahir-ud-din Muhammad Babur (b. 1483–d. 26 December 1530), the Turkish ruler of Ferghana, to move south into Kabul. After establishing his rule in central and eastern Afghanistan, Babur turned his attention towards Hind (Hindustan/north India). Victory at the First Battle of Panipat (21 April 1526) allowed the Mughals to establish a foothold in north India. Hence, this battle deserves analysis in some detail. Babur used three innovative techniques that gave him repeated victories over his Indian (Afghan and Rajput) opponents. Gunpowder technology, wagon laagers and the taulqama/tulughnama tactics were the three trump cards in Babur’s arsenal, which were used by him at the First Battle of Panipat. In 1512, Babur’s force of 5,000 cavalry was defeated by an Uzbek force that had 3,000 troopers. Victory went to the Uzbeks due to their implementation of the taulqama technique.99 This involved elite mounted archer units moving across the flanks and rear of the enemy force and then encircling and enveloping it. Babur copied this technique and used it with great effect at the First Battle of Panipat against Ibrahim Lodhi’s army.100 The Lodhi Sultanate was cut off from Afghanistan. Hence, the Lodhis lacked access to Central Asian horses or mounted archers. Gujarat had also become independent of the Delhi Sultanate, so the Lodhis were not in a position to import Arabian horses. Though the Afghans of east India used bans (rockets), the use of mortars and cannons was unknown among the military leaders of north India. The Lodhis tried to make up their shortfall through numerical superiority and the use of war elephants. Babur confronted the Lodhi Sultan Ibrahim at Panipat. Most of Babur’s soldiers were Turks and Tajiks. Babur had about 12,000 cavalry. Ibrahim’s force was estimated at 100,000 cavalry and foot soldiers and 1,000 elephants.101 According to one estimate, while the Mughal Army was 24,000 strong, Sultan Ibrahim commanded 50,000 men and 2,000 elephants. However, the Lodhi Army was raked by internal dissension.102 Just before the First Battle of Panipat was fought, Babur issued orders to collect carriages. Some 700 carriages were collected, and Ustad Quli Khan was ordered to yoke them together in the Rumi (Ottoman) manner with chains and ropes made of cow hide. Between every two carriages were placed six to seven gabions, in order to allow the matchlock men to fire their pieces from behind these. Some cannons and mortars were also deployed at the centre of Babur’s line. The right

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wing of the Mughal Army were resting in the environs of the city of Panipat. The left wing was defended by trees and ditches. And in front of the centre, the carriages and the gabions were placed. At the extreme end of both wings, two flanking parties consisting of mounted archers were deployed.103 Their duty was to implement the deadly taulqama charge against the two flanks and rear of the enemy force at the right opportunity. The Lodhi infantry, equipped with swords and spears, were easy prey for the mobile mounted archers. Babur in his autobiography describes the Lodhi infantry as unskilled and unable to manoeuvre in the battlefield.104 Sultan Ibrahim Lodhi was personally brave. The Lodhis, like the Safavids, did not have catapults to destroy the wagon laager. Before the Lodhi elephants could reach the wagon laager, firing by the matchlock men and mortars from the laager frightened these huge beasts, which ran back among the Lodhi ranks creating disorder and confusion. The superior discipline of the Mughal troops, and Babur’s judicious synthesis of the taulqama charge launched by the horse archers along with the material and psychological effect produced by gunpowder weapons, generated fear and caused death among the elephants and Lodhi military personnel. By sunset, the Lodhi Army was scattered and Ibrahim Lodhi lay dead on the battlefield.105 To conclude, in this battle, gunpowder weapons constituted one of the decisive elements behind the Mughal victory. Next, Babur had to tackle the powerful Rajput chief known as Rana Sanga or Rana Sangram Singh. He led a coalition of Rajput leaders along with some Afghan chiefs against the upstart Mughals. On 16 March 1527, Rana Sanga moved towards the village of Khanwa in Biana. The Mughal camp was located two kos away from the Rajput camp.106 While Rana Sanga had 80,000 cavalry, Babur had only 12,000 horsemen. Besides light cavalry (unarmoured mounted archers), Babur also deployed heavy cavalry: horses and the sowars covered with chain mail armour. Behind the wheeled tripods, Ustad Quli deployed the infantry equipped with matchlocks. The whole battle line extended for one kos. As in the First Battle of Panipat, Babur took up position at the centre of his battle line. Babur’s eldest son, Humayun, commanded the right wing.107 As Babur emphasized in his autobiography: ‘We imitated the ghazis of Rum by posting matchlock men and cannoneers along the line of carts which were chained to one another in front of us’.108 Thus, we see that the Mughal ORBAT at Khanwa was similar to that of the First Battle of Panipat and both battle plans were influenced by Ottoman techniques. Though numerically inferior, Babur’s force had an edge both in hardware and software (command, control, communications and intelligence – C3I). Not only did the huge host of Rana Sangram Singh lack artillery, matchlocks and mounted archers, but a defective

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command also hampered them. The Rana lacked a disciplined body of troops under his direct command. Rather, the Rana’s force was a collection of retainers of different chiefs who were suspicious of each other’s motives. For instance, Siladin of Raisin commanded 30,000 cavalry, Udai Singh had 12,000 horses, Barmal had 4,000 cavalry, Narpat Hara had 7,000 horses and Bir Singh Deo had 4,000 cavalry. And during the battle, Siladin betrayed the Rana and joined Babur.109 Unified command was absent in Rana’s numerically superior force. Superior command, discipline, mobility, along with firepower, gave victory to the Mughals. After Babur’s death, Humayun became the Mughal Emperor. And the Afghans in Bihar rallied under their chief, Sher Khan. From Bihar, Sher marched towards Bengal. The Bengal Sultan sent Ibrahim Khan and Jalal Khan with a large number of elephants and artillery. In order to withstand artillery fire and the elephant charge, Sher resorted to the construction of field fortifications in the battlefield. In October 1530, at Surajgarh, with 30,000 cavalry Sher Khan was able to defeat the army of the Bengal Sultanate. Sher Khan’s cavalry made a tactical retreat, which drew the Bengal Sultanate’s cavalry from their artillery parks and the elephants. When the Bengal Sultanate’s cavalry recklessly pursued Sher’s cavalry, the former were attacked from behind by Sher Khan’s reserve cavalry and the fleeing cavalry also turned round and attacked their pursuers.110 The Bengal Sultanate Army, equipped with superior gunpowder weapons, was unable to prevail against the deft handling of cavalry by Sher Khan. Between 1530 and 1537, Sher Khan’s cavalry force had increased from a mere 6,000 to 70,000. One revolutionary innovation in the sphere of management by Sher was that the sowars were paid regularly in cash. The monthly salary bill of Sher’s army came to about 12 crore tankas. Sher could maintain its military establishment with the revenues from economically productive Bengal and Bihar. Humayun marched towards east India to tackle the growing threat posed by Sher Khan. Sher Khan confronted the Mughal Army of Humayun at Chausa, a town on the bank of the Ganga River. The Afghan force of Sher Khan was divided into three divisions: one under Sher Khan’s direct command, another under his son, Jalal Khan, and the third under Khawas Khan.111 In June 1539, Sher Khan launched a surprise attack on the Mughal camp and defeated Humayun’s force.112 As in the case of the Bengal Sultanate’s Army, the Mughal Army’s gunpowder weapons failed to secure victory against a vigorous cavalry attack by Sher Khan. The battles of Surajgarh and Chausa should warn historians against any sort of technological determinism. In South Asia, cavalry in the early sixteenth century still remained the dominant weapon system.

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After the expulsion of Humayun from India, Sher Khan took the title of Sher Shah Suri. After his death, the Suri Sultanate disintegrated. This facilitated the rise of Suri Sultanate’s Hindu General Hemu. Meanwhile, Humayun had returned to India with Safavid military aid. In early 1556, Hemu with a large army (50,000 cavalry, 1,000 elephants [both war elephants and commissariat animals], 5,000 falconets and 51 cannons) moved towards Delhi.113 Hemu’s army was relatively large by West European standards. The Duke of Parma, during the two campaigns in France in 1590 and 1592, had 11,000 and 30,000 men, respectively.114 By the mid-sixteenth century, diffusion of gunpowder weapons had occurred from the Mughals to the Afghans. It is also possible that the Afghans of eastern India had acquired knowledge of gunpowder due to the connection between Bengal and China. Technologically, both Hemu’s army and the Mughal Army were of similar power. In fact, Hemu enjoyed quantitative superiority over the Mughals. The bulk of the Mughal Army at that time was in Kabul. The Mughal garrison in Delhi was then under Tardi Beg Khan. Tardi Beg ordered back the detachment under Ali Quli Shaibani, which was engaged in fighting the Afghans at Sambhal. On 6 October 1556, Hemu reached Delhi. Many officers in Tardi Khan’s army decided to wait for Mughal reinforcements from Kabul, or at least for the detachment of Ali Quli. However, on 7 October 1556, Tardi Beg Khan somewhat rashly decided to engage Hemu in battle. This resulted in the Third Battle of Delhi. The centre was commanded by Tardi Beg, the right wing under Haidar Khan and the left wing under Iskander Khan. Abdullah Uzbek commanded the Mughal vanguard. The Mughal vanguard dispersed Hemu’s vanguard and pursued it. Hemu’s army suffered some 3,000 casualties and the Mughals were able to capture 400 elephants. However, the Mughal vanguard in the course of pursuing the defeated enemy was separated from the Mughal centre. At that juncture, Hemu with his reserve force launched an elephant charge towards Tardi Khan. Tardi Khan escaped to fight another day. Hemu did not pursue the retreating Mughal Army115 because he was afraid that the Mughal mounted archers, following the tactical principle of ‘Parthian shots’, might launch a counter-attack. Thus, the Mughal Army was defeated but not destroyed. Akbar’s (b. 1542–d. 1605) noble Bairam Khan stationed in Punjab then took over the mantle of leadership. Under Bairam Khan’s orders, Iskander Khan Uzbek was given charge of the harawal-i-manqula (forward force/advanced guard). This detachment comprised elite units and moved in advance of the main body with the object of reconnaissance and harassing the hostile forces. The harawali-manqula was a development of forward scouting parties, which the Central

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Asian armies sent in order to screen their advance and gather reconnaissance about the enemy army. In fact, Babur in his memoirs writes that during 1496– 1497 he used a scouting party comprising 200–300 selected men for the abovementioned purpose.116 The harawal-i-manqula was similar to the Muscovy cavalry’s Advanced Regiment, which went in advance of the main regiment. Bairam Khan followed a more complicated ORBAT compared with Tardi Khan. The Mughal Army was divided into right and left wings, centre, vanguard, rear guard, reserve, uqci (contingent of mounted archers positioned at both the flanks) and altamash. At the First Battle of Panipat, Babur had deployed uqci on both flanks. The altamash was a special contingent placed between the vanguard and the centre. If the vanguard became separated from the centre (as happened in the Third Battle of Delhi), the altamash was to come to the aid of the centre.117 Thus, we see that the Mughals were learning from previous mistakes and there was some sort of tactical-organizational innovations occurring in their army on the eve of the Second Battle of Panipat. Due to continuous warfare over the previous two years in north India, there was a famine. Scarcity of grain and fodder created difficulties for Hemu as he could not keep his large force intact for very long near Delhi due to logistical problems. Nor could he, due to famine conditions, withdraw deep into eastern India. So, he decided to join battle. Bairam Khan was also eager to try his luck in battle as quickly as possible since any delay would only worsen the Mughal position, which was also assailed by other enemies. Mirza Sulaiman from Badakshan attacked Kabul with 10,000 cavalry, with the Mughal commander Munim Khan crying for reinforcements.118 Hemu wanted to fight the advancing Mughals east of Delhi. While Hemu was with his main body that was moving slowly due to the presence of a large number of elephants, he sent his artillery detachment under his officers Mubarak Khan and Bahadur Khan towards the town of Panipat (30 kos from Delhi). Hemu failed to anticipate the mobility of the Mughal Army. The Mughal forward force surprised Hemu’s advanced detachment and captured the artillery. Hemu’s artillery was qualitatively and quantitatively superior to the Mughal artillery. This shows how quickly technological diffusion had occurred. Had his artillery park remained intact, Hemu’s victory in the forthcoming battle was a certainty. Without his artillery park, Hemu still had a numerically superior army vis-à-vis the Mughals. Besides the elephants, Hemu had 30,000 Rajput and Afghan cavalry.119 The decisive battle was fought at Panipat on 5 November 1556 and in history is known as the Second Battle of Panipat. The battle went initially in Hemu’s favour. Suddenly, an arrow shot by a Mughal mounted archer struck

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Hemu’s right eye. He fell back unconscious and the Mughal troopers captured the elephant on which he was riding. capture of Hemu resulted in the desertion of his army, which was on the point of winning victory. Thus, a chance factor (Machiavelli’s Goddess Fortuna) played an important role in shaping the course of the Second Battle of Panipat. Interestingly, in this battle, unlike in the first, gunpowder did not play an important role. Thus, we cannot construct a linear trajectory of the rising importance of gunpowder in warfare over time. While the Mongol and the Ottoman mercenaries of the Mughals were responsible for the introduction of gunpowder and cannons in north India, the Portuguese and stranded Ottoman sailors brought gunpowder weapons to south India. During the second decade of the sixteenth century, in Cochin there was a great demand for Portuguese gunners.120 The Vijayanagara Empire hired Iranian and Deccani Muslim mercenaries.121 In 1520, the Battle of Raichur was fought between Krishna Raya of Vijayanagara and Sultan Ismail Adil Shah of Bijapur. Though Bijapur had superior firepower, Vijayanagara emerged victorious. The city of Raichur was located at the Raichur Doab between the Tungabhadra and Krishna rivers. As early as 1504, Sultan Ahmad Nizam Shah of Ahmadnagar had 5,000 infantry equipped with matchlocks and bans. In 1509, Turkish sailors moved into Bijapur and aided the establishment of workshops where bombards and matchlocks were manufactured. The quality of matchlocks was as good as those manufactured in contemporary Bohemia. By 1510, Bijapur had siege and field artillery.122 On 5 January 1565, at the Battle of Talikota, the Vijayanagara Empire was destroyed by the combined armies of the four Deccani sultanates. The bulk of the Vijayanagara Army comprised Hindu peasant infantry who proved to be easy meat for the Turkish mounted archers. Vijayanagara’s cavalry was quantitatively and qualitatively inferior to that of the Muslim Deccani sultanates’ cavalry force. Vijayanagara’s cavaliers, mounted on inferior horses and equipped with spears and lances, failed against the mobile Turkish mounted archers. Lastly, Chelbi Rumi Khan (an Ottoman mercenary), employed by Nizam Shah of Ahmadnagar, deployed better field artillery compared with the Vijayanagara force.123 During the first half of the seventeenth century, the Mughal Empire by deploying a superior number of cavalry and a larger number of heavy guns was able to annex the Deccani sultanates. On 8 February 1597, at Asthi, the Mughals met the combined force of Bijapur, Golkunda and Ahmadnagar.124 The Mughal Army crossed Godavari and deployed for battle. Nizam-ul-Mulk commanded the centre, Adil Khan was on the right wing and Qutub-ul-Mulk commanded

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the left wing. The uqci on the right flank under Sher Khwaja drove back the combined Deccani force under the Bijapuri General Suhail. Then, the vanguard and the right wing attacked the Deccanis. The Deccani force retreated leaving behind many handheld firearms. The Mughals were able to capture the Deccani artillery park and 40 elephants.125 The point to be noted is that it was not firearms but mounted archery that gave victory to the Mughals. As regards the combat effectiveness of the Mughal field army in the midseventeenth century, Francois Bernier, the French traveller, wrote: ‘I could never see these soldiers, destitute of order, and marching with the irregularity of a herd of animals, without reflecting upon with the ease with which five and twenty-five thousand of our veterans from the Army in Flanders, commanded by Prince Conde or Marshal Turenne, would overcome these armies however numerous’.126 Bernier’s account is tinged with racial bias and he uses animal imagery to explain the swift mobility of Mughal cavalry. For Bernier, closely packed West European ORBAT was normal and he could not comprehend the swarming tactics of steppe nomadic cavalry. Bernier, who did not have much respect for Mughal methods of warfare, wrote in his memoirs: ‘It cannot be denied that the cavalry of this country maneuver with much ease, and discharge their arrows with astonishing quickness; a horseman shooting six times before a musketeer can fire twice. They also preserve excellent order, and keep in a compact body, especially when charging the enemy’.127 Like the Mughal Army, the Safavid Army’s mainstay was also cavalry. James B. Fraser writes about the Safavid horsemanship in the following words: We need scarcely describe the military exercises, which form a portion of the customary sports. They consist principally in the jereedbazee, or throwing the jeered, – the kay-kej, or performing a variety of evolutions in the saddle, to enable the rider, in Parthian fashion, to shoot, while in full flight, at his advancing enemy, – and the various methods of practicing with the sabre. Their horsemanship is celebrated … they may claim the honour of being the boldest riders in the world. They urge their horses without the slightest apprehension over ground that would make the best English foxhunter draw up, – scramble over rocky mountains sprinkled with bushes, – dash down slopes of loose and slippery stones, and gallop up the steepest acclivities, where a false step would be death. In these daring feats their spirited animals do full justice to their confidence; but an experienced horseman of Europe would be shocked at the management of their mouths and the abuse of their feet … for they drive them at full speed over ground hard enough to break down the stoutest limbs, and suddenly check them with violence enough … 128

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It is interesting to note that Fraser minced no words in making his case that European horsemanship was inferior in comparison with their Persians’ skill in managing the riders. It would be erroneous to downplay the military effectiveness of the Safavid and Mughal armies vis-à-vis contemporary European armies just because the former were cavalry-centric forces. The range of the Ottoman and Central Asian recurved bow was 280 yards (250 m).129 During the eighteenth century, the effective range of the musket was 80 yards (70 m) and only 50 per cent of the shots hit the target.130 Mesut Uyar and Edward J. Erickson note that the Ottoman composite bows had a high rate of firing compared with muskets (nine to ten shots per minute against one musket shot per 2–3 minutes). Furthermore, a well-trained archer had an effective range of up to 300 m while a musketeer could not hit a target effectively further than 70 m.131 The crossbow used in West Europe with wooden or composite limbs had a range of 200 yards (180 m). The longbow was more effective than the crossbow, which had a slower firing rate. The range of a longbow, writes Robert Hardy, was greater than the crossbow. The longbow was made from a single unjointed and unpieced yew stave. Britain used to import yew from Italy, Austria and Poland where the trees grew high and were fine grained.132 In Elizabethan Britain, longbows were replaced by firearms. In the sixteenth century, harquebus (which was lighter, smaller and less effective than the musket) was commonly used. An expert could discharge the harquebus only once every 40 seconds. During that period, a bowman was able to discharge six arrows. The range of a harquebus (accurate at maximum 20 yards (18 m)) was less than a longbow. A longbow was also 50 per cent cheaper than a harquebus. Even the penetrating power of a harquebus was not greater compared with a longbow. An arrow shot by a longbow was able to kill a horse or pierce chain mail at about 200 yards (180 m). However, the force of a shot depended on the level of training of the archer. Archers were poorly trained during the sixteenth century so, the efficiency of the bowmen declined. We have seen earlier that this was also the case in Muscovy. Most of the recruits of Elizabeth’s army were vagabonds who had been pressed into service. They were not highly trained in archery. During the Hundred Years War, archery was the national sport in Britain. The decline in archery among the general populace was due to the rising popularity of other sports and also due to the enclosure movement. The latter development resulted in lack of wide open spaces for practicing archery. Thus, due to socio-economic changes, an inferior technology (hand-held firearms) replaced a superior technology (the longbow).133

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Jos Gommans claims that the easy availability of large numbers of horses and readily available cash prevented the emergence of centralized polities with gunpowder armies in South Asia up to the mid-nineteenth century. Gommans makes an important point that tercios could only be deployed successfully in West Europe where large numbers of good-quality cavalry were neither available nor could they be deployed. In fact, the Mughal heavy cavalry’s armour could only be penetrated by firing a matchlock within 100 yards (90 m). Due to the availability of a large number of good cavalry, Mughal India lacked the incentive to develop drilled and disciplined infantry.134 For close-quarter combat, the Mughal cavalry had swords. And good-quality swords were manufactured at Delhi and Lahore.135 So, the Mughals had good reason not to opt for slow, cumbersome, unwieldy, tightly packed infantry squares armed with slow-firing firearms. We might speculate that if around 25,000 mounted archers pounded a West European infantry force armed with pikes, muskets and longbows/crossbows from a distance of about 250 yards (220 m) and then 15,000 heavy Rajput cavalry ran riot among the demoralized infantrymen, what would Conde or Turenne have done? Counterfactual scenarios are necessary to avoid determinism in history. Despite focusing on cavalry, the Mughals did not neglect artillery. We have a few scattered accounts regarding the details of Mughal manufacture of cannons and handheld firearms. Generally, two types of cannon manufacturing processe were followed in medieval India: forge welding and casting. In the forgewelding process, the two important techniques were hammering and welding. The iron rings were fabricated first by forge welding and then they were slipped over longitudinally arranged iron staves onto the joints. After cooling the rings contracted and held the joints tightly. Iron cannons of large dimensions were manufactured in this way. The other method was casting with high-tin bronzes (80 per cent copper and 20 per cent tin), where the alloy was melted in eight small furnaces from which the metal was designed to flow together into the mould.136 According to one author, forge-welded cannons had fallen into disuse in West Europe by the 1520s. Zarb zans were small cannons, each about 4–5 feet in length and the muzzle diameter was between 1–2 inches (2.5–5 cm). These were mobile field artillery pieces used by the Mughals. During the first half of the sixteenth-century, these field cannons were manufactured by the forge-welding technique.137 The sixteenth century Hindu text of Sukracharya mentions the use of guns with iron tubes filled with gunpowder and placed on carriages for mobility. The shells were made of iron balls in which other small shells (made of

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lead) were filled. The fire was introduced through a side hole and then the shell burst forward.138 It seems that this ancient text is pointing to some sort of primitive grapeshot shells fired by field artillery. Sukraniti of Sukracharya says that the gunpowder needs to be packed inside the handheld gun with the rod.139 The Mughal handheld firearms had laminated steel-twist barrels. The iron and steel bars were placed in regular alternation and welded into one bar, and then this bar or several were placed together and twisted spirally and the whole assembly welded together.140 The Mughals modified the bans. Unlike the Chinese bans, which comprised of bamboo tubes, the Mughals used iron tubes filled with gunpowder. The iron tube of the ban was made of a thin sheet, as the weapon was not designed for repeated firing but as a one-time-use-and-throw weapon, somewhat like the panzerfaust used by the Wehrmacht towards the end of World War II. The range of a ban was 1,000 yards (950 m), which was greater than any contemporary handheld firearm anywhere in the world. The bans were of great use in implementing harassing fire against infantry or cavalry forming up for a charge. The Mughals used Kahak Ban, which was a type of rocket that moved in a zigzag direction across the thickets of the ground and made much noise. These bans were of considerable use in frightening the infantry, horses and elephants of the hostile forces.141 In India, most of the saltpetre was found in Bihar, especially in the region around Patna. The best mercenary musketeers in north India came from Bihar and the eastern part of Awadh. This region is known as Purab (east) and the inhabitants were known as Purbiyas. The Bhojpur region was especially famous for providing mercenary Purbiyas. These were recruited both in the Mughal Army and the armies of other regional powers such as Malwa. The Purbiyas knew about the use of bans and matchlocks from the 1520s. In 1535, at Champanir, the Purbiyas were hired as mercenary gunners in the Gujarat Sultan Bahadur Shah’s army.142 The Purbiyas formed the bulk of EIC’s Bengal Army until 1857. During the civil war (1657–1659) among the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan’s four sons, Dara (Shah Jahan’s eldest son) mobilized an army of 100,000 cavalry, 20,000 infantry and 200,000 followers for logistical support. However, for a particular battle, Dara could deploy at least 50,000 soldiers. Dara’s brother, Aurangzeb (Governor of Deccan) had an army of 40,000 men. In 1635, at Breitenfeld, which was the largest battle fought in Germany during the Thirty Years War, 41,000 Swedish and Saxon soldiers fought 31,000 troops of the Habsburgs. At the Battle of Samugarh (29 May 1658), Dara deployed cannons in the front of his line of battle. Most of these cannons were large and immobile.

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All the pieces were chained together to prevent the entry of hostile cavalry as in the case of the First Battle of Panipat and at Chaldiran. Behind the cannons were stationed rows of zamburaks/shutarnals (camels with light swivel guns attached to them). These guns could be fired without having to make the camels sit down. Bernier noted that these guns were similar to the swivel guns used on ships. At Samugarh, the shutarnals were used for the first time in the subcontinent. In the use of the shutarnals (equivalent to horse artillery), we find a tactical-cumtechnological innovation on the part of the Mughal Army. Behind the camels were stationed musketeer infantry. At the two wings, cavalry was deployed. While the Rajput cavalry was equipped with sabres, the mercenary Turkish and Uzbek cavaliers in Dara’s force were mounted archers. The army was divided into three parts: right, centre and left. In Aurangzeb’s force, some cannons were placed at the wings along with men equipped with bans. Aurangzeb’s victory was due to better command and superior field artillery, which was manned by European gunners.143 On 11 June 1658, Aurangzeb occupied the imperial capital, Agra. After getting rid of Dara, Aurangzeb had to tackle his brother, Shuja, who was Governor of Bengal. On 4 January 1659, Shuja clashed with Aurangzeb’s army at the village of Korra (this confrontation was also known as the Battle of Khajwa). Aurangzeb had some 90,000 cavalry. More than a thousand miles in the west, at Rocroi (1643), 27,000 Spanish troops clashed with 23,000 French troops. Shuja deployed his artillery in front of his troops and resorted to bombardment throughout the day. During the night both sides rested. Next day, both sides started combat by firing rockets, guns and muskets. Maharaja Jaswant Singh, who was commanding Aurangzeb’s right wing, defected to Shuja and attacked Muhammad Sultan’s (a loyal officer of Aurangzeb) contingent. Aurangzeb himself was guarded by 2,000 select cavalry. After being defeated, Shuja escaped from the battlefield.144 Meanwhile, Dara fled to Lahore and gathered a force of 20,000 cavalry. Then, he returned and reached Ajmir/Ajmer and, on 9 March 1659, got ready for battle. As Aurangzeb’s army approached near Ajmir, Dara fortified the hill passes. The imperial army under Aurangzeb camped at Deorai, about three kos from Ajmir and the ensuing encounter is known as the Battle of Deorai. On 10 March, Aurangzeb’s army advanced and cannonaded the hill passes. Dara’s soldiers responded with cannon and musket fire. The cannonade continued even into the night. As Aurangzeb’s army attempted to force the pass by launching an infantry assault, Dara lost heart. Though his trenches remained intact, Dara fled to Gujarat.145 These battles show that along with mounted archers, the roles of entrenched musketeer infantry and field artillery were increasing in Mughal field warfare.

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After the death of Aurangzeb in 1707, the Mughal Empire declined due to factional fighting among the powerful mansabdars and large-scale armed insurgency conducted by the Marathas, who spread out of west India. As the Maratha movement gradually transformed itself from an unconventional to a conventional power, a more dangerous threat emerged on the North-West Frontier of Mughal India. The Afghan tribes broke out from arid Afghanistan and threatened the two sedentary empires to the east and west of Afghanistan. In 1722, at the Battle of Gulnabad, the Safavids deployed 24 cannons under the command of Tupci Bashi Ahmad Khan. He was assisted by a French master gunner named Philippe Colombe. Nevertheless, gunpowder weapons could not save the Safavid Army from the impetuous charge of the Afghan cavalry.146 As the Safavids collapsed, in 1722, Muscovy annexed the Dagestan Coast from Astrakhan to Derbent. And in 1723 the Ottoman troops occupied Tiflis.147 Persia was relegated from the rank of a great power, but only for a short period of time. Nadir Shah (r. 1736–1747) of the Afshar tribe emerged out of the chaos and anarchy following the Afghan occupation of Isfahan. On 21 May 1738, he marched towards Afghanistan. The Mughal garrison in Kabul was in 5 years’ arrears of pay. The Mughal governor of Kabul, with some 20,000 mercenary Afghan soldiers, blocked the pass. On 26 November, Nadir sent 12,000 men towards the Khyber Pass. The Mughal governor was expecting the Persian attack from the side of Jalalabad. Meanwhile, Nadir with 10,000 light cavalry moved through the Bazar Valley, turned north and appeared at the rear of the Mughal blocking force. The Mughals were surprised and Nadir’s attack was totally successful. The Persians advanced towards Peshawar and on 21 January 1739, the Mughal governor of Lahore surrendered to Nadir.148 The Imperial Mughal Army left Delhi on 13 December 1738. Emperor Muhammad Shah joined the army towards the end of January 1739. Around the middle of February, the Mughals camped at Karnal, some 75 miles north of Delhi. The Mughal camp was located to the north of the town of Karnal. On 19 February, the Persians made their camp at Shahabad, 35 miles from the Mughal camp at Karnal. The Mughal camp was surrounded by a mud wall 16 miles in circumference. Huge, immobile cannons were placed on the wall. On the eastern side of the camp was a canal. And there was a jungle on the north side of the camp.149 The Mughals lacked mobile and light guns suitable for field battles. Besides the dynamic and aggressive leadership of Nadir, his army enjoyed superiority in the sphere of field artillery and handguns over the Mughals.

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The Mughal defeat at the hands of Nadir Shah must be placed in a Eurasian perspective. Michael Axworthy asserts that Nadir initiated a Military Revolution in Persia between 1736 and 1747. Military Revolution or not, Nadir was definitely in command of the strongest army in Eurasia. In 1741, Nadir had 150,000 soldiers. In the spring of 1743, Nadir mobilized 375,000 men to invade Ottoman Iraq. Of his troops, 60,000 were Turkmen and Uzbeks, 70,000 Afghans and Indians, 65,000 from Khorasan/Khurasan, 60,000 from Azerbaijan and Caucasus and 120,000 from western Persia (Kurdistan, Hamadan, Laristan, Bakhtaran, Fars and Khuzestan). After sending detachments to occupy various towns in Iraq, the field army numbered 200,000 personnel. Of these, 13,000 were guards cavalry, 20,000 cavalry from Nadir’s own Afshar tribe, 50,000 Afghan cavalry, 12,000 jezailchis and 40,000 musketeers. In addition, there were 18,000 Turkmen, Uzbeks and Baluchis who functioned as light troops. The Uzbeks were equipped with lances and bows and some of them had pistols and sabres. Most of the muskets were flintlocks or miquelet locks, though some infantry were equipped with matchlocks. The Afghan cavalry in Nadir’s service equipped with lances functioned as shock troops. And Nadir’s cavalry was considered superior to the Ottoman cavalry. The jezailchis were elite firearms-equipped mounted infantry (i.e. elite tufangchis). While the cavalry recruits came from the nomadic tribes, the poor peasants and unemployed townsmen joined the infantry branch. Men from the same tribes were placed in their own discrete units, which in turn generated a competitive spirit among the various units of his army. His artillery train comprised of 116 heavy cannon and 230 siege mortars. In addition, Nadir had 500–700 zamburaks. Being light and mobile, these camel swivel guns could cover roadless and rugged terrain and provided organic fire support to the cavalry. Some Russian experts provided technical inputs to the engineering and ordnance branches of Nadir Shah’s army.150 After Nadir’s assassination, his empire started disintegrating and Persia went on a downward slide to the rank of a minor power. Nadir’s failure to institutionalize his political and military legacies, and the weak economy of Persia, were the principal causative factors behind this decline.

The transition from Ming to Manchu armies Probably, the largest and the most bureaucratic military force was maintained by the Chinese polities. Requirements of reading and writing on the part of military officers, which were considered an aspect of professionalism in early modern

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West Europe, were also present in China but not in the Safavid and Mughal empires. Wang Shouren (1472–1529), a Ming official, felt that the border regions were vulnerable and that this required the state to raise soldiers whose skills should go beyond riding and shooting. Wang felt that soldiers should have an understanding of strategy. So, in 1499, Wang came up with a new training programme linked to examinations that emphasized military theory and decision making. It was aimed at drawing the students from the elite families and the Ming Dynasty’s military academies.151 Under Emperor Jiajing (r. 1522– 1566), new training positions/posts subordinated to civilian oversight were created. The Ming General, Qi Jiguang, emphasized repetitive drilling and his manual contained extensive drawings of battle formations. He favoured utilizing different tactics depending upon terrain, skill and weaponry.152 Military thought could be conceptualized as the conscious study of battlefield events and the forces that shape them.153 A drill manual for firearms was published in Japanese in 1595. There was also a military manual publishing boom in late Ming China that covered the compilation of technical manuals, training works, encyclopaedias and campaign histories.154 China was quite well advanced in regard to military thinking during the early modern era. And the tradition of military thinking, in both China and in India, stretches back to ancient times.155 Geoffrey Parker’s assertion, that one of the constituents of the Western way of warfare has been the West’s nurturing of secular military theories in contrast to the rest of the world’s civilizations lacking sustained traditions of military theories or possessing only religio-military theories, is thus completely erroneous. One well-known Ming military theoreticians is Qi Jiguang (1528–1588). He composed two lengthy military manuals geared to improve the training of the Ming Army. He argued that cannons were to be integrated into the army as a whole rather than deployed with individual units. He was born into a hereditary military family established six generations earlier by Qi Xiang, a famous general who played an important role in the establishment of the Ming Dynasty. Qi Jiguang cultivated both civil and martial skills before entering active military service at the age of 17 in Beijing. He served as a Northern Defence Commander against the Mongols. When he was 24, he was posted to Zhejiang and given the task of defeating the Japanese pirates who, in collusion with powerful families and local officials, were entrenched in the coastal areas.156 Initially, a powerful military group dominated policy making of the early Ming Empire. However, by the middle of the sixteenth century, due to the proliferation of bureaucratic rule by civilian bureaucrats, military personnel were marginalized. Military institutions and generals came to be regarded with

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animosity. At that juncture, the Mongol leader Altan Khan in the north and the Japanese pirates along the Zhejiang Coast to the south simultaneously threatened the Ming Empire.157 From 1550 to 1570, nomadic horsemen raided north-west China with greater intensity than before.158 In 1550, when the Mongol chieftain Altan Khan (1507–1582) invaded China from his base at Guihua, the Ming regime could deploy a field army of about 60,000 soldiers.159 After the Portuguese introduced the arquebus to Japan in the 1540s, a rapid proliferation of handheld firearms occurred in that island kingdom. According to one estimate, there were more than 300,000 guns in Japan in 1556. Initially, firearms were manufactured at Kyushu where the Portuguese vessels called. Later, migrating gunsmiths spread the skill of manufacturing firearms throughout Japan. In 1575 at the Battle of Nagashino, Oda Nobunaga had an army of 70,000 men of whom some 3,000 were armed with matchlocks. The matchlock men were stationed behind the stockades that were built on hills opposite the Takeda camps. Nobunaga sent out small units to carry out feint frontal attacks and to conduct surprise raids on the enemy’s rear. This provoked Takeda to order his centre to attack Nobunaga’s breastworks. Takeda hoped to storm these stockades before Nobunaga’s matchlock men could reload their matchlocks. Nobunaga ordered that only 1,000 of the infantry should fire at a time. Thus, continuous volley fire was maintained. Takeda’s centre retreated and then his wings collapsed, following which Nobunaga ordered his infantry to move forward from the stockades and engage the enemy in close-quarter combat.160 Nagashino had certain similarities as well as dissimilarities to Chaldiran and the First Battle of Panipat. In all three battles, the matchlock-/musket-bearing infantry was placed behind field fortifications: wagons in the case of Chaldiran and First Battle of Panipat and stockades in Nagashino. At Chaldiran and in the First Battle of Panipat, firearms-equipped infantry remained in a defensive position throughout the battle. But, at Nagashino, after volley fire, Nobunaga’s gunpowder-equipped infantry went on the offensive in West European style. While Nobunaga’s infantry had practised volley fire, at the First Battle of Panipat, Mughal firearms-equipped infantry did not do so. At Chaldiran and at First Battle of Panipat, the Central Asian technique of using horse archers to smash through the enemy’s flanks and rear played a decisive role. But, Nobunaga, like the West European generals, did not have access to mounted archers. Overall, Nagashino had more in common with the battles fought in West Europe. During the late Ming period, the Ming Army changed from being a hereditary force to a mercenary army. Some officials argued for greater mercenary recruitment in order to improve efficiency and to lighten the burden of military

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service in local areas. The largest unit of the Ming Army was the guard (wei), which consisted of 5,600 men. Guards were divided into battalions (suo) of 1,120 men (10 companies each of 112 men). Each company had two platoons of 56 men each and each platoon had five squads of 11–12 men each.161 During the fighting at Pyongyang in 1593, the Chinese artillery and muskets proved superior to their Japanese counterparts.162 The Ming Empire collapsed due to a combination of external threat posed by the Manchus and internal uprisings by local bandits, thugs, rebels and local soldiers.163 Badly disciplined and inadequately supplied, the Ming troops were prone to desertions when they were deployed for longterm attrition-oriented counter-insurgency (COIN) campaigns against the ‘bandits’ in central and western China in the 1630s.164 As the Ming Government was unable to maintain public peace, the Chinese literati joined forces with ambitious and enterprising generals and combative monks in order to establish private armies and unofficial literati-oriented martial arts schools in order to protect themselves against coastal pirates, outlaws and sectarian rebels. The net result was privatization of war, militarization of the countryside and further disorder.165 Nurhaci (b. 1559–d. 1626) and his son, Hung/Hong Taiji (b. 1592–d. 1636/1643), launched a conquest of China and the latter proclaimed the formation of a new dynasty named Manchu/Qing.166 The Manchus hailed from the north-eastern region of China (Manchuria). Before 1634, they were known as the Jurchens. The Jurchens were divided into three tribal groupings: Jianzhou, Hada and Haixi. Increased commercial activity along China’s north-east frontier region, combined with the development of agriculture in southern Manchuria, brought economic prosperity to certain Jurchen tribes. Nurhaci was born in 1559 in Hutuala, the capital of a small principality among the Great White Mountains north of the Korean border. At the age of 24, he became head of his clan and gained the support of the Ming court for maintaining order in Manchuria. In 1595, Nurhaci received the title of Dragon and Tiger General from the Ming Emperor. Nurhaci used his connection with the Ming court along with his military ability to establish his dominance among the other Jurchen factions. The adoption of the Manchu script in 1599 was another step in Nurhaci’s statebuilding enterprise. In 1607, several Mongol leaders accepted Nurhaci’s exalted position. By 1616, Nurhaci had completed his project of unifying Manchuria and proclaimed the foundation of the Jin Dynasty.167 This time the Mings reacted. In their eyes, the erstwhile Ming vassal, Nurhaci had gone too far and ought to be chastized to prevent other tribal leaders in the border region from aping him. In 1619, a Ming expeditionary force numbering

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110,000 soldiers was sent to destroy Nurhaci’s power base in Manchuria. According to another scholar, the Mings concentrated 200,000 soldiers at Mukden and marched in four columns towards the small state of Hingking. Nurhaci had at his disposal some 60,000 soldiers. Nurhaci attacked each of these four columns separately before they could coordinate with each other. The resultant five-day battle, known as the Battle of Sarhu (Sahu), ended with defeat of the Ming expeditionary force. Sarhu was in Liaodong, a territory north-east of the Great Wall, claimed by the Ming but indirectly administered by a system of hereditary chieftains.168 Some 45,000 Ming soldiers died. Nurhaci expanded his power to Mongolia and began to focus his attention on the border regions of the Ming Empire. In 1626, he was wounded while attacking the Ningyuan Fortress, which was protected with European-style cannons. These injuries led to his death at the age of 62.169 Hong Taiji, the eighth son of Nurhaci, succeeded his father. In 1627, he invaded Korea in order to extract payment and to prevent any attack from the east, when he eventually would turn his attention towards the south.170 It is probably politics rather than military technology that at certain moments was the most important driver of political and military history. The inclusion of the Mongols within the Manchu Eight Banner Army due to superior politics and diplomacy on the part of Nurhaci gave the Manchus an advantage in mobilizing military manpower over the Mings.171 During the Manchu expedition to Inner Mongolia in 1634, thousands of Mongols were recruited to serve under both Mongolian and Manchu Banners. A Mongolian corps expanded in 1626 into Two Banners before 1631 and into Eight Banners in 1635.172 Political troubles within the Ming Empire aided the Manchus and also facilitated the Manchu policy of successfully incorporating the Ming military elites within their everexpanding framework. Political co-option of the Ming generals with their armies by the Manchus was to a large extent responsible for the final defeat of the Mings. General Wu Sangui (1612–1678) was the commander of the Ming Army on the Manchurian border. He not only defected to the Manchus but also fought against the Southern Ming armies and captured the fleeing Ming Emperor and executed him in Yunnan.173 From the civil war, peasant leader Li Tzu-cheng emerged victorious and crowned himself Emperor. However, Wu Sangui, who commanded the largest Chinese force on the northern frontier, refused to submit to the rebel-turned-Emperor despite the fact that Sangui’s father was being held captive in Li’s court. Wu Sangui made a pact with the Manchus and then jointly marched towards Peking. Li fled to the north-west.174 Chinese units were also recruited by the Manchus for the conquest of China. This policy was somewhat

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akin to the British recruiting Indians in the eighteenth century for the conquest of India. In 1642, 100 Chinese companies raised by the Manchus were used for the invasion of China in 1644.175 The basic building block of the Manchu Army was the Banner System. Initially, it was an administrative and military organization in which each Banner included a portion of the Manchu population whose male individuals were liable for military service. In the early 1640s, there were three sets of Eight Banners each divided along ethnic lines: Manchu, Mongol and Han (Chinese). The Banner consisted of companies (Manchu nirus). Five companies comprised a division (Manchu jalan) and jalans constituted a Banner. The first niru was established by Nurhaci in 1601. Then, there were four nirus distinguished by flags of different colours: white, yellow, red and blue. These were the origins of the future Eight Banner System. A further reorganization was initiated in 1615–1616, and then the Eight Banners were established. The niru became a company of 300 men under a captain. When there were about 100–150 men in a niru, such units were known as half-companies. There were two types of niru: hereditary and public. The hereditary niru was formed by the clans and communities who submitted to Nurhaci and whose chiefs were appointed as commandants, with the right to retain that position within their family after their death. The candidates for inheritance were appointed after being interviewed by the emperor. It is to be noted that a mansabdar’s son or a male relative in the Mughal Empire occasionally succeeded to the father’s or patron’s position only after an interview by the Mughal Emperor. In the public niru, the commandant’s post was not hereditary.176 The armour of the Manchu cavalry was made from several layers of cloth stitched together to make a flexible, light, arrow-proof protective cover.177 Peter Lorge writes that in 1619, the speed and discipline of the Manchu cavalry were instrumental in defeating the Ming Army who were equipped with slow-firing firearms and used cannons both for battles and in siege warfare. The Mings also had muskets. While some cannons were domestically produced, others were copied from Dutch designs known as ‘Red Barbarian Cannon’.178 However, the Manchus did not neglect gunpowder weapons. Despite the Central Asian origins of the Manchu elites, their vision was not clouded by a ‘cavalry ethos’. Unlike the mamluks, but like the Ottomans, the Manchu rulers paid due attention to gunpowder weapons. Rapid spread of gunpowder technology occurred in Manchu China. By 1621, cannons were cast for the Manchus by Portuguesetrained Chinese artillerymen.179

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Political success generated in the short term by absorbing the Ming generals with their retinues created a political problem for the Manchus in the long term. The four Ming generals, Kong Yude, Shang Kexi, Geng Zhongming and Wu Sangui, enjoyed autonomous power in south and south-west China as reward for joining the Manchus. In 1660, Shang Kexi ruled Guangdong, Geng Jimao controlled Fujian and Wu Sangui controlled Yunnan. Wu commanded 65,000 soldiers and the Beijing Government subsidized his army with nine million taels (equivalent to 2/5th of the state revenue). Keng Chi-mao in the 1660s commanded an army numbering 20,000 men in Fukien. And Shang Kexi commanded 10,500 soldiers in Kwantung. At the end of 1673, Wu Sangui started a rebellion. The young Emperor Kangxi/Kang Hsi (r. 1662–1722), who had been installed on the throne as a child in 1661/1662, was then only 19 years old. However, Kangxi rose to the challenge. Between 1667 and 1675, Kangxi increased his forces from 170 to 799 companies. The sudden death of Wu Sangui in 1678 proved lucky for the Manchus. The war continued to 1681 and the troops were demobilized in 1682.180 In the mountainous regions of south-western China, Chinese infantry was better suited for combat compared with the Manchu and Mongol cavalry. So, the Chinese Banner armies were used to great effect against the rebel troops.181 We have an eye-witness description of the clash between the Manchus and rebel troops supported by Burma in Yunnan. A mid-ranking Manchu military officer, Dzengseo, noted in his diary entry dated 11 June 1680: On the fifteenth the false generals Ma Chenglie and Rao Yilong, subordinate to the rebel bandit Ma Chengyin, together with the false generals Fan Qihan and Zhan Yang, who had come from Yunnan, jointly leading over 10,000 rebels, advanced forward, pressing on to attack [our] camp. In the locality of Taodeng, they arranged in good order their … shields, muskets and elephants in four rows, and came forward in an imposing manner … . The rebels’ musket fire sounded like frying beans. Following that, the soldiers of the first column were attacked by the elephants. As the elephants closed in on the encircled soldiers of the second column, the arrows shot by all of my men [into the elephants’ hides] looked like quills of porcupine. The elephants fled towards the hill … 182

Though Dzengseo may not have known at the time, this battle appears very similar to the those fought by the Mughals against their Afghan and Hindu opponents. Dzengseo’s reporting of the battle is also very similar to that of Akbar’s courtier and Mughal intellectual, Abul Fazl. Burma, like India, had a tradition of using elephants in warfare. The Burmese and south Chinese rebels, like the Indians,

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were able to construct a joint musketeer–elephant force structure that almost succeeded against the cavalry-rich army of the Manchus. Shortages of good horses and pasture land in South China, Burma and the interior of India forced the rulers of these regions to opt for an elephant–infantry combined force structure. The diary entry of Dzengseo for 9 April 1681 describes another confrontation with the rebel troops. When the two imperial Banners attacked, the rebel troops responded with volleys of musket fire, cannons and barrages of fire arrows. The rebel troops were estimated at 20,000 infantry and five elephants. The campaign against the rebels required mobilization of 150,000 Banner troops and 400,000 Green Standard troops.183 Between 1681 and 1684, more than 50,000 Banner troops were sent from Peking to suppress a rebellion by the feudatories. In addition, 26,000 men from Inner Mongolia and 4,000 from Manchuria were also mobilized. Overall, some 80,000 government troops (privates) participated. Taking into account the number of officers and retainers (one for each private and from two to over 100 for officers, depending on their rank), the total number of men in the Banner force engaged on various fronts in fighting the rebels varied from 160,000 to 200,000.184 Several points emerge from the Manchu campaigns against the rebel troops of south-west China. First, the huge numbers of military personnel in the expeditionary armies that were mobilized by the imperial government were indeed striking by global standards. Second, cavalry played a marginal role in the hilly mountainous terrain of south-west China. Third, the rebel troops were amply supplied with cannons and muskets and even practised volley firing. But, gunpowder technology was no silver bullet. The Manchus created an empire bigger than the Mings’. After destroying the rebel feudatories, the Manchus turned against the Zunghar Mongols. Zungharia comprised western Mongolia and part of Xinjiang. The Eastern Mongols (Khalka/Khalkha) were allied to the Manchus. The Zunghars, a Mongol tribe (or probably Eastern Kalmuks and Oirats), took advantage of the Ming Dynasty’s chaos and the early Manchus, Qing’s preoccupation with Wu Sangui’s rebellion to expand and consolidate the territory under their control. The Zunghars, also known as the Western Mongols, occupied Tarim Basin and Tibet. By the late seventeenth century, the Zunghars had constructed a capital city and laid the foundations of a bureaucratically administered polity.185 The Zunghars attempted to expand in all directions: east and south towards Manchuria, north to Siberia and south-west across the Mongolian Steppe towards Ferghana (ancient Turkestan). Ferghana was prosperous in agrarian resources and was the centre of the caravan trade (silk trade), which linked the cities of the Tarim Basin in the east with Persia in the west.186 The rise of the Zunghars was also

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assisted by the break-up of the Kipchak Khanate and decline in power of the successors of Timur in Turkestan.187 In Transoxiana (Mawarannahr), two entities ruled. The Shaibanids were in power from 1500 to 1598 and they were followed by the Tuqay-Timurids (1598–1785).188 Galdan Khan (b. 1644; r. 1671– 4 April 1697) of the Zunghars was actively supported by the Tibetan Lamaist regime at Lhasa and the Turkish people dwelling in the oasis of the Tarim Basin. Galdan depended on the personal, tribal and ethnic loyalties of the Mongolian, Turkish and Tibetan people inhabiting the region from Hami and Kokonor in the east to Lhasa in the west.189 In 1679, Galdan with 10,000 troops prepared to attack Turfan. In 1686, Galdan Khan provoked the Manchus by attacking the Khalka. As the Khalka refugees fled across the border, the Manchu regime had to arrange for immediate provisions for 20,000 starving people. The Manchu Commander, Fiyanggu sold tea and cloth and brought grain and animals for the refugees. The refugees’ demands for subsistence pushed Kangxi to destroy Galdan once and for all. On 9 June 1690, Galdan led 30,000 soldiers across the Urja River to attack the Kundulun, Chechen and Tusiyetu Khans. At the River Urhui, Arni’s 200 elite Mongolian troops and 500 Khalka raiders were defeated by Galdan’s 20,000 soldiers who were equipped with fowling pieces and field cannons. On 3 September 1690, at the Battle of Ulan Butong, Qing artillery badly damaged Galdan’s Zunghar force. Prince Fuquan, Kangxi Emperor’s younger brother, advanced to Galdan’s camp at noon on 3 September 1690. The Manchu Army opened the attack by firing their cannons. The Zunghar soldiers took position in the forest at the foot of the mountains and used their camels to protect themselves from artillery fire. The feet of 10,000 camels were tied and their bodies were covered with felt. Behind this ‘camel wall’, the Zunghar troops took up position. Through the space between the camels, the Zunghars started shooting arrows at the Manchu troops. The left wing of the Manchu Army surrounded the Zunghar troops in the mountains, but the advance of the right wing was obstructed by the presence of a marsh. As a result, the soldiers of the right wing had returned to their original position, by nightfall. During the retreat, Tong Guogang, the Manchu commander and Kangxi’s uncle, was killed and several cannons sunk in the marsh. This battle was a draw. Interestingly, camels and trees had protected Galdan’s troops from annihilation by the Manchu cannons. The following day, neither side was willing to renew the fight. Though Galdan had lost a number of his soldiers, he was able to conduct a strategic retreat and the Manchu force, suffering from supply difficulties, failed to pursue him. Gunpowder was yet to achieve a clear-cut victory in steppe warfare even when the nomadic army

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was trapped in a static position. The First Zunghar Campaign cost the Manchu treasury three million taels (6 per cent of the annual treasury holdings).190 The Zunghars, like the Uzbeks, fought mostly with light cavalry mounted archers. Their favourite tactics were to cut off the supply lines of the invading army and lure them into ambushes. Dragging cannons over the mountainous narrow defiles of these regions was almost next to impossible. And neither the Uzbeks nor the Zunghars provided targets for cannon fire, due to their dispersive swarming tactics. Both Uzbekistan and Zungharia are arid plateaus, which did not generate adequate agricultural surplus. The 60,000-strong Mughal Army in 1647 retreated against the Uzbeks because of logistical failure. There were no banjaras (grain traders) available to supply the Mughal troopers with grain and fodder, and local markets were not available for the Mughal military personnel to buy such goods. So, the Mughals had to beat a retreat. The grand finale to Zunghar power came because the Qing Empire was able to maintain several armies for a long period in Zunghar territory, thanks to its massive logistical apparatus. The markets of north-western China and the grain reserves that were available there and transported by oxen to the far-flung military posts enabled the Qing forces to overwhelm the Zunghar nomads.191 Galdan was finally destroyed due to a combination of diplomacy, firepower and logistical superiority on the part of the Manchus. In 1690, Galdan tried to obtain aid from Russia but failed. The Treaty of Nerchinsk had established a mutually beneficial relationship between the Manchus and the Russians. In 1690, for the upcoming steppe campaign, the Manchus started casting small cannons that were 1 m long and placed on wheeled carriages. In 1691, Kangxi set up his camp at Dolon Nor, some 250 km north of Beijing. His camp included 64 small cannon, 8 large cannon and 8 mortars. Some of the guns were provided by the Jesuits. Next, the Kangxi Emperor initiated a diplomatic coup by integrating the Khalkas within the Banner system. While the Khalkas were provided with titles and food, they lost the right to move at will from pasture to pasture. Thus, mobile groups were settled within the sedentary empires and monitored and sedentarized (Victorian scholars would have said ‘barbarians being civilized’). In 1695, Galdan had only 5,000–6,000 troops. In that same year, the Central Army consisted of 32,970 men and, led by Emperor Kangxi, travelled from Beijing almost 1,100 km across the Gobi Desert. The East Route Army, led by Sabsu, left Shengjing (Fengtian) with 35,000 soldiers and advanced towards Kerulen, a distance of 1,300 km. The West Route Army, consisted of 35,000 men under Fiyanggu, started off from Guihua in Ningxia and travelled between 900 and

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1,100 km to the Tula River. Sabsu’s army stopped at the Khalka River to block movement of the Mongols to the east. Another force of 10,000 men under Sunsike set out from Ningxia to join Fiyanggu.192 Peter C. Perdue rightly asserts that it was logistics rather than gunpowder artillery that enabled the Qing Empire to gain the upper hand over the nomads at its periphery. Dragging artillery along the steppe was almost impossible, and the absence of sieges made gunpowder an unimportant issue in the struggle with the nomads.193 For their supply of warhorses, the Manchus depended on their Mongol allies. However, this does not mean that gunpowder was totally unimportant, rather, it was of secondary importance. Overall, from the beginning to the end of Kanxi’s reign, the role of gunpowder weapons within the Manchu Army increased steadily. During the three feudatories’ rebellion, the rebels enjoyed gunpowder superiority and the Manchu Army defeated them without utilizing gunpowder weapons. In contrast, during the First Zunghar Campaign, even though the campaign was fought over a more rugged terrain, cannons were used. And in the Second Zunghar Campaign, the Manchu Army carried larger numbers of field guns: 235 large cannon, each weighing between 4,000 and 5,000 kg. In addition, there were 104 light cannon varying between 50 and 400 kg. While some cannons were copied from West European bronze guns, others were known as Taiwan light cannons. Beyond Guihua, the cannons were transported on camelback.194 In 1696 the Zunghars, while conducting a strategic retreat, were trapped between the converging columns of Manchu forces and were defeated at Jao Modo. This was a small valley with a river at the bottom and surrounded by hills. Galdan had 5,000 men and 2,000 fowling pieces. General Yin ordered his men to capture the hilltops. As the Manchu soldiers climbed the hills, they came under attack from the Mongol sharpshooters. Then, the Manchu troops fired their cannons and the infantry, wearing padded cotton armour, advanced behind a wooden barricade. Galdan’s soldiers started shooting their arrows. Then, Manchu cavalry attacked. At this juncture, Galdan’s troops started to flee. Galdan escaped but several of his commanders surrendered to the Manchus. Galdan set up his camp in the Altai Mountains, over 1,600 km north-west of Ningxia. Grain for the Manchu units was shipped along the Yellow River to Ningxia, some 1,400 km from Beijing. Galdan was hunted down on 4 April 1697. This was a revolutionary moment in Eurasian history. For the first time, the sedentary Chinese state had been able to tame the Eurasian steppe nomads and, in this process, gunpowder had played a secondary role. Those Zunghar troops that surrendered were included in the Chahar Mongol Banners.195

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The Manchu Army was well drilled and disciplined and was not a mob. From 1681 until his death in 1722, the Kangxi Emperor, who was the contemporary of Louis XIV, held annual hunts at Mulan except when he was on campaign. The participants in such hunts were the imperial princes, troops from the capitals, etc. Wrestling contests and mock battles tested the fitness and archery skill of the soldiers. Moreover, the discipline displayed by the soldiers during the hunt also enhanced their discipline during military campaigns. In fact, organizing and conducting a royal hunt was equivalent to mobilizing an army for a campaign. Such royal hunts had a precedent among the Eurasian steppe people.196 In 1685, the Kangxi Emperor proposed that drills and training should take place annually.197 Soldiers were not allowed to desert, unlike in eighteenth-century India. The Mongol tribes who had surrendered to the Qing were assigned fixed pasture lands, and the Qing exercised the exclusive rights to set pasture boundaries and confirm succession of the chiefs. The Kangxi Emperor invited the Jesuits to conduct extensive surveys, which resulted in the compilation of the Jesuit Atlas. This was published in three versions from 1717 to 1721.198 Printed manuals on gunnery, tactics, drill, fortification and siegecraft in West Europe spread the techniques of warfare. The first Russian book on military matters was published in 1647. It was an infantry manual, which emphasized training and included a large number of sketches and plans for teaching drill. The military manual also emphasized the value of military education and associated military skills with existing knowledge. Literacy and printing encouraged discussion on military organizations and methods. The advent of printing established a dynamic relationship between applied science and military practice. Jeremy Black explains how spread of the use of print in West Europe accelerated scientific innovation and applications from the second half of the seventeenth century.199 True, great changes in the spheres of theory and practice were occurring in the military theatre in West Europe. But, the combat effectiveness of the Manchu Army in the eighteenth century was also impressive. During the early eighteenth century, when the Mughals and Safavids were in decline and the Ottoman Empire was either in a static or a strategic defensive mode, the Manchu Empire was still expanding in both north-easterly and south-westerly directions. The Zunghars were still a force to reckon with. In 1723, they occupied Turkestan and scattered the Kazaks. In 1756, with the aid of the Kazaks, the Chinese totally defeated the Zunghars.200 In 1757, a Manchu force under General Chao Hui invaded the Ili Valley. The Zunghars were almost wiped out and the Muslims of the Tarim Basin, who had defeated the Zunghars, were also defeated. The Manchu border

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reached Lake Balkhash and the Pamir Mountains. Only the Tangs among the various dynasties of China had previously advanced that far.201 The decline of Mongol power in Central Eurasia occurred at this juncture. Sandwiched between two expanding empires – Muscovy and Manchu China – the Mongols lost the territory necessary to conduct strategic manoeuvres deep within the Eurasian steppes. So, the Mongol armies lost the ability to retreat beyond the reach of the armies of the sedentary empires or to lure the armies of the sedentary steppes into strategic ambush on the vast spaces of the Eurasian steppes. What had happened to the nomads of Ukraine in the late sixteenth century also occurred among the nomads of Central Eurasia during the late eighteenth century. Secondly, the Mongols who had submitted to Manchu rule were weakened due to the government’s policy of restricting them to certain pastures. During drought, they were unable to maintain their horse herds. Furthermore, the Mongol tribes were hampered by chronic political disunity and were hampered by epidemics spread by farmers and traders moving across their land as interaction with the settled population increased.202 Between 1768 and 1770, the Manchus deployed some 40,000 Bannermen from Manchuria against Burma. The Burmese purchased several thousand flintlock muskets from the French. By 1770, Burma was exhausted. The Manchu Army was numerically superior to the forces of the Burmese monarch. And Burma was on the verge of a civil war. In 1771, Burma agreed to return to its earlier tributary status and the Qianlong Emperor agreed. However, the regional chieftains of southern Yunnan lost their autonomy and were integrated much more closely within the Qing administrative structure.203 In 1786, an expedition was sent against Vietnam. In 1789, the Manchus were defeated in Vietnam but the king of the Nguyen Dynasty agreed to pay tribute. In 1720, Tibet became a vassal of the Manchu Empire. In 1790, the Gurkhas from Nepal attacked Tibet and raided the Tashilhunpo Monastery. The Gurkha Kingdom at that time was also expanding at Terai and Himachal Pradesh in India. The Dalai Lama requested aid, and an 80,000-strong army was sent under the Manchu General, Fu Kang. He defeated the Gurkhas at Nawakot near Kathmandu and the Gurhkas agreed to pay tribute to the Chinese.204 One could argue that by the first decade of the nineteenth century, Europe was catching up with China as regards military manpower mobilization. Napoleon raised 1.3 million conscripts in 1810–1811, and another million in 1812–1813. At Austerlitz (2 December 1805), the Habsburg–Russian force threw 85,000 men against Napoleon’s 75,000-strong Grande Armée.205 In 1830, the Manchu Army reached Khokand and the Manchu Court took the strategic decision not to expand further.206 Manchu China at that time was the premier power on the Asian continent and definitely one of the major powers of Eurasia.

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Conclusion During the seventeenth century, the West European armies consisted mainly of infantry arranged in square formations. The infantry was partly armed with musketeers. To protect them from cavalry equipped with lances and swords, several rows of pikemen were also deployed within the infantry squares.207 The point to be noted is that the square formation of pikemen and musketeers would have been wiped out from a distance quickly and effectively by some thousands of mounted archers. Even a compact body of heavily armoured Rajput cavalry supported by war elephants would have been able to overwhelm the pikemen supported by infantry equipped with slow-firing inaccurate arquebus/muskets. The Asian armies were not in a state of stasis. In fact, they were continuously upgrading their force structure and combat techniques. Cavalry warfare itself was undergoing gradual modification. Furthermore, the logistical infrastructure and bureaucratic capacity for military manpower mobilization in the Manchu and Mughal cases were indeed impressive. Compared with those, the Ottoman Empire was facing a manpower crisis towards the end of the seventeenth century. If we create a hierarchical chart in terms of technical specialization of the armies, then the Manchus and the Ottomans would be at the top, the Mughals in the middle and the Safavids at the bottom. Medieval China and India were foremost in developing rocket technology. The Asian polities were not unaware of the importance of firearms and cannons. In fact, we have seen that volley fire by drilled and disciplined infantry was exclusive to West Europe. The Mings, Japanese and Ottomans came up with this technique before Maurice of Nassau. When the terrain suited the use of such weapons, the Asian armies deployed infantry equipped with handheld firearms and cannons. Since the Asian states had zamburaks and adequate numbers of superior cavalry (especially mounted archers), they did not feel the necessity to develop mobile light field artillery and volley fire by disciplined infantry. Only in the mid-eighteenth century were handheld firearms and field cannons proven superior to rockets, at least in some regions. The Ottoman Army had all this hardware. And, the decline in combat effectiveness of the Ottoman Army from the eighteenth century vis-à-vis the Habsburgs and Muscovy was the product of administrative, and not technological, factors. We can speculate that in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, West European army organization was unsuited for warfare in Asia and, in terms of combat effectiveness, the four major Asian militaries probably had an edge over their West European counterparts.

3

Siege Warfare and Siege Artillery in Asia

Introduction The medieval West European walls and towers were high in proportion to their thickness, with relatively shallow foundations. Such constructions offered limited defence against the artillery of besieging armies. In response, military engineers and fort architects began constructing the trace italienne. This comprised thick, massive, low-lying walls that were better able to absorb the impact of shots and shells. The walls were further protected against mining and raiding parties by an elaborate system of outworks and then by angled bastions, which projected from the corners of the fortifications. The bastions functioned as gun platforms and allowed flanking fire along the length of the walls. The classic design for the citadel was the pentagon, whose angles were characterized by five bastions. Such constructions first appeared in Italy from the 1530s.1 Geoffrey Parker asserts that one of the components of the Military Revolution of early modern West Europe, the trace italiene or alla moderna, played an important role in the expansion of the West in the extra-Western world. The non-Western powers lacked the knowledge to construct coastal forts of geometric design (star-shaped forts or polygonal structures) with interlocking systems of fire. As a result, the coastal forts of the Asian powers proved to be easy victims to West European naval bombardments. In contrast, between the mid-fifteenth and mid-seventeenth centuries, the West Europeans on the shores of Afro-Asia constructed artillery fortresses with innovative structural designs that maximized outgoing fire and minimized damage by incoming fire. These artillery fortresses held back quantitatively superior ‘native’ forces and enabled the West Europeans to project power into the interior of continents. In fact, the resilience of the West European coastal fortifications enabled them to attract indigenous allies, which further weakened the Asian polities. Parker goes on to say that the West European coastal enclaves were militarily so superior against

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any indigenous threats that the coastal artillery fortresses really sprang up due to intra-West European combat, for supremacy in Afro-Asia. In other words, Asia seemed to be waiting to be invaded. The West Europeans could pick off the coastal Asian kingdoms like ripe plums. Only Japan copied the system of geometric artillery fortresses and was able to stave off Western imperialism.2 An analytical overview of military architecture and fortress warfare conducted by the four Asian empires against Asian and European foes will enable us to assess the importance (or lack of it) of gunpowder weapons in this sphere. Due attention will also be given to the siege warfare conducted by these polities far into the interior along their land frontiers against both their Asian and European enemies.

Ottoman siege warfare Christopher Duffy asserts that the Turkish fortresses in East Europe were characterized by high masonry ramparts. In addition, they also built palankas, which were watch towers, citadels and suburban enceintes of a distinctive wooden construction. Circular towers constructed at the corners of the palankas mounted some cannons. The term palanka was derived from the Hungarian term plancae, which meant a petty fortress surrounded by palisades. After the Habsburg offensive in the late seventeenth century, the Turks used Western mercenaries to build retrenchments and bastioned works in some of the fortresses. Nevertheless, the Ottomans continued to have faith in their high masonry walls. The Armenian masons were in charge of mining. The galleries were arch shaped and only 3–4 feet (1 m) high, which were cramped by West European standards. The mine chambers were semi-circular in shape. When mining started, the Ottomans covered the entrance with beams and earth. Furthermore, Duffy writes that while conducting siege warfare in eastern Europe, the Turks did not employ systematic counter-battery fire during the eighteenth century. Hence the retired bastioned flanks on the sixteenth-century Italian model, long after it became outmoded in West European warfare, proved useful in resisting Turkish bombardment in East Europe.3 In a somewhat similar manner, Thomas F. Arnold writes: … the new European military architecture based on mutually supporting bastions, low and relatively invulnerable to artillery attack, yet bristling with well-hidden cannon able to sweep all assault routes with a withering, enfilading fire. Against such a scientific system … the Turks had no similarly systematic

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response, only a brute reliance on human-wave assaults and massive but imprecisely directed cannon battery … could not overpower this European advantage in fortification science … 4

Arnold continues that from the last third of the sixteenth century in Central and East Europe, a cordon of rampart- and bastion-defended fortifications (which constituted a revolutionary system) blocked Ottoman expansion westward.5 From Duffy and Arnold’s assertions, it seems that the Ottomans were unskilled in siege warfare and were capable of constructing only crude fortifications. It seems that the Ottoman borderland in East Europe was ripe for taking by the West Europeans. The reality was somewhat different. As we shall see, the Ottomans were capable of conducting sophisticated forms of siege warfare. Even in the mid-eighteenth century, the intricate system of Ottoman border forts network, along with garrisons provided by locally raised troops plus reinforcements sent from central government for the field army, made Ottoman border defence both in Crimea and in East Europe a tough nut to crack. During emergencies, in Ottoman Hungary the camis were used as warehouses and arsenals. Suleiman’s Cami at Pecs was used as a food depot for the garrison and at Csanad Cami, barley for the troops stationed at Temesvar was stored. Storage of food, weapons and ammunition proved more important for the Ottoman Government than the religious health of the Muslim populace in times of warfare.6 It shows that the Ottoman Government was rational and not irrationally Islamic. The Ottomans constructed a chain of fortresses not only in the Balkan but also along their Black Sea frontier. The chain of fortresses ran along the northern rim of the Black Sea and beyond from the Danube to the Sea of Azov into the Caucasus. The most important was the fortress at Ozi (Ochakiv/Oczakow/ Ochakov) on the Dnieper in Ukraine. From west to east, the important castles/ fortresses were Ibrail (Braila), Isaqci (Isaccea), Ismail (Izmajil), Tulca (Tulcea) and Kili (Kilija) near the Danube delta; Bender (Bendery) on the Dniester and Aqkerman at the mouth of the river; Or (Perekop) at the isthmus of the Crimean Peninsula; Kefe (Feodosija) on the south Crimean Coast; Kers (Kerch) at the mouth of the Sea of Azov; Jenikale on the eastern salient of the Crimean Peninsula; Taman across the straits through which the Sea of Azov debouches into the Black Sea; and finally Azov, where the Don River debouches into the Sea of Azov. The Danubian fortresses to the west of the river included Vidin and Belgrade, Hotin (Khotyn) on the Dniester and Yasi on a tributary of Prut. Another was Anapa, on the Black Sea Coast to the south-west of Taman. By the end of the 1620s, at Ozi the original castle that had been built in the 1490s

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by the Crimean Khan Mengli Gerey/Giri was upgraded and two more castles were added to the original. The original castle was known as the old castle. One of the new castles was constructed at the riverside to obstruct Cossack naval assault and fire cannons at the their chajkas (longboats). In 1627–1628, Hasan Pasha the Grand Admiral of the Ottoman Fleet built a small palanka that connected the old and new castles. The old castle, known as the upper castle, the new palanka of Hasan Pasha, known as the middle castle and the new castle, known as the lower castle together constituted one large structure known as the main castle of the Ozi fortress complex. Hasan Pasha also built a satellite castle downriver from the main castle where the Dnieper enters the Black Sea. This came to be known as the Fort of Hasan Pasha. At the site known as Hair Spit, directly across the river mouth, Hasan Pasha repaired and upgraded another fort whose cannons were designed to decimate the Cossacks who passed through this route. At Ozi, earthen ramparts and mining tunnels and galleries for communication also existed.7 Muscovy was quite successful at times in conducting siege warfare against the Ottomans and the nomads in the steppe region. Construction of cities like Vasilsursk in 1523 and Sviiazhsk in 1550 was part of long-term Muscovite plans to advance towards Kazan. One modern author asserts that these two Russian cities were to Kazan what Anadolu Hissar and Rumeli Hissar (the two fortresses on the eastern and western bank of Bosphorus, constructed by the Ottomans in 1395 and 1452) were to the Turkish conquest of Constantinople. In 1524, there was only one master-gunner in the city of Kazan.8 In 1552, Muscovy concentrated 150 ordnance pieces and 150,000 men near Kazan, which is on the middle course of the Volga River. These figures are probably an exaggeration. On 23 August, Ivan IV (1530–1584) encamped near Kazan. The ramparts of the town were built of wood and earth and the garrison numbered 30,000 men. By the end of September, artillery bombardment had created a substantial breach. On 2 October 1552, a general assault was ordered and the Russians captured the fort. When 6,000 Tatars tried to escape by fording River Kazanka, Ivan’s troops wiped them out.9 In 1554, 30,000 Muscovite troops under Prince George Ivanovitch Pronski moved towards Astrakhan and captured it on 29 August. One West European observer noted in 1557 that the Russian gunners’ drill was excellent and that they fired their guns with swiftness and skill.10 In 1569, the Ottomans launched an expedition under the leadership of Kasim Pasha against Astrakhan with 15,000 troops (including 3,000 Janissaries) from Azak (Azov on the Don estuary, which the Ottomans had taken from Venice in 1475). The distance from Astrakhan to

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Azak was about 500 miles. The Ottoman flotilla sailed from Azak up to the River Tsaritsyn (Tsaritsa), a tributary of the Don. The terrain was such that the ships could not be hauled overland to Volga. Kasim Pasha was forced to send back the flotilla, as well as the heavy guns and most of his supplies. When Kasim Pasha reached Astrakhan, he had only two large and 30 small guns. Even the range of the two large guns proved insufficient to bombard the Russian fortress effectively. Moreover, he was short of provisions. The Little and Big Nogais neither provided food nor military manpower to the Ottomans as earlier promised. Due to the width and depth of the surrounding water, the Turkish sappers and miners who had proved their worth in siege operations in Hungary failed to blow up the fortress. And in the absence of a flotilla, Kasim Pasha could not prevent Prince Serebryany sailing to Astrakhan with ammunition and reinforcements for the Muscovite garrison. On 26 September, Kasim Pasha began his retreat.11 The Astrakhan expedition of the Ottomans had failed (just as in the case of the Mughals in Kandahar in the mid-seventeenth century) due to the breakdown of logistics. Muscovy, by building a series of fortified points backed by garrisons rather than constructing castles in the style of alla moderna, ringed in the steppe nomads. Before the establishment of Kozlov (Michurinsk) in 1635, the 120-km stretch of forest and steppe between the Voronezh River in the west and the Tsna River in the east was open to attack by the Tatar nomads up to the Nogai Road. Except for occasional patrols, there was no systematic Muscovite military presence in this region. Voronezh was one of the larger southern garrison towns but it was 180 km from Kozlov. Another garrison centre was Lebedian, which was 70 km from Kozlov and in 1635 had only 457 personnel. The garrison at Kozlov constructed a 12-km earthen wall from the Polnoi Voronezh to the Chelnova between 13 May and 16 October 1636. Small forts extended from the new wall to the Tsna. Anti-cavalry fences were built along the Lipovitsa. The Kozlov–Tambov steppe wall facilitated military colonization by providing a defensive shield for pomeste settlements.12 Besides the steppe frontier, the Ottomans also had to defend their Balkan frontier. Along this frontier, the Habsburg Empire also constructed a chain of fortresses to check the Ottoman advance into Central Europe during the midsixteenth century. Mobilization of resources and organizational innovations rather than technical superiority provided the Habsburgs with an edge over the Ottomans over the course of time. The fall of Buda in 1541 caused the disintegration of the medieval Kingdom of Hungary. In 1542, a force of 55,000 German, Austrian and Hungarian soldiers failed to capture Buda and Pest. The

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Aulic War Council, established in November 1556, formulated the Habsburg defensive strategy in the Balkan against the Ottomans.13 The Aulic Council had under it the Aulic War Council, which replaced the Royal Council of medieval times.14 By the late 1560s, a line of fortresses extending from the Adriatic Sea to Transylvania had been constructed under the direction of the Aulic Council. This defensive chain consisted of somewhere between 100 and 120 fortresses of varying size. This defensive system was under the Border Fortress Captain Generals whose headquarters was the main fort or a fortified city in their region. For instance, the Upper Hungary or Kassa Captain Generalcy had Kassa as the command centre. The Gyor Captain Generalcy protected Vienna. The main fortresses were enlarged, each of them with a garrison of 1,000–1,500 men. Then, there were medium-sized forts, each of which had a garrison of between 400 and 600 men. Smaller stone or palisade fortifications had garrisons with 100–300 soldiers each. In addition, there were guard or patrol outposts with 12 soldiers each. The latter played an important role in surveillance and alerted the larger fortresses during a Turkish attack.15 After the end of the Ottoman–Habsburg Long War (1593–1606), the Ottomans held the forts of Kanije and Egri. The Habsburgs no longer paid an annual tribute but agreed to pay a substantial gift to the Sultan. During the seventeenth century, the Ottoman–Habsburg border remained more or less stable. It ran through western Hungary. Both powers established fortresses along the border. These fortresses functioned as bases for launching raids across the border into hostile territories. Their design ranged from timber and mud palisades to massive bastioned structures. Some examples can be given. Kanije (Nagykanisza) is in western Hungary between Lake Balaton and the the River Muir. It is 75 km south-west of Budapest and 45 km north-east of Zagreb. The Ottomans captured Kanije in 1600 and lost it to the Holy League in 1690. It was a large fort, and the city under Ottoman occupation was the centre of an Ottoman Vilayet. Uyvar (Neuhausel/Nove Zamsky), a comparatively smaller fortress, was held by the Ottomans for 22 years. This fortress, less than 60 km from Vienna, was like an Ottoman dagger pointing at the heart of the Habsburg Empire. This fort was captured by Fazil Ahmed Koprulu in 1663 and was lost to the Habsburgs in 1685. Under Ottoman control, Uyvar was also the centre of a Vilayet.16 At the end of January 1664, about 26,000 soldiers (Hungarian, Austrian and Bavarian), including Croat light cavalry led by Miklos Zrinyi and Hohenloe, advanced towards Pecs and Eszek. Their objective was to occupy the castles along the Drava region and to destroy the Eszek bridge. During the 26-day campaign, Zrinyi’s troops had marched 450 km. On 10 February, the troops

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arrived at Babocsa. On 30 April, Zrinyi began the siege of Segesd. On 1 June, the Ottoman relief army was only 20 km away. Zrinyi’s force raised the siege and retreated to Murakoz. After capturing Murakoz, the Ottomans started advancing towards Vienna. Montecuccoli, with the Habsburg Army, fought an indecisive battle near the River Raba on 1 August 1664. The Vasvar Peace Treaty allowed the Ottomans to retain Neuhausel, Nagyvarad and Nograd in Hungary.17 The standard European siege guns were 24-pounders. The Ottoman battering pieces were slightly heavier. In addition, the Ottoman cannons had a higher charge of gunpowder compared with the equivalent size of European cannon. Ottoman siege techniques evolved with time. They used artillery batteries to break the walls and ramparts of the Habsburg forts. Sand, wood and fascines were used to fill up the ditches. The Ottomans were able to construct galleries protected by high dirt walls in order to protect them from hostile cannonballs. The Ottoman mines used for undermining the walls and wooden forts of hostile fortifications were larger than the Habsburg ones. After selecting the point of attack, the Ottoman besieging force began constructing trenches, supervised by military engineers. Ottoman approach trenches, called sican yollari, were longer and deeper than those dug by the Europeans. These approach trenches were deliberately made in a twisting manner, winding back and forth (snakelike) in order to avoid defensive cannon fire from the hostile forts. Parallels called meteris branched off from the approaches. Two to three steps were cut into the forward side of the parallels, which functioned as firing platforms for the troops stationed there. The ends of the parallels curved back and communication trenches connected them. The end points of the parallels housed artillery and musket batteries. The Janissaries were considered better diggers than their European counterparts because the former dug while sitting cross-legged instead of kneeling. The former posture was more comfortable for the troops and provided better cover for the men who dug. For the Janissaries, trench barracks were constructed at the end or middle of the parallels. While yeniceri and irregular infantry troops dug and manned the trenches, the sipahi cavalry ravaged the countryside. They manufactured gabions and fascines. The cavalry also protected the trenches against enemy sorties. The Ottomans created mountains of earth higher than the bastions of besieged fortresses, and these were used for staging cavalry assaults against enemy forces.18 For defending the frontier, the Ottomans depended on the ghazis/gazis, standing regular troops (troops sent by the central government and the household troops of the provincial governors), local soldiers and gonullus. The latter were volunteers who moved to the frontier in order to make a livelihood

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as soldiers, somewhat like the gazis during the early Ottoman Empire. Initially, they served in the retinue of the fortress commanders without any pay. They hoped that by performing valorous service, they might be awarded timars or regular salaries. In the sixteenth century, the gonullus became an integral part of the garrisons of the forts. During peacetime, in Uyvar, almost 20 per cent of the garrison comprised gonullus. Their presence increased in wartime as by then regular troops were shifted from garrison duty to the field armies.19 The First Ottoman Siege of Vienna occurred in 1529 under Sultan Suleiman the Lawgiver. Kara Mustafa, the Grand Vizir led the second invasion in 1683 in the reign of Sultan Muhammad IV. The total number of Turkish hosts during the Second Siege of Vienna was 150,000 (according to one estimate, 300,000).20 Probably, the latter figure also included non-combatants. Emperor Leopold I left Vienna on 7 July for Passau. The defence of Vienna was entrusted to Ernst von Stahremberg and a Council of Five aided by an engineer named Rimpler. The garrison of Vienna comprised 11,000 men (including 3,000 citizens and student militia).21 On 13 July 1683, Kara Mustafa made a mistake by allowing his troops to raid Fischamend on the shore of the Danube, which resulted in the loss of large stocks of timber. The Ottoman troops would require timber for their forthcoming siege operation. On 14 July, the Ottoman besieging army moved to near the Valley of Wien. On Kara Mustafa’s orders, the principal elements of the Ottoman besieging force camped between the villages of Gunpendorf and Hernals. Some detachments were stationed at the village of Dobling, thus encircling the city to the west and north. A detachment was also stationed at the suburbs of Rossau, adjoining the canal. The Pasha of Timisoara with his contingents and some Anatolian Janissaries commanded this section. A smaller, but formidable, detachment was stationed on the Ottoman right wing, to the east and south-east of Vienna at St Marx. The Ottoman tents were spread roughly in a crescent shape around Vienna. The Ottomans concentrated their focus on the area south of the Burg. Kara Mustafa took his position at the centre of the Ottoman troops. He was assisted by the Aga and Prefect of the Janissaries and the Beylerbei of Rumelia. On his right, the Pashas of Diyarbakir and Anatolia with some Janissaries and Asiatic troops were stationed. The left was commanded by the Pashas of Jeno and Sivas. On the night of 14 July, the Ottoman troops started digging their approaches towards the fortifications of Vienna.22 During the Siege of Vienna (1683), the Ottomans deployed 32,000 sappers and miners. As a point of comparison, during the Siege of Baghdad (1638), the Ottomans had 20,000 diggers and 8,000 miners. The miners were recruited from the Armenians, Greeks and Bosnians.23 The Ottoman centre

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faced the projecting angle of the counterscarp opposite the Burg Ravelin in Vienna. The right wing of the Ottoman force around St Ulrich faced the Burg Bastion and the Ottoman left wing faced the Lobel Bastion.24 The defenders continued to strengthen the counterscarp by building palisades. Ernest Rudiger Starhemberg was in charge of the defence of Vienna. He concentrated his artillery near Hofburg. On the morning of 16 July, the Turks were only 200 paces from the salient angles of the counterscarp. Kara Mustafa then decided to totally encircle the city. On his orders, an Ottoman detachment crossed the shallow water of the canal and occupied Leopoldstadt and the islands. They drove back the Duke of Lorraine’s rearguard under Schultz. The Ottomans began building bridges to connect Leopoldstadt with the right bank of the Danube. The besieging troops began building batteries and breastworks opposite the north wall held by Starhemberg’s men. Supplies coming downstream for the besieged troops were stopped by the Turkish bridge crossing the canal to Rossau. As a result, Vienna was completely cut off and surrounded.25 The Habsburg Emperor displayed political foresight by forming an alliance with the King of Poland. A multinational force of 76,000 soldiers was assembled for the relief of Vienna. Of these, 21,000 were Habsburg troops. Max Emmanuel II of Bavaria led 11,300 soldiers, the Elector of Saxony led 10,400 men and Prince George Frederick of Waldeck commanded 9,500 Swabians. The Poles contributed 24,200 soldiers. Overall command was with the Polish King John Sobieski III. The second in command was Charles V, the Duke of Lorraine.26 Kara Mustafa not only underestimated the defensive capability of the city but also failed to construct defensive lines around his camp during the first month of the siege. Such defensive lines would have protected his camp from the Christian relieving army. He did not construct defensive works on the no-man’sland in Wiener Weld until the last moment. He failed to pay serious attention to capturing Klosterneuberg. He also failed to detach Turkish cavalry and Tatar auxiliary cavalry from Crimea for patrolling the Plain of Tulln. In fact, the relationship between Kara Mustafa and the Ottoman vassal Khan of Crimea was not cordial. Only on 4 September did Kara Mustafa become aware of the danger posed by the relieving army in Wiener Weld. Then he ordered construction of observation posts, ditches and gun batteries. But it was already too late. Kara Mustafa then sent ‘Old’ Ibrahim of Buda to move his contingent from Gyor to Vienna. Ibrahim of Buda had earlier criticized the Ottoman offensive against Vienna. Ibrahim brought with him 8,000 troops. By 8 September, the Duke of Lorraine and John Sobieski III’s forces had crossed the Danube at Tulln with 200

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artillery pieces. On 8 and 9 September, the Turkish commanders held a Grand Council. Some Ottoman commanders argued that the whole Turkish besieging force should be turned against Lorraine’s force. However, Kara Mustafa decided to keep up the pressure against the city of Vienna.27 Finally, the Ottomans withdrew 60 guns and 6,000 infantry from the besieging force to face the relieving army. In addition, the Ottomans had some 22,000 cavalry with them. There were some additional poor-quality Wallachian and Moldavian auxiliary troops with the Ottomans. The European relieving army was numerically superior and also superior as regards field artillery vis-à-vis the Turkish field force that opposed them. The left and centre of Lorraine’s army had more than 40,000 soldiers and the right wing under Sobieski’s command had more than 20,000.28 The Battle of Vienna occurred on 12 September 1683, from 5 a.m. to 7 p.m. The battle was a series of separate, confused encounters that occurred over a wide area separated by deep ravines, vineyards, ridges, valleys, etc. The Duke of Lorraine, commanding the left wing of the relieving army, had as its objective the capture of Nussburg in order to penetrate the Turkish line at Nussdorf and roll it up. The most serious combat before noon occurred between the Christian left wing and the Turkish right wing. After the Turkish defenders were driven away from Nussberg Hill, by mid-day the Turkish line was driven back to Schrieberbach. At the same time, the Saxons attacked towards Sievering and Potzleinsdorf and the Poles stormed the Gallitzinberg. By late afternoon, the Turkish line had encamped at Dornbach and the southern bank of Krottenbach. The Saxons then stormed Turkenschanz Fort. As the Turkish line was wavering, Sobieski launched his 20,000 cavalry on the plain between Breitensee and Hernals. The final defence of the Turkish units occurred at the ruined fortifications of Lowel Bastion. By then, the day was won.29 On 13 September, the commanders of the relieving army, such as the King of Poland, some German commanders and princes, surveyed the deserted Turkish siege works and then entered the city of Vienna.30 The relieving force suffered only 2,500 casualties and the Turks some 15,000. In the siege, the defenders of Vienna suffered some 5,000 casualties.31 To sum up, the Turkish defeat at Vienna in the late seventeenth century was due to bad command decisions and logistical overstretch. Gunpowder technology was not the overriding factor in determining the outcome. And it is to be remembered that in 1683, it was the Ottomans who were projecting power into the heart of the Central European Habsburg Empire and not vice versa. The Europeans would be able to threaten Constantinople only in 1915 during the Dardanelles ‘fiasco’. Even after the failure of the Second Siege of Vienna,

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the Ottoman defence in East Europe did not fall like ninepins. The empire had much fight left in it as it went into a strategic defensive on its European frontier. In 1715, Habsburg Emperor Charles VI (r. 1711–1740) entered into an alliance with Venice and declared war on the Ottomans. In response, the 150,000-strong Ottoman Army crossed the River Sava at Zimony. The Habsburgs gathered some 125,000 soldiers. On 5 August 1716, the Ottomans were defeated at the Battle of Petervarad by Field Marshal Prince Eugene of Savoy. Then, the Habsburg Army laid siege to Temesvar, which fell on 13 October. The Ottomans also lost the two fortresses of Pancsova and Ujpalanka.32 The next great siege on the Western Front of the Ottoman Empire occurred at Belgrade from 29 June to 18 August 1717. Belgrade is strategically located at the confluence of the Danube and Save rivers. In 1693, a weak Ottoman garrison was able to withstand a siege of 49 days under General Croy. In the spring of 1717, Prince Eugene with an army numbering 100,000 men and 200 guns marched east along the north bank of the Danube and crossed the river at Pancsoya. Then, he turned west. On 29 June 1717, Eugene appeared before the fortress of Belgrade. Mustafa Pasha, the garrison commander, had at his disposal some 30,000 soldiers, 600 cannons of different calibre and 70 boats. On 22 July, Eugene was able to complete the lines of contra- and circumvallation. It should be noted that Kara Mustafa failed to undertake this task of constructing contra- and circumvallation lines at Vienna in 1683. However, the Habsburg troops were struck by disease. Worse, Mustafa Pasha conducted an active defence. Furthermore, Grand Vizir Khalil Pasha set out from Adrianopole with a relieving army, which had 150,000 men (including 80,000 cavalry) with 120 guns and mortars. Meanwhile, Eugene’s force had shrunk to half its size. On 1 August, Khalil Pasha’s forces were able to surround Eugene’s army. Eugene’s forces were bombarded by both the garrison of Belgrade and Khalil Pasha’s relieving force. The Ottomans started exploding large mines under Eugene’s lines of circumvallation. The Ottoman strategy was not to storm Eugene’s position but to starve him out.33 This strategy was similar to Mughal siege techniques. On 15 August, Eugene issued orders to attack the Turkish position the next day. He drew up his force in two lines. The attacking force comprised 52 battalions, 53 grenadier companies and 180 squadrons supported by 60 cannons, and they advanced to attack the unsuspecting Turks at early dawn. Only eight battalions were left as trench guards. Fog resulted in messing up the advance of the Habsburg right wing. When a gap appeared in the right wing of the Habsburg line, Eugene ordered the second line to fill the gap. The Habsburg left wing suffered casualties from the Turkish Grand Battery until the latter was assaulted

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by the Bavarian troops around 9 a.m. By 10 a.m., the Turks were in retreat all along their line. On 18 August, Belgrade surrendered to Eugene but the garrison was allowed to march out. The Habsburgs suffered 5,400 battle casualties, and 30,000 died of wounds and disease during the siege. The Ottomans lost 20,000 men in the battle besides 5,000 during the siege. The Ottoman defeat was due to the bold leadership displayed by Eugene, quick regrouping of Habsburg tactical reserve in the midst of the firefight, overconfidence on the part of the Ottoman relieving force and lack of coordination between the Ottoman garrison in Belgrade and Khalil Pasha.34 One wonders what might have happened if the Ottoman garrison at Belgrade had carried out a sortie at Eugene’s lines when it was moving to attack Khalil Pasha’s unsuspecting army. On 21 July 1718, peace was established by the Treaty of Passarowitz (Pozsaravec). The Ottomans had lost territories in western Wallachia and northern Serbia.35 The key region in Ottoman frontier defence in East Europe during the first half of the eighteenth century was Bosnia. On 6 April 1733, the Governor of Bosnia Muhsinzade Abdullah/Ali Pasha was ordered by Sultan Mahmud I to conduct an assessment of the defensive fortifications along the Bosnian border, including the District of Herzegovina. Abdullah Pasha recorded in his inventory 44 fortresses and stockades. There were 282 brass guns, 1,287.5 kantar (barrels) of black powder and 842.5 kantar of lead shot. The Governor recommended the shipment of 80 cannons, 500 kantar of black powder and 600 kantar of lead shot.36 In the eighteenth century, the Ottoman garrison in Bosnia consisted mainly of armed Bosnians in Ottoman service. The Sultan’s palace troops were in a minority. Muhsinzade Ali Pasha controlled over 20,000 Bosnian soldiers who garrisoned various fortifications in this province.37 In 1737, war broke out between the Habsburgs and the Ottomans in Bosnia. Muscovy also displayed a hostile attitude towards the Porte. In order to strengthen the Ottoman force facing the Russians, from Bosnia 5,000 troops were sent to south Russia. According to one estimate, some 150,000 were mobilized by the Habsburgs against the Ottomans.38 The Habsburg force that advanced towards Bosnia comprised five divisions. The first attack was directed towards Banialuka/Banaluka, a fortified town on the River Verbas about 18 km south of the Save. After the Austrian capture of Gradiska/Gradishka in 1717, Banaluka replaced it as the primary centre of defence in the Verbas River Valley with a small stockade, also named Gradiska. The fortress in Banaluka had seven outer towers and a single inner dungeon. In 1734, these towers had 16 large brass cannons and three large iron cannons.

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In addition, there were 314 small cannons, 112 large mortars and 5,500 small tower guns. The large guns had carriages. The armoury contained 16,800 pounds of black powder, 75,348 pounds of lead shot and 10,836 pounds of lead ingots (one pond equals around 450 g). The garrison comprised 1,105 Bosnians organized in four infantry, nine cavalry, one artillery and one garrison artillery company. The outer works and stockades around Banaluka held 437 infantry. Mehmed Aga Kapudan of Banaluka, Commander of the First Infantry Company, was the son of a land-owning family. About 80,000 Germans and 20,000 Hungarians concentrated against this fortified site under the command of Prince Joseph Hildburghausen and four other generals. About 15 km from this fortress, the Habsburg force constructed several bridges over the Save/Sava.39 The Habsburg force advanced and constructed a palanka at Gradiska.40 Some German and Croatian soldiers (second division of the Habsburg Army in Bosnia) moved towards Buzin and Chetin (Cetin), the two fortresses at the far border of the Ottoman Empire. Cetin had an inner tower with a single brass cannon and a smaller piece of field artillery. The walls were square with small towers at the corners, each defended by a small cannon. Buzin had two large brass cannons, a small cannon and a field gun. These two were smaller defensive works on the western part of the Ottoman border, north-west of the massive island fortress of Bihke/Bihka. Cetin and Buzin had 421 and 213 soldiers, respectively. Cetin and Buzin, the two small fortifications west of Una River, were not designed to resist a major invasion but only to buy time in order to allow the garrison at Bihke to consolidate. The third division, consisting of German and Hungarian soldiers, had 20,000 men under the command of three generals (Lyka, Carloff and Sang) moved to Osterwitch-atyk (Ostrovice-i atik), south of Bihka, a small town with a castle in Hungarian Dalmatia. It had one brass cannon, one large mortar and field cannon drawn by oxen. The walls were almost 2 m in height but had no towers. The castle was garrisoned by 220 soldiers and there were 1,200 Bosnians holding the outer works in the nearby region. The Habsburg strategy was that the second division, by capturing Cetin and Buzin, and the third division, by occupying Osterwitch-atyk in the south, would isolate the Bosnian-Ottoman force around Bihke. The fourth division consisting of 15,000 Germans, Slavs, Serbians and Hungarians fortified themselves near Tzwernik (Zwornick), a walled town defended by a castle on the River Drina.41 The fifth division captured the fortress of Niss and then moved towards Yangi-bazar, a town in Serbia about 50 km south of Belgrade.42

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The Habsburg force collected and also constructed numerous boats for maintaining their logistical lifelines along the Save and the Danube. During the time of the Habsburg invasion, Hekimoglu Ali Pasha was the Vizir of Bosnia. Prior to his appointment in 1736, he was a middle-aged ex-Grand Vizir in exile on the Island of Crete.43 The Ottoman provincial government in Bosnia concentrated all the infantry and cavalry available for field duty on the Plains of Traunick (near the border with Dalmatia).44 Hekimoglu Ali Pasha was able to scrape together a field force of some 20,000 personnel.45 On 29 June 1737, the Habsburg force took up a position near Tzwernik. They attacked a palanka near this fortress and killed the men and took numerous women and children as prisoners, in addition to huge quantities of loot. Ahmad Pasha, with his own contingent and five Janissary companies sent from Constantinople, was ordered to relieve Tzwernik. On 6 July 1737, the Habsburg force began constructing field fortifications before Osterwitch-atyk. Ali Pasha ordered Osman and Muhammad (formerly commander of Tzwernik) to advance towards Osterwitch-atyk with 5,000 veteran soldiers. The Ottoman relief force advanced to Belai.46 A contemporary account paints a ‘heroic’ picture of the conditions inside Osterwitch-atyk under siege: The enemy of the faith employed more than fifteen days in their efforts against this place, distressing its inhabitants night and day, but all their attempts … were fruitless. There were in it, besides, a number of females who, like the ancient Bosnian women, acquired the courage of heroes. These changed their female dress for the habiliments of warriors, and appeared, sword in hand, in the ranks of the besieged, ready and determined, acting in concert with their male companions. Some of them carried balls … to the fighting men, and stood ready for rendering any service they were able to perform. There were others who went forth with cups, jars, and other water vessels, to meet their heroic bridegrooms … . Some employed themselves in preparing victuals, and others again administered medicine to the wounded, or bound up their wounds with suitable bandages. The troops in the fortress were indeed few in numbers, whilst those of the enemy were very numerous, and played night and day with their guns … against the fortress.47

The Bosnian frontier force turned the Austrian western flank and paved the way for the successful Siege of Belgrade in the summer of 1738. Hekimoglu Ali Pasha’s relief of Banaluka with the Bosnian Provincial Army paved the way for the recapture of Belgrade in 1739. The effectiveness of the Ottoman frontier defence enabled the Porte to triumph over Austria and Russia, as exemplified in the Treaty of Belgrade in 1740.48 So, even in the fourth decade of the eighteenth century,

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while the Mughal and Safavid empires were in ruins, the Ottoman Empire was not only alive but still kicking. It could still triumph over the joint defences of Austria and Muscovy even when a new anti-Ottoman power rose up in Persia. On 3 September 1743, Nadir Shah with his army advanced from Kirkuk towards the Ottoman frontier. On 14 September, 200,000 soldiers of Nadir reached the outskirts of Mosul. Nadir set up camp at Yarimja village, which was on the east side of the River Tigris and a few kilometres south of Mosul. Yarimja, located between the riverbed and the steppe to the east, offered access to both the regions. Mosul was the key point that had to be captured before Nadir could secure northern Iraq (Mesopotamia). Mosul was one of the principal gateways to the Anatolian Plateau, as well as to Syria. Mosul is a region of transition between the high, rugged mountains of Kurdistan and the plains and desert that begin south of Mosul and extend to the Persian Gulf. Mosul lies at the southeastern corner of the Al-Jazira (the Island), between the upper courses of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Al-Jazira is the region north of the upper course of the Tigris and west of its middle course. It is a plateau encircled by Syria to the west, Armenia to the north-east, Azerbaijan to the east and north and Iraq (Mesopotamia) to the south. South of Mosul, the city of Tekrit on the western bank of the Tigris is the geographical boundary between northern and southern Mesopotamia. North of Mosul is the mountainous region of Kurdistan. Here, the Taurus and the Zagros meet. The major mountain chains are cut by deep gorges that isolate one valley from another. West of Mosul, the Khabar Valley provided an avenue to the north of Mesopotamia both for migrating Arab tribes and invading armies. The location of Mosul at the foothills of juxtaposed mountains provided it with great strategic value. Haj Husain Pasha Jalali was the Vali of Mosul. By this time, rather than the Ottoman central government, the Jalali family had secured control over Mosul. In 1723, when the Ottoman– Persian War broke out, the Jalali family provided supplies and war materials for the Ottoman force in Mosul. In 1726, Ismail Jalali was appointed as Vali of Mosul.49 On 25 June 1743, work started on refurbishing the walls of Mosul. The Jalali family, by dint of their financial resources and popularity, mobilized the civilian population in digging a ditch outside the city. The population of Mosul was estimated at between 75,000 and 125,000 (including 6,000 Christians). The civilian workforce was swelled by refugees who had drifted to Mosul due to destruction of nearby villages by Nadir’s soldiers. There were some 300 villages in the Mosul Vilayet. Haj Husain’s garrison comprised 30,000 men plus 15,000 soldiers of Husain Pasha of Aleppo. Koc Pasha, the Governor of Koy Sancak,

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contributed a contingent of 500 cavalry. While the craftsmen within the city prepared weapons for the garrison, the civilian parties went outside the city to bring stones, earth and soil for strengthening the defensive structure of Mosul.50 Mosul was a classic case of pre-modern ‘people in arms’. On 19 September, Nadir’s besieging army gathered in the area of the Red Mosque. He ordered the construction of 12 structures opposite the 12 towers of Mosul’s walls in order to place cannons for bombarding the city. Husain Pasha responded by setting up the cannons opposite Nadir’s artillery batteries, which comprised 390 large and small cannons along with mortars. On 25 September, Nadir started his bombardment. The bombardment continued for 8 days and nights. In total, some 50,000 bombs were dropped on Mosul in 40 days. During the 1683 Siege of Vienna, the Ottomans fired 100,000 cannonballs into the city between 14 July and 12 September. The people of Mosul cheerfully repaired the damage and aided the garrison. Nadir then concentrated his attack on the northwestern side of Mosul along the Bash Tabya tower. Nadir brought his army from Yarimja to Qadikent village, north of Mosul and east of the Tigris. The north wall was breached but Haj Husain Pasha immediately ordered its repair.51 When the bombardment failed, the Persians tried mining operations. Tunnels were dug under the walls and these were filled with gunpowder. However, one mining attempt backfired on Nadir’s troops because when the Persians ignited the gunpowder, shifting wind currents flung it back towards the Persian lines. Taking advantage of the conflagration, the Mosulis counter-attacked. Nadir’s soldiers then constructed numerous ladders and used them to cross the moat and scale the walls. The Mosulis poured boiling oil over the attackers from the top of the walls. On 23 October 1743, after 40 days of unsuccessful siege operation, Nadir withdrew from Mosul. The Persians had lost more than 5,000 soldiers. Besides the popularity and extraordinary leadership of the Jalali family, Mustafa Pasha, an engineer from Istanbul, who provided technical assistance to the besiegers, was instrumental in foiling Nadir’s attempt to take Mosul. Mustafa Pasha was especially praised for defeating Nadir’s attempt to tunnel under the Tigris and destroy the east wall of the city by mining.52 Let us turn the spotlight now on siege warfare further east.

Mughal and Safavid siege warfare Safavid Persia, unlike the Ming/Manchu, Mughal and the Ottoman empires, did not have very big cities. Isfahan was smaller than Damascus, Cairo

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and Istanbul. The Safavid cities’ fortifications were not that impressive. Isfahan was surrounded by a wall with eight gates. The wall of Isfahan was constructed thrice in its history. The first was constructed in the pre-Islamic period, the second in the tenth century under the Buwaids and finally by the Afghan Ashraf after the fall of the Safavid Dynasty. The Safavids, after making Isfahan their capital, did not rebuilt the wall. The south-facing gate, Darb-i-Hasanabad and that facing west were the principal ones. Canals were outside the city walls, which might have functioned as a wet moat.53 Since Isfahan faced no threat, there was no point in constructing time-consuming and costly fortifications. We have some rudimentary data as regards fortifications and the use of siege artillery in Safavid Persia. In 1507, cannons were used by the Safavids during the Siege of Arantelia. The master-gunner was one Hamzabeg from Trebizonid. The following year, the Shah requested artillery from the Venetian ambassador. In 1523–1524, the garrison of Herat included infantry equipped with handguns. In 1548, the Portuguese provided Shah Tahmasp with 20 cannon in order to confront the Ottomans. The Ottoman–Portuguese rivalry centred round the issue of which power would control the spice trade along the coastline of the Indian Ocean. The Safavids used Portuguese cannons during the Siege of Kish in 1551. In 1559, the Ottoman Prince Bayazid sought refuge with Shah Tahmasp and brought 20 artillery pieces with him.54 In 1588, the Uzbeks under Abdullah Khan laid siege to Herat. The Persian garrison comprised armoured troopers and infantry equipped with harquebus. The Uzbeks had mastered the technique of tunnelling and breaching the walls, and the fort was stormed in 1589.55 In 1683, the Safavids captured Hormuz from the Portuguese and were not impressed by the feranghi cannons there. This event probably paid a contributory role in Abbas II’s decision to disband the nascent artillery corps in the Safavid Army. The artillery branch was again revived in the reign of Shah Hossein/Hussein (r. 1694–1722).56 From the second half of the seventeenth century, rather than Merv, Sarakh functioned as the principal defensive node in Safavid Persia against the Uzbeks. There was a citadel at Sarakh situated on the top of a hill and surrounded by a moat.57 The important towns in Central Asia had citadels and were walled and further protected by mud circumvallation. Many forts had stone towers with turrets for defensive purposes. Some forts were protected by double walls. While besieging a fort, the attackers constructed sar-kob, which was a raised platform made of earth and wood. It was constructed near the wall and was as high as the wall. From this platform, the besiegers attacked the garrison stationed at

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the ramparts of the fort. Furthermore, the besieging army was also capable of constructing trenches in order to allow the assault parties to move forward towards the fort walls.58 Babur, a Central Asian warlord and founder of the Mughal Empire in north India, in his autobiography describes the method of casting siege cannons during October 1526: Ustad Ali Quli had been ordered to cast a large mortar for use against Biana and other forts which had not yet submitted. When all the furnaces and materials were ready … we went to see the mortar cast. Round the mortar mould he had had eight furnaces made in which were the molten materials. From below each furnace a channel went direct to the mould. When he opened the furnace holes … the molten metal poured like water through all these channels into the mould … . The mould was left a day or two to cool; when it was opened, Ustad Ali Quli with great delight sent to say ‘The stone chamber is without defect; to cast the powder compartment is easy’. He got the stone chamber out … he busied himself with casting the powder compartment.59

During February 1527, Ustad Quli manufactured another stone-throwing mortar. Its range, Babur tells us in his memoirs, was 1,600 paces.60 Babur’s description of the construction of a siege mortar needs to be compared to the account of Kritovoulos, who describes the manufacture of siege cannon by the Ottomans about 70 years earlier: Clay was mixed for many days, so as to make it very workable, made of the lightest, cleanest and finest earth. It was thoroughly mixed together and mingled with … hemp, and other such things combined and worked in, after having been chopped up fine, so as to form one body … . Of this, a round model was constructed like a pipe, oblong to the core. The length of this was 40 spans. Of this the forward half, for the reception of stone cannon ball, was of 12 spans as the circle and circumference of its thickness; while the hinder half, or tail, for the reception of the substance called ‘fodder’ [gunpowder] was of four spans … . There was also another, an outer casing, made to receive this, altogether hollow, and like a scabbard, but wider, so as to fit over the core and leave some space between. And the space between the core and the casing, uniform throughout the whole length was of one span … . It was to receive the bronze poured out from the crucible to form the body of the cannon. And this outer mould was made of the same clay, but was completely bound around and protected by iron and wood and earth and stones built up and reinforced from outside, so that the great weight of the bronze bearing down within, might not break it apart or spoil the form of the cannon.61

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But, occasionally, as Babur’s memoirs show, the barrel split during casting. Comparing these two accounts, one finds the unmistakable Ottoman influence on Ustad Quli. The role of gunpowder weapons in Mughal siege warfare increased from the time of Akbar onwards. The Mughals started using firearms and mines in siege warfare in a systematic way from the last decade of the sixteenth century. On 18 December 1595, Prince Murad accompanied by Khan Khanan and Raja Ali Khan laid siege to Ahmadnagar City. The Mughals began laying mines on the walls of the city.62 In 1573, the Mughal Army captured the Fort of Surat after a siege of 47 days. Abul Fazl notes: ‘The pioneers made from a long distance trenches and so brought themselves to the walls and began to break them down, and the alert servants raised mounds (tilha) around it, and from them showered bullets on the garrison, and the bombardiers also performed marvels’.63 However, the Mughal soldiery was not yet adept at mining the walls. It seems that there was little advance in the art of mining on the part of the Central Asian nomads between Timur and Akbar. On 21 February 1596, the walls of the fort were partly breached. After some excavation of the foundations of the fort, the rubble was cleared and filled with gunpowder and set on fire. Some 30 m of the wall collapsed. The infantry was ready to assault but a mine was discovered, which was then emptied. The Mughal infantry wasted time until the mine was exploded, to prevent a recurrence of the accident that had occurred during the Siege of Chitor Fort. This delay allowed the garrison to rush in reserves and repair the wall.64 As the Mughals moved further south of Chitor, they had to conduct siege warfare against the Deccani Sultanates such as Ahmadnagar, Bijapur and Golkunda. A mercenary contingent of Ahmadnagar’s force, which consisted of light Maratha cavalry led by a Koli chief, harassed the Mughal Army’s lines of communication. It was a foretaste of things to come. The Mughals were further troubled by the news that the sultanates of Bijapur and Golkunda had sent a joint relief army to save Ahmadnagar from the Mughals. The Mughals decided to negotiate. On 14 March 1596, the Mughals raised the siege on condition that Berar would be ceded to them.65 However, Ahmadnagar was not willing to vacate Berar once the Mughals had commenced the siege of their capital. At this stage, the Mughals had no answer to the harassing tactics of the light Maratha cavalry. Nor were the Mughals able to capture the Deccani forts very quickly with gunpowder weapons. However, Mughal battlefield supremacy remained unchallenged. The city of Ahmadnagar was finally captured in 1600. The moat in front of the fort was 30–40 m broad and 7 m deep. The wall of the fort was made of basalt and 27 m high. The Mughals set up artillery batteries to engage the defenders,

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then mines were laid to blow up the glacis. The explosion destroyed one of the towers of the fort. On the morning of 16 August, some 180 mans of gunpowder was used to blow up parts of the wall, following which the Mughal infantry attacked. After the garrison had suffered 1,500 fatalities, they surrendered. The successful siege had lasted 124 days.66 In 1608, Malik Ambar negotiated an alliance with Sultan Ibrahim II of Bijapur so that he could concentrate all his forces against the Mughals to the north.67 Besides Deccan, the Mughals also had to focus their attention on the turbulent North-West Frontier. The Mughal record of siege warfare along the North-West Frontier is mixed. Along that axis, the Mughals had to tackle two threats: Safavid Persia and the Uzbeks of Central Asia. To maintain secure military connections with Afghanistan, under Emperor Akbar the Mughals constructed a highway along the Khyber Pass. Every spring, stones were removed and the scrubs and bushes cleared. The road was made suitable for bullock carts, which carried the baggage of the Mughal Army.68 Akbar’s successors repeatedly tried to develop secure communications between India and Afghanistan. Joannes De Laet, the Flemish geographer, philologist and naturalist was born in Antwerp in 1593 and died at Leiden in 1649. In 1625, he was the Director of the Company of the West Indies. And later, he became one of the directors of the Dutch East India Company. In 1631, he published his observations on the Mughal Empire, in Latin.69 De Laet thus describes the internal security situation of the Mughal North-West Frontier under Emperor Jahangir: ‘The road from Lahore to Kabul is infested by Pathan brigands; and although the king has established 23 guard stations of troops at regular intervals, none the less travellers are frequently robbed by these brigands, who in the year 1611 actually attacked and looted the city of Kabul’.70 In general, the journey from Lahore (an important Mughal military outpost in western Punjab) to Kabul took about 3 months, because of the major detour that travellers had to make in order to avoid the robber-infested regions and also due to the lack of good tracks across the mountainous regions. However, the Mughal royal road from Lahore to Kabul, with guard posts constructed at regular intervals, reduced the length of the journey to 20–25 days. The road from Lahore to Kabul was designed to strengthen Mughal control over central and northern Afghanistan. Another road was constructed from Lahore to Kandahar to secure Mughal domination over southern Afghanistan, and especially to guard against any possible Safavid incursion. The Mughals maintained about 12,000–15,000 cavalry in Kandahar. Kandahar Fort was protected to the west by a steep, rugged mountain, and to the south and east by a strong wall. Construction of these royal roads assisted the transfer of military assets from

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the core of the empire in order to deal effectively with uprisings by frontier Afghans (especially along the River Indus), and also to check the external threat posed by the Uzbeks and Persians. Road building and the maintenance of internal peace also boosted long-distance commerce. Large caravans from Kabul journeyed for two to three months to reach Kasghar. The chief trading centre was Yarkhand, where large quantities of silk, musk and rhubarb from China were exported to Afghanistan.71 After Akbar’s death, his eldest son Prince Salim ascended the Mughal throne as Jahangir on 23 October 1605.72 By May 1606, the Persians posed a threat to Kandahar. Jahangir notes in his memoirs: ‘I had gathered from the reports of Shah Beg Khan, the Governor of Kandahar, that the amirs of the Qizilbash frontier were going to make a move owing to the corrupting influence of several men remaining from the army of the mirzas of that area who were always shaking the chain of contention and strife and writing letters encouraging [the Qizilbash] to take Kandahar’.73 Actually, the death of Humayun and the rebellion instigated by Jahangir’s son, Khusrau encouraged the Persians to make a move against Kandahar.74 Jahangir tells us: ‘The Governor of Farah, the malik of Seistan, and the jagirdars of that region attacked Kandahar with the assistance of Husayn Khan, the Governor of Herat. Thanks to his courage and bravery, Shah Beg Khan made a manly defence by fortifying and securing the fortress’.75 Jahangir congratulated Shah Beg for not challenging the Safavids to a pitched battle near Kandahar. In his memoirs, Jahangir also wrote that Shah Beg’s decision to shut himself up in Kandahar Fort and prepare the garrison for a siege was the right decision.76 At the time of the Safavid Siege of Kandahar, the Mughal garrison was fortunate because both the Mughal Emperor Jahangir and the Mughal court were located at Lahore. And from Lahore, a large relief force was quickly dispatched to relieve Kandahar. Jahangir himself was aware of the Mughal’s good luck. He notes in his memoirs: ‘By chance, the imperial forces, that had been sent after Khusrau (rebel Mughal prince) from Agra were camped in Lahore, just then’.77 The preparation of a relief army is thus described by the emperor: ‘I immediately appointed a large contingent under the leadership of Mirza Ghazi, who was accompanied by a number of officers and servants of the court such as Qara Beg … Tokhta Beg … Khwaja Aqil was appointed as bakshi to this campaign. To cover expenses, forty-three thousand rupees were given to Qara Khan, and fifteen thousand rupees were given to Naqdi Beg and Qilich Beg, who accompanied Mirza Ghazi. I decided to stay in Lahore in order to settle this matter, and to visit Kabul’.78

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When the Safavid force learnt that a Mughal relief force was marching towards Kandahar, they lifted the siege and retreated across the River Helmand, some 56 kos from Kandahar. The Mughal relief army entered Kandahar on 31 January 1607. In this siege, the regional army under the Governor of Farah was involved but the Persian royal army did not take part. Jahangir came to believe that the Kandahar expedition had been undertaken by the Governors of Farah and Herat without any direct order from Shah Abbas I (r. 1587–1629). In December 1607, the Mughal North-West Frontier defence was put in the hands of Mirza Ghazi, the commandant of the relief force. He was put in charge of Subas from Thatta (Sind), Multan and Kandahar.79 About 20 kos beyond Kabul was the town of Charikar, and 20 kos further to the north was Ghorband. Under Jahangir, Ghorband was at the boundary of the Uzbek Empire whose capital was Samarkhand.80 In 1645, Shah Jahan (b. 1592, d. 1666, and Emperor from 1628 to 1658) prepared a plan for conquering Badakshan and Balkh by launching operations from Kabul. Not only did the Mughals begin to gather military contingents from various parts of India at Kabul, but the imperial court itself moved to Kabul. On 6 April 1645, Shah Jahan ordered Asalat Khan, the Mir Bakshi, to collect mansabdars, ahadis and musketeers in Kabul for the forthcoming campaign.81 In regard to utilization of Afghan mercenaries by the Mughals, Inayat Khan writes: ‘He [Shah Jahan] moreover instructed the said Khan [Asalat Khan] to recruit a band of gallant and sturdy youths from amongst the Oymaqs, Chaghtais, and other tribes dwelling in the neighbourhoods of Kabul on the Badakshan frontier. With Amir-ul Umara’s concurrence, he was to recommend the worthiest for suitable mansabs and enlist the rest into the ranks of the ahadis’.82 The Amir-ul Umara and Asalat Khan were ordered to send a party to widen and level the road leading to Badakshan and also to construct bridges along the route of invasion. The Emperor further assured them that reinforcements from Punjab would soon reach Kabul to strengthen the invasion force. In August 1645, Nazar Muhammad and his son Abd al-Aziz/Abdul Aziz Khan, who held Samarkhand, Bokhara and parts of Transoxiana, were fighting each other. The civil war in Central Asia provided to be an opportunity for the Mughals to intervene in the region north of Afghanistan.83 In fact, Nazar Muhammad sent an envoy to the Mughal durbar to plead Mughal support for his cause.84 The Amir-ul-Umara dispatched Khalil Beg with 2,000 cavalry and 1,000 infantry to seize the Kahmard Fort. After capturing this fort, Khalil Beg returned with most of his force to Zuhak to collect supplies and munitions of war. The detachment from Zuhak, which was escorting the heavy baggage

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and military stores heading for the Kahmard Fort, was attacked by the Uzbeks at Bamiyan. Before Khalil Beg could move with his reinforcements to aid the Zuhak detachment, the Uzbeks withdrew. Meanwhile, Abd al-Rahman/Abdul Rahman and Tardi Ali with their Uzbek soldiers captured the Kahmard Fort from the Mughal garrison. Khalil Beg wrote to the Amir-ul-Umara that no further reinforcements could be sent to attack the Kahmard Fort because the route between Zuhak and Kahmard was devoid of grass for the horses and provisions for the men due to the frequent to-and-fro passage of the armies. Moreover, the tracks between the mountains were not only narrow but also very difficult to traverse. The local Afghan chieftains, who had transferred their loyalty to the Mughals in response to the changing military balance, advised the Amir-ul-Umara that a full-scale invasion of Badakshan during the winter was not possible due to logistical problems. In response, the Amirul-Umara sent a force of 10,000 cavalry towards Khinjan in order to conduct a reconnaissance as regards the nature of the terrain for conducting military operations after the winter. Asalat Khan led a force over the Hindukush Mountain in an expedition that lasted for 16 days. He brought back many prisoners and also horses, camels, cattle and sheep from the inhabitants, in retaliation for their rebellious activities. Shah Jahan ordered the Amir-ulUmara to send masons, carpenters and sappers in order to improve the road. The Emperor set up winter quarters at Peshawar and the Rajput contingent was stationed at Attock. While Rustam Khan guarded Rohtas, Qilij Khan was stationed at Bhera with a detachment.85 Raja Jagat Singh, a Mughal Mansabdar, with 1,500 cavalry and 2,000 infantry recruited from Rajasthan, was deployed in Kabul. After they were financially recompensed by the Mughal treasury at Kabul, Jagat Singh’s force crossed the Thul Pass and sent an advance guard under Bhao Singh to ravage Khost.86 Khost is a district on the northern slopes of the Hindu Kush south to south-east of Kunduz and to the west of Badakshan, and lies near the hill tracts that the British called Kafiristan.87 During November 1645, Jagat Singh advanced towards Sirab and Indarab. When the Uzbeks attacked, he built a series of wooden stockades and successfully engaged in a defensive close-quarter battle. The Hazara infantry, allied with Uzbek cavalry, was driven back by the matchlockmen in Jagat Singh’s force. Then, 4,000 cavalry (2,000 Rajputs under Rajrup and 2,000 raised from the Afghans in Kabul) attacked the Uzbek cavalry, which though numbered 20,000, was driven back.88 The Uzbeks were masters of mobile battle as their mounted archers, practising Parthian tactics, were unassailable from the time of Alexander onwards. Nevertheless, in a static defensive battle and

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lacking handheld firearms, the Uzbek cavalry was unable to defeat a well-armed adversary (especially the infantry) taking advantage of terrain and field fortifications. In 1646, a 60,000-strong army with an artillery park was assembled under Prince Murad. The imperial objective was either to restore Nazar Muhammad as a tributary ruler in Balkh or to annex his kingdom to the Mughal Empire. In July 1646, Murad and his commander Mardan Khan occupied Balkh. The Mughals seized Nazar Muhammad’s treasury of 12 million rupees but Nazar fled the city. Within a month, Murad had retreated from Balkh due to logistical difficulties and Shah Jahan ordered his Wazir Sadullah Khan to reorganize the army for another invasion. Prince Aurangzeb was appointed as commander of the second imperial force and Shah Jahan himself advanced on Kabul to provide logistical support to the invading force. The Uzbeks failed to resist the musketeers and field artillery of the Mughals, but the light Uzbek horse proved adept in skirmishing and ambushing, harassing the lumbering Mughal columns. During the summer of 1647, the Mughals in Balkh opened negotiations with Abdul Aziz at Bokhara. The Mughal Army could not live off the land in the and desolate countryside. The sparsely populated and desolate countryside could not generate adequate surplus food and fodder to sustain the Mughal troops: there were no banjaras in Central Asia to supply the Mughal soldiers and their horses with grain and fodder. In October 1647, with the winter approaching, Prince Aurangzeb offered Balkh and the surrounding districts to Nazar Muhammad in return for the latter’s nominal submission to the Mughal Emperor. As the Mughals retreated to Kabul over the snow-filled passes, the Uzbek cavalry took a heavy toll of them. Overall, the Mughal–Uzbek treaty resulted in shifting of the Mughal frontier some 50 miles north of Kabul. However, the Mughals had failed to capture Bokhara and Samarkhand. The two-year-long campaign cost the Mughal court some Rs 40 million (mid-seventeenth century calculation).89 To put this figure in context, the annual Mughal revenue in 1590 was some Rs 110 million.90 As soon as the Mughal power projection in Central Asia had failed, the Safavid threat to Afghanistan reappeared. In 1648, Shah Abbas II (r. 1642– 1666) advanced to Tus city (Mashhad-i-Mukaddas) to capture Kandahar. From the borders of Khorasan, Shah Abbas recruited matchlock men and pioneers. Agents were sent to Farah, Seistan and Herat to gather grain to feed the army on its march. The Safavids planned to attack in the winter when the Mughals would be unable to send reinforcements through Multan and Kabul to Kandahar. Nevertheless, the Mughal court appointed Prince Muhammad Aurangzeb as

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the commander of the relief force, which numbered 50,000 cavalry and 10,000 infantry (including matchlock men and soldiers equipped with bans). Aurangzeb was ordered to proceed by the shortest route, which was across Bangash-i-Bala, Bangash-i-Payin, Kabul, Ghazni and then on to Kandahar. Meanwhile, Shah Abbas marched from Herat to Tus and then on to Farah. After halting there for some days, he then advanced towards Kandahar. The main body of the Persian Army was under Shah Abbas, and he detached two contingents that comprised the Persian advanced guard. One detachment consisting of 8,000 cavalry and some matchlock men under Mehrab Khan was ordered to besiege the fortress of Bust. Another detachment consisting of some 6,000 Qizilbash cavalry under Saz Khan was ordered to occupy Zamindawar.91 Daulat Khan, the Mughal commandant of Kandahar, took up position in the interior of the fort. Besides depending on the Mughal garrison, he tried to strengthen his position by levying some Afghans from Kandahar. He stationed a party of imperial and locally raised matchlock men at the top of Kambul Hill. Kakar Khan defended the towers with some matchlock men. Mughal troops, as well as local levies raised in Kandahar, garrisoned the fortifications at Daulatabad and Mandavi. However, the towers on top of the hill of Chihal Zinah (40 steps) constructed by Kalich Khan were not guarded properly. From these towers, guns and matchlocks could be fired into the interior of the forts of Daulatabad and Mandavi. The Qizilbash captured these towers and posted some matchlock men who opened destructive fire on the garrisons of the two forts. Meanwhile, a defeatist attitude spread among the Mughal mansabdars, ahadis and the matchlock men. They argued that since no aid from India would reach them, if they stayed to fight the Persians then they would either be killed by the Qizilbash or become prisoners and had to endure captivity for life. Daulat Khan failed to provide resolute leadership. As a result, most of the Mughal soldiers deserted the entrenchments. Hence, the Safavids entered the Sher Haji quite easily. The Siege of Kandahar, which lasted for 54 days, cost the Persians some 2,000 dead (including 600 Qizilbash), and about 400 men of the Mughal garrison died. The Persian ruler with most of his cavalry left Kandahar due to lack of forage and grain. However, before leaving for Khorasan, the Shah appointed Mehrab Khan with 10,000 Qizilbash cavalry and matchlock men to garrison Kandahar. Dost Ali Uzbek was left with another detachment to garrison Bust.92 Prince Aurangzeb with the relief army reached Multan and then Kohat. There, he halted and sent agents to get information about the level of snowfall before advancing farther. Khalil Beg was sent in advance to level the road and

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construct bridges. He sent back an intelligence report that the route through the hilly country of Kohistan was so deep with snow that it could not be used for a further month. Aurangzeb then decided to advance through Peshawar by way of the rugged Sendh–Basta Pass, and finally reached Kabul. From Kabul, he marched to Kandahar and established his headquarters half a kos from the fort. In 1649, when the Mughal Siege of Kandahar Fort had dragged on for three and a half months, the Mughal besieging army began to suffer from lack of grain and fodder. Due to the lack of a siege train with battering guns and the absence of skilled artillerymen, the Mughals failed to capture the fort. Aurangzeb could not bring the heavy guns with him due to the difficult route through which he had entered Kabul from Peshawar. When winter approached, Aurangzeb decided to withdraw from Kandahar due to increasing logistical difficulties.93 In 1651, Shah Jahan appointed Sadullah Khan and Prince Aurangzeb with 50,000 cavalry and 10,000 infantry (including gunners, matchlock men, rocket men, etc.) with orders to capture the forts of Kandahar, Bust and Zamindawar from the Persians. Sadullah Khan was given 8 heavy and 20 light guns. The latter threw projectiles weighing between 4 and 5 pounds. In addition, 20 hathnals (elephant-drawn guns) and 100 shutarnals were present. About 3,000 camels were employed for carrying lead, powder and iron shot. When the siege had dragged on for 68 days, the Qizilbash garrison sallied out of Kandahar Fort and attacked the Mughal trenches. The Mughals prevailed and carried on with the parallels and zig-zag trenches. The Mughals had with them seven breaching guns with which they were able to destroy the parapets and bastions of the fort. Of these seven guns, the barrels of two cracked due to continuous firing. The gunners of the other five breaching guns were not skilled enough to fire the guns with effect. The imperial chronicler, Inayat Khan, in his account of the Siege of Kandahar, accepts Mughal technical inferiority in the fields of siege guns and skilled gunners vis-à-vis the Safavids. Meanwhile, news reached Aurangzeb that the Uzbeks had reached the vicinity of Ghazni. Aurangzeb was afraid that his line of communications with Kabul might be severed, so he decided to raise the siege and retreat.94 Inayat Khan’s argument that the technical superiority of the Safavid artillery resulted in the failure of the Mughal siege of Kandahar is not entirely acceptable. The Mughal siege guns were at least able to batter the outer fortifications of Kandahar. Earlier, the Safavids had captured Kandahar because of poor leadership at the Mughal garrison and the skillful positioning of the Safavid guns. The Mughal failure to launch an infantry assault the moment the outer fortifications were beached was an example of gross tactical failure. The reasons for Mughal

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failures before Kandahar were mostly logistical: lack of adequate supply of shot, powder, food and the Uzbek threat to the Mughal lines of communications with Kabul and Lahore. One European observer noted in 1666 that the Mughals, while manufacturing cannons, melted the metal in different furnaces and then they amalgamated it. He considered this process of manufacturing defective.95 French gun founders were employed in the artillery branch from 1650 onwards.96 By the midseventeenth century, most of the gunners in the Mughal Army in Deccan were Christian European mercenaries. Some French mercenaries acted as officers in Aurangzeb’s artillery corps.97 One of the best known West European mercenaries in the Mughal artillery was Niccolao Manucci. He left Venice in 1653 at the age of 14. Moving through Asia Minor and Persia, he reached India in 1656. He took employment in Prince Dara Shikoh’s artillery branch and served until the death of Dara in 1659. Then, he was offered the post of Captain of Artillery by the Mughal Mansabdar Raja Jai Singh, whom served until 1669.98 In Dara’s force, Manucci’s pay was Rs 80 per month.99 When the Dutch expelled the Portuguese from Sri Lanka (Ceylon), they took refuge in Bengal and many took up service in 1659 in the artillery branch of Crown Prince Shuja (Governor of Bengal and Emperor Shah Jahan’s son).100 However, the Mughal Army did not gain much from the European mercenaries. Manucci continues: ‘For European artillerymen who took service … had only to take aim; as for the rest—the fatigue of raising, lowering, loading, and firing—this was the business of artificers or labourers kept for the purpose. However, when Aurangzeb came to the throne, he, seeing the insolent behaviour and the drunkenness of such-like men, deprived them of all their privileges … and forced them to do sentry duty’.101 Jos Gommans asserts that because most of the forts in India were built on steep hills and in the midst of inaccessible forests, implementation of the ‘trace italienne’ techniques during the early modern age was superfluous for them.102 The European traveller-cum-adventurer, Francois Bernier, noted that in 1658 the Dutch taught the technique of siege warfare to the Mughals when they were engaged in taking the port city of Surat in Gujarat.103 One must take such statements with a pinch of salt, as European travellers always overemphasized their own abilities and undermined those of the ‘natives’. The Mughals had to capture numerous hill forts of the Rajputs and the Marathas. However, the larger forts like Bijapur and Golkunda were situated on the plains. Some description of Deccan fortress architecture, where the Mughals conducted most of their sieges, is necessary in order to understand the intricacies

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of siege warfare in late medieval South Asia. Ramagiri Fort in the Karimnagar District of Andhra Pradesh was under the Qutub Sahi Sultanate (1518–1687). This fort was originally built by the Kakatiyas of Warangal in early medieval India. It had huge masonry battlements on which were placed four forge-welded cannons. The battlements rose to a height of 12 m within the fort walls. In 1656, the ruler of Golkunda, Abdullah Qutb Shah, bestowed this fort on Aurangzeb’s son who was married to the former’s daughter. Between Karimnagar and Jagital was Kodimyal village, which was famous for its bronze and ironwork from ancient times. In the medieval era, this place was famous for iron smelting and wootz steel making. It became a centre for making large forge-welded cannons, which were used for both attacking and protecting fortresses.104 In Deccan, saltpetre was manufactured and supplied by the banjaras. The jagirdars bought it from them and then sold it at the local markets. In Golkunda Sultanate, saltpetre was manufactured at Nalogonda, Bhuvanagiri, Guntur and Nirmal. The Qutub Sahi Sultanate imported saltpetre from Bengal through British merchants who made large profits by buying crude saltpetre and then refining it and selling the finished product to the Indian rulers. The port of entry was Masulipatnam. In Bijapur, the principal centre for the saltpetre trade was Raibagh.105 Jean Deloche opines that in the forts of the Deccan Plateau, the towers rose above and exceeded the curtain walls in height. The cavaliers (platforms used as support for the cannons) were circular in shape, but sometimes rectangular, square or polygonal, raised for providing maximum flanking fire. This was indeed an innovation that occurred in response to the threat posed by the gunpowder artillery of the besieging force. The curtain wall around Bijapur was 10 km in length.106 To conclude, South Asian fortifications were massive compared with those of West Europe. However, in the sphere of military education and institutions of learning, the Mughals lagged behind. The advent of print generated a dynamic relationship between applied science and military practice in West Europe. This was evident in the case of fortifications and ballistics. Tartaglia’s geometrical models of artillery trajectories in the 1530s and Galileo’s kinematics of ballistic motion in a vacuum are among landmark examples. In the 1530s, there was much interest in measuring cannon fire. The period between 1660 and 1760 witnessed the application of Newtonian science to military engineering, artillery and military thought. Great changes occurred in ballistics between 1742 and 1753 through the work of Benjamin Robins and Leonhard Euler. Robins invented instruments that enabled him to discover and quantify air resistance to high-speed projectiles. Euler solved

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the equations of subsonic ballistic motion in 1753 and summarized the results in tables that were then published. These theoretical and empirical advances increased the predictive power of ballistics and transformed gunnery from a craft to a science that could be taught. These advances influenced the use of artillery and military education. An artillery school was opened in Naples in 1744 and an engineering academy in 1754. In 1769, these two institutions were amalgamated into a military academy, which taught ballistics, tactics, experimental physics and chemistry to the officer cadets.107 The development of printed maps and elaboration of the techniques of scientific warfare, which occurred in the sixteenth century in West Europe,108 did not occur in Mughal India and Safavid Persia. Nevertheless, the Chinese had printed military maps. The following section focuses on siege warfare in the Celestial Empire.

Ming–Manchu siege warfare The debate about the origins of the Great Wall of China is still unresolved. Arthur Waldron claims that the Great Wall was not an ancient structure but built initially by the Ming Dynasty. He writes that the walls near Peking were built when the Mings were unwilling to deal with the Mongol leader Altan Khan (1507–1582). The north-east walls were designed to counter the Manchus. The Mings had no master plan in constructing a Great Wall of China. Rather, there were various walls built in different periods with different strategic objectives in view.109 Waldron says: ‘The Wall came into existence only in the mid and late Ming, as military policy changed. And most importantly, it should be understood that the Wall was never planned. Rather sections, initially earth ramparts of the traditional type were built at various places as military and political circumstances dictated. By late sixteenth century these sections were semi-continuous, and by the end of the dynasty a very impressive line’.110 Not all historians agree with Waldron’s assertion. Owen Lattimore claims that the Great Wall of China developed out of an earlier system of walled frontiers. The earlier system of frontier walls, which preceded the Great Wall, was not merely the product of wars between the Chinese and the ‘barbarians’ (steppe nomads) but the result of interstate conflicts among the Chinese polities. For Lattimore, the Great Wall to a great extent was the product of Chinese intellectual theorizing across several centuries of insulating intensively irrigated agricultural valleys from the outer ‘others’/‘barbarians’ of the arid steppes.111 There exists an eleventh-century poetic reference that probably refers to the Great Wall, and

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probably the Qin had some sort of Great Wall.112 To sum up, the idea of a Great Wall might have preceded the Ming, but the wall as it exists today was built by the Ming Dynasty. Unwilling to engage in trade with the Mongols and unable to defeat them in battle, the Ming followed the strategy of excluding the ‘barbarians’ by building walls. This policy option, though suggested in the fifteenth century, was implemented systematically in the sixteenth century. Ming documents speak of frontier defence not as the Great Wall but as nine border garrisons. This phrase refers to nine important locations with large garrisons. Waldron suggests that nine is an arbitrary number selected for its cosmological significance in Chinese culture. The key garrison points were as follows: Liao-tung in Manchuria, Chichou north-east of Peking, Hsuan-fu north-west of Peking, Ta-tung in northern Shansi, Shansi/Tai-yuan further west, Yen-sui/Yu lin south of the Ordos, Kuyuan near central Shensi, Ning-hsia at the mouth of the corridor westward and Kan-su near its western end.113 Wall building first started in the west and then moved east ward. Yu TzuChun’s wall, constructed in the far west in the 1470s, was the Ming defensive response to the migration of nomads in the Yellow River loop. Construction of the wall redirected nomadic attack eastwards. In the early 1500s, the Mongols moved their attack route to Ta-tung and Hsuan-fu area. At that time, there was no wall in this region. In the regions of Hsuan-fu and Ta-tung, west of Peking, Weng Wan-ta carried out massive wall building during the sixteenth century. In response, the nomadic attack route shifted to the east and north-east. The final phase of wall building by the Ming Dynasty was carried out in this region. Besides the three above-mentioned key regions where walls were built, smaller walls were also constructed in the Kansu Corridor in the west and Liaotung in the east.114 Chia-yu-kuan, the westernmost point of the Great Wall, guarded the narrow route between the mountains to the south and deserts in the north. Caravans between China and Central Asia had followed this route since ancient times. The first Ming fort, an earthen enclosure, was constructed at this point in 1372 by General Feng Sheng. In 1495, the western gate tower was constructed and the eastern one in 1506–1507. In 1539, as the security situation in north-west of the Ming Empire deteriorated, Chai Luan inspected the borders and recommended rebuilding at Chia-yu-kuan. Hence, the fortress walls were doubled in height, with bricks added to the top of the pounded earth wall. The fortress wall had ramps for horses that led to the parapet. The fortress was further secured by constructing a long wall that connected it to the other perimeter walls.115

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According to one interpretation, the Great Wall of China runs from Chiayu-kuan in Kansu Province to Shang/Shan-hai-kuan (only 6 km from the sea and easternmost point of the wall) on the coast at the border with Manchuria for about 2,300 km. A Chinese military map drawn between 1680 and 1700 depicts the wall in detail from Chia-yu-kuan to Ta-tung in Shantung, which is about three-quarters of its total length. The map indicates the distance between key points, the strength of the garrison within the wall and some detail regarding the location of various nomadic groups both within and outside the wall.116 The map mentions Chin-ta-szu north of the wall. This site defended the point at which San-cha-ho (now Pei-ta-ho) penetrated the wall and the gate to the north. The city was fortified by two walls and there was a moat within the outer wall. From 1691, the garrison comprised a major (yu-chi), one first lieutenant (chien-tsung), three second lieutenants (pa-tsuung) and 419 privates.117 East of Peking, between the mountains to the north and south, there is a strategic coastal strip through which runs the road to Manchuria and Korea. At the Manchurian border, where the coastal strip is narrow, the Ming constructed the fortress complex known as Shan-hai-kuan. Between that fort and Peking, a wall with signal towers existed. Shan-hai-kuan, the Mountain Sea Barrier, is some 260 miles east of Peking and not far from the site of an ancient gate called Yu-kuan. This site was first fortified under the Northern Chi Dynasty. Only in the second half of the sixteenth century, due to warfare in Korea and the rising threat of the Manchus, was the defence complex in this region completed. The increasing importance of this region is exemplified by the separation of Shanhai-kuan from Chi-Chou Command and the establishment of the former as an independent command in 1571. A long stretch of wall from this fort to the sea was constructed by Chi Chi-kuang, who served as commander of Chi Chou from 1569 to 1583. Construction work was still on going in this region when the Manchus conquered China. Some distance from Chu-yung-kuan, a set of parallel walls was constructed between 1528 and 1619. Another stretch of wall was built after 1570 at Chin-shan-ling, 10 km east of Ku-pei-kou, by Chi Chikuang and Tan-Lun.118 The walls of the Chinese forts were constructed using tamped earth. These thick walls were fireproof and highly resistant to battering. The outcome of most sieges in China as in medieval India, was decided by starvation and escalade.119 Early Ming ramparts, city walls and even the wall constructed by Yu Tzu-chun south of the Ordos were constructed from pounded earth by local unpaid labour mobilized for the season as corvée. However, such works did not last long and, by the 1520s, Yu’s walls had eroded away. In order to ensure permanence, writes

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Waldron, new construction was carried out with bricks and stones. Instead of unskilled unpaid peasant labourers, skilled masons who were paid were utilized. A network of brick kilns and quarries was also developed. All these resulted in greater expenditure, which was supported by central government with silver.120 Earthen fortifications were not necessarily inferior and outdated even in the West European context. Alessandro Farnese, the Imperial Governor of the Low Countries and an acknowledged expert on fortification during the late sixteenth century, argued that ramparts should be constructed using rammed earth without the brickwork camiciatura (outer skin that protected the earthworks from the elements of weather). This was the most favoured technique in the Low Countries, where the techniques of siege warfare were most developed. Take for instance the case of Lucca’s Renaissance fortifications. Defensive fortifications were being modernized from 1513 onwards, when medieval walls were thickened with earth-filled ramparts to stop the cannonballs. Between 1516 and 1525, Lucca refortified its medieval walls by constructing brick gun towers.121 In the 1570s the Dutch military engineers, especially Adriaan Anthonisz, introduced the ‘Old Netherlands System of Fortification’ in order to avoid the cost and time involved in opting for a trace italienne. The Old Netherlands System involved construction of fortifications in the new Italian style but made entirely of earth, which was plentiful in the Netherlands, earth being less vulnerable to artillery fire compared with stone. Furthermore, most of the designs incorporated Holland’s high water table in creating wet ditches round the trace. The new system was adopted quickly by many cities that faced the Spanish threat. As late as 1590, Breda had earthen bastions.122 In the dry, arid regions of north China, and in north Persia (especially along the Safavid–Uzbek border), earthen walls were an effective defensive measure. In the drier western and southern parts of India, Indian military engineers– even in the gunpowder era–used to raise a broad mound of earth to strengthen the inner walls of the forts. For instance, at Senji (Gingee) fortress complex (in Tamil Nadu, some 60 km north-west of Pondicherry), the Maratha warlord Shivaji strengthened the first enclosure with an earthen platform some 15 m thick with two tapering stone faces.123 But in east India, with a heavy monsoon rainfall, earthen walls were not a good defensive mechanism because heavy rainfall washed away earthen fortifications. Certain sections of the Great Wall displayed sophisticated defensive techniques. For instance, at Badaling north of Peking, the wall averages 24 feet (7 m) in height, 20 feet (6 m) wide at the base and 16 feet (4 m) wide on the top. The top of the wall was broad enough to enable five horsemen to ride abreast. The wall was faced with stone, with

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battlements at the top and loopholes in places, which enabled the defenders to shoot from within. Projected buttresses every 150 yards permitted enfilading fire. Stone towers were constructed every 300 yards with firing ports for artillery and crossbows.124 Besides the Great Wall, there were also other types of fortification. After the fall of the Yuan Dynasty, there was a spurt in China as regards construction of walled cities. The area enclosed by the walls in Peking in the thirteenth century was 18 square miles, and by the sixteenth century it rose to 24.25. The area enclosed by walls in Nanking during the fourteenth century was 16.87 square miles, giving a population of Peking was 706,861 in 1578, giving a population density of 29,149 per square mile or 46 per acre, quite high by contemporary standards.125 The maximum range of the Chinese catapult (torsion catapults were not used in China) and the trebuchet during the medieval era varied between 100 and 160 feet.126 The winch-armed crossbow shot bolts as far as 1,160 yards and was useful for attacking the ramparts of cities and forts.127 In 1596, one Western observer noted that the fortifications of Chinese cities had stone walls and wet ditches. Generally, the cities lacked castles and fortresses. The gates of the towns had strong towers where ordnance was mounted.128 By the first decade of the seventeenth century, the Chinese had several types of siege gun. The largest was the roaring tiger cannon, which threw a projectile weighing between 60 and 100 caties (units of weight). Then, there was the extralarge saker, which threw a projectile weighing 60 catties. Its range was 1,000 paces and if used for firing upwards like a howitzer, the range was about 4,650 paces. The large saker threw a projectile of 50 catties with a range of 950 paces. If used in the style of a howitzer, the range rose to 4,730 paces. The demi-saker launched a projectile weighing 46 catties with a range of 100 paces. When used in the howitzer style, the range rose to 4,620 paces.129 From 1412 onwards, gunpowder weapons were deployed to bolster the northern defences. Certain sectors of the Great Wall were equipped with a substantial number of cannons. In Shensi, between 1536 and 1538, 9,300 iron and brass guns were issued.130 Both China and India manufactured composite cannons. Such cannon comprised an iron barrel (wrought, cast or both) around which bronze was cast. The barrel of wrought iron provided strength and toughness and the cast iron around it gave weight and additional strength. This technique enabled the Chinese and Indian gun makers to blend the advantages of bronze and cast iron long before the process of casting iron was perfected in West Europe. When a bronze gun failed, it just split. But, when an early cast iron gun shattered, it

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hurled fragments in all directions and often killed the crew. Combining wrought and cast iron allowed an economical method of manufacturing a cannon that would not fail in such a disastrous way. An example of a composite Chinese cannon from the seventeenth century or earlier comprised an inner part or bore made of longitudinal bars, one inch wide and half an inch thick, welded together and forming a lip that terminated at the muzzle. Around these and binding them together were welded rings 1 inch thick and 3 inches wide. Outside these was a layer of cast iron 2.75 inches thick at the muzzle and much thicker at the breech. The casting of this gun took place in a mould made of bricks. The cannon was 9 feet 6.5 inches long, diameter at the breech was 23.75 inches and that at the mouth was 15.5 inches. Another gun, with the rings welded together and encased in cast iron, was 9 feet 7 inches long, 2 feet 1 inch in diameter at the breech and 16 inches at the mouth. Composite cannons cast in India were used for defending the Golkunda Fort in Hyderabad. The interior of such guns comprised iron barrels made of iron staves, reinforced with wrought iron rings.131 The steppe nomads were also learning over time. Though the Ming ‘Maginot Line’ (Great Wall of China) failed to stop the Jurchens/Manchus, the latter did not completely neglect siege warfare and fortresses. Nicola Di Cosmo writes that Nurhaci introduced a new way of warfare with the objective of gradual territorial acquisition, while the Mongols were merely concerned with raiding and counterraiding with the objective of pillage and plunder. In the 1620s, Nurhaci modified the Mongol ‘Way of Warfare’ by the introduction of forts in the steppe. The towns acted as nodal centres of rendezvous for the various contingents coming from different regions. The fortified towns functioned as sanctuaries during enemy attacks. Sieges lasted for one or two months maximum because that was the longest possible period an enemy army could keep the cavalry concentrated in a particular region. After that period, the siege had to be lifted because the horses had exhausted the existing pasture.132 In 1621, when Nurhaci laid siege to Liaoyang, the Ming garrison deployed artillery on the flat glacis outside the city wall. The artillery defence comprised the gun line between the city wall and the moat. The guns had carpenter trestle mountings. Because the trestles lacked wheels and had flat feet, the mobility of the guns was very limited. Furthermore, musketeers were stationed between the cannons.133 The Ming Empire’s northern frontier, which was threatened by the steppe nomads, was several times longer than the frontiers of the small West European powers. So, unlike Louis XIV’s France or the Low Countries, construction of a network of densely packed forts defending a frontier was not

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possible. Along the vulnerable northern frontier of the Ming Empire, forts were situated quite a distance from each other and were geared to guard the vital mountain passes that allowed the nomads ingress into the river valleys of China. A static Ming defence bolstered by gunpowder weapons failed to stop the mobile cavalry force of the Manchus. The situation for the Mings was further worsened by intense peasant rebellions in the core regions of the empire and desertion of the Ming generals with their armies to the Manchus. The Manchu conquest of China proved again the uselessness of gunpowder-oriented frontier defence vis-à-vis the nomads. During the late seventeenth century, the Mughal and Safavid empires were in limbo and the Ottoman Empire had shifted to a strategic defensive mode against its European (especially Russian) opponents, but the Manchu Empire was still expanding. And the Manchus clashed with the Russian Empire in the Far East. In 1652, the Russians moved out of their settlements in Siberia and invaded Amur Valley in Manchuria. In 1654, the Russians tried to take their boats up the Sungari River, a tributary of the Amur. In the spring of 1658, a Manchu fleet of river boats equipped with cannons defeated the Muscovite invasion.134 By 1685, the Russians were evicted from the lower Amur Valley in Manchuria except for the Albazin Fort, which was held by some 500 Cossacks. The wooden fortifications comprised a high stockade with corner towers on which artillery could be mounted, and were surrounded by a moat. Outside the moat was a palisade, and beyond that, iron stakes were hidden in pits. In June 1685, a Manchu force of 10,000 men arrived under Sabsu. They constructed siege works and deployed gunboats on the Amur River in order to isolate the fort. They then set fire to the palisade. The Russian commander, Tolbuzin surrendered and was allowed to retire to Nerchinsk. The Manchus burnt the fort and left but failed to destroy or harvest the crops that the Russians had sown in the nearby region. Soon, Tolbuzin reoccupied the site with 826 men and 12 cannons, a Prussian engineer supervising the rebuilding of the fort. The fort was then well stocked with food and gunpowder. 135 In July 1686, Sabsu returned with 7,000 soldiers and 40 cannons. He deployed the heavy guns on a hill one-third of a mile away from the fort. The lighter pieces were stationed 500 paces from the palisade. Then, under cover of bombardment, the Manchu soldiers shot fire arrows and attacked under the cover of wheeled shields. However, the Manchu attempts to scale the walls with ladders were repulsed by the Russians. Tolbuzin was killed while commanding a sortie but the fort held out until November. At that time, only 66 defenders remained

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alive. In the ensuing peace treaty, Muscovy withdrew from the fort. In these two siege operations, the Manchus displayed that in the Far East, qualitatively and quantitatively, they were able to deploy superior force compared with Muscovy, which was emerging at that time as the ‘terror’ of East Europe. In 1689, the Russians had 2,000 troops in this region while Manchu prince Songgotu had 15,000 soldiers and 50 cannons. The Treaty of Nerchinck, which was signed between Manchu China and Czarist Russia, established Chinese supremacy in Manchuria, which lasted up to the 1850s.136

Conclusion Rather than copying Western technology, we find continuous innovations in the field of siege artillery, especially in the case of Ming–Manchu China, Mughal India and the Ottomans. The Asian empires’ besieging armies (for instance, Nadir’s army before Mosul) were quite large by global standards. The bureaucratic capacity of the Mughals and Ottomans to project power in Kandahar and Vienna, far away from the heartlands of their domain, was impressive by any standards. The Mughal road-building programme along India’s North-West Frontier was impressive by the standards of the pre-modern era. The Mughals were able to hold Kabul and Kandahar for about 200 years, a feat that the British in India failed to achieve during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. And the Americans and NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), with all their modern technology, are failing now. The forts in south India were much larger than those in West Europe. For geopolitical reasons, Persia did not require forts. Though the Great Wall failed to contain the Manchus, the financial and demographic resources required for such a massive building programme were probably beyond the capacity of most of the early modern West European polities. The construction of earthen walls and establishment of fortified garrison cities served the Manchu Empire and Muscovy well most of the time in containing the steppe nomads, who lacked the techniques for conducting complex siege warfare. As shown by the cases of Kandahar, Belgrade and Vienna in the ultimate analysis, it was not so much fortress architecture but the battles fought between the relieving force and the besiegers that shaped the outcome of sieges. David Parrott, while reviewing the nature of siege warfare in West Europe between 1540 and 1640, notes that the real issue was the morale of the defenders rather than expensive ‘modern’ constructions. The morale of the garrison was linked with the possibility of another army relieving them by defeating the besiegers.

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In many cases, stubborn resistance was offered by the defenders defending backward medieval fortifications, in the hope that they would be relieved by a relief force.137 This assertion applies well in case of Ottoman–Habsburg siege warfare in the Balkan. Overall, it seems that in the abstract sense, in the sphere of fortress architecture and the use of heavy guns for capturing forts, the Asian empires did not lag behind the West European powers. However, the spread of printing and the foundation of military academies in West Europe were innovations that were absent in the Asian polities. Advances in the military theory and engineering, however, would affect the military capacity of Europe vis-à-vis Asia only from the mid-nineteenth century.

4

Naval Warfare by the Asian States

Introduction Geopolitics and the absence of intense interstate maritime threats discouraged the evolution of seaworthy battleships in the four Asian empires under consideration in this monograph. Most of the major Asian land empires had ‘live’ land borders that were threatened by the steppe nomads. Moreover, these Asian powers had adequate land for expansion and so the land frontiers constituted their main fronts. Furthermore, the enormous demographic resources and large expanse of land they controlled made it possible for them to derive revenue from taxing agriculture. So, the motivation for participating in and actively supporting maritime trade was not that great. Furthermore, to a great extent, but with minor variations, the ruling elite in the four major Asian states were seeped in steppe nomadic cavalry ethos. Culture, to an extent, functioned as a brake as regards conducting state-supported/sponsored maritime trade on a large scale in both China and India. Both Confucianism and Brahmanical orthodoxy emphasized that ‘just’ (righteous) rulers should not engage in trade and commerce. So, we do not find the presence of a permanent blue-water navy in any of the pre-modern Asian states. But, that does not mean that coastal and riverine warfare, including amphibious operations, was not carried out by these four Asian empires. First, let us concentrate on China and its neighbours.

The Far East Most cities in south China were situated on riverbanks. Walled cities controlled the countryside and the cities were sources of recruits and supplies. Most of the rivers and their tributaries were navigable, providing networks for transportation and communication. Oar-propelled ships patrolled the rivers and transported

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armies near to cities prior to attacking them. The ships were used to supply the besiegers and also to blockade the cities.1 Between 1450 and 1815, the Chinese mostly used their navy for suppression of piracy. The Ming ban on coastal trade in 1523 accelerated armed raids by smugglers.2 In the 1550s, wokou (Japanese pirate raids) on the Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Fujian coasts became intense.3 To regulate smugglers and pirate ships, a blue-water navy with battleships was not required. Rather, what was necessary was a nimble coastal (green-water) navy. Jan Glete asserts that despite possessing the necessary technology, the Chinese political culture was not geared for deployment of navies on the high seas to coerce foreign opponents. The principal maritime threat to China came from the Japanese piratical fleets, and in the seventeenth century even Japan became a closed society. The Chinese never repeated their intrusions into the Indian Ocean after the first half of the fifteenth century. And advanced gun-armed warships, used by the Koreans against the Japanese in the 1590s, were not developed further.4 The Japanese invasion of Korea started in 1592 and continued to 1598. The Japanese warlord, Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536–1598) was the moving force behind this enterprise. The reasons behind Hideyoshi’s overseas military adventure are still debated among historians. Some say that Hideyoshi (a sort of premodern Hideki Tojo) had a megalomaniac al dream of conquering Asia (including even India), and Korea was just the first step in his enterprise. Others note Japan’s interest in cornering the overseas trade in the Far East, while others point out that Hideyoshi, by launching this expedition, actually wanted to control his subordinate warlords. Japan mobilized more than 150,000 troops for the first invasion in 1592 and over 140,000 during the second major invasion in 1597. Ming China provided 40,000 soldiers in 1592 and more than 80,000 soldiers in 1597, to help Korea.5 The initial Japanese force under Konishi Yukinaga and So Yoshitoshi landed at Pusan from 700 ships on 23 May 1592. There were 20,000 Korean troops at Pusan under their commander, Chong Pal.6 Initially, the Korean naval response was timid. Park Hong, Commander of the Eastern Gyeongsang Fleet and entrusted with the defence of Pusan, fled after destroying the 75 ships under his command. The Commander of the Western Gyeongsang Fleet, Won Kyun, fled with four ships and the rest of his unit was destroyed.7 The square sails used by the Japanese were less effective than the Chinese and Korean fore-and-aft sail designs. Thus, the Japanese ships were less manoeuvrable than their Korean and Chinese opposites ones. In general, the Japanese ships had musketeers while the Ming ships carried cannons.8 The

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Chinese used meng chong crafts which were fast and low-oared vessels. The Chinese covered them with fire-resistant moistened leather and used them for ramming enemy ships. Some scholars argue that the Korean Navy was more advanced than the British Navy in possessing standardized ordnance. The four types of cannon used by the Korean ships were yellow, black, heaven and earth. The earth cannon fired iron balls or iron-tipped arrows covered with incendiary materials and the Korean ships had four-wheeled gun carriages. The trunnions on the cannon allowed their elevation and depression according to the requirements of the gunners. The principal Korean ship was the panokson (board-roofed ship), which was a rectangular vessel with high wooden sides that supported a protective wooden roof and command tower. The rectilinear construction allowed this warship to mount formidable ordnance at the bow, stern and sides. The panokson’s high sides prevented Japanese soldiers from boarding. The largest panokson was about 110 feet (35 m) in length, and the smallest 50 feet (15 m). Oarsmen rowed on the deck below the panokson’s cannons. Each panokson had a central observation cupola for the commander. A panokson carried about 125 crew.9 On 16 June 1592, Admiral Yi clashed with the Japanese Fleet near the island of Okpo. Yi’s fleet of 24 panoksons was joined by the remnant of Won Kyun’s squadron. Then, they attacked the Japanese ships, which were still unprepared. The Korean cannons blasted the Japanese ships before the Japanese sailors, equipped with arquebus, could get within range to kill the Korean crews. The Korean ships also fired flaming iron arrows (probably an invention copied from China). Some 50 Japanese ships were destroyed in this engagement.10 In this war, the Koreans introduced their kobuksons (turtleboats/turtleships), which were vessels reinforced with iron plates and ringed with spikes that made them resemble turtles. The plates and spikes threatened the Japanese tactics of grappling and boarding the boats. The turtleboats were propelled by rows of oars on both sides, while the Japanese boats were dependent on the uncertain wind. A head was mounted at the front of the turtle boat and fire was lit inside, with smoke belching out through the head. The turtle’s head was about 1.5 m long and 1 m wide, and filled with a combination of sulphur and saltpetre, which generated a smokescreen. This smoke disoriented and confused the Japanese mariners. Moreover, the turtleboats carried cannons while the Japanese boats had musketeers but no cannons. Admiral Yi Sunsin was credited with the invention of the turtleboat, but the thinking behind this type of boat had been around in Korea since 1415.11 A turtleboat was about 35 m long with a 9-m beam and measured about 2.5 m from bottom to deck. Bulwarks on each side

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were fitted with ports for guns and cannons. The vessel contained 24 cabins of which five were used for powder magazines, arms and equipment; the rest were reserved for sailors. Every boat had 10 oars on each side and carried 40 or more cannons. The crews were also equipped with fire arrows, bombs, etc.12 On 8 July 1592, the first turtleship joined Admiral Yi at Sacheon.13 In July 1592, at the Battle of Hansan Island (Battle of Hansando in Korean), the Japanese ships were lined up in a long row but the channel being narrow and rocky, the Korean boats could not close into engage them. The Japanese fleet was in a bay surrounded by high cliffs from which plunging fire could devastate the Korean ships. The Korean ships started a tactical retreat in order to draw the Japanese out into the open bay. Wakizaka Yasuharu advanced rapidly with 40 heavy and 25 medium-sized vessels towards the Island of Hansan, while the Korean Fleet comprised some 100 ships. A small Korean contingent lured the overaggressive Japanese into Admiral Yi’s ambush. The Korean ships then turned, writes Kenneth W. Swope, formed a crane wing formation and attacked the flanks of the Japanese fleet. According to another view, the Korean ships were arranged in a hollow crescent pattern. As the feigned disorderly retreat of the Korean picket contingent brought the Japanese within the ambush, Yi’s two horns of the crescent closed in on the Japanese ships. The large earth guns of the panoksons fired explosive shells while the turtleships especially targeted the Japanese command ships. Only 14 of the 70 Japanese ships survived the encounter with Yi and his turtleboats. The turtleships played the role of principal aggressors with their cannons and ramming tactics, just like the galleases at Lepanto. However, the Korean naval fleet never engaged more than 12 turtleboats in action at any one time. Better maritime technology and leadership enabled the Koreans to win what Kenneth M. Swope calls ‘the Salamis of Korea’.14 To conclude, along with good leadership, firepower played a dominant role in shaping this naval battle. By the end of 1592, Ming military advisors in Korea demanded from Beijing large warships, mid-size galleys, and oared vessels for shallow water duties. As regards marine equipment, the Ming admirals and generals wanted three-barrelled guns, Portuguese-style folangis, rapid-fire guns, crouching tiger cannons, etc.15 In the early sixteenth century, Western-style breechloader cannons were known as folangis or folangchis. They were also known as Frankish culverins/caliver. Western names for them were bases, port pieces and serpentines. By the early seventeenth century they were known as slings or Portuguese bases. Basically they were long, narrow cannons. Culverin, saker and minion actually referred to categories based on the various lengths and bores

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of the guns. Base was the one with the smallest calibre. By the early sixteenth century, a Portuguese ship-borne breech-loader gun cast in bronze with a long tiller and a chamber-cavity would have a barrel length of 7 feet 10 inches (2.5 m). By the second decade of the sixteenth century, in Fukien and Chiangsi, bronze cast cannons were common. Frankish-type breech-loaders were common in China even as early as 1510. Joseph Needham questions the claim that the Chinese learnt to manufacture bronze breech-loaders from the Portuguese. The first Portuguese reached Malacca in 1509, and the first Portuguese ship made port in China was in 1514. A Chinese book dated 1545 notes that the design originally came from abroad and that the Cantonese gun makers could manufacture folangis, which were as good as those manufactured abroad. In 1525, Chinese-manufactured cannons (equivalent to Frankish culverins) were mounted with their trunnions supported on swivelling pivots.16 A culverin was about 10 feet (3 m) long and fired balls of iron or stone.17 In 1557, a detachment of Portuguese gunners and musketeers aided the Governor of Kuangchow in suppressing an uprising of pirates and dissident soldiers.18 Such interactions might have resulted in the Mings (who possessed their own gunpowder weapons) coming in contact with Western cannon technology. One Chinese text from the mid-sixteenth century describes the folangis in the following words: This cannon … is made of iron (or bronze), and measures five or six feet in length. It has a large belly and a long barrel. At the bulge there is a long cavity, into which five smaller chambers … can be inserted in rotation, and these contain the gunpowder for firing. The gun is wrapped on the outside with wooden staves and fastened with iron hoops to ensure that it does not split. Four or five of these cannons were concealed behind a ship’s bulwarks on each side, and if an opposing ship comes near, one single shot, finding its target, will smash the hull and send the enemy to the bottom. With this arm one can sail about at will on the high seas, and no other country’s ships can match it.19

Initially, the Chinese politico-military establishment was eager to arm their ships with such cannons. After manufacturing such a cannon, it was found that its range was about 100 paces, but is not clear whether one pace represents 1 or 2 feet. Each breech-loading cannon weighed about 200 catties and its three chambers weighed 30 catties each. The single lead shot of such a cannon weighed about 10 ounces (0.3 g). The Chinese high command assumed that such cannons might be useful on ships for anti-piracy missions and for defending city walls. These cannons were also mounted on rafts for coastal defence. However, the Chinese later found out that the big Kuangtung ships

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armed with such cannons were unable to hit fast-moving pirate ships.20 And the Japanese pirates constituted the principal threat to the Celestial Empire. As a point of comparison, towards the end of the twentieth century, the missile frigates and minesweepers of the Indian Navy with aircraft and radar failed to patrol the coast of Sri Lanka and Palk Strait properly and could not capture the small ragtag boats of the Tamil Tigers sneaking in and out of the Jaffna Peninsula. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, the Sri Lanka Navy by building small, fast coastal crafts rather than larger ships, was able to destroy the Tamil Tigers’ ‘pirate navy’. The coast of China is several times longer than the operational theatre of the Indian Navy around Sri Lanka in the 1990s. Furthermore, no navy in the world before the twentieth century had aircraft or radars. So, it made sense for the Mings to go for fast, small coastal crafts rather than for big ocean-going battleships. Cast iron guns for use onboard ship were manufactured in England in the 1540s. But it was not until the second half of the seventeenth century that cast iron guns replaced the larger types of copper guns.21 After 1600, the Mings obtained cast iron cannons from West European ships. The Mings called these ‘red-haired barbarian gun’s. Each cannon measured over 20 feet (6 m) and weighed about 3,000 catties. Ming officials concluded that such cannon shots were able to demolish stone walls of coastal cities. Between 1628 and 1643, the Ming Emperor ordered the manufacture of such cannons.22 During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Western ship-borne ordnance used iron-cored lead shot. Since lead is 44 per cent heavier than iron, the inclusion of an iron core reduced the shot’s mass as compared with a lead shot and required less powder to propel the shot at the same velocity. One view is that composite lead-and-iron shots were manufactured by casting the lead around a wrought iron core. Joe J. Simmons III writes that a crucible and ladle were used for manufacturing composite lead–iron shots. The device was used to hold the two halves of the mould together while giving a handhold well removed from the heat associated with the manufacturing process. A clamping device or shot mould tongs were used for manufacturing the composite shot. Pins were used to hold the two halves of the mould together. Besides composite and solid cast iron shots, hollow cast iron, wrought iron and solid lead shots were also used by Western ship-borne ordnance, which included small muzzle-loading swivel guns, larger breech-loading swivel guns and breech-loading tube guns.23 One conclude that there was no serious lag ging behind in Chinese small cannon design vis-à-vis the West European state-of-the-art product, at least in the first half of the sixteenth century. When the nature of warfare demanded,

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the Mings developed a navy equipped with gunpowder weapons, and they were also ready to innovate and learn from foreign designs. However, a greater danger threatened the Ming Empire in the 1650s, when the Jurchens crossed the Great Wall and occupied Beijing. The pirate/smuggler-turned-warlord, Nicholas Iquan, joined the retreating Mings who established the short-lived Southern Ming Empire after losing Beijing and northern China to the Manchus. Zhenjiang, a heavily fortified city on the southern bank of the Yangtze River and the meeting point of the Yangzhou and Yangtze rivers, lies east of Nanjing. Zhenjiang was occupied by a Ming force under Feng the Phoenix, brother of Iquan. Feng was made a marquess by the Ming Emperor of Grand Radiance in return for amphibious support. Feng was supported by Zheng Cai, nephew of Iquan. The Zheng clan’s soldiers, equipped with firearms acquired from West European trading powers, occupied nearby Golden Island. On 1 June 1645, when there was dense fog, the Manchus launched a decoy attack using flaming rafts. Feng’s men mistook the decoy rafts as assault parties and wasted their powder and shells on them in the dark. Taking advantage of this decoy attack, the Manchus landed without any resistance on the other side of the river. Completely outwitted, Feng retreated from Zhenjiang.24 In April 1646, Iquan surrendered to the newly emerging Manchu regime. Zheng Chenggong (Coxinga) took over the Zheng family navy after his father had surrendered to the Qing (a similar process of privatization of the navy and its fragmentation among opposing clan members occurred among the Marathas in the eighteenth century). Coxinga was born in Japan of a Japanese mother, and could be categorized as a sort of trader-pirate25 who later attempted to build up a sovereign realm in marine space (somewhat similar to Kanhoji Angre of the Marathas). When his father surrendered to the Manchus, Coxinga, aged 22 years, was then guarding Xianxia (the Pass of Misty Immortals) with a small party of soldiers, a pass which led to Fujian. An angry and sad Coxinga left for the Fujian coast. The Zheng family controlled the offshore islands at Quemoy and Amoy, and Coxinga joined them there. The Zheng family financed themselves by smuggling silk from China to the Ryukyu Islands. Another source of income was to act as middlemen for the Dutch traders based in Taiwan.26 In 1648, Tongan, a port near Amoy, was garrisoned by the Manchus. The Zheng spies, disguised as monks, infiltrated the town. The Zheng Navy arrived and launched several incendiary boats towards the ships anchored in the harbour. Simultaneously, the spies killed the guards and opened the gates through which the Zheng assault parties entered the town. After killing the Manchu guards,

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Coxinga occupied the town. In Coxinga’s fleet, Shi Lang had emerged as the most battle hardened admiral. In 1650, Shi Lang was escorting a cargo of silver to the Ryukyu Islands in order to purchase military supplies. A storm intervened and the silver cargo was lost. A furious Coxinga blamed Shi Lang for negligence and the latter tendered his resignation. Shi Lang with his own squadron joined the Manchus. Meanwhile, the Manchus attacked Amoy, Coxinga’s coastal base. Guan the Stork, the representative of the Zheng family, evacuated the town and shipped the inhabitants to nearby Quemoy Island. Feng launched a successful counter-attack. Since Iquan was being held as a captive by the Manchus, Feng could not proceed with the attack and Coxinga was forced to pull out of Canton. An irate Coxinga ordered the execution of Guan and retired Feng for his failure to continue the counter-attack, despite the threat to Iquan’s life.27 Meanwhile, Coxinga was not sitting idle. From his base on the Island of Quemoy, he laid siege to the coastal town of Changzhou. For six months, the siege continued. The impatient Coxinga then moved to the nearby town of Haicheng, which surrendered quickly. In 1653, Coxinga was made a prince by the Ming Emperor of Eternal Experiences, who was rapidly losing power even in south China. The Manchus were slowly transforming themselves from horse warriors to sea warriors. Prince Jidu assembled a fleet and attacked Quemoy, the Zheng headquarters, on 9 May 1656. When the battle started, a storm intervened. Coxinga’s experienced sailors were able to weather the storm but Jidu’s inexperienced armada was almost wiped out by ‘mother nature’.28 Coxinga’s greatest venture in life was the conquest of Taiwan. On 21 April 1661, he assembled 900 warships and 25,000 soldiers in Liao-luo Bay. The two generals in charge of the ground assault force were Maxin and Zhou Quanbin. On 22 April, the fleet anchored at Pescadores. Then, Coxiga’s fleet, somewhat delayed by the storm, crossed the Taiwan Strait. As the Chinese ships appeared, the Dutch Governor, Frederick Coyett assembled 1,100 Dutch men at Fort Zeelandia. Of them, only 40 had real fighting experience. Coyett had stockpiled food to for six months and 30,000 lbs (about 13,000 kg) of gunpowder. Besides Fort Zeelandia, near Sakkam village was the small Fort Provintia. Coyett had two large ships, Hector and Gravenlande, and two smaller craft, Vink and Maria. Hector sailed straight towards Coxinga’s armada and with his big guns sank many of the smaller Chinese ships. Coxinga then ordered 60 of his ships (each armed with two cannons) to attack Hector. Suddenly, Hector blew up as its powder kegs exploded. Like the Maratha ships of the late seventeenth century, Coxinga’s craft, equipped with with grappling hooks, attached themselves to the Gravenlande and the Vink. The Gravenlande was extensively damaged but, along with the Maria and Vink,

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was able to escape back out to the open sea.29 The naval battle was over and the big guns were un able to save the Dutch in the congested shallow waters against the numerically superior, more manoeuvrable and faster ‘native’ Chinese craft. After having lost control of Formosa to Coxinga’s men, the Dutch attempted to forge an alliance with the Manchus. Embassies were sent from Batavia to Fukien and a joint Manchu–Dutch fleet was organized in 1663 to drive Coxinga’s men from the coastal islands.30 The Green Standard troops provided personnel for the Manchu Navy. With the conquest of Taiwan, the coastal pirates and smugglers were deprived of their principal base near the Chinese coast.31 And after the annexation of Taiwan in 1683 by Admiral Shi Lang, there was no necessity to maintain a large navy for the Qings.32 The development of Chinese naval cartography seemed to have stalled due to lack of motivation for maintaining a sea-going navy. An atlas with 69 maps was prepared some time between the mid-seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. These maps cover the coast of China from Liaodong Bay in the north-east to the mouth of the Zhu Jiang in Guangdong Province, including part of Dongsha (Pratas) Island in the South China Sea. These maps contain information similar to Zheng He’s chart, depicting bays, inlets, islands, sand dunes, half-tide rocks and coastal features such as mountains, ports, settlements, buildings and pagodas. However, in no way was this atlas superior to the contemporary West European sea charts. However, Zheng He’s chart, prepared almost 200 years earlier than the Manchu sea atlas and depicting China’s coast, East Africa and Arabia, was superior in comparison with contemporary West European sea charts. Zheng He’s chart included considerable detail on ports, shallow waters along the coasts and the islands, courses of inland waterways, shoals and other navigational data in order to aid sailors.33 A Chinese naval squadron employing cannons defeated a Portuguese armada near Tunmen (near Macao) in 1522. At that time, the Chinese had a coastal navy but not a high-sea fleet. Lack of a credible interstate maritime threat resulted in mothballing of the Chinese fleet. Had Japan not given up its maritime ambitions and had there been more Hideyoshis, then China might have been forced to develop its navy and continue the process of maritime innovation. Jeremy Black asserts that the Portuguese naval capability was more or less supreme on the high seas during the sixteenth century, but this is not true as regards inshore combat. Deep-draught sailing ships were not suited for operations along estuarine and riverine waters. Black continues that only with the coming of the shallow-draught steamships from the 1820s onwards, did the West Europeans

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achieve technological superiority in coastal combat.34 And this was especially true as regards coastal warfare along the West (Malabar) Coast of India.

Naval warfare in South Asia The Zamorins (ruling dynasty) of Calicut (along the Malabar/West Coast in South India) were the first on the subcontinent to confront Portuguese naval power. They encouraged Arab settlers engaged in overseas trade and commerce to settle in their kingdom,35 and members of this community provided mariners for Zamorin’s naval service. Along Bengal and Orissa, large ships were constructed using teak and iron nails. Each ship had between three and four masts and the hull was divided into a series of watertight compartments. When the hull aged, it was re-planked with a new layer of strakes placed over the old ones. The sails (two per ship) were made of cotton.36 By the sixteenth century, grain collection points and naval transport along the Danube enabled the Ottomans to conduct long-distance campaigns about 1,000 km away from Constantinople.37 The Mughals also had such a riverine navy that aided their land campaigns. In 1659, while campaigning against Prince Shuja in the Bihar–Bengal region, Aurangzeb’s General Mir Jumla bought some boats (kisti and ghurabs) from the local majhis (boatmen). He equipped each boat with a cannon and 10 gunners. These boats were used to operate along the Ganga River. Mir Jumla’s improvised fleet was opposed by Shuja’s Admiral Itibar Khan, who commanded kusas (fast boats) and ghurbas (purpose-built gun boats). The crews of Shuja’s fleet were Portuguese and mestizos (offspring of Portuguese men and Indian women).38 Mughal naval activity in east India was directed against the Portuguese (Mags) pirates in the Bay of Bengal and the Arakan Kingdom in Burma. Manowar Khan, the grandson of Isha Khan and Admiral of the Mughal Governor of Bengal Shaista Khan, recovered Chittagong from the Mags. His ships were equipped with bronze/brass cannons of muzzle diameter roughly 9.5 inches.39 In order to protect the Haj pilgrim trade, the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb toyed with the idea of constructing a high-sea fleet. He ordered the Mir Atish (Superintendent of Artillery) to ascertain from European mercenaries how to manufacture cannons with which pirate ships at sea could be destroyed. However, the lack of availabile sailors and navigators, writes a Mughal chronicler, forced Aurangzeb to halt the project. This is strange, because India had an abundant

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supply of wood (forests in Punjab, the Terai region of the Himalayas, etc.), large reserves of saltpetre in the Bihar–Bengal region and a community specializing in maritime trade along the Coromondal and Malabar coasts. In 1670, as an ad hoc measure, Siddi Yaqut Khan, an Abyssinian corsair chieftain of Malabar, was enrolled in the imperial service. He was given an annual subsidy of Rs 300,000 in return for protecting Muslim pilgrims and merchant ships on the high seas. In modern terminology, Aurangzeb in an attempt to achieve naval capability quickly and cheaply, outsourced the navy. The Siddi maintained a fleet of large vessels equipped with artillery.40 Diffusion of technical knowledge occurred rapidly. Between 1550 and 1600, the Indians using iron rather than marble anchors. We have evidence that in 1615, the Mughals were buying iron anchors from the British at Surat. And the Indian shipwrights were no less efficient. By the second decade of the seventeenth century, on the Coromondal Coast, Indian shipwrights were constructing 600-ton ships made of good-quality timber and iron.41 In 1681 at Bassein, Indian shipwrights constructed a number of warships for the Portuguese.42 The study of cartographic knowledge of pre-modern India is still in its infancy. A Gujarati shipping manual, which can be dated to the mid-eighteenth century, was analysed by Samira Sheikh. This manual, or pilot book, has a map of the Gulf of Cambay. The paper on which this map is drawn was made in South Asia and the text is in both Gujarati and Arabic. The text contains information regarding sailing instructions for navigating near the ports of Surat and Jeddah (Jidda), a list of about 90 Indian Ocean ports and the stellar altitudes of these ports. Before the coming of West European technology and the mariner’s compass, Indian sailors relied on rhumb lines or loxodromes for navigation and sailed on constant bearings. During the night they took bearings with respect to the celestial features and during the day used visual landmarks on the coastline, wind direction and the position of the sun to adjust their location accordingly. Mariners referred to the Pole Star to locate north while sailing at night. The fifteenth-century Arab navigator, Ahmad Ibn Majid said that the Gujaratis, like the Cholas, knew techniques to determine latitudes. The practice of observing the maximum altitude of the Pole Star as it crossed the meridian was an Arab tradition, which was adopted by seafarers of the West Coast of India.43 During the second half of the eighteenth century, when the British East India Company (EIC) was expanding its imperial tentacles in the subcontinent from the coastal enclaves to further inland, the Royal Navy was the mighti strongest naval service in the world. In 1760, the displacement tonnage of the Royal Navy

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totalled about 375,000 tons, which was the largest in the world. In 1762, the Royal Navy included comprised of some 300 ships and 84,000 personnel. In 1790, Britain had 29 per cent of the world’s ships of the line and, by 1810, that figure had risen to 50 per cent.44

The Persian Navy The naval histories of Mughal India and Persia were linked to a certain extent. Indian teak was exported to the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea ports as raw materials for building Arab sea-going vessels, because the Arab merchants lacked local sources of durable wood for that purpose.45 However, Safavid Persia had not developed a navy worth speaking of. In 1515, the Portuguese consolidated their control of the Persian Gulf Island of Hormuz, and Shah Ismail signed a treaty ceding control to Portugal in return for a military-cum-commercial antiOttoman alliance.46 Safavid Persia was facing a dire threat from the Uzbeks to the north-east and the Ottomans to the west. Furthermore, the core supporters of the Safavids, who happened to be Turcoman tribes of nomadic origin, had no experience of naval affairs and lacked the maritime ethos. So, Ismail’s policy made sense. As the Safavid monarchy became weakened due to rebellion by the Afghans in 1709, the Persian Gulf coast was invaded by raiders from Muscat. Bandar-e Kong was sacked in 1714 and Ibn Saif II of Muscat sent a strong force against Bahrain in 1715. This attack was beaten off but the Muscat Fleet returned in 1717 and the island was captured. The troops of Muscat also captured Larak and Qeshm. The Safavids had no naval vessels of their own. The Dutch and British refused to loan war vessels to the Safavids. In July 1718, with the aid of some vessels lent by local Arab tribesmen, the Safavids ferried a 6,000-strong expeditionary force to Bahrain. A fleet from Muscat landed soldiers and killed the Safavid troops. In 1722, the Safavid monarchy collapsed.47 It should be noted that the Muscat Fleet was a nuisance, having taken advantage of the collapse of the Safavid power following to the Afghan invasion and the subsequent rise of Nadir Quli Khan. After taking control of Persia, Nadir Shah decided to bring the coastal Arabs in the Persian Gulf under control. Nadir built up a fleet by forcing the British and Dutch East India companies to sell several vessels to him. In 1735, Nadir’s fleet totalled four ships. He ordered Latif Khan to make Bushire the base for his fleet, and the old Portuguese fort there was repaired and renamed Bandar Nadiriya. In 1736, the British EIC agreed to buy for Nadir two 20-gun ships, each of 400

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tons, at Surat. The price came to about 8,000 tomans (18,600 pounds sterling) and the ships in due course were delivered to Nadir.48 In March 1737, the Persian Fleet under Latif Khan sailed from Bushire. The fleet consisted of four ships, two grabs (ghurabs) and some smaller vessels. The ghurab is a 2–3-masted vessel rigged in the European manner, with a low and sharp prow like that of a galley. The crews of the Persian Fleet were mostly Arabs but some British sailors also joined the Persian Fleet.49 About 5,000 military personnel and 1,500 horses were taken on board at Bandar Abbas and the fleet arrived at Khor Fakkan on the Gulf of Oman on 16 April 1737. Here, Latif Khan disembarked some of the troops before sailing back through the Straits of Hormuz to Julfar (Ras al-Khaimah), where the remainder of the force landed. However, the Persians quarrelled with the Sultan of Oman’s force and Latif Khan withdrew to Julfar. Nadir ordered Taqi Khan to renew the offensive. And in 1738, Taqi Khan and Latif Khan sailed again from Bandar Abbas with 6,000 men, with some of their ships provided by the British and Dutch. Taqi Khan again quarrelled with the Sultan of Oman and had Latif Khan poisoned. The Arab seamen of the Persian Fleet rebelled due to lack of provisions, and joined the pirates. In 1739, Nadir ordered Taqi Khan to sail to Sind. Taqi was ordered to bring 25,000 troops from Fars to Sind. The Dutch provided several ships. However, the expedition failed. Due to lack of water and provisions, many men died and the Baluchis defeated his troops at Kesh in the Makran desert. As a result, on 16 April 1740, Taqi Khan retreated to Bandar Abbas.50 In 1742, Nadir’s fleet comprised four three-masters, three sloops, two gallivats and many trankis, each with 4–6 cannons. Two three-masted ships were bought from the British in Bandar Abbas by Muhammad Taqi Khan for 7,000 tomans. Each ship had 22 guns and was 110 feet long. The two other threemasted ships were bought at Bushire from private English and French traders for 1,800 tomans each. These were 60-cannon ships, about 90–100 feet long. However, these were second-hand ships. The sailors of most of Nadir’s fleet at this time were Bengali Muslims who had deserted the British and French ships that called at the Persian ports. In the same year, the Imam of Musqat gave Nadir two ships, one of which boasted 64 cannons. In 1744, Nadir had 30 ships and several smaller craft. In that same year, Nadir ordered that two ships should be sent annually with cargoes of the best Persian goods (worth 5,000 tomans) to Surat for the purchase of stores and the building of two other ships. When Nadir died in 1747, his fleet was in a sorry state. Several of the ships were lost due to shipwreck, and the commanders of his fleet fought for control over the other ships. In 1756, only two of Nadir’s ships were still afloat and they were in a bad state of repair.51

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The Ottoman Navy and naval warfare Palmira Brummet– and to an extent Giancarlo Casale– assert that the Portuguese and Ottoman empires were merchant states. Both polities had access to commercial and timber resources to compete for control of the Euro-Asian sea frontiers. Brummet notes that the Ottoman Empire straddle three trading zones. The first was the island coast zone, which comprised the Ottoman trade routes westward through the Aegean into the Adriatic. The main commodity traded in this region was grain. The second was Anatolia–Syria, which comprised the east–west overland caravan and eastern Mediterranean sea trade from Persia into eastern Anatolia and Syria into western Anatolia. This region extended from Istanbul to Aleppo and Tabriz. The principal commodities traded were spices, silk and lumber. The third zone comprised the eastern Mediterranean and Indian Ocean. Spices and copper were the main commodities transported through this area.52 This third zone, which was characterized by trade in spices, especially pepper, connected the spice markets of India, Sri Lanka and China at one end with Venice at the other. Arabian dhows carried goods from India to the Persian Gulf. Ormuz (Hormuz), at the entrance to the Persian Gulf, and Aden, at the entrance to the Red Sea, were the two main points of transfer of Indian spices. The commercial route led from Ormuz to Basra when the caravans carried the merchandise through Mesopotamia to Baghdad and then on to Aleppo. The spices unloaded at Aden were carried by small vessels along the Red Sea to Suez, and from there the caravans departed for Alexandria. The Venetian vessels carried the goods from Aleppo, Tripoli and Alexandria to Venice, from whence they were distributed to the markets of Europe.53 Brummet writes: ‘ … the Ottoman state was a sea based power whose conquests were directed not only at the acquisition of arable land but also at dominating or controlling the trade entrepots and commercial networks across the zones … ’54 Brummet to a certain degree overshoots the mark. She focuses especially on the first half of the sixteenth century while Casale also includes the second half. Brummet concentrates mainly on Egypt–Syria and the eastern Mediterranean, while Casale turns the spotlight on the Indian Ocean. One can argue that until the 1560s, the Ottoman Empire displayed certain mercantilist trends, which had been marginalized by the beginning of the seventeenth century. And even in the sixteenth century, within the overall gamut of Ottoman grand strategy, concern for land frontiers and territorial expansionist trends remained quite

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important. Unlike Portugal, the Ottoman Empire had extensive land frontiers. While Portugal faced only Spain on its landward frontier, the Ottomans had to tackle Persia, Muscovy, Poland, Austria-Hungary and Egypt. Moreover, Portugal succumbed to Spanish pressure but the Ottomans continued to remain independent up to 1919. So, the Ottomans had to divert substantial resources for upkeep of their army against the threats posed by the Habsburgs, Muscovy and Persia. The Ottoman Navy had to operate in two distinct geographical locales: the Mediterranean front and the Indian Ocean (including the Red Sea). The following section focuses on Ottoman activities in the Mediterranean.

The Mediterranean front From 1205, the islands of Skyros, Skiathos, Skopelos and Alonisos belonged to the Venetians. Besides engaging in agriculture, fishing and shipping, the residents of these islands were also involved in piracy. In the first decades of the sixteenth century, they were engaged in attacking the Ottoman-controlled mainland opposite northern Euboia in the Lamia Stylis region.55 The Latin states manned their galleys with the criminals from their societies, and also utilized the Muslims captured at sea.56 Slaves were used in the Ottoman galleys.57 During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, many Greeks served in the Ottoman fleet because they inhabited the areas under Turkish domination, and also due to their hostility to Latins such as the Hospitallers.58 The Ottoman– Venetian War lasted from 1499 to 1503. In 1499, the Ottoman plan was to construct a fleet of 300 ships in order to tackle Venice. In 1500–1501, Bayazid ordered the construction of 400 ships, including 200 galleys mounted with large cannons, 50 heavy galleys and smaller galliots and fustas. In 1502 at Midilli, the Ottoman naval flotilla comprised 120 vessels including 40 galleys. Carpenters, caulkers and building materials were acquired from Chios.59 While the galliot was a light galley (an oared vessel) also used for commerce, the fusta was a light, fast-oared vessel with one or two oars per bench. It was used for coastal shipping and raiding.60 The principal warship in the Mediterranean was the galley, a long, thin, light manoeuvrable vessel with 150–200 rowers. The Venetian galley was 125 feet in length and 22 feet wide, including outriggers. There were 25–30 oars on each side. The vessel had one or more masts lateen sails. The latter functioned as an auxiliary source of power to the oarsmen. There was a single rudder attached to the sternpost. The bow was long and pointed because it was designed to ram enemy ships.61 In the fifteenth-century

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galley, there were three men per rowing bench each pulling a separate oar. By the time of Lepanto (1571), each single oar was being pulled by nine men. These galleys were also equipped with masts and sails, and used oars to manoeuvre in harbour or during battle, when a sailing ship might become immobile due to a change in the strength or direction of the wind. The fighting men in a galley were positioned on a runway down the centre of the vessel, while the rowers were protected by a screen along the gunwales often formed of shields. The beak of the galley was not designed to be used as a ram to bore a hole in the hull of a hostile vessel, but as a form of bridge to allow boarding parties to gain access to the opponent’s ship or rarely to break the oars of the enemy vessel to prevent it from being manoeuvred.62 The carrying capacity of the galley varied between 50 and 100 tons. Moreover, its potential was restricted by the size of the crew. The galley could not sail far from the shore due to its limited capacity to carry water and provisions for its crews.63 Victory went to the Ottomans in the war with Venice, which lasted from 1499 to 1502. The Ottoman–Venetian Treaty of 1503 resulted in the Venetian merchants gaining trading privileges with in Ottoman territory. However, Venice had to pay an annual tribute of 10,000 ducats to the Ottoman Sultan.64 As a result of this treaty, the Ottomans acquired several naval bases in Greece (Modon, Lepanto, Navarino, Durazzo and Coron). The Ottoman victory was to a great extent due to the Turkish corsairs, who functioned as maritime ghazis and became skilled naval personnel who advised the Sultan on maritime affairs and also joined his naval service. In fact, the ghazi corsair Kemal Reis advised Sultan Bayazid II to invade Rhodes.65 The Ottoman conquest of Rhodes occurred in 1522. Rhodes was also the name of that island’s main city, which had a well-fortified harbour that faced south-west Turkey across a narrow strait (20 km at its narrowest point and 52 km between Rhodes and Marmaris). Rhodes, once part of the Byzantine Empire, had a Greek-speaking population. For two centuries it was under the rule of the Roman Catholic Order of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem. In 1125 in Jerusalem, they received the title of Hospitallers for taking medical care of pilgrims travelling to to the Holy Land. By 1310, the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem had moved to Rhodes. The knights gave occasional logistical support and shelter to the Christian pirates from the Mediterranean who preyed upon Muslim ships and took large numbers of Muslim captives to ransom or to work on the island.66 Rhodes did not pose a naval threat to the Ottomans, but the former’s navy had a nuisance value due to its occasional forays against Ottoman shipping. In 1502, Rhodes’ fleet comprised of four galleys (gallere), a

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large carrack, a large nave and many smaller craft. In the winter, this fleet was augmented by three Venetian galleys and four French ships. In total, 11 galleys were far outnumbered by the number maintained by the Ottomans at Galata and Gallipoli. In late 1502, Rhodes captured five Turkish galleys near the Island of Samos and, after refitting, added them to its own fleet. In September 1504, Rhodes’ fleet included a grand nave, two carracks (including one Genoese), two French barks, an ordinary bark, five galleys (including two French) and many brigantines. Overall, Rhodes had 11 large ships. At that time, a single Ottoman Fleet cruising the Aegean numbered 18 vessels. Overall, the Ottoman armada in the eastern Mediterranean had more than 100 ships.67 When the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman sent an ultimatum to Rhodes in June 1522, the 55-year-old former Grand Prior of France, Philippe Villers de L’Isle Adam, had begun to strengthen the fortifications at the island. He strengthened the walls, widened the ditches, stored the harvest in April 1522 and torched the arable land. He also appealed to the Christian monarchs of Europe for aid. On 20 December 1522, Philippe Villiers de L’Isle Adam, the last Knight Commander at Rhodes and later the 44th Grand Master of the Order at Malta, sued for peace.68 To a great extent, the Muslim corsairs seemed to be the principal advocates of Ottoman naval expansion. In the first half of the sixteenth century, the Barbarossa brothers established an enclave of corsairs in central Maghrib. Cooperation between corsairs, Muslim refugees from Spain (known as Moriscos) and local war parties resulted in effective raiding of the south-eastern shores of Spain. Motivated by the feelings of revenge and enthusiasm for conducting holy war, the immigrants from Andalusia became corsairs and raided the shores of Spain through to the seventeenth century.69 The Barbarossa (known as Barbarossa due to their red beards) brothers petitioned the Ottoman Sultan for military assistance to protect their pirate bases, which they had established along the central Maghrib. The two brothers, named Khizr/Khair-ud-din and Aruj, were the sons of Yakub, a retired Janissary who had settled in Lesbos in 1462. The Turkish sipahi was originally from Macedonia, and his wife was a Greek woman from Lesbos/Mytiline. The two brothers had started their careers as pirates and operated two small galliots. Each ship had 17 or 18 oars on the side and could also use sails. In 1504, Aruj and Khizr arrived in Tunis. In 1516, when Ferdinand V of Spain died, the Algerians revolted against Spain and asked for aid from the two brothers. Aruj supplied 16 galliots, 800 Turks and 5,000 sailors. Then, he became ruler of Algiers. Aruj was appointed Provincial Governor of Algiers by Sultan Selim I (the Grim). In 1517, the Spanish monarchy launched an attack against Tiemeen. Aruj died fighting in

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early 1518. Khizr then became the Provincial Governor of Algiers. The Ottoman Sultan sent Khizr 2,000 Janissaries as reinforcements.70 Suleiman the Lawgiver (1520–1566), in a more systematic way, supplied arms, ammunition and men to these naval frontiersmen and in 1534 appointed their leader, Khizr-ud-din/Hayreddin Barbarossa, to the post of Admiral.71 Andrea Dorea of Genoa left the service of Francois I and entered that of Charles V in 1528. One modern author interprets Doria’s capture of the Ottoman port of Coron in the Morea in 1532 as having led Suleiman to appoint Hayreddin Barbarossa (who had already taken control of Algiers) as the Ottoman Grand Admiral in 1533.72 In 1533, the Ottoman Fleet in the Mediterranean was tasked with supplying provisions for the Ottoman Army, which was gathering on the Plains of Avlona. Vizir Mustafa Pasha was then in charge of subduing Albania. Hayreddin was given 60 vessels to bring provisions for the Ottoman Army from Egypt to Avlona. Lufti Pasha was in charge of the rest of the Ottoman ships and provided escort duties. He sailed near to the Puglia Coast and raided the coastal settlements. When Hayreddin passed the Island of Corfu, 40 Venetian vessels attempted to sail back to the Gulf of Venice. Lufti’s detachment caught up with them and in the ensuing naval encounter, the Venetians lost two ships and another two were captured by Lufti. Hayreddin was successful in bringing his cargo ships to Prevesa and then to Avlona, where the Ottoman Fleet reassembled.73 The Ottoman Fleet was ordered to take Corfu. Haji Khalifeh describes the techniques of Ottoman naval siege warfare in the following words: … a bridge of boats was constructed across the channel where its width did not exceed half a mile, by means of which the armies of the faithful passed over to the island. One hundred and forty villages in the neighbourhood of the town were all pillaged, so that the town alone remained, against which the artillery was drawn up, and the siege was regularly commenced. But it being almost entirely surrounded by sea, they attacked it on the land side for full forty-three days and nights. When however they had opened the sally ports, and had several fierce engagements, they found their time for warlike operations was exhausted, the setting in of winter having commenced, and heavy rains falling, accompanied with extreme cold,–added to which, the sailing season was past.74

While Lufti Pasha and Hayreddin were all for continuing the siege, Elias Pasha, sent by the Sultan, ordered the raising of the siege. The siege was finally raised and the Sultan went back to Adrianopole.75 Hayreddin was not a person given to despair. With 60 vessels, he remained at sea while the rest of the Ottoman ships, with Lufti, returned to Constantinople. Hayreddin went to the Island of Aegina, which had a strong fortress. For three

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days, the fortress was subjected to artillery bombardment and on the fourth day it surrendered. Hayreddin was able to take 4,800 prisoners besides booty. Then, Hayreddin’s naval detachment sailed to Zea, which was captured along with 1,200 prisoners.76 Hayreddin brought under the Ottoman Sultan’s control the corsairs of North Africa, and also the territories he had conquered in Maghrib.77 In 1536, Hayreddin sailed to Minorca and having landing a ground force, laid siege to the castle. After four days of siege operation, the garrison numbering 6,000 troops emerged under its governor but the besiegers routed them. The governor fell in battle and the garrison surrendered. About 800 of the besieged were killed and 5,700 prisoners were taken. The city was given over to plunder. On the sixth day of landing, the fortress was razed and Hayreddin returned to Algiers. Hayreddin visited the Sultan, who ordered him to build 200 ships in order to continue offensive maritime operations in the Mediterranean. By May 1537, Lufti Pasha was the Grand Admiral of the Ottoman Fleet. Hayreddin’s fleet comprised 280 vessels (including 135 galleys) manned by some 30,000 sailors.78 Sultan Suleiman ordered his Vizir to prepare 150 vessels and give them to Hayreddin for continuing maritime operations in the Mediterranean. However, these vessels were not ready when Hayreddin was ordered to sail. Hayreddin pointed out that Andrea Doria had sailed to Candia with 40 vessels in order to intercept Saleh Reis, who had sailed with 20 vessels to Egypt to bring Indian merchandise. On 8 June 1538, Hayreddin sailed with 40 vessels and 3,000 Janissaries. Another 90 ships were to follow him later. They sailed to Imbro and then to the island of Skiathos, which had a strong castle and a harbour. In 1538, the Ottoman Admiral Hayreddinn Barbarossa attacked the Sporades.79 Meanwhile, 90 vessels (not fully equipped) had arrived from Constantinople. Saleh Reis with 20 vessels also joined the Ottoman Fleet, which now boasted some 150 vessels. Hayreddin sent 12 of the unequipped ships back to Gallipoli, and Hayreddin then plundered Canea. The Spanish, Papal and Venetian fleets assembled at Corfu and attacked Prevesa. In response, Hayreddin sent out 20 small privateers, which reached Zente where 40 hostile ships were spotted. Hayreddin plundered villages in Cephalonia and then he landed troops in Prevesa, defeated the ‘Christian’ forces and entered the castle, which had, by then, been repaired. The Sultan’s ground force was then stationed at Moldavia. Andrea Doria had 52 galleys (including one galleon), the Venetians had 70 ships (plus 10 krakas) and the Pope’s fleet had 30 ships. The Spaniards and Portuguese had 80 barges while Hayreddin had 120 light galleys with bow guns. The ‘Christian’ vessels sailed to the Bay of Prevesa and attacked the Ottoman ships. During the next engagement,

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the Ottoman vessels took advantage of the wind direction and manoeuvred to their advantage. But, the ‘Christian’ vessels benefited from superior gunfire and deployed an in-line formation. Hayreddin was able to capture several of the enemy’s barges. Dorea’s attempt to attack the Ottoman Fleet at its rear failed. Andrea Dorea finally decided to withdraw to Corfu.80 The Ottoman victory, despite suffering from numerical and gunpowder inferiority, was due to better handling of the ships, bold leadership and excellent seamanship. In 1543, the Ottomans decided to send a naval fleet across the Western Mediterranean to aid France against the Habsburg Empire of Charles V. The fleet sailed from Istanbul, around Greece to Reggio on the Straits of Messina in Habsburg territory, which was sacked. The fleet then reached Antibes on the Mediterranean Coast of France on 20 July. The Ottoman fleet comprised 110 galleys, 40 fustas and 3 great nefs (a nef was a round-hulled ship or might even represent a merchant ship) carrying considerable quantities of artillery and ammunition and between 25,000 and 30,000 men.81 In 1568, when the Ottomans were sowing discord within the Sadi clan in order to undermine its authority in Morocco, the corsair Captain Kilic (Sword) Ali (also known as Uluc [Barbarian] Ali because of his non-Muslim Italian origin), who was in Ottoman service, sent a small army overland from Algiers. This expeditionary force defeated the Hafsids.82 Venice had ruled Cyprus since 1489. It was invited to the island to protect the last Lusignan king against the Ottomans.83 During the Ottoman–Mamluk War (1485–1491), when the Ottomans requested the use of Famagusta (Famagosta) in Cyprus to supply their troops from the sea, Venice refused to comply.84 The Ottoman Government raised the money required for launching the expedition against Cyprus in 1568, through the sale of monasteries and Orthodox churches within the European provinces of the empire. Lala Mustafa Pasha was appointed as head of land forces while the fleet was commanded by Grand Admiral Muezzinzade Ali Pasha. The latter was assisted by Piyale Pasha, who had been Grand Admiral for 14 years. By September 1570, Nicosia was captured.85 In September 1571, a fleet under the command of Don John of Austria, the illegitimate son of the former Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and half-brother of Philip II of Spain, sailed east from Messina. The fleet reached the Ionian Island of Cephalonia when news arrived that Farmagusta (Magosa), the last Venetian stronghold in Cyprus, had fallen to the Ottomans on 1 August after an 11-month siege.86 On 7 October 1571, the Ottoman Mediterranean Fleet was destroyed by a combined Spanish–Venetian fleet at the Battle of Lepanto. The principal ships of the Venetian fleet were the big galleys. Each galley had oars, each of which

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was pulled by four men sitting on a bench. Cannons were placed on the bow of the ship, with the largest cannons on the ship’s centre line and the smaller dragons/drakes along the sides. The cannons were welterweight pieces with longer barrels providing greater propulsive power from the gunpowder charge. A galley was able to carry one heavy culverin along the centre line flanked by lighter guns. Light cannons known as periers fired stone balls that shattered on impact. Such stone balls damaged the hulls and wounded the crew. The tactic was to fire the guns to decimate the enemy crew and then to board the hostile ship. An Ottoman galley had a lower freeboard compared with a Venetian one. However, the Ottomans favoured a high stern structure, which functioned as an obstacle to boarders. Initially, the Ottoman galley had a ram for grappling, which later the Venetians copied. The Ottoman mariners were equipped with compound bows. So, basically, naval combat involved discharge of guns, then grappling and finally boarding the hostile vessel.87 As a point of comparison, a Fukien warship of the Ming Navy of that period carried one heavy cannon, one mortar, six large culverins, three falconets and 60 fire lances. The fire lances were geared to repel boarders and to set fire to enemy ships’ sails and riggings. In addition, each Ming ship also carried several shen chi chien, which were guns that shot arrows. Joseph Needham reminds us that in 1588, Sir Francis Drake fired arrows from his musket and improvements to this weapon system was canvassed as late as 1693.88 The Ottoman and combined ‘Christian’ fleets engaged near Nafpaktos. Don John had more than 200 galleys, which were oared warships armed with cannons. In addition, he had six galleases, which were large galleys armed with larger cannons. These six galleases were fitted with specialized structures at the bow, stern and along the sides to mount the heaviest cannons of Venice. At the bow, the high protected forecastle had several cannons. The aftercastles also had cannons. Nine periers were fitted along each side of the galleas. These guns with their carriages were mounted above, below and among the oarsmen. It was the forerunner of the later broadsides. In total, each galleas had five heavy cannons firing balls weighing 22.7 kg, two to three cannons firing balls weighing 11.3 kg each, 23 lighter pieces and 20 swivel guns for slaughtering the rowers and boarding parties. Each galleas was 160 feet long and 40 feet wide, i.e. twice as wide as the lighter galley. Six men pulled each of the 76 heavy oars. The deck was protected from boarding by a high freeboard.89 The Ottoman Navy had numerical superiority but lacked galleases. The battle was fought on calm seas, and the heavy cannon fire from Don John’s fleet at close quarters destroyed most of the Ottoman fleet. The battle lasted for 4 hours. After the battle, a violent

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storm destroyed most of the remaining damaged Ottoman ships.90 In this battle, some 7,700 Christian sailors and 12 ships of the Christian alliance were lost. In comparison, the Ottomans lost 170 galleys and 30,000 personnel.91 However, Selim II (d. 1574) was able to establish another fleet in 1572, and forced Venice to accept peace in 1573 at the cost of surrendering Cyprus.92 And the Ottomans captured the important Spanish fortress of La Goletta, near Tunis, in the summer of 1574.93 The effects of the Battle of Lepanto should neither be overestimated nor underestimated. A single battle could not destroy the military machine of a major power. Lepanto was no ‘Mediterranean Stalingrad’. And it is questionable whether Stalingrad destroyed the Wehrmacht in Russia or whether German military power was ground down through slow attrition by superior military forces over three years (1942–1945). True, within a year, the Ottomans built up a bigger navy. However, without Lepanto, the Turks might have had a navy double the size they deployed in 1572. And such a navy would have been unstoppable in the central and western Mediterranean. To conclude, though Lepanto was not the swansong of the Ottoman Navy, the naval battle’s significance cannot be dismissed out of hand. In the western part of the Mediterranean, rather than their state navy, the Ottomans conducted irregular sea warfare by proxy through the corsairs. The beys who ruled in Algiers gained the support of the Turkish Janissaries by becoming vassals of the Ottoman Sultan. They conducted a marine jihad. Lepanto weakened the authority of the Ottoman Sultan over them. In 1587, the Ottoman central government decided that in place of beys, appointed for life, Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli were to be governed by triennial pashas. This resulted in the creation of three semi-autonomous pirate polities.94 The Alawi Dynasty was established in Morocco in the 1660s on the ruins of the Sadi principalities based on Fez and Marrakesh. Ismail (1672–1727), the second ruler of the Alawi line, drove the Europeans from their coastal strongholds. The Arabs and the Arabized Berbers, who were provided tax-free land grants, were under obligation to supply soldiers to the Alawi mawlay (master).95 Ottoman marine cartography focused on the Mediterranean front. A Turkish sailing book, which dates back to the reign of Sultan Mehmed IV (r. 1648–1687), contains coloured maps of the Black Sea and the Mediterranean ports. The work was authored by one Sayyid Nuh, who purported to have information about the Black Sea and the White Sea (Mediterranean), along with coastal sites. The author claimed to have travelled in these regions. A description of the coastal cities is given in a counterclockwise direction. The description begins with Istanbul, then along the Aegean Sea through the Greek Archipelago to

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the Anatolian Coast; and then by way of Rhodes and Athens along the coast of Morea to the western Greek coast; to Albania, Dalmatia and Venice to the west coast of the Adriatic Sea; down to Sicily, Malta, Sardinia and the Balearic Islands; to the west coast of Italy including Rome, Genoa, Marseille and Spain; and then to North Africa, Syria and back to Crete. Special attention is given to the River Nile and its banks.96 Besides the Mediterranean, the Ottoman Navy also had to fight the feranghis in the Indian Ocean, the subject of the following section.

The Indian Ocean region The principal ships used by the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean were the naus (nef), caravels and carracks. In the early fifteenth century, the Portuguese used caravels for coasting and exploratory voyages. A caravel had the long bow, continuous sheer and long poop of the Arabian dhow. The caravel had a narrower and a longer hull than most European ships and was lateen rigged. The Portuguese, during their encounter with the North African Muslims in the fifteenth century, became familiar with lateen sails. It was a successful case of the West absorbing and then developing a sailing technique from Islam. Later, a mizzen mast was added. Thus, a caravel had three masts while a dhow had two. The square-rigged caravel with its composite rig (a combination of square and lateen sails) made it a very effective ship.97 The Nau was a rounded ship and its design was influenced by the cog of northern Europe. The carrack needed fewer men than a galley and could carry more cargo. The carrack was not constrained like the galley, which was required to put into the shore for procuring supplies and water for sailors.98 In the early fifteenth century, the shipbuilders of NorthWest Europe changed the rig to a composite one with both square and lateen sails. There were three masts instead of the previous one or two. The fore and main masts carried one or two square sails each while the mizzen carried a triangular lateen sail. A small square sail was often slung under the bowsprit to function as a headsail for better control. The rigging, as well as construction of the hull, was also modified. The fully rigged ship was easier to handle than its predecessors. The combination rig allowed exploitation of the divisibility of square sails and the provision of greater power from having a larger sail area. The hull of the fully rigged ship was built in the same way as the Mediterranean ships. Planks were fitted edge to edge, and the strength was derived from the internal structure of the ribs and frames. As a fully rigged ship was both defensible and manoeuvrable, it was superior compared with the galley. The multiplication of sails allowed construction of larger ships. The largest of the fully rigged ships

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was called a carrack. The Portuguese used carracks of up to 2,000 tons in the Indian Ocean.99 In contrast, the galley, the workhorse of the Ottoman Navy, was unsuitable for the open sea. Its great bank of oars required great length in proportion to beam and freeboard. And with its wooden construction, the vessel was unable to encounter rough seas safely. Furthermore, the accommodation for the oarsmen and the stores needed to feed them took up valuable space and reduced the operating range of this ship.100 Vasco da Gama discovered a new route leading to India by rounding the Cape of Good Hope in 1497. The Portuguese fortified Cochin, an important port in south India supplying pepper.101 The entry of the Portuguese into the Indian Ocean region transformed the strategic scenario for Mediterranean powers such as Venice, the Ottoman Empire and the Mamluk Sultanate of SyriaEgypt. The Indian Ocean trade, which interested the Mamluks, Ottomans and the West Europeans, centred mostly around spices. Cloves and nutmegs were produced in the Spice Islands. Pepper was grown on the Malabar Coast of India and in Sumatra. Ginger came from Bengal, cinnamon from Ceylon (Sri Lanka), camphor and other aromatics from Borneo. Besides spices, countries around the Indian Ocean also traded in various other goods such as sugar from Bengal, porcelain from China, gems from Burma and Deccan, copper from the Red Sea region and iron from Orissa.102 But, these items, unlike spice, were not high on the priority list of the Portuguese, the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt and the Ottomans. One of the crucial sources of income for the Mamluk state was levying customs duties on the lucrative Indian Ocean trade. From Egypt and beyond, the Venetians handled the trade (also known as the Levant trade) but Portuguese ships threatened this arrangement. The quantity of spice that reached Aleppo and Alexandria diminished for a while. It seemed that Lisbon would replace Venice as the centre of the spice trade. The Mamluk Sultanate, which controlled Syria-Egypt, collected half a million gold ducats as customs fees by taxing the caravan routes that were now threatened by the Portuguese discovery of a new route.103 The Mamluk Sultanate, writes Andrew C. Hess, was hampered in naval affairs by the absence of wood, copper and iron in its domain and the neglect of maritime affairs by the aristocratic horsemen who constituted the ruling class.104 From 1507 onwards, the Ottomans supplied the Mamluk regime with wood, copper and marine soldiers. In 1507, the Ottoman naval leader Kemal Reis arrived in Alexandria with copper and gun founders. The Venetians also supplied the Mamluks with boat-building experts and cannons. The Mamluks began building ships at Suez. A small flotilla was also deployed in

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the Mediterranean for transfer of important war materials from Asia Minor to Egypt. This Mediterranean flotilla was destroyed in September 1510 by ships of the Hospitallers of Rhodes. The Mamluk flotilla was transporting timber and other supplies from Ayas (north-eastern Mediterranean) for an armada, which was being prepared against the Portuguese when it was attacked and destroyed by the ships from Rhodes.105 In 1507, the Mamluk fleet, constructed with joint aid from the Ottomans and Venetians, sailed for India under the joint command of Mamluk Husayn al-Kurdi and the Ottoman Salman/Suleiman Rais. In January 1508, this fleet achieved a victory over the Portuguese at Chaul. But, in the next encounter at Diu, the Portuguese emerged victorious. In 1510, a delegation from the Indian states visited Cairo and threatened that unless the Mamluks checked the Portuguese, they would collaborate with the ‘feranghis’.106 In January 1511, another Ottoman fleet arrived at Alexandria for deployment on the Red Sea frontier against the Portuguese.107 In 1516, the Portuguese sent an armada consisting of 37 ships to intercept a Mamluk Fleet in the Red Sea.108 In 1538, the Ottomans launched another expedition with 76 vessels carrying 20,000 troops and an artillery park to seize Diu from the Portuguese. But this venture also failed.109 Giancarlo Casale claims that, to some extent, the Ottoman policy towards the Indian Ocean was shaped by internal power politics within the empire. After the dismissal of Hadim Suleiman as Grand Vizir in November 1544, Rustem Pasha for the next 17 years controlled Ottoman policy. Unlike Hadim Suleiman, who tried to maximize the free flow of trade across the Ottoman territories from the Indian Ocean, Rustem was suspicious of the foreign merchants. Rustem’s economic policy subordinated mercantile interest to the requirements of supplying the Ottoman Army and provisioning the Ottoman capital. Rustem realized that Hadim Suleiman’s influence was most deeply entrenched in the Indian Ocean provinces of the Ottoman Empire. In order to weaken the base of his enemy, Rustem stopped all expansionist activity on the Indian Ocean front. Rustem’s Vizierate displayed a tug of war between the Grand Vizir and the Indian Ocean faction (Hadim Suleiman’s supporters).110 However, under Rustem’s Vizierate, the Indian Ocean theatre was not totally inactive. The Ottoman conquest of Basra in 1546 was a blow to the Portuguese.111 Basra was one of the most important port cities of the Persian Gulf, and connected through overland trade with the principal centres of the Ottoman Empire via Baghdad, with Shiraz and Isfahan in Safavid Empire and by way of maritime trade with the western Indian Ocean from Surat to Al-Mukha.

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Through Basra, dates were exported, while sugar, coffee and Indian textiles were imported. In order to maintain the unfavourable balance of trade with India, the Ottoman Empire had to export bullion to the Indian subcontinent.112 In 1547, Piri Reis, the famous Ottoman cartographer and navigator, was appointed as the admiral in charge of the Ottoman Fleet at Suez. Piri Reis was previously in command of the Ottoman Galley Squadron at Alexandria. When Piri Reis was appointed to the Indian Ocean theatre, he was not only too old (over 80 years) but also spent most of his time in the Mediterranean. Piri was a newcomer in the Indian Ocean theatre. He set out from Suez and joined Solak Ferhad at Mocha in December 1547. From there the two commanders sent reinforcements to Ozdemir. After the assassination of Uveys Pasha in Yemen in the spring of 1547, Ozdemir was left as the most senior Ottoman officer in the province. He restored order among the troops outside Sanaa and was nominated as the interim commander of the region. With the aid of reinforcements sent by Piri and Ferhad, Ozdemir recaptured Zebid and crushed the rebellion in the interior of the province. Ferhad and Piri Reis then moved towards Aden. Ferhad came first with an advance force of five vessels in late December, and Piri with the rest of the fleet joined him at the end of January 1548. The combined fleet then began a bombardment of Aden’s defensive wall. Aden’s defence was under the Portuguese Commander Dom Paio de Noronha, and the crews of two galleys from Hormuz. Noronha was waiting for a relief force under Alvaro de Castro from Goa. However, even by the middle of February, the relief force from Goa had failed to arrive. Noronha abandoned the city, and the Ottomans breached the walls and stormed the citadel on 23 February. Alvaro de Castro’s relief force arrived near the coast of Arabia only at the beginning of March, and then turned back without reaching Aden.113 Meanwhile, an Ottoman naval captain, Sefer Reis, was conducting guerre de course. Sefer realized that he could plunder the Portuguese merchantmen between Gujarat and Hormuz. By using light and fast galleys, Sefer was able to capture individual merchant vessels of Estado da India especially during the sailing season of late summer and early autumn. Sefer realized that his galleys were vulnerable against the heavily armed Portuguese warships in the Indian Ocean. Sefer knew that the monsoon wind blows towards the north-east during late summer and autumn. So he always avoided and outran the Portuguese sail ships by rowing south-west into the wind down the Arabian Coast and back towards his base in Mocha where the Portuguese sail ships could not follow him. He understood that even if he failed to capture a merchantman at sea, his mere appearance near Hormuz would encourage a counter-attack by the Portuguese

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fleet. And this attack could only come in the winter months when the shifting monsoon made sailing from India to the west practicable. He could then prepare for their arrival in advance and lure the Portuguese to waters where fickle winds, shallows and dangerous coral reefs gave his galleys a decided advantage over the Portuguese sailing ships.114 In 1550, the Portuguese Squadron Commander Luiz Figueira arrived at Goa and requested Viceroy Afonso de Noronha for four sailing ships and an oared fusta in order to launch a counter-attack against the Ottoman corsair commander Sefer in the Red Sea. Figueira reached the southern Arabian Coast and entered Bab al-Mandab in January 1551. As Sefer’s four galleys conducted a tactical retreat, Figueira recklessly attacked them with his own vessel and was soon surrounded by the Ottoman ships. The other vessels in Figueira’s squadron could not reach him due to the shallowness of the water. The Portuguese ships from a distance fired an ineffective barrage and saw Figueira’s fusta being overwhelmed. Figueira was killed and the other crews of his ships were captured. Figueira’s four ships then retreated. One went to Ethiopia and the others back to India.115 This battle shows that the demands of physical geography resulted in a certain degree of ‘demodernization’ of the Portuguese fleet. For fighting in the narrows and shallow water, the Portuguese had to utilize oared ships rather than wind-powered battleships, which were characteristics of naval battles in the Atlantic. The Portuguese maritime strategy in the Indian Ocean did not aim at territorial conquest but at controlling the spice trade route by occupying and then fortifying a series of strategic points that could be defended by battleships. These strategic points were Hormuz, Goa and Malacca.116 Hormuz, the formidable island fortress, was the key to controlling maritime access to and from the Persian Gulf. In early 1550, Rustem sent reinforcements to the Ottoman garrison in Basra. The reinforced Ottoman garrison then captured nearby Fort Katif, which was a tributary of Hormuz and under the indirect rule of the Portuguese. Rustem also ordered the construction of a new fleet of galleys at Suez, and assembled a large expeditionary force that included artillery, infantry and gunners. The expeditionary force and the fleet were placed in charge of Rustem’s client, Piri Reis, who was the Admiral of the Indian Ocean Fleet. Meanwhile, the Portuguese planned a counter-attack. In July 1551, the Captain of Hormuz, Alvaro de Noronha, set out with 1,000 Portuguese and 3,000 local auxiliaries for Katif. Katif was garrisoned by 400 Ottoman soldiers. After several days of heavy bombardment, the Ottoman garrison fled and the Portuguese destroyed the empty fort. However, a few weeks later, the Ottomans recaptured Katif.117

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Piri, with 24 galleys and four supply ships, sailed from Suez in April 1552. By July, an advance force under his son Mehmed Reis rounded the Arabian Peninsula and landed at Portuguese-held Muscat. After a siege that lasted for 18 days, Muscat was captured along with the local commander, Joao de Lisboa and 128 Portuguese personnel. After Piri’s arrival, the Ottoman armada continued north wards and reached Hormuz. By early August, a large number of Ottoman troops had landed on the island and siege guns were positioned around the citadel. However, just before the arrival of Piri, a large and heavily armed Portuguese warship had reached Hormuz. The Portuguese garrison enjoyed numerical superiority over the besiegers and had a large number of cannons and a huge store of gunpowder. The Portuguese guns inflicted severe losses on the Ottoman troops and the ships anchored in the harbour. Meanwhile, the Ottoman guns proved ineffective against the reinforced wall of Hormuz. Furthermore, the loss of a supply ship while sailing from Yemen resulted in shortage of munitions stores for the Ottomans. A Portuguese relief force was on its way from India. Piri raised the siege and then headed straight for Basra without attempting a landing at Bahrein. After arrival at Basra, Piri’s nerve cracked. He panicked and left the fleet by sailing with three fast ships. After reaching Egypt, Piri was arrested for his failure and executed in 1549 by Governor Semir Ali Pasha.118 Ottoman–Portuguese rivalry, both directly and by proxy, occurred in both the central and eastern portions of the Indian Ocean. Malacca in the fifteenth century became a commercial emporium and the centre of intra-Asia trade. Merchants from Arabia, Persia, India, Java, Sumatra, Siam and China flocked to Malacca.119 The Malays first built a fort there, which comprised a system of earthworks surrounded by a wooden stockade. Within this fortification, the Malaya Sultan’s royal residence was located. By the early sixteenth century, this piece of fortification was defended with guns. Alfonso d’Albuquerque attacked the fort in 1511. After gaining possession of Malacca, Albuquerque ordered the construction of a wooden fortress. This was to serve as a defensive point for the Portuguese soldiers against a Malayan counter-attack. The defensive work on the Portuguese fort made of wood, surrounded by thick trees and several guns, was started in August 1511 and was completed within a month. In September 1511, work was begun to build a stone fortress. The project was completed in January 1512. The stone fortification was square in shape and the walls were 8 feet thick. It was built on the left, or southern, bank of the Malacca River close to the estuary. At its north-west corner rose a tall donjon or keep. This fortress, if besieged by indigenous forces, could be supplied by ships anchored alongside the walls.120 In 1511, Albuquerque built a four-storey building.

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However, Melaka Hill concealed the southern shoreline from those standing on the tower. This limitation was addressed in 1514 by Captain Rui de Brito, who constructed another storey. Thus, the tall dungeon tower had five storeys. The Acehnese surprise attack in 1537 almost overwhelmed the Portuguese settlement. In 1551, Japara and Johor attacked Malacca/Mekala. At that time, the Portuguese fortifications consisted of the Famosa fortress and wooden palisades with taipa walls (earth and pebbles beaten together with pestles). The stone city wall checked the assault by the Acehnese infantry in 1568.121 In 1583, Joao Batista, an Italian military engineer (original name Giovanni Batista Cairati) was appointed as Architect-in-Chief of the Portuguese overseas empire. Batista travelled to Sri Lanka, the Malabar Coast and Malacca in 1588. By 1588, Malacca had become a walled town. A new stone wall was constructed facing the sea. At the centre of this new wall and close to the river mouth, the powerful bastion of San Pedro projected towards the sea. The northern extremity of the wall terminated at the bastion of San Domingos, and on the southern side was the bastion of Santiago.122 The number of Portuguese males in Malacca varied between 200 and 600.123 The Portuguese overseas army comprised mainly Africans and Asians. In the 1600s, most of the garrisons at Malacca and Macao comprised both African and Asian soldiers.124 From 1550, it was not the Ottomans but the Achehnese/Atjehnese Empire that became the chief rival to the Portuguese in the eastern Indian Ocean. The west Sumatran coast between Barus in the north and Inderapura in the south, which came under Achehnese rule, was originally part of the Minangkabau Kingdom, which emerged towards the end of the fourteenth century. Acheh, a vassal state of Pidir, declared its independence under the leadership of Raja Ibrahim who became Sultan Ali Mughyat Shah, the founder of the Achehnese Sultanate. To some extent the rise of Acheh was aided by the Portuguese conquest of Muslim power at Malacca.125 The Achehnese Empire came into existence by absorbing small principalities on the east and west coasts of Sumatra. Sultan Ali Mughayat Shah (r. 1516–1530) conquered Daya/Daja in the west (1520) and Pedir (Pidie) and Pase (Pasai) in the east in 1521 and 1524, respectively. By the time of his death around 1530, the Atjehnese had captured many cannons from the Portuguese. Atjeh was a coastal state and a seagoing empire. The Atjeh Sultans did not make any serious attempt to control the interior of the island, where the Sultan’s rule was nominal. The capital was Kutaraja and trade with India became important in the reign of Sultan Ala al din Riyat Shah al Kahar (1537–1571). Pepper from Sumatra was exported to Gujarat. White pepper was loaded in Pedir and Martaban and then exported to Gujarat. The Portuguese

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intrusion partly impeded this trade. During the reign of Shah al Kahar, the Ottoman Sultan sent several craftsmen who were experts in manufacturing cannons. Shah al Kahar then began casting guns and also constructed a fort at Atjeh. In 1561 (March/April), a naval engagement occurred off the coast of south Arabia. A large 50-gun ship of Atjeh, comparable in size to the great Portuguese Indiamen (nao or carrack), was intercepted near Qishn (Caxem) by two Portuguese galleons and some foists. The Atjeh ship had 500 warriors (Turks, Arabs, Abyssinians and Atjehnese). The battle raged through the night and in the end both the Portuguese galleons and the Atjehnese ship caught fire. One of the Portuguese galleons was able to extinguish the fire on board but the other two ships burnt completely.126 This battle showed that Asian shipwrights were responding positively to the Portuguese naval gunpowder challenge. In 1568, the Achehnese Fleet laid siege to Malacca. The fleet comprised some 346 ships. Long, galley-type oared ships dominated in the fleet. According to one contemporary author, the fleet comprised three large galleys from Malabar, three bastardas galleys, 60 fustas and galeotas, 200 lancharas/lancaran, 80 baloes/balang and two large champanas loaded with ammunition. A lancaran was a swift, local ship propelled by oars and sails and with a quarter rudder. The lancarans were taller than the galleys but equalled them in length. Some of the lancarans had two rows of oars each. The lancarans and balangs were rounder and larger local vessels of the galley class, while the fustas and galeotas were small galleys similar to the Mediterranean galley. These ships were products of Portuguese and Ottoman Turkish influence in the eastern part of the Indian Ocean.127 They were one-, two- or three-masted. Most ships had central stern post rudders and some had South-East Asian double-quarter rudders. A three-mast ship, which had a sport quarter rudder, was the Acehnese flag ship. However, Atjeh was not a major Asian power and Portugal’s days of supremacy were also numbered. The Estado da India (the State of India) until 1571 included all the Portuguese possessions between Sofala and Macao.128 There was no joint Asian front against the Portuguese. In 1582, Akbar contemplated an anti-Ottoman alliance with the Portuguese. The Mughal Emperor was ready to finance a joint Mughal– Portuguese campaign against the Ottomans.129 From October 1584, a Mughal ambassador was permanently stationed in Goa. In 1587, Akbar made another attempt to form a Mughal–Portuguese anti-Ottoman alliance. In response, the Ottoman Sultan ordered the governors of Egypt and Basra to send 15 and 5 galleys immediately to Yemen as a countermeasure in case a joint Mughal– Portuguese fleet appeared in the Persian Gulf or in the Red Sea region. In the end, nothing happened.130

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The maritime scenario in South-East Asia remained in turmoil. And small indigenous polities created enough trouble for the Portuguese and the Dutch. One wonders that even a small Ottoman fleet could have tipped the balance against the West Europeans. The eastern Indian Ocean remained a case of lost opportunity for the Ottomans to challenge Western maritime hegemony in the rim lands of Asia. In 1613–1620, Johore, Pahang, Kedah and Perak were conquered by Sultan Iskander Muda (1607–1636) of Acheh. For a century before 1629, the Sultanate of Acheh in north Sumatra was the most powerful indigenous state on either side of the Malacca Strait. The Achinese expedition against Malacca in 1627 was defeated by Francisco Coutinho del Sem, and that of 1629 was annihilated in the Duyong River near Malacca by Nuno Alvares Botelho. The 1629 expedition cost the Achinese some 19,000 men and all their ships and artillery stores. The fleets of Patani and Johore also assisted the Portuguese during the 1629 expedition.131

Conclusion The building and maintenance of naval power in the long run depends on three factors: strategic rationale (or presence of strategic threat), economic motivation (pressure exerted by commercial groups for conducting overseas trade) and the presence of human and non-human capital (e.g. timber, copper, iron). The British maritime enterprise was aided by the enclosures of common land for sheep herding, which dispossessed many agriculturists who then became sailors. The fishing fleet of the Dutch functioned as a nursery and a pool for trained seamen required by their trans-oceanic shipping.132 No such imperatives operated in case of the major Asian polities. To sum up, despite the availability of raw materials for building ships, the Mughal polity being a land empire did not pursue seriously the task of constructing a blue-water navy. Neither the Mughals nor the Manchus or the Safavids, at least until 1700, were seriously threatened by hostile maritime fleets. Unlike Britain or the Netherlands, the economies of the four Asian empires were not dependent on maritime trade. The four empires under consideration were agrarian bureaucratic empires. The bulk of their income came from agricultural taxes and most of the populace were also engaged in agriculture. About 80 per cent of the Persian and 90 per cent of the Mughal empires’ populace were engaged in agriculture and related activities.133 The large land empires had vast space for agricultural expansion. Reclaiming waste and fallow land remained profitable.

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Furthermore, the Mughals, Safavids, Ottomans and the Mings/Manchus had ‘live’ land frontiers threatened by the steppe nomads and other settled states. Still, among the four Asian empires, the achievements of the Ottomans as regards naval affairs were most creditable. This was because the hinterland around Constantinople (the core of the empire) was surrounded by sea on several sides. And furthermore, the Ottomans, unlike the other three Asian polities, were able to utilize those communities with maritime experience who inhabited the Anatolian and Maghrib coastlines. However, the Ottomans could not sustain their naval supremacy either in the Mediterranean or in the Persian Gulf region, because they were attempting the impossible task of simultaneously becoming a continental as well as an oceanic power. Spain also followed a somewhat similar policy and went bankrupt in the end, despite having access to gold and silver from the New World. And after the 1550s, Ottoman attention shifted from the Indian Ocean to east-central Europe. And from circa 1650 onwards, the Manchu Navy stagnated due to the lack of any maritime threat. Had Japan, instead of turning its back on the world, continued to pose a maritime threat to the Manchu Empire, then the Manchu politico-military establishment would have been forced to provide resources to the navy, which might have innovated and expanded rather than going into hibernation. Here, Paul Kennedy’s argument that the presence of threat results in military innovation or the necessity of a challenge–response dynamic for continuous military improvement seems to hold sway.134 Polities with an oceanic navy may decline and can even be conquered by a major land-based power. One example is Portugal, which, despite having an ocean-going navy, was taken over by Spain, a larger land power. The transoceanic shipping of the Iberian powers declined during the last quarter of the sixteenth century and then dropped rapidly between 1610 and 1640. The Dutch filled this vacuum.135 And then the Dutch, with their ocean-going navy lost their supremacy in the face of opposition from Britain and France. The absence of an ocean-going navy does not mean that a polity is militarily weak. In fact, large landed empires at times may not require a blue-water navy at all. Take, for instance, Muscovy. Its navy was miniscule. But, by the early eighteenth century, Muscovy was the most important player in east Europe and in the Ukrainian steppe. However, unlike Muscovy, the Mughal and Qing/Manchu empires had long coastlines with several warm-water ports. And the undefended coastlines of Persia, Mughal India and China were indeed vulnerable to maritime intrusions by the West European powers. Both the Mughals and Ottomans tried to co-opt the corsairs/pirates within their fledgling navies. However, the Ottomans were

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more successful compared with the Mughals in this regard. Nadir Shah and Aurangzeb realized the importance of sea power and attempted to build oceangoing navies. But, their attempts were too late and too little. Both had to deal with the overriding importance of land frontiers. Furthermore, after their death, there was neither institutional, commercial nor social support for sustaining the scheme of state-sponsored navies. Moreover, after the death of these two ‘great rulers’, their empires started declining. Having assessed the navies of the major Asian powers, one could argue that the Western maritime nations had a definite technological and organizational advantage in the sphere of sea power vis-à-vis the Asian ‘majors’ from the late sixteenth century onwards. One might accept that early modern West Europe initiated a revolution in naval affairs, at least on the high seas if not in coastal waters. This development allowed the Western maritime powers to patrol the oceanic highways of the world and to garner the lucrative trade of the Indian Ocean. However, the presence of superior navies capable of oceanic power projection does not automatically mean that the sedentary land empires of Asia would fall like ninepins. And even small Asian coastal powers like Acheh were able to pose a threat to the Portuguese settlements. In reply, the Portuguese had to continuously upgrade the defensive systems of their coastal settlements. For power projection into the interior of Asia from the coast, the Western maritime powers had to raise large armies for fighting on land. The British completed this task successfully by raising a colonial army from the Indians in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The intrusion of the Western maritime powers into the rim lands of Eurasia was also facilitated by steppe nomadic invasions of the Mughal and Safavid empires, and the economic crisis that had gripped these Asian powers by the mid-eighteenth century.136 Lastly, China, South Asia and the Ottoman Empire were afflicted by naval piracy. In the cases of China and Ottoman Turkey, pirates even attacked coastal cities. Although Britain and Spain also had to tackle piracy, their coastlines were not afflicted by sea pirates. In fact, the Royal Navy fought pirate ships on the open sea partly with battleships. So battleships, which were elements for projecting power across the oceans, were also suited for checking ocean piracy in the Atlantic. One should note that the pirate ships in the Atlantic also were smaller and less heavily armoured than the ships of the line. Nonetheless, the pirate ships were more manoeuvrable and were of shallower draft. They were useful for commercial raiding. To tackle them, the Royal Navy had lighter ships like sloops, frigates and ketches.137 In contrast, the motivation for the Asian sedentary powers was to establish anti-piracy coastal units rather than blue-water navies.

5

Military Systems and Societies of Asia

Introduction Historians more or less agree that West Europe had a unique culture that aided the West European polities in integrating gunpowder weapons successfully within their military systems. For instance, Jeremy Black writes: ‘European-style use of firearms depended on types of drill that relied on patterns of constrained behaviour that in part reflected an ethic of self-constraint and a mechanistic aesthetic that were particularly developed in European culture’.1 John A. Lynn II, in a similar vein, asserts that the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century West European monarchs, taking into account social prejudice and cultural predilections, crafted a culture of war that can be termed ‘battle culture of forbearance’.2 The issue here is not to debate on whether or not West Europe possessed a pro-gunpowder culture in the early modern era, but to see how the four different Asian cultures interacted with gunpowder technology. This point is related to the issue of monopoly of violence by the polities. This, in turn, also requires investigation of the social fabric and economic basis of the Asian polities. The dominant interpretation is that the West European polities, unlike their Asian counterparts, were able to obtain a monopoly in regard to the use of organized violence in the public sphere.3 David Ralston asserts that, at least from the eighteenth century onwards, the religious figures in the Ottoman Empire were opposed to copying of Western military and administrative techniques.4 Ralston’s book is partly concerned with modernization (or the lack of it) in the Ottoman armed forces from 1750. In contrast to Ralston, Gabor Agoston asserts that Islam played no key role in shaping the Muslim polities’ (Ottoman Empire and Safavid Persia) response to gunpowder technology.5 So, state structure was probably important. William R. Thompson claims that, along with military power, the availability of local allies, who functioned as military auxiliaries of the Western powers, and the fragile

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state system of the non-Europeans, aided in the rise of the West vis-à-vis the others between 1500 and 1800.6 Then the question that arises is, were the nonWestern polities weak and fragile? One way to evaluate Thompson’s assertion is to study the state–society relationship of the four mainland Asian states by comparing their military capacity. This in turn would require an analysis of the economic and social affairs of the four empires. William H. McNeill, in his global survey of the world since 1000 CE (published in 1983), asserts that the rise of the free-market economy encouraged continuous improvement in economic processes and in the field of the weaponry-industrial infrastructure of the West European powers since the turn of the last millennium. As a point of contrast to the market economy and open society of West Europe, McNeill posits the case of China. Despite massive progress in certain sectors, writes McNeill, a command economy and the dominance of the mandarins (instead of overseas merchants as in the West) stalled China’s progress, especially in matters of overseas commerce and shipbuilding.7 Brian M. Downing in an article suggests that pre-modern constitutional arrangements (feudal assemblies, local governments and town charters), agrarian changes (commercialization of agriculture) and military pressure shaped the divergent trajectories of the various West European states. A militarily powerful state might have possessed a liberal constitution (Britain) or an absolute authoritarian structure (Prussia). In early modern Europe, there was equilibrium between the crown and the nobles. Constitutional trends were strengthened by the rise of the burgher class. Downing claims that the reach of the state in China and Japan was more powerful than in early modern European states. Autonomous towns, local government and customary laws did not emerge in these countries. Imperial whims and arbitrary taxation characterized the governance of China and Japan. Downing hints that the rise of effective infantry power in West Europe resulted somewhat in the increasing diffusion of power at the local level. To conclude, a unique alliance between burghers, gentry and the crown, along with pre-modern constitutionalism, resulted in the particular manner of West European development.8 It is to be noted that both McNeill and Downing emphasize the importance of burghers in the unfolding of the ‘unique’ West European political economy. McNeill, Downing and David Landes accuse the absence of a free-market economy and the presence of an overbearing Chinese state as the causes of economic and technological stagnation in the Middle Kingdom. Landes, however, also adds that the values and structure of Chinese society caused abandonment of westward maritime exploration.9

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In the last two decades of the twentieth century, a group of scholars dealing with state formation in West Europe introduced the concept of fiscal militarism. They argue that the emergence of a military-fiscal state explains the transition to modernity in state structure during the early modern era. The characteristic feature of the military-fiscal state was revenue maximization in order to maintain large, capital-intensive armed forces. Military struggle was the principal imperative behind the emergence of military-fiscalism. The foremost proponent of the military-fiscal state is John Brewer. In his case study of Britain, Brewer emphasizes the role of banks, public debt backed by parliament and especially taxation of capitalist agriculture in generating wealth for the country, which in turn was used for maintaining the armed forces of the nation.10 Generally, modern scholarship in a way implicitly follows the Hegelian model: China could not develop because historically it has had an extraordinarily strong statist tradition, and in South Asia the state has been very weak. In the Indian subcontinent, due to the philosophy of ‘otherwordliness’ (an effect of Vedic metaphysical thinking?), society was so strong that the polity was almost reduced to the level of being a theatre state.11 An attempt to analyse the nature of the comparatively weaker (in contrast to the West European polities) medieval Asian empires is made by Jos Gommans, who writes that the period between 1500 and 1800 witnessed the rise of the stable and powerful frontier empires of the Ottomans, Mughals and the Manchus. Influx of cash and bullion from sedentary societies, which these regimes controlled, as well as access to Central Asian horses, enabled these polities to project power over long distances. He categorizes these polities as post-nomadic trans-frontier states.12 In another article, Gommans claims that circa 1000 CE could be categorized as a cut-off date because, around that time, trans-regional nomadic empires emerged in Asia. The polities of the Latin West were able to ward off nomadic warriors, but in the Middle East, China and South Asia, mounted nomadic warriors carved out principalities over sedentary societies. West Europe was somewhat saved by the physical geography of intermittent forest, which did not favour pastoralism as practised by the warrior migrants from the Inner Asian arid zones. The absence of nomadic intrusion enabled the settled West European authorities to establish centralized governments with well-developed rigid borders. Through administrative measures and ideological hegemony, West Europe was able to criminalize and marginalize the feuding tendencies of its warrior aristocracies, and the latter group channeled their energies outwards – against the ‘others’. In contrast, in South Asia, the warrior aristocracies enjoyed shared rights with the sovereign. And this in turn made the South Asian states

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comparatively weaker.13 An assessment of the four Asian empires’ economies and social structures, and their interlinks with their respective military systems, is attempted below.

State, economy, society and armed forces of China Peter Lorge asserts that most of the dynasties that ruled China were conquest dynasties and political power was created by war.14 The Ming Army comprised hereditary military personnel, who were assigned land in the military colonies. They cultivated the land under the supervision of hereditary military officers, and detachments for active service were mobilized from this pool hereditary soldierfarmers.15 The military offices were divided into two categories: hereditary offices and circulating offices. Hereditary offices were lower-ranking ones and these positions were handed down from father to son without any diminution of rank. In contrast, in the Mughal Empire, a mansabdar’s son was appointed at a lower grade than his deceased father. Nevertheless, it should be noted that the mansabdars held high offices equivalent to the circulating offices of the Ming Empire. Circulating offices were high-ranking ones, filled by special selection from among the holders of hereditary offices. The pool of hereditary officers was supplemented after 1478 by officers recruited through open competitive examinations, which were superficially comparable to a civil examinations leading to a military doctorate. From 1504 onwards, such examinations were held every third year. Military heirs had to qualify through special tests before they succeeded to their fathers’ posts. Sons of military officials were not excluded from candidacy in the civil examinations. And unlike the Mughal Empire, transfer from civil to military service and vice versa was uncommon. Due to Confucian values, the prestige of the Ming military officers was lower compared with the civilian officials. In the late Ming period, there were 100,000 military officials.16 The Ming military establishment comprised four million men.17 Since most of the soldiers were drawn from the peasant communities and the agrarian economy supported the military infrastructure, military strength and the agrarian sector were interrelated. The annual revenue of the Ming Empire during the late sixteenth century was estimated at 37 million taels of silver. In reality, much less was collected. Some scholars assert that the Mings suffered from under-taxation.18 However, Wang Yu-Chuan writes that for more than 50 years before the fall of the Ming Dynasty, the agrarian economy of China was bled dry by special land taxes

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(required to finance and provision the armies fighting the Manchus in southern Manchuria) levied on the peasantry. Along with excessive taxation, corruption in the levying of taxes provoked mass peasant uprising throughout China. In the end, a peasant army captured Beijing, resulting in the suicide of the Ming Emperor. This allowed the Manchus to move into China proper.19 Yu-Chuan (in the case of Ming China) and Irfan Habib (in the case of late Mughal India) assert that regressive taxation resulted in massive peasant uprisings, which in turn caused agrarian collapse and facilitated the fall of these two agrarian empires.20 One scholar argues that economic-cum-ecological disorders facilitated the collapse of the Ming Empire. The 1630s and 1640s saw drought, flood, locust attacks, famine, disease and monetary fluctuations in eastern China. As a result, grain prices rose very sharply. Climatic changes adversely affected agricultural production. The global wind and rainfall patterns altered and east China experienced very hot and dry conditions while some regions suffered from unusual cold and dampness.21 By the late sixteenth century, some of the irrigation systems had deteriorated and the number of absentee landlords (especially in north China) had increased. The number of households entering into servile relationships with powerful families continued to rise. Since the Ming polity had failed to defend its northern frontier, rural tax ation and corvée increased. Resentment and alienation in the countryside resulted in rural rebellions, which further weakened the economic and military basis of the Ming Empire.22 A cyclical theory of climatic changes causing warfare over redistribution of resources has been put forward by a group of scholars. This theory asserts that the frequency of war, resulting in dynastic changes, increased during the cooling phase. Reduction in thermal energy caused shrinkage in agricultural production because the biological inability of certain grains to effectively withstand lower temperature caused lower yields. South-East China constituted the major ricegrowing area. Double-cropping of rice was practised in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River. However, between 1620 and 1720, the doublecropping system collapsed due to cooler temperatures. Between 1620 and 1640, the earth’s climate fell to its lowest temperatures since 1000 CE. Cold periods were associated with huge climatic variations like drought, flood, extreme summer heat, etc., which further disturbed agricultural patterns and added to demographic stress. The five worst consecutive years of drought in China occurred between 1637 and 1641. One might argue that this resulted in massive peasant rebellion. Climatic cooling also had adverse effects on the northern steppes of China. A drop of 2ºC in air temperature shortened the grass-growing season by

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40 days. Cooling changed the vegetative composition of the grasslands, resulting in forage shortages, which caused the death of 90 per cent of domestic animals annually. This in turn triggered the migration of the nomads (Jurchens) en masse to Ming China. It is to be noted that one million Jurchens migrated lock, stock and barrel from north-east Korea to northern China during the coldest period of the Little Ice Age. However, the Chinese economy recovered in the eighteenth century with the beginning of climatic warming from 1740 onwards.23 And the Manchu army also recorded victories from the 1740s. One might speculate that the mid-seventeenth century also experienced the levelling of agricultural returns in Mughal India despite the expansion of available arable land. From the 1650s, massive peasant rebellion began to threaten the Mughal Empire. In fact, the rise of the Marathas and Sikhs could be categorized as a peasant uprising.24 The extraordinary energy of Aurangzeb and expansion of the Mughal Empire in Deccan probably delayed the decline and fall of the Mughals from 1707. Between 1700 and 1715, the population of France fluctuated between 18 and 21.2 million.25 As a point of comparison, during the same period, the corresponding figures for the Safavid Empire, Ottoman Empire and Mughal India were 9, 30 and 150 million, respectively.26 Between 1600 and 1790, the population of China increased from 150 to 313 million. And between 1661 and 1812, the cultivated acreage in China rose by 44 per cent.27 Most of the populace inhabited the flat, fertile north China plain along the lower reaches of the Yellow River. The river valleys and narrow coastal belt were densely populated and supported by intense agricultural activity. The vast arid territory, which included Xinjiang, Tibet and Qinghai, was sparsely populated. Except for small-scale irrigation along this oasis, most of the population of western China, including Mongolia, followed pastoral nomadism.28 The Qing common soldiers were paid partly in food rations and partly in cash, but their officers received monetary salaries. The high-ranking military officials were supposed to spend part of their pay in repairing the soldiers’ weapons and equipment, and also to give occasional awards to brave and enterprising personnel. The Bannermen and the Green Standard soldiers had to use a portion of their cash stipends to purchase and repair some of their weapons and equipment. Soldiers were responsible for purchasing nonfirearm weapons such as bows, arrows, knives and equipment like armour and arrowhead bags. In peacetime, despite periodic examination by their superior officers, soldiers did not attend to their weapons and equipment properly.29 The problems associated with the Qing military system were administrative in nature and had little to do with a weak economy.

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Initially, the Manchu rulers, just after their conquest of China, allotted land to the peasants and reduced land taxation. One of the strongest Manchu Emperors was Kang Hsi. He was born in 1654 and died at the age of 68. His mother was from the Tung family that had lived in Liaotung and served as Ming officials before they became Bannermen under Nurhaci. Kang Hsi’s reign started from 1669. From the 1690s onwards, he systematically concentrated power in his own hands. Kang Hsi could be termed the ‘Aurangzeb of the Manchu Empire’. Nevertheless, in Manchu China, unlike in the Mughal Empire, bureaucratic checks were in place on the arbitrary power of the Emperor. Bondservants from the imperial household, who were descendants of Chinese enslaved prior to the Manchu conquest, were appointed to key financial positions. The bondservants used to send confidential reports about the conduct of the officials and economic conditions of the provinces directly to the emperor, bypassing the Grand Secretariat.30 In 1713, under Emperor Kang Hsi, the ‘permanent settlement’ decree assured that in future there would be no variation in either land tax or poll tax.31 Nevertheless, continuing insurgencies throughout the length and breadth of China absorbed much of the energy and military assets of central government, which in turn had adverse effects on the economy and military defence of the empire against external enemies. Some scholars categorize peasant (popular) rebellions into two types: predatory and protective. The predatory form was adopted by peasant communities who found themselves almost destitute and then formed bandit gangs that roamed the countryside and preyed on the comparatively better-off communities. Small bandit groups often coalesced to form super-sized bandit groups or armies. In response to the predatory threat, the better-off communities organized themselves for self-defence. Leadership was provided by the local elites and landowners whose kinsmen, tenants and retainers constituted the nucleus of the protective militia. Such militias often abandoned their home communities and took refuge in defensible terrains such as hilly or mountainous regions, where they constructed fortified encampments. David A. Graff notes that even in these predatory forces, leadership was not in the hands of the ordinary peasants. The leader of a semipermanent bandit gang was generally a literate, ambitious young man from a well-to-do family.32 Both the Mings and Manchus suffered from large-scale insurgencies and had to divert large tranches of troops against the insurgents. Large-scale bandit operations south of Beijing from 1509 onwards resulted in the deployment of troops. However, the counter-insurgency (COIN) operation was successful

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only from 1512.33 To give another example, on 11 April 1528, Wang Yangming/ Wang Shouren (1472–1529), then Supreme Commander of the provinces of Jiangxi, Huguang, Guangdong and Guangxi, issued an order to launch a surprise attack on the Yao bandits in central Guangxi. More than 13,000 soldiers took part in the three-month-long COIN campaign. The net result was some 3,000 bandits dead and 1,000 of their family members captured. In addition, numerous villages were destroyed and thousands of people inhabiting the estabilized zone either drowned or died from starvation. In fact, Wang Yangming was rather an expert in conducting COIN campaigns. In 1517 and 1518, he suppressed a number of uprisings in the provinces of Fujian, Jiangxi, Huguang and Guangdong.34 Ramon H. Myers and Yeh-chien Wang write: ‘The Ching state and society could not maintain these remarkable achievements into the first half of the nineteenth century, when market failure replaced market success, social grievances worsened, and great rebellions spread’.35 One option for the Manchu Empire to reduce pressure on their overstrained agrarian economy was to develop industries. Initially, the Manchu economy performed well. The mining boom during the second quarter of the eighteenth century was partly due to the progressive relaxation of bans on the opening of private mines, and it was accelerated by the rising demand for copper as monetary metal.36 The Manchus, due to the Confucian ethos of their mandarins, did not encourage overseas trade although commerce may be taken as the motor of economic growth. Kenneth Pomeranz argues that until 1800 the caloric intake and life expectancy in China were similar to those of the developed regions of Europe. In fact, in 1750, per capita consumption of tea, sugar and cloth was higher in China than in Europe of 1800. Nonetheless, as, in case of Britain overtaking China in the race for economic growth, ‘geographical luck’ again played an important role. Because most of China’s coal deposits were far away from its core regions, it was uneconomical to utilize this coal due to transportation difficulties. Hence, the technological breakthrough in the use of fossil fuels did not occur in China. In contrast, the coal deposits in Britain were located appropriately for economic use by the fuel-hungry markets. This resulted in the concentration of skilled artisans at certain locations, which in turn resulted in the development of the steam engine, which revolutionized production and transportation. Furthermore, West Europe benefitted from the import of landintensive products from the New World. While Europe imported land-intensive products like food, fibre and building materials, it sold textiles in return. Slavery allowed the West European powers to grow land-intensive products

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cheaply in the sparsely populated New World. This in turn allowed Britain to specialize in manufacturing and commerce, but Manchu China did not have this option. So, from 1750, economic growth in China slowed down. The Manchu bureaucracy attempted to spread textile production throughout the empire and also provide subsidies to the poorer regions.37 Pomeranz writes: ‘The Qing tried to spread rural industry, especially textile production, across the entire Chinese landscape … their vision emphasized the widest possible geographic dispersion of rural industry, rather than allocative efficiency and GNP maximization’.38 All these initiatives slowed regional specialization due to the dispersal of protoindustrialization. The concept of geographical chance is becoming popular among a section of economic historians. Terje Tvedt asserts that favourable geographical factors enabled Britain to utilize water power for transportation and for the running of machinery. Such natural conditions were absent in China and India. Without the utilization of water power, which indeed was helped by ‘mother nature’, Britain could not have industrialized before the coming of the railways. In China and India, monsoon rains made large parts of the road network unusable for a considerable part of the year. Furthermore, road transportation in the premodern era was not as economical as water transportation. In contrast, England had an unique system of easily navigable waterways. Furthermore, both coal and iron deposits were available within the ambit of the water transport system in England to a greater extent compared with China and India. The rainfall patterns of both China and India caused extreme annual and seasonal variations in river discharges. Long, dry spells adversely affected the supply of water in the gargantuan canal systems in China. Furthermore, the manpower and economic resources required for maintaining an artificial canal system were economically prohibitive and, one might add, dependent on the stability of the political order. Along the 4,000 km of China’s main coastline, the rivers, unlike in Britain, offered few outlets to the sea. The rivers of China and India, frequently fed by the monsoons and Himalayan glaciers, caused catastrophic floods that proved detrimental to the commercial centres located in the fertile deltaic plains. Frequent shifting of river channels and sediment deposits in harbours were further impediments to the utilization of water power for China and India. Onesixth of India was drought prone and one-eighth of the Indian subcontinent was flood prone. In the end, the ‘unruly’ river systems of China and India, unlike in Britain, deprived these two countries of a trigger effect for industrialization.39 Interestingly, Pomeranz stresses the egalitarian (or quasi-premodern socialist) ideology of the state and its intervention as being among

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the factors obstructing capital accumulation. Sevket Pamuk, in the context of the Ottoman Empire, notes: ‘ … rather than reinforcing incentives towards productive activity, states generally act as instruments to transfer resources from one group to another or to ensure their own survival. Politics and political struggles can be detrimental to economic growth’.40 But, what about the Mughal Empire, whose population was just below that of China and with agricultural productivity equivalent to, if not greater than, the river valleys of China? Irfan Habib in an article states that the productivity of Indian agriculture during the seventeenth century was greater than that of Britain. Nevertheless, the primitive accumulation of capital required for the genesis of capitalism did not occur due to the parasitic nature of the Mughal ruling class.41 How and why the Mughal Empire’s strategic managers were parasites is of course not explained.

State, society, economy and the military establishment in the Mughal Empire In general, the historiography of the Mughal Empire is characterized by debate between the proponents of the weak-state versus supporters of strong-state thesis. The proponents of the weak-state thesis claim that personalized relations characterized the Mughal domain. In fact, M. N. Pearson claims that the personal relationship between the Padshah and his 8,000 mansabdars (imperial office holders), who had a stake in the empire, was the principal feature of the Mughal polity. The rest of the society was organized along local clan groupings.42 Naturally, such an empire was built on quicksand. In contrast, Indian Muslim Marxist historians, known as the Aligarh School, assert that rather than personalized patronage ties between the Mughal Emperor and his mansabdars, bureaucratic institutional relations bonded imperial office holders to central government. The mansabdari system evolved over time and was an amalgam of bureaucratic institutions and personalized ties. And a personalized autocratic regime is not necessarily a weak state, one such example being Muscovy. The same question could also be asked about the Habsburg Empire. Exactly how many thousands of people in the sprawling multi-ethnic and multi-linguistic Habsburg territories had a stake in the Vienna Government? The scholar Marshall Poe argues that Muscovy, during the mid-seventeenth century, experienced a Military Revolution. He claims that as in West Europe, the Military Revolution in Muscovy was accompanied by expansion of written procedures regarding matters military. Administrative and logistical activities

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became complicated and records of such activities were kept by the literate clerks. By 1650, in Muscovy, governmental documentary production registered a quantum leap. From the standpoint of document production, especially in matters of revenue management, the Mughal Empire could clearly be categorized as a ‘Paper Empire’. In fact Emperor Akbar during the second half of the sixteenth century transformed the semi-nomadic warriors with their armed retainers into a sort of service nobility by introducing the mansabdari system. Audit and account keeping of land revenue assessment and collection was initiated with the aid of Hindu writers, bankers and financiers. Poe continues by saying that another index of the unfolding Military Revolution was that a simplistic society was transformed into a complex one, with many functional groups and hierarchical boundaries (as happened in seventeenth-century Muscovy).43 Medieval India’s rural society was indeed complex. One of the crucial lynchpins of the land revenue system of Mughal India was the zamindars. There were three types of zamindar: autonomous chieftains, intermediary zamindars and primary zamindars (rich peasants, also known as khud khasta). The autonomous chieftains in the early medieval period were known as rais, ranas or rawats, while the small intermediaries were khots, muqaddams or chaudhuris. The lands of the empire were divided into khalisa and jagirs. The jagirs were assigned to the mansabdars for maintaining cavalry contingents (jagirs were somewhat equivalent to the tuyuls of the Safavids), and the khalisa (crown land) was supervised directly by central government. The khalisa land was equivalent to khassa/khasa land in the Safavid Empire. The revenues from the khalisa land went to the treasury of central government. Both the khalisa and jagir lands had zamindars. These chieftains were hereditary autonomous rulers of particular tracts and enjoyed sovereign power. Many of the chieftains were absorbed into the Mughal ruling class by the granting of mansabdari rank. With the awarding of mansabdari rank, a chieftain also acquired jagirs, the income from which exceeded that from their patrimonial holdings. For instance, in the seventeenth century, a mansabdar holding a rank of 5,000 sowars would be assigned a jagir, which yielded an annual revenue of Rs 830,000. In addition to extra income, imperial service enabled these chieftains to recruit their own retainers and clansmen for maintaining the cavalry contingents required by mansabdari regulations.44 Each mansabdar had two ranks: zat and sawar/sowar. The zat (personal) rank reflected the mansabdar’s position in the imperial hierarchy while the sawar rank reflected his obligation to maintain the required number of cavalry in lieu of the jagir assigned to him.45 Thus, a particular mansabdar might have a

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higher zat rank (e.g. 2,000) and a lower sawar rank (e.g. 1,000). This meant that the mansabdar had to maintain 1,000 horsemen, but his personal pay would be higher than that assigned to an official who maintained 1,000 cavalry. The jagirs, being service assignments, were neither hereditary nor permanent.46 There were frequent transfer of mansabdars and, after the death of a particular mansabdar, his jagir was reassigned to another mansabdar.47 From the time of Sher Shah and Akbar, land revenue was extracted in cash, which reflected monetization of the economy.48 The peasants had to sell their grain in order to pay the revenue in cash.49 A silver coinage was established in 1540, with most of the silver being imported from Europe, which in turn had acquired silver from Spanish America. Most of the silver entered Mughal India through ports in Gujarat, and the Ahmedabad mint was one of the principal silver coin production units in Mughal India.50 Gold and silver coins were issued from the Mughal mints located at various cities throughout the empire: Lahore, Delhi, Agra, Ahmedabad, etc. The imperial mint master at Fatehpur Sikri was in charge of supervising all the mints. One estimate of Akbar’s revenue during the period 1595–1596 was 99 million silver rupees. Of the total Mughal budget, the imperial household consumed only about 5 per cent of the budget. The ahadis (central standing force under the direct pay of the Emperor) swallowed up 10 per cent of the budget. The rest of the budget (i.e. about 81 million rupees) went to the mansabdars. The mansabdars liked to be paid in jagirs rather than in cash. It should be noted that around 1600, only 30 per cent of the assessed land remained under direct crown control, the remainder being assigned to the mansabdars. The mansabdar received the jagir(s) (revenue assignment) in lieu of salary which, however, was not fief. The jagirs were not hereditary and, unlike the iqtas, were transferable. Moreover, a single mansabdar might receive several jagirs scattered around the empire to prevent the emergence of a mansabdar with a territorial power base. Theoretically, the Mughal budget was huge but, in reality, about 70 per cent of the income was channelled away from the imperial treasury into the pockets of the mansabdars, who collectively as a group had financial and military strength to challenge the imperial centre. Abul Fazl speaks of the imperial karkhanas. But, the Emperor’s arsenal remained quite small. During 1595–1596, the annual expense of the imperial arsenal was only 0.5 million rupees. As a point of comparison, the collective annual expenditure of the mansabdars’ cavalry contingents was 51 million rupees.51 It would be wrong to assume that all the European polities were paragons of centralization. As late as 1782, 26 per cent of the gross revenue in the Habsburg Empire was either absorbed by collection costs or retained by the provincial estates.52

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In Shah Jahan’s reign (Emperor, 1627–1558), the mansabdars absorbed about 82 per cent of the land revenue income of the state.53 In 1680, Muscovy defence expenditure comprised 62 per cent of the state’s income, and this had risen to 63.3 per cent by 1762. Both periods represented a time of war. In general, Muscovy spent some 40 per cent of its income on defence.54 On the twentieth year of Shah Jahan’s reign, there were 8,000 mansabdars plus their cavalry sowars.55 Besides the contingent of the mansabdars, the standing army under direct control of the crown during Shah Jahan’s reign comprised some 7,000 ahadis and mounted musketeers, 40,000 foot soldiers, gunners, musketeers and archers. The annual expenditure of the Emperor’s standing force totalled about Rs 100 lakhs.56 As a point of comparison, Habsburg Emperor Ferdinand I (Emperor 1558–1564) had 9,000 soldiers under his direct command.57 The Mughal emperors faced continuous pressure from their nobility to raise the rank and number of mansabs. Sometimes political conditions also forced the Emperors’ hand. Increase in the number and ranks of mansabdars created fiscal pressure on the Mughal Empire, especially when its agrarian resources were not expanding at the same rate.58 Circa 1600, the Mughal Empire controlled 3.2 million square kilometres with a population of about 150 million.59 Agriculture constituted more than 50 per cent of the Mughal Empire’s gross domestic product (GDP).60 The Hindu bankers served as lenders of cash and credit, receivers and remitters of land revenue as well as financiers and tax farmers. The nobles obtained credit at a high rate from the bankers by providing their jagirs as security.61 In the seventeenth century, the Mughal economy suffered from less a level of inflation lower than 1%. Both population and the total area under cultivation increased slowly. Nevertheless, Mughal fiscal resources did not increase in real terms.62 Between 1630 and 1670, agricultural yields declined in Deccan due to famines, plague, failure of the monsoon, overexploitation of agricultural resources and continuous warfare. The jagirs in Deccan, compared with those in northern India, not only yielded less revenue, but also there was tension between the northern Indian Mughal nobles and Deccani Mughal nobles (those who previously had been in the service of the Deccani sultanates), in regard to how many jagirs would be allocated to which group.63 Worse, raids by Maratha light cavalry resulted in further reduction in revenue from the jagirs in Deccan. To conclude, from 1700 onwards, even though Aurangzeb and his weak successors realized the importance of cast iron field artillery, iron shot for siege artillery and flintlock musket-equipped infantry, the mansabdars and their retainers prevented the Mughal central government from replacing their cavalry

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contingents and jagirs with the new armed structure based on cash payments. So, the collective interests of the mansabdars (somewhat like the Janissary corps’ corporate interest) prevented modernization and centralization of the Mughal Army. Furthermore, continuing peasant insurgency sapped the financial and military strength of the Mughals. The Maratha movement, which initially started as a peasant rebellion in the shape of an armed insurgency during the mid-seventeenth century, had gradually escalated into a full-scale conventional threat by the late seventeenth century. Continuous fighting with the Marathas had drained the strength of the Mughals long before Nadir Shah vanquished the Mughal Army at Karnal. While the Marathas in the reign of Shah Jahan functioned as mercenaries of the Deccani sultanates, in Aurangzeb’s reign they held the ambition of founding an independent kingdom under their charismatic leader, Shivaji. Shivaji expanded his realm at the cost of the declining Bijapur and Golkunda sultanates. When the Mughal war of succession broke out in the last days of Shah Jahan, Shivaji attacked the Mughal dominions. When the Mughals retaliated against Shivaji, in order to maintain a balance of power in Deccan, Bijapur and Golkunda supported the Marathas. The core of Shivaji’s army comprised peasants of the Maratha and Kunbi castes. The same Maratha peasants joined the EIC’s Bombay Army during the eighteenth century.64 In May 1663, Shivaji launched a night attack against the camp of Shaista Khan, the Mughal Subadar of Deccan. The Subadar himself was slightly wounded and his son Abul Fath Khan died in this encounter. As a mark of disfavour, Aurangzeb transferred the Subadar to Bengal and the viceroyalty of Deccan was given to Prince Muhammad Muazzam. On 12 June 1665, Shivaji submitted to the Mughal Governor of Deccan Raja Jai Singh. Shivaji surrendered 23 of his forts and in return his son Sambhaji was appointed a panchhazari (mansabdar of 5,000 troopers) and Jai Singh was rewarded with the rank of 7,000 (du aspa, sih aspa). Since Adil Khan of Bijapur aided Shivaji when the latter was fighting the Mughals, Aurangzeb ordered Jai Singh to move against Bijapur.65 However, Shivaji proved disloyal. Just before the death of Shivaji in 1680, the Maratha threat had escalated from unconventional (armed insurgency) to conventional (posed by an emerging state). By then, Shivaji controlled an area of about 50,000 square miles, or about 4.1 per cent of the whole subcontinent. His revenue amounted one-fifth to one-sixth of the Mughal Empire under Aurangzeb.66 In addition to fighting the Marathas, the Mughals also had to conduct lowintensity operations against the ‘bandits’. Most of these were impoverished peasants, demobilized soldiers and deserters from the Mughal and various

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sultanates’ armies, as well as ex-officials of the above-mentioned polities. These bandit leaders controlled infantry, cavalry and artillery and possessed fortresses made of stone and mortars. In fact, during the first decade of the eighteenth century, some of the private soldiers maintained by these bandits were equipped with double-chambered muskets, each of which was capable of firing a second round without reloading.67 Imperial campaigns against the peasant rebellions (leadership provided by the zamindars and rich peasant leaders) were frequently led by the Faujdars and Subadars, making up a force exceeding 10,000 cavalry and several artillery pieces. Artillery was required to smash the earthen fortresses of the armed peasantry.68 The Mughal Empire collapsed due to managerial-cum-military failure rather than deep-seated economic causes. The agrarian crisis, to a great extent, was a managerial one. In fact, as the Mughal Empire declined, economic growth continued in India (at least in certain regions like Bengal, Punjab, and parts of south India). Though the economy was growing, the Mughal central government failed to tap the extra cream from the rural intermediaries and the merchants. When Bengal came under British domination in the late 1750s, the Bengal economy was dynamic. This was despite the fact that there had been no shift in the use of fossil fuels. Unlike in China, Indian coal deposits in Bihar and West Bengal were near the economic growth centres. Still, large-scale utilization of coal did not occur in pre-modern India because it was not necessary. Eastern India had abundant wood and manpower resources. What was applicable in the case of Qing China or eighteenth-century Britain was not applicable to eighteenth-century India. In the ultimate analysis, politics and the military are the key drivers of history.

State, society, economy and the military establishment in Safavid Persia Despite the fact that gunpowder was brought to Central Asia from China by the Mongols and the close proximity of Persia to Central Asia, the Persians had not accepted gunpowder weapons systematically before their defeat by the Ottomans at Chaldiran. This was probably because of the tribal character of the Safavid polity and the dominance of the Qizilbash tribal chieftains. The tribal character of the state was transformed into a bureaucratic one under Shah Abbas I. Let us take a look at what happened. A contemplative spiritual movement was pioneered by the eponymous Shaikh Safi al Din (d. 1334), whose followers were mostly Sunnis. In 1447, due

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to an influx of new elements from various Turkish tribes, the order embraced a new militant messianic religio-political discourse. Shia extremism, which grew under Shaikh Junaid, began to acquire quasi-divine attributes and foster military aims. Early support for the Safavid dynasty came from local Turcoman and Talish tribesmen. During their campaigns in the Caucasus, Junaid and Shaikh Haidar depended on the fanatic Shia supporters from Anatolia and Sham (Syria). Junaid (d. 1460), his son Haidar (d. 1488) and the latter’s eldest son, Sultan Ali (d. 1494), all died in the battlefields. After Sultan Ali’s death, his infant brother Ismail (b. 1487) fled from Ardabil to Gilan and returned in 1499, aged 12, with supporters from the tribes of Qajar, Qaramanlu, Khnisulu, Qipchaq, Shamlu and Afshar. At Erjinjan in Anatolia, he was joined by Sufi cavalry from the tribes of Ustaliju/Ustajlu, Rumlu, Takalu, Dulqadir and Varsaq. Ismail was crowned Shah in 1501 at Tabriz.69 Ismail, in order to protect the Shia order from Sunni Ottomans in the west and the Sunni Uzbeks in the north-east, invited a large number of Shiaite clerics, who were resident in Arabic-speaking lands, to Persia in order to promulgate the faith’s doctrine and practices. Ismail projected himself as the direct descendant of the Shia Imam and chief defender of this faith.70 The Qizilbash tribes, who constituted the core of Shah Ismail’s support base, were mostly Turcoman and were rewarded with land grants. These tribes could not return to Asia Minor after the Ottoman Sultan Selim’s massacre of the Shias in Asia Minor in 1514.71 In the early Safavid era, the Ustajlu and Shamlu tribes (the latter with White Sheep connections) dominated. The religious discourse in the post-Chaldiran era was marked by increasingly overt Safavid identification with Twelver Shism, and especially its messianic dimensions.72 The pre-Safavid polities in Persia, like the White Sheep and Black Sheep confederations, used the Tajiks (Persians) to run their civil bureaucracy and the Turcoman tribes for the military. This tradition to a great extent continued in the Safavid era. Most of the Vizirs (equivalent to Mughal Wazirs and the Ottoman Grand Vizir) and the holders of the post of Comptroller General in Safavid Persia were Tajiks. In May 1524, Ismail passed away at Tabriz following a fever.73 The devotional zeal of the Sufi Qizilbash dissipated after the defeat at Chaldiran (1514). The attitude of absolute autocracy remained with the Safavid rulers as a legacy of their role as the murshid-i kamil. Under Ismail I, the provincial governments were mostly autonomous of central government, because most provincial governors, who were Qizilbash officers, held land as tuyul assignments. The turbulent period between the death of Shah Tahmasp I (r. 1524–1576) in 1576 and the accession of Shah Abbas (r. 1588–1629) in 1588

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convinced the latter that he must reduce the power of the Qizilbash chieftains in order to maintain his own power.74 Shah Abbas promoted the rise of the ghulams (slaves) in both the civil and military administration in an attempt to curb the power of the Qizilbash chieftains. The ghulams were mostly Georgian and Circassian prisoners who had been converted to Islam. Ghulams were appointed as governors of the khassa provinces, and the revenues from the khassa provinces were collected by the darughas or intendants appointed by the Shah. The money was then remitted to the royal central treasury rather than to the provincial treasury.75 Before Shah Abbas I’s reforms, most of the Safavid Army consisted of Qizilbash cavaliers of the Turkmen chiefs. They were granted tuyul land grants towards maintenance of the cavalry contingents. Shah Abbas I recruited Georgians, Armenians and Circassians in the armed forces and they were organized into regiments of a standing army. The soldiers swore allegiance to the ruler and were paid directly by central government. These men were known as ghulams of the Shah. Instead of land grants, some of these troops were paid from the funds at the disposal of the royal household. Most of the land in the hands of the Turcoman military commanders was transformed to mamalik (crown land), and the taxes and levies from crown lands went to the Shah’s treasury for the maintenance of new contingents.76 Shah Abbas I, in response to the threat posed by the Ottomans and also to ensure the security of the royal throne, reduced the power of the Qizilbash tribal leaders and introduced the tufangchis and Qorchi Corps (Royal Guards). The Qorchi Corps’ personnel were paid directly by the Shah. However, even in the Qorchi Corps, the military posts were hereditary. During the seventeenth century, the Qorchi Corps consisted of about 10,000 men. Though the formation of the Qorchi corps to some extent reduced the power of the Turcoman tribes and the Qizilbash amirs, the Qorchi Corps was still not a standing bureaucratic force due to the operation of the principle of hereditary succession.77 The small number of Qorchi troops (somewhat like the ahadis) shows that both the Mughal Emperors and the Shahs of Persia failed to monopolize royal control over the organs of public violence. Shah Abbas II (1642–1666) continued the policy of reducing the size and power of the Qizilbash contingent, and the land under the control of the Turcoman chieftains. However, reduction in the number of Qizilbash troops was not made good by a corresponding increase in the number of ghulams.78 This was probably due to the economic problems of the Safavid monarchy. Table 5.1 below gives a breakdown of the income of the Safavid royal treasury.

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Table 5.1 Annual income of the Safavid central government Province

Fars

Net Expenditure Net income assessment (in tomans) (in tomans) 300,000

150,000

Kerman

Remarks

150,000 50,000

Mekran

No net income to the royal treasury

Khorasan

No income; central government had to send money to maintain the presence of the state in the region

Part of Mesopotamia, which was under Safavid control

500,000

Kurdistan

30,000

Nahavund, Boorojird, Khonsar and Korumabad

No income

Casbin, Cashan and Zenjan

30,000

Yezd

54,000

Azerbaijan

Central government had to pay in order to maintain its presence

Mazanderan Gilan

15,000 200,000

40,000

160,000

Kermanshah

No income

Total

989,000

Land revenue plus presents and fines imposed

1,500,000

Grand total

2,489,000

Equivalent to 1.5 million pounds sterling

Source: James B. Fraser, An Historical and Descriptive Account of Persia from the Earliest Ages to the Present Time: With a Detailed View of Its Resources, Government, Population, Natural History, and the Character of Its Inhabitants, Particularly of the Wandering Tribes; Including a Description of Afghanistan and Baluchistan (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, Tweeddale Court: MDCCCXXXIV), pp. 296–297.

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Fusion of long-term economic forces (structural factors) with contingent factors (managerial failure on the part of the monarchy) resulted in the fall of the Safavid Dynasty at the beginning of the eighteenth century. The nomadic and semi-pastoralists, numbering about three million people, comprised about one-third of Persia’s population in the early eighteenth century.79 The Safavid economy was structurally unsound. The Safavid Government raised two types of tax: regular and irregular. Regular taxes included imposts on land, livestock, capitation taxes and customs duties on merchandise. Rents from the crown lands constituted one of the principal incomes of the state. On the basis of the rights of proprietors, land could be classified into the following categories: crown/khalisa land; land belonging to private individuals; land granted to charitable and religious institutions (waqf land, which also existed in the Ottoman and Mughal empires and was generally tax free); and land granted by the ruler in lieu of military service. Generally, land tax was onetenth of gross product. Gradually, the government raised the rate of land tax to one-fifth of gross product.80 However, the soil in Persia was not as productive as that of Anatolia – and especially that of north India and the Yellow and Yangtze river valleys of China. Under Shah Abbas I, major irrigation works were undertaken around Isfahan. Most of the industries set up manufactured goods like carpets and other luxuries for court consumption. However, silk was exported to India, the Ottoman Empire and Europe. The Europeans paid for silk with South American silver, which was an important source of royal revenue.81 Legi silk was grown in the Caspian provinces. The best silk was produced in Rasht. Other production centres were Qarabagh, Lahijan, Mazandaran and Farahabad. The last two regions produced silk that was of short thread, coarse and thin and it was known as Salvatika silk. Khorasan produced fine silk. Most of this was used for Persian consumption while some was exported to India for the manufacture of silken textiles and carpets. Raw silk was also produced in Kuzistan.82 During the seventeenth century, the Julfans played a dominating role in exporting raw silk from Persia to Levant. Julfa was an Armenian town near the Ottoman–Persian border, on the north bank of River Aras. The Julfans bought Gilan silk from the markets at Tabriz. They also exported raw silk from Qarabagh and Siwnik.83 Persia exported to India melons, almonds and horses and, in return, imported rice, sugar and spice. The balance of payments favoured the Mughals.84 Until 1617, Persian raw silk was transported overland to Levant for local consumption and for shipment to Europe. However, intermittent warfare between Persia and

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the Ottoman Empire resulted in the disruption of this trade. For instance, in 1516, Sultan Selim banned the import of silk from Persia. However, this measure also hit the Ottoman silk industry and resulted in a decline in Ottoman customs revenue. Hence, Sultan Suleiman I lifted the ban. Gradually, Persian and Turkish merchants were replaced by Armenians.85 Jewish and Armenian merchants, along with their shops, were taxed. Goods moving from Trebizonid to Isfahan were subject to heavy taxation.86 Due to competition from India, the silk trade fell during the latter part of the seventeenth century. Not only did India become self-sufficient in the production of silk, but Bengal silk displaced Persian silk in the European market. Moreover, Indian cotton flooded the Persian market. The net result was financial weakening of the Safavid regime.87 Persia had no reserves of precious metals, but acquired those required for coinage in exchange for other goods.88 However, because of the unfavourable balance of trade, there was a shortage of coins in circulation from the late seventeenth century. Due to inflation, urban populations and the marginalized were hit most. The army consumed 38.2 per cent of the state’s income, and the next item of expenditure was the imperial household. Under Shah Hussein/Hossein (r. 1694–1722), the imperial harem expanded. In order to overcome the fiscal problem, the court began to sell official posts (as was the case in the French ancien regime). Those who bought such positions made several exactions on the populace in order to recoup the cost and make further profits. The Shah tried to cut spending by reducing expenditure on the standing army. In 1739, the Spanish Crown declared bankruptcy.89 However, Spain, unlike Persia, did not face external invasion from tribal breakout from Central Eurasia. When in 1720, the Afghans challenged the Safavid central government, the Turcoman tribal cavalry contingents, who had previously been alienated due to Shah Abbas I and Abbas II’s centralizing reforms, did not rally round the dynasty.90 Royal authority was further undermined due to the rise of the mujtahids, a process that had started in the reign of Abbas II (1642–1667) and reached its zenith in the reign of Shah Hossein. The mujtahids exercised powerful influence in shaping public opinion. They were the focus of popular sentiment and at times of pious protests against the monarchy. The mujtahids actually spoke about direct religious rule overshadowing the monarchy.91 The Georgians could have come to the aid of the Safavids. Georgian troops were probably the best in the Safavid military establishment. However, increasing religious intolerance of the Safavid court, factional fighting and Shah Hossein’s

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weak handling of the fluid political scenario turned the Georgians from an ally to a foe. Between 1522 and 1558, Shah Ismail and Shah Tahmasp conquered Georgia. The Georgian contingent in the Safavid Army varied from 12,000 to 25,000 cavalry between 1588 and 1608. Later, the Georgian contingent expanded to 40,000 soldiers. The Georgian troops were known as qullar (slaves of the Shah). Between 1614 and 1616, Shah Abbas conducted a policy of rapine and slaughter in Georgia. Nevertheless, many Georgians also were co-opted by assigning them high rankings. In 1703, Giorgi of Kartli was given the task of subduing the rebellious Afghans at Kandahar. Meanwhile, the relations between the Persian and Georgian contingents had deteriorated from bad to worse. Furthermore, the anti-Georgian faction in the Safavid court sabotaged the Georgian attempt to subdue the Afghans. The anti-Georgian faction fed rumours to the Shah that the Georgians were aiming for independence and conspiring with Peter of Muscovy. Mir Vayas then turned against the Georgian troops. Disunity disrupted the Persian campaign of 1711, with the loss of almost 30,000 soldiers. In 1720–1721, when Wakhtang with the Kartlian Army surrounded the rebellious Daghestanis, the Shah forced Wakhtang to suspend operation. Wakhtang was so angry that he declared that he would never draw sword again in support of the Safavid monarchy. In 1722, the Afghan Mir Muhammad took Kirman and marched on Isfahan. At the Battle of Gulnabad (8 March 1722), Wakhtang’s brother Rustam, commanding Georgian cavalry, fell out with the new Grand Vizir Muhammad Quli Khan Shamlu. In May 1722, Wakhtang decided not to send a relief army under his son Bakar to Isfahan, but rather to cooperate with the Muscovite forces of Peter. In October 1722, Shah Hossein abdicated.92 The Safavid Dynasty by then had virtually ceased to exist. The later period of the Safavid era witnessed a tripolar struggle within the ruling class between the Tajiks, Turcoman (Qizilbash) and the GeorgianCircassian elements. Of course, the ethnic divisions were not clear cut and there were personal and cross-ethnic ties. The political landscape was similar to the tripolar struggle of the Iranis, Turanis and Hindustanis among the mansabdars of the post-Aurangzeb Mughal Empire. Individuals play an important role in world history. A strong Shah like Shah Abbas I or a Padshah like Aurangzeb could manage such internecine factional fighting and manipulate the situation to strengthen royal authority. However, weak rulers like Shah Hossein or Muhammad Shah were incapable of such managerial games. And the result was that royal authority, in the absence of political institutionalization (unlike in the case of Ottoman Empire and Qing/Manchu China), was whittled away.

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State, society, economy and armed forces of the Ottoman Empire In 1627, Wallenstein’s army comprised 120,000 men and by 1632, Gustavus Adolphus had 100,000 men.93 By the end of Peter’s reign, Russia had about 200,000 men under arms while the country’s total population was about 15 million.94 During the early seventeenth century, the Ottoman Empire could maintain more than 40,000 combatants for a long period in the field. In 1635 and again in 1638, against Erivan and Baghdad, the Ottomans mobilized more than 100,000 soldiers, but they could not be maintained in the field for long. Theoretically, the Ottomans could mobilize between 100,000 and 200,000 timariots and their retainers. However, more than 70,000 timariots were never mobilized and deployed in any particular campaign.95 During the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries, the Turks were able to deploy about 100,000 soldiers in eastern Europe during a major war with Austria.96 The sipahis (cavalry troopers) were paid cash salaries from the central treasury and stationed on the outskirts of Istanbul and other major cities. In 1527, there were 5,000 sipahis and this number had risen to 14,000 by 1609.97 However, many sipahis were also assigned timars (equivalent to iqta). A sancak was the administrative and military unit. The sancak beyi was the leader of the timar holders in his sancak. He commanded the timariots during war and was also responsible for maintaining public order and implementing the government’s decisions.98 The late Byzantine Empire introduced the pronoia system. Under this system, landholders had military obligations. This was a derivative of West European feudalism and the precursor of the Muslim iqta system,99 which later gradually evolved into the jagirdari system. The timar, like the mansab of the Mughals, was also used as a technique for political co-option during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Many Christian garrisons in the Balkan surrendered on being promised assignment of timars. The timars were also assigned to the traditional military gentry of the Balkan states. In accordance with their obligations, the major timar holders had to bring along a fixed number of fully armed cavalrymen.100 Under Suleiman I, the number of timar holders varied between 27,868 and 40,000. There were three types of timar holder. The small timar holder’s income did not exceed 20,000 asper, the zeamet owner’s income varied between 20,000 and 100,000 aspers and the hass owner’s income exceeded 100,000 aspers. By the end of the seventeenth century, the timar estates in Anatolia and Rumelia were divided in the following proportions: hass estates 7.2 per cent, zeamet estates

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40.6 per cent and small timar estates 52.2 per cent. During the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, throughout the empire, 0.5 per cent timar owners were hass owners, 9.5 per cent were zeamet owners and 90 per cent were small timar owners.101 This was in contrast to the Mughal Empire, where the major mansabdars dominated the agrarian landscape. Thus, it could be argued that the power of the Mughal Emperor vis-à-vis the landowners was more circumscribed compared with the authority of the Ottoman Sultan/central government vis-àvis the timar owners. The timariots failed to perform adequately during the 1593–1606 Long War between the Habsburgs and the Ottomans. This was partly because of a decline in the monetary value of military fiefs. The Ottoman central government reassigned the military fiefs to the palace and Janissary officials. The seventeenth century, asserts Virginia Aksan, witnessed the replacement of the timar-based cavalry with state-contracted and -financed infantry regiments in the Ottoman Empire.102 Such a transition did not occur in Safavid Persia or in Mughal India. This transition probably enabled the Ottoman Empire to survive in the eighteenth century. Nevertheless, the transition in the Ottoman military system was neither smooth nor flawless. The principal military prop of the Ottoman monarchy was the Janissaries. By the sixteenth century, the Janissaries had developed a strong corporate ethos and almost become a state within the state. While on the one hand they extracted the maximum benefits from central government for their group’s benefit, on the other hand central government’s attempt to discipline and modernize this politicized military community came to nought. For instance, after Suleiman’s death, Selim reached Istanbul. After being proclaimed Sultan, Selim II set off for the Hungarian Front. However, he was warned by Sokullu Mehmed Pasha that there was too little money in the treasury to pay the troops the customary bribe that was due on the accession of a new Sultan. At Belgrade, the troops demanded money from Selim II. Sokullu Mehmed handed out some money, raised their pay and promised to pay the remainder later. When the army reached Istanbul, the Janissaries mutinied. The Janissaries were pacified after the distribution of some gold coins.103 The problem with the Janissaries was managerial failure on the part of the Ottoman monarchy and Istanbul bureaucracy, and not necessarily a case of the weak economic performance of the Ottoman Empire. In fact, the Ottoman economy exhibited dynamism, pragmatism and flexibility. The urban population and some sections of the countryside were already part of the monetary economy by the end of the fifteenth century. The Ottoman lands registered more use of money during the sixteenth century because of the greater availability

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of specie and the growing commercialization of the rural economy. Population growth and urbanization during the sixteenth century were accompanied by growth in economic linkages between the rural and urban centres. In both the Balkan and Anatolia, an intensive pattern of periodic markets and market fairs, where peasants and larger landholders sold part of their produce to the urban consumers, operated. These markets also provided an avenue for nomads to interact with the urban populace and peasants. Large sectors of the rural population used coinage, especially the small denominations of silver acke and copper mangir through their participation in such markets.104 In the reign of Bayazid II (Sultan 1481–1512), there were 14 mints producing akces. Of these, six were in Balkan, one in Istanbul and the rest were in various locations around of Anatolia. The number of mints increased in the Ottoman Empire under the reigns of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent (r. 1520–1566) and Murad III (Sultan 1574–1595). Under the latter’s reign, there were 30 mints producing akces, including 15 in the Balkan and Aegean Islands. Furthermore, there were 9 mints in the Balkan and Anatolia manufacturing gold sultanis. Copper coinage was mostly produced in Anatolia and Istanbul.105 Egypt was economically valuable to the Ottomans. The province was not only a route for spices but also for gold from West Africa and one of the breadbaskets of the empire, along with Syria. The Egyptian budget enjoyed an annual surplus of half a million ducats, which was delivered to Constantinople in gold.106 Besides tax on agriculture, one of the principal sources of income for the Ottoman Empire was the special tax on the non-Muslim population (equivalent to Jizya in Aurangzeb’s Mughal Empire), tolls, customs and gold and silver mines in Serbia and Bosnia. The principal coin for commerce was the silver akce.107 The traditional argument about the economic difficulties faced by the Ottomans in the seventeenth century is that inflationary pressure, due to mportation of metals from the New World, had adverse repercussions on the functioning of the state apparatus. Monetary dues that were fixed long ago declined in value, which led the government to depend more and more on taxes that were reassessed annually. This made the life of the peasant producer unpredictable and uncomfortable. Holders of the timars found themselves deprived of their holdings, as they could not equip themselves from the earnings of their land grants. Central government tried to raise money by converting the timars into tax-farming arrangements. The tax farmers and wealthy landowners established large landholdings and displaced many peasants. Simultaneously, as the frontiers of the Ottoman Empire were nolonger expanding, the influx of war booties stopped and the surplus manpower could not be absorbed. Continuous

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warfare with the Habsburg Empire and Safavid Persia generated a demand for higher taxation, which in turn forced central government to opt for regressive taxation. This ruined the small peasants, merchants and craftsmen.108 A very similar model, explaining the decline in the Mughal Empire, between the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, has been developed by the Aligarh School, in which this crisis is considered an agrarian crisis. This school argues that as returns from agriculture declined, the mansabdars’ income from jagirs also declined. Like the small timariots, the small mansabdars found themselves unable to maintain themselves. Continuous warfare with the Marathas generated greater demand for cash and resulted in expansion of the numbers of mansabdars. However, the frontiers of the Mughal Empire were no longer expanding after the late seventeenth century. This resulted in a scramble for jagirs among the mansabdars, which led to factional fighting. The desperate Mughal central government increased taxes in the form of regressive taxation, which in turn created de-peasantization. This consequently resulted in further decline in agrarian production. The last nail in the coffin was hammered in by the Mughal government’s practice of tax farming (ijaradari system). The hapless and desperate peasants of Mughal India, ruined by rack renting, as in the case of Ottoman Empire, turned to armed brigandage. Both empires were then rocked by massive peasant rebellions.109 In recent times there has been a re-evaluation of the Ottoman and Mughal economy. A growing group of historians are now arguing that the Indian economy exhibited dynamic growth during the first half of the eighteenth century. Because of its institutional weakness, the Mughal regime failed to tap the extra revenues that were accruing in the countryside due to the intensive cultivation of cash crops and the commercialization of credit relations. This extra income was taken by the rural intermediaries (khud kashta peasants), who then acquired the economic muscle and psychological confidence to withstand the revenue demands of the Mughals and rebel against the authority of Delhi.110 The traditional image of the the Ottoman economy slowing down and then stagnating from the second half of the sixteenth century has been questioned. In 1520, the population of the Ottoman Empire was between 12 and 13 million. The population of Hungary (at that time still unconquered) was 4 million. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Ottoman Empire’s population was 30 million. The European provinces accounted for slightly more than half of the population: Anatolia had 7–8 million and the other Asian and North African provinces another 7–8 million.111 In 1526–1527, Ottoman revenues amounted to 477 million aspers, which was equivalent to 9.5 million in gold ducats. Spain’s

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annual income towards the end of the sixteenth century was 9 million, that of France was 5 million and that of Venice was 4 million in gold ducats.112 So, the Ottomans were not doing too badly by comparison. Sevket Pamuk claims that the adverse effects of the Price Revolution on the Ottoman economy have been overestimated. In fact, the Ottoman economy was thriving in the late sixteenth century. Neither the Islamic prohibitions against interest and usury nor the absence of formal banking institutions prevented the expansion of credit in Ottoman society. Credit, large and small, was widespread among all segments of urban society and parts of rural society.113 For instance, among the important providers of loans in the urban centres of the Balkan and Anatolia were the cash vakifs, which were pious foundations established with the aim of lending their cash assets and using the interest to fulfil their duties. These endowments were approved by the Ottoman court. In the eighteenth century, there was increasing allocation of funds to the trustees of these endowments. The trustees used the borrowed funds to lend at higher rates of interest to major moneylenders (sarrafs) at Istanbul, who pooled these funds to finance large ventures such as long-distance trade and tax farming. For the financing of longdistance commerce, mudaraba partnership was also utilized. In this case, an investor entrusted his capital or merchandise to an agent who was to trade with it and then return the original amount. The profits were then shared between the principal and the agent. Any loss of capital resulting from the exigencies of travel or business ventures was borne by the principal. The Ottoman businessmen also used the mufawada partnership in which the partners were considered equals in terms of capital, efforts, returns and liabilities.114 However, towards the end of the sixteenth century, the Ottoman Government had to debase its currency due to financial pressures. This was due to several factors. Some of the government revenues were fixed in nominal terms and the Istanbul Government failed to adjust them upward. However, the real reason behind Ottoman debasement was the growing need for maintaining large standing armies by central government and the attritional war on both the Eastern and Western fronts.115 In other words, the strategic environment, growing political ambition and imperial overstretch were the driving factors behind the financial worries of the Ottoman Empire. In 1630, military wages constituted 77 per cent of the Ottoman budget and by 1670, it was 62.5 per cent. The military personnel received wages quarterly. Every three months, the government had to hand out a massive amount of silver coins. But, most taxes were paid annually and many were paid in kind. In the first half of the seventeenth century, the finance department tried to convert

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taxes in kind to taxes in cash. The deficit problem (exacerbated by devaluation of the silver coinage) was not resolved until the eighteenth century.116 Unable to pay its regiments regularly due to fiscal-cum-managerial troubles, the Ottoman central government overlooked the tendency of the Janissaries to finance themselves through involvement in trade and industry or through rural and urban tax firms. By the middle of the seventeenth century, mounted soldiers were led by local men who were often capable of challenging the authority of the state by relying on their private troops. Such military leaders controlled rural resources in the form of tax firms and established closer relationships with the rural populace.117 During the second half of the sixteenth century, Anatolia (the backbone of the Ottoman Empire in terms of providing military personnel and land revenue) faced demographic pressures. The peasant farms were fragmented and peasant households were caught in a trap of ever-shrinking plots of land. The number of landless peasants increased and especially the number of unmarried landless men rose appreciably. The young unmarried men left their villages either to join brigand groups or to enrol themselves as students in the madrassas.118 The first two decades of the seventeenth century saw decline or stagnation of the population in Anatolia. Lack of economic opportunities resulted in delayed or no marriages. Leila Erder and Suraiya Faroqhi show that there was an increase of 15–20 per cent in the number of unmarried and rootless males (the ingredients of an armed insurgency) among the declining population.119 Like the Mings, Manchus and Mughals, the Ottomans also faced consistent long-term insurgencies throughout the length and breadth of their empire. One insurgency-infested region was Syria. The mountain hinterland of Sidon and Beirut is known as Druze Mountain. The first rebellion in this region broke out in Sidon in 1518 and was led by a Bedouin chief named Nasir al-din Ibn al-Hanash. His principal allies were the four chiefs from Druze Mountain. The rebellion ended with the capture and execution of Nasir. His four Druze allies were imprisoned but then set free after being fined heavily.120 Druze insubordination started again from 1545 onwards. By 1565, the Druzes had acquired firearms from Europe (especially Venice), which were better than, or at least equivalent to, those possessed by the Janissaries.121 Foreign aid fostering insurgencies within enemy territory, as we can see in the present era, was a trend even in the pre-modern age. Yemen was important because of the spice route, and the Ottomans exacted customs duties. Ottoman authority in Yemen was always marginal. In this sparsely populated rugged terrain, the local Arab chiefs remained dominant. In

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1567, the powerful chief of the Zaidi clan, Imam Mutahhar Ibn Sharaf al-din, rallied his Shia followers and rebelled. In 1565, Yemen was divided into two provinces. The Ottoman Governor of Southern Yemen was killed at Sana, and Mutahhar’s followers occupied several strongholds. In 1568, Lala Mustafa Pasha led a strong COIN force in Yemen. Koca Sinan Pasha, the Ottoman Governor of Egypt, refused to send men and supplies to Lala Mustafa. Lala Mustafa was dismissed from his post and, in 1571, the two Yemeni provinces were reunited.122 The Celali rebellions, which started during the late sixteenth century and intensified during the early seventeenth century, were to an extent related to the increasing demographic crisis in Anatolia. The Ottoman Government required an increasing number of firearms-equipped infantry, and so it recruited rootless peasants. It provided short-term military benefits to the Ottoman state but in the long run it resulted in militarization and mobilization of the uprooted masses in the Anatolian countryside. When disbanded by the government, these armed bands either joined the retinues of the provincial strongmen or engaged in independent brigandage. The net result was loss of public security in the countryside of the empire.123 This adversely affected agriculture, trade and commerce. The death toll in the Patrona Rebellion reached tens of thousands and the centralized Ottoman administrative system received a jolt. The decline in the power of central government resulted in increasing autonomy of the provincial governors. The governors of Baghdad and Mosul became quasi-independent. And the power of ethnic communities like the Kurds and the Arabs in the eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire increased.124 In contrast, the West European states seemed to have been able to suppress internal disorders because of their comparatively small size, and these polities ruled over the homogeneous population. Let us take the case of Britain, which was one of the strongest world powers between the Glorious Revolution (1688/1689) and the fall of the Napoleonic Empire (1815). Britain in particular, and the West in general, writes Jeremy Black, from the second half of the seventeenth century, could defeat rebels because of the increasing specialization, professionalism and size of their armed forces. The personal arms of the population, continues Black, were becoming useless. Moreover, the Royal Navy enabled the British state to concentrate its military assets, providing not just mobility but also local concentration of strength in order to achieve victory. The narrow contours of Britain enabled its naval forces to exert its powers effectively, unlike continental states like Persia, India and China. Penetration of the land mass by sea lochs and the narrow nature of the coastal strip made western Scotland (the hotbed of rebellion) vulnerable to power projection by the Royal Navy.125

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In comparison, the major Asian states were hampered by bad communications over long distances, especially when rebellions were occurring in the interior far away from the centre of government power. When (as in most cases) river communication was not available, the central government’s armies had to march. In China and India, there are no rivers flowing in a north–south direction, most flowing east–west. So, in the case of a rebellion in the interior of south China or Deccan, a Ming – and later a Manchu or Mughal detachment – had to start their slow march from Beijing and Delhi and considerable time would pass before government forces could reach the actual trouble spot. Furthermore, Indian rivers are fed by a seasonal monsoon, so even east–west riverine communication in north and central India cannot be utilized during the dry summer season. And in the pre-modern era, land communication was slow and costly. Since the response time of the government was slow, this time lag allowed rebel leaders to mobilize more potential allies using territorial, clan, caste and kin considerations. Worse, when central government devolved more power to the Mughal provincial governors to deal with potential rebels immediately on the spot, the provincial governors rebelled and established themselves as independent regional lords. David Ayalon asserts that as long as manufacture of firearms remained uncomplicated, the Ottomans could bridge this gap by employing European craftsmen. However, with the passage of time, the production of firearms became complex and the Ottomans were left with two options: either to continue producing their own variety of inferior firearms or to buy inferiorgrade weapons available on the international market.126 Gabor Agoston asserts that towards the end of the seventeenth century, the Ottomans were lagging behind the European powers. The reasons were not technical inferiority of Ottoman gunpowder weapons, but contraction of the Mediterranean economy, logistical problems and strategic overextension. During the midsixteenth century, at the stamp mill in Buda, the pounders were operated by a wheel, which in turn was operated by the waters of a nearby hot spring.127 Claude Alexandre Comte de Bonneval (1675–1747) was supported by the Grand Vizirs (Topal Osman and Ali Pasha) in his attempts to modernize the Ottoman forces. He constructed new barracks, drilled the forces and opened an engineering school. However, he was marginalized by the other elite members of the Ottoman Empire.128 The Ottoman central government definitely faced financial troubles. But, the financial woes of a major power were not a unique Ottoman problem. By the late 1760s, the French Government’s debt due to continuous warfare was equivalent

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to six times the Crown’s annual revenue. In 1770, due to lack of money, Choiseul was, for France, withdrawing from the Seven Years War (1756–1763). Unlike Britain, both the French and Ottoman monarchies did not have access to lowinterest, long-term loans.129 Heavy debt incurred by the state was one of the contributory factors behind the French Revolution, which ultimately brought down the ancien regime in France in the last decade of the eighteenth century. The Ottoman regime at least escaped such a fate. In Muscovy, the share of state revenues consumed by the armed forces varied from 35.4 to 63.1 per cent between the 1760s and 1790s. However, in real terms, the Russian state income, unlike that of Ottoman Empire, increased. The Russian budget for the armed forces in the same period also rose from 9.2 million to 21 million roubles.130 Some scholars overemphasize cultural failure on the part of the Asian polities. The role of culture, especially when combined with the corporate interest of powerful social groups (like the Janissaries, mansabdars and ulemas), cannot be totally denied. Even after taking into consideration the racial and ethnocentric bias of the Reverend Thomas Smith, Fellow of Magdallen College Oxford and of the Royal Society, his account penned in the second half of the seventeenth century about the cultural ‘backwardness’ of the Ottomans cannot be totally denied: Their knowledge of the motion of the heavens, for which the Arabians and the other eastern Nations have been so deservedly famous, as their Astronomical tables of the Longitude and Latitude of the fixed stars, and of the appulfe (?) of the moon to them, fully evince, is now very mean, and is chiefly studied for the use of Judiciary Astrology. The great instrument they make use of is an Astrolabe, with which they make very imperfect observations, having no such thing as a Quadrant or Sextant, much less a Telescope, or any mechanical engine, to direct and assist them in their calculation.131

The learned Smith continued: ‘They trouble not themselves with reading the Histories of other Nations or of ancient times, much less with the study of Chronology, without which History is very lame and imperfect; which is the cause of those ridiculous and childish mistakes, which pass current and uncontradicted among them’.132 The role of Islam could not be totally discounted in analysing this cultural failure. Svat Soucek asserts that the Ottoman Empire’s principal function was gaza (a term equivalent of jihad). The concept of jihad for the Ottomans represented not only war against Christian Europe but also total refusal to adopt any of their values (except partly those related to military knowledge). Muslims refused to travel to and trade with Europe. They did not learn Latin to study

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and translate the books. In contrast, the Christians, though equally intolerant of Islam at the religious level, were more open at the temporal level. Translations of Arabic scientific and philosophical texts played an important role in medieval Europe’s intellectual awakening and preparation for the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution. West Europe’s acquaintance with Islamic culture became intimate in Spain during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when massive government-sponsored translation projects were undertaken. The flexibility of Christianity was such that the Christian monarchs did not find their interest in Islamic culture in conflict with the re-conquest of Spain from Islam for Christianity. This was due to the separation of the spiritual and the temporal in Christianity, and the fusion of these two spheres in Islam.133 One instance of this fusion was the Ottoman bureaucracy. Until late in the fifteenth century, there was much tension in Ottoman society between the Turkish landed aristocracy in the provinces (who were involved in territorial conquests) and central bureaucracy, comprising mainly devshirme (converted slaves). After the centralization drive of Mehmet II during the second half of the fifteenth century, central bureaucracy asserted its control. The influence over central bureaucracy of various social groups like the landed aristocracy, merchants and moneychangers remained limited. The principal objective of the Ottoman bureaucracy was not to sponsor the emergence of capitalism but to preserve the traditional social order. The Ottoman vision of an ideal social order involved a balance between the peasantry, guilds and merchants. The Sultan and the bureaucracy constituted the top of the social order. The government tried to preserve the traditional order by retaining the established structure of production and employment. Rapid accumulation of capital by the merchants was not conducive to the objectives of the Ottoman bureaucracy, as this would lead to disintegration of the existing order.134 The officials were trained in the madrasas. The madrasa was founded in eleventh-century Baghdad by the Seljuq monarch, following which it spread all over the Islamic world. Istanbul and the other Ottoman cities were full of madrasas. The madrasas monopolized higher education. The curriculum focused on traditional religious and related sciences. Intellectual and natural sciences were marginalized. The intellectual life of the Ottoman Empire was rooted in the medieval Arabo-Persian heritage. In Ottoman society, the sharia rather than the qanun had the final say.135 Traditional Hindu society was equally orthodox. When the Arab intellectual Ibn Battuta visited India in the medieval era, the Islamic conquest was in full swing and the Hindu rulers were down and out. Ibn Battuta was astonished that

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the Brahmin intellectuals would not accept the existence of civilizations and literate people outside the orbit of Aryavarta. In other words, when a cultural zone enters into a period of military defeat and economic sluggishness, it tried to close ranks and attempts to become more rigid and orthodox in an attempt to explain defeat and humiliation. In such a context, Brahmins and ulemas became reactionary and called for a return to the pristine glory of the good old days. In a recent book, Prasannan Parthasarathi attempts to argue the case that the intellectual life of late Mughal India was not in a state of stasis. True, the Indians were part of a global network of knowledge systems, and the flow of knowledge also occurred from east to west.136 Nevertheless, it would be hard to accept that West Europe did not have an edge as regards systematic production and bureaucratization of the knowledge system and its use in innovations related to material enhancement. Archibald R. Lewis notes that, between 1300 and 1500, there was an explosion of universities in West and Central Europe. In contrast, the Islamic world at that time shifted its attention from science to religious studies.137 Institutions for secular learning did not emerge in West Asia, Persia or Mughal India. In the three interrelated developments of map making, military operation and empire building, early modern West Europe definitely had the edge. Muscovy was far behind West Europe in this matter. Nevertheless, compared with the four Asian empires, Muscovy was far ahead in the matter of map making. Among the four major Asian polities, the Chinese and the Ottoman had made some progress as regards map making. But their achievements in this field, especially in the early modern era, are less noteworthy than those of the Russians. Most of the early Russian maps were produced for military and administrative purposes and were kept in local archives, Moscow’s regional offices and branch offices of central government. The Privy Chamber and Estate Office had hundreds of maps. The Military Office commissioned maps of the western and southern frontier areas. From the eighteenth century onwards, there was a proliferation of maps of Siberia. However, earlier maps of Siberia and routes to China were then available, and could be dated back to the late sixteenth century. Boundary maps were mentioned in these earlier documents, but none that is extant dates back to a time before 1700. In addition to established borders, frontier zones were also mapped. For European Russia, there were hundreds of maps of outlying or frontier towns.138 J. C. Hurewitz rightly argues that civil wars among the successors, after the death of a ruler, severely weakened the Muslim polities. The failure to evolve a definitive policy of succession allowed military intrusion into the political sphere.

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The principle of primogeniture, which was applied in Europe, was not accepted in the Islamic dynastic states of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This point is especially applicable in the case of the Mughal Empire. The Ottomans, after 1603, instead of engaging in fratricide, followed the policy of locking up the sons of the rulers in a special quarter of the Top Kapi Palace in Istanbul. They received little formal education and led a purposeless, indolent life.139 Muscovy presents a curious case. It was neither a classic West European state nor an agrarian bureaucratic empire in the Asian style. Muscovy was an amalgam of both, a sort of hybrid variety. Muscovy succeeded because it was an authoritarian despotic state. The Czars were able to exercise more power vis-à-vis their nobility and peasantry in comparison with the Ottoman Sultans, Mughal Emperors and Safavid Shahs. The Czar was the author of worldly law. The Muscovites believed that they were the Czar’s slaves and Czardom was the natural order of things. Marshall Poe writes that a harsh climate (long, hard winters) and infertile soil, combined with poor agricultural techniques, a location distant from the principal trade routes and the open, dangerous borders constantly put Muscovy’s survival at stake. The very demands of survival made despotic Czardom a necessity and acceptable to the populace (mostly illiterate subsistence farmers). Nevertheless, those scarce resources were indeed effectively mobilized for mainly military purposes, which allowed the survival and expansion of Muscovy.140 One might add that the very absence of resources prevented annexation of a weakened Muscovy, either by the Golden Horde, the Ottoman Turks or Poland and Lithuania. ‘Geographical luck’ again seems to have played an important role in the survival and later rise of Muscovy.

Conclusion Among all three ‘Islamic’ empires discussed in this book, the Ottomans were the most successful in constructing a corporate ethos for their standing army, the Janissaries. However, this very ethos undermined the power of the Ottoman central government. The West European states had been more successful during the early modern era in resolving civil–military tensions. Probably, crown– nobility cooperation and regimental tradition enabled the West European rulers to subordinate their combat-effective standing armies. This aspect has not received due attention from the votaries of the Military Revolution thesis. A militarily and economically successful empire’s culture would radiate confidence and openness. However, when economic sluggishness and military

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failure occur, culture becomes rigid, backward-looking and inward in nature. In such circumstances, the ‘reactionaries’ come to power and this is evident in the case of the four empires that are the subject of our case studies. The agrarian bureaucratic polities in China, South Asia and West Asia suffered from large-scale armed insurgencies. The Chinese, Mughal and Ottoman imperial chroniclers describe the insurgents as bandits. Whether or not such insurgencies were the product of class struggle in pre-modern societies should not influence our analysis. What is important from our perspective is that in response to large-scale ‘banditry’, the rulers had to mobilize armies that were at times larger than the armies that fought inter-state wars in West Europe. Largescale COIN campaigns often paralysed these agrarian polities’ response towards external enemies. At times, these COIN campaigns escalated to the scale of a conventional military campaign, especially when the bandit leaders seized hold of adequate manpower and economic resources and tried to set up secessionist regimes. Size does matter. Large size and vast demographic resources gave an advantage to the rulers of China, South Asia and the Ottoman Empire in their economic and military spheres. At the same time, the vast size of a country and its population also proved to be serious problems for the rulers of these regions. At a time before the emergence of modern means of communication, large number of males who could not be accommodated within the agrarian economy and – especially when they were armed – posed a serious threat to the central governments of these sedentary empires. The West European rulers were able to demilitarize their domains and hence spread power beyond their principalities. The smaller populations and relatively smaller size of the West European polities enabled the rulers of these regions to follow such demilitarization policies. However, each of the provinces of the Ming/Manchu and Mughal empires was as big as a West European kingdom. Probably, one-half of humanity lived in China and India. Worse, they were armed. Horses, matchlocks/muskets, spears and bows and arrows were available in abundance among the peasantry. The spread of hand-held firearms made these ‘marginal groups’ in the countryside more dangerous than ever. The available armed manpower aided the Ottoman Sultan, Mughal Padshah, and the Chinese Emperor to increase the size of their armies during external crisis, but also posed a danger when central government was weak or distracted in other ways. So, a particular piece of technology (i.e. handheld firearms) can not, per se, explain centralization. A particular piece of technology (gunpowder weaponry) might have accelerated centralization in West Europe, but this very technology, due to the differing ecological, social and cultural conditions, had the opposite effect in West Asia, China and India.

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Continuous COIN campaigns forced the rulers of these vast agrarian empires to maintain a labour-intensive army (large numbers of cavalry for a quick response and infantry for capturing rebel strongholds) rather than a capital-intensive (heavy firepower-rich) force. One could argue that continuous COIN campaigns somewhat decelerated the ‘modernization’ of the armies of these polities. Worse, the presence of multi-religious, multi-linguistic communities in these vast sedentary empires further compounded the problems. In addition to this volatile mixture, open borders through which nomads from the steppes were infiltrating and nomadic tribes (e.g. Banjaras and Bhils in South Asia, Qizilbash tribes in Safavid Persia, Mongol tribes within the Ordos loop), were settling within the boundaries of these empires. In such a scenario, a limited power projection outside the boundaries of their empires was possible only in the case of great emperors (e.g. Shah Jahan, Shah Abbas and Kang Hsi), and maritime enterprise was a luxury they simply could not afford. To cap it all, the large surplus generated by the dynamic agrarian economies of the Manchu, Mughal and Ottoman Empire (e.g. the lucrative silk trade in the case of the Safavids) up to the late eighteenth century negated the necessity of pursuing maritime trade and capitalist ventures, unlike the situation in West Europe.

Conclusion But in the battle of Angora the main body itself was supported, on the flanks and in the rear, by the bravest squadrons of the reserve, commanded by the sons and grandsons of Timur. The conqueror of Hindustan ostentatiously showed a line of elephants, the trophies rather than the instruments of victory: the use of Greek fire was familiar to the Mongols and the Ottomans; but had they borrowed from Europe the recent invention of gunpowder and cannon, the artificial thunder, in the hands of either nation, must have turned the fortune of the day … By the Venetians the use of gunpowder was communicated without reproach to the sultans of Egypt and Persia, their allies against the Ottoman power; the secret was soon propagated to the extremities of Asia; and the advantage of the European was confined to his easy victories over the savages of the new world.1

A time traveller without the benefit of hindsight looking at the world in 1800 would have been amazed by the fact that the West was on the point of dominating Asia at the beginning of the nineteenth century. There was nothing much exceptional in the north-west European region. Compared with the river valleys of the Asian states, West European agriculture was comparatively backward. The European ‘miracle’ in the manufacturing sector was then not evident. And the ‘peculiar’ West European war-making with gunpowder infantry had limited validity outside the landscape of West Europe. Edward Gibbon is wrong and his account quoted above suffers from teleological, technological and Eurocentric bias. Our survey shows that gunpowder played a marginal role in the encounters between Europe and Asia prior to 1800. In the Battle of Ankara and in other such contemporary battles, the decisive masterstrokes were delivered by cavalry and not by slow-firing gunpowder weapons of limited range. Secondly, gunpowder was not a European invention and Europe learnt from Asia about various military techniques as much as Asia learnt from Europe. The exchange of military techniques was a two-way process. The five chapters have dealt with the issue of comparative evolution of Asian war-making between 1400 and 1750 and evaluation of Asian military performance vis-à-vis the West during the same period. However, by 1750, the incredible had happened. The West was poised to take over the world. A combination of long and short-term factors, along with

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chance, had resulted in the decline of the major Asian powers, which to a great extent enabled the West to take over the ‘rest’. But even by 1750, global domination by the West was not inevitable. The time traveller would have been playing for high stakes if he or she had made a bet in the mid-eighteenth century, that in the next one hundred years the West would be the only player left in Eurasia. By the 1750s, two of the chips were down. The Safavids and the Mughals were out of the game. Nevertheless, the Ottomans were alive and still kicking hard. And the Manchu/Qing Empire was still expanding. The Safavids and the Mughals did not collapse due to attack by the ‘hat wearers’ from across the oceans. These two ‘Islamic’ empires collapsed due to traditional factors that had dominated the geopolitics of Asia for two millennia: economic decline and invasion by the steppe nomads. The Afghans destroyed the Safavid Empire not by firepower but by launching repeated cavalry charges. Ironically, the rise of the Safavid Empire was also not due to gunpowder supremacy but to the product of raw religious fanaticism and Qizilbash tribal cavalry power. So, it would not be wrong to argue that gunpowder weapons played a marginal role in both the rise and fall of the Safavid Empire. Compared with the Safavid Empire, in the Mughal Empire, gunpowder played a slightly more important role. In Babur’s victory, gunpowder weapons were important. And Nadir’s defeat of the Mughal Army at Karnal was partly due to superior gunpowder weapons in the hands of the Persian Army. Again, the Safavid and Mughal empires were considerably weakened due to inter-state wars within Asia, nomadic invasions from the steppes and finally insurgency and piracy both within their realms and on the coast. While analysing the generation of military power, historians also need to take into account the counter-insurgency (COIN) warfare both on land and sea that these polities experienced. Nonetheless, military historians for most of the time focus on conventional campaigns without considering the importance of unconventional warfare in the rise of the West and the fall of Asia. For instance, the Mughal Empire collapsed due to a combination of conventional threat posed by Nadir Shah and Ahmad Shah Abdali, and plus the unconventional warfare launched by the Marathas. Interestingly, the Marathas, like the Afghans, did not enjoy firepower superiority over the Mughals but still repeatedly defeated the latter. However, it must be noted that without the defeat at Karnal, the Mughal Army could have stood firm against the marauding Maratha bands. For instance, in 1708, the Mughals could field an army of 300,000 men in Deccan.2 Insurgencies both on land and sea troubled the Asian giants, unlike the West European powers.

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During the mid-eighteenth century, the political landscape on the Indian subcontinent was in a flux. In South Asia, various Mughal successor states were jostling for supremacy. The British East India Company (EIC) was still confined within the tiny coastal enclaves of Madras, Bombay and Calcutta. The battle for supremacy within South Asia continued until 1849, when the EIC emerged as the sole paramount power in the subcontinent. At Plassey (1757) and Buxar (1764), the EIC met opposition from fragmented polities that were still jostling for power. Had there been a centralized pan-Indian bureaucratic Mughal Empire in existence, which could mobilize 200,000 cavalry and innumerable infantry, either the British would have been thrown out of the subcontinent or the cost of attrition warfare would have been so high for the EIC that they would have reverted to trading rather than trying to become a territorial power. Again, the EIC’s victories at Plassey and Buxar were possible because the Maratha Confederacy, the strongest among the Mughal successor states, was engaged in a life-and-death struggle with Ahmad Shah Abdali of Afghanistan. The traditional Eurasian steppe nomadic factor remained a crucial driver in the decline of the Safavids and Mughals. Nadir’s military machine was more powerful than that of the Safavids under Shah Abbas. Unfortunately, Nadir’s empire, like the Mughal Empire after Bahadur Shah I, declined after the former’s assassination in internecine civil war. The West European states had a decisive advantage vis-à-vis the Asian states in the sphere of political institutionalization. Unlike the Safavids and the Mughals, the Ottomans had achieved greater bureaucratic stability in the sphere of political succession. The issue of unstable political succession, which occasionally resulted in civil wars, also dogged the Mughal successor states, which gave an advantage to the EIC. The organization of the Asian states’ militaries differed. For instance, both the Ottomans and the Safavids maintained ghulams but the Mughals and the Mings/ Manchus did not depend on military slaves. Several waves of technological diffusion among the Asian empires may be gleaned. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, gunpowder technology flowed from China to Central Asia, South-East Asia and eastern India. During the sixteenth century, Ottoman Turkey played an important role in the diffusion of gunpowder technology to Central Asia and early Mughal India. Portugal was also responsible for a limited spread of gunpowder technology in Persia and south India during the sixteenth century. The spread of gunpowder technology did not initiate a homogeneous method of warfare among the Asian ‘big four’. Differing enemy force structure and varying terrain shaped the different ways in which gunpowder technology was used by the four big Asian powers at different moments in time. For

200

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instance, the Ottoman technique of volley firing was effective against the tightly packed Habsburg infantry squares in eastern Europe. But, against the fastmoving scattered cavalry of the Mongols/Jurchens, Rajputs and Uzbeks, the Ming, Mughal and Safavid musketeers did not have the incentive to practise volley firing. To conclude, at least prior to the 1750s, Asian military systems proved combat effective, resilient and capable of adaptation. Cultural rigidity was not present at least until the mid-eighteenth century. Slow and incremental changes in warfare, which had started in the era before 1500, continued during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Just because Asia declined under West European onslaught during the nineteenth century does not mean that it was bound to collapse. In fact, there were several turning points when there were potentialities and possibilities for the historical trajectory to take different routes. Our aim here is not to portray the possible counterfactual scenarios3 but to emphasize that alternate paths of historical evolution were possible at certain moments in time. Ifs and buts are important in history in order to posit a challenge to rigid structural determinism or a linear view of history. What would have happened if the Ottoman Sultan, after his victory at Chaldiran (1514), had marched into the interior of Persia rather than turning towards Syria and Egypt? Selim I’s decision at that juncture about whether to march into the interior of Persia or Syria was of the same level of importance as Adolf Hitler’s decision in late 1940 about whether to continue with Operation Sea Lion or to initiate Operation Barbarossa in the summer of 1941. After Chaldiran there was no field army at the disposal of the Safavids. Isfahan might have fallen to the Ottomans. The Safavid Empire might have ceased to exist under Shah Ismail, and this would have started a chain reaction. No Shah Hossein means no Nadir Shah and no Mughal decline. It is not a mere parlour game. Historians are now challenging the notion that the Mughal decline was inevitable due to ‘structural’ agrarian crisis.4 Again, after his victory at Karnal (24 February 1739), Nadir was mulling over the idea of establishing a joint Indo-Persian empire extending from Bengal in the east to Tehran in the west.5 Such an empire in terms of territorial size, manpower and economic resources would have been larger than Alexander’s Empire. At that time, no power except Nadir himself could undo such an empire. The light cavalry of the Marathas south of River Narmada would have been in no position to check the cavalry-gunpowder army of Nadir.6 One could imagine that such an IndoPersian empire, with its vast gross domestic product (GDP) and the dynamic leadership of Nadir, would have been a new and powerful player in the game of dominating Eurasia. Not only Muscovy but also the British EIC too would have

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taken care not to antagonize such a land power. In fact, the British EIC’s cheap and easy victories over the fragmented South Asian states, as occured in the late eighteenth century, would have been impossible. At least, none of the big Asian four collapsed due to European onslaught. The Mings, Mughals and Safavids collapsed due to internecine troubles and invasions by neighbouring Asian powers. Nor were the Asian ‘majors’ facing any long-term inevitable economic decline. Only the Safavid economy was structurally weak. Up to circa 1700, the Ottoman, Mughal and Manchu/Qing economies did not face any serious problems. The Safavid and Mughal empires disintegrated due to a combination of internal and external military threats. For the Safavids, the Afghans delivered the coup de grace and the Marathas and Nadir Shah pushed the Mughal Empire towards its terminal decline. The vaunted infantry squares, armed with smoothbore muskets and supported by field artillery, the brainchild of the House of Orange, had limited effectiveness outside West Europe at least until circa 1700. Prior to the beginning of the eighteenth century, the complex Ottoman fortification system remained secure against the Habsburgs. And building structures like the massive fortress complexes constructed by the Chinese and Indians was beyond the bureaucratic capacity of the European states. There were no intrinsic advantages to gunpowder weapons in the early modern era. Rather, gunpowder weapons’ advantages proved to be episodic. We have seen that both Elizabethan England and Muscovy adopted gunpowder weapons, which at that time was considered an inferior technology vis-à-vis mounted archers, because the former two states unlike the four Asian ‘majors’ lacked skilled archers and warhorses in sufficient numbers. So, the strategic managers of pre-modern Asian states cannot be accused of not adopting a technology that was considered inferior. However, from the mid-eighteenth century onwards, as gunpowder weapons on land and sea became more complex and required larger capital investment, more sophisticated machines, and the application of systematic scientific knowledge, China and the Ottoman Empire started lagging behind West Europe, and Mughal India and Safavid Persia had already collapsed. To conclude, before circa 1750, there was no great difference in matters of military effectiveness between West Europe and the sedentary, agrarian, bureaucratic polities of Asia.

Glossary Ahadis Ajam Alla moderna

Altamash Amir Ban Banjaras Bheda Cami Crore Devshirme

Durbar Faujdar Feranghis Fitna Folangi Gazi/Ghazi

Ghazwa Gulai Gorod Howdah

Iqta

Jagir

Household soldier of the Mughal Emperor Medieval Islamic term for modern Iraq/Mesopotamia Also known as trace italienne. The term refers to geometric fortifications: angular bastions, sloping walls with ditches, etc. It first started in mid-sixteenth-century Italy and then spread to other parts of West Europe Advance guard of the Mughal Army Muslim noble Hand-held rocket Traders of pre-modern India who carried grain for the army on the backs of bullocks and camels for selling to the soldiers Hindu concept of divide and rule A place for saying Friday prayer; a sort of makeshift mosque 100 lakhs or 10 million Blood collection system. It meant Ottoman conscription of young Christian boys who were later converted to Islam and inducted in the Janissary Corps Court Mughal police officials Literal meaning Franks, i.e. Europeans Internal troubles within the Islamic polity Portuguese-style ordnance used in early modern Far East Holy warriors of Islam. They were actually unpaid irregular Muslim volunteers who joined the army of a sultan/amir during a campaign against the non-Muslims, in the hope of gaining booty Pillage and plundering of the lands inhabited by the heathen ghazis Wooden field fortifications constructed by the Muscovite soldiers during campaigns A wooden box-like seating structure covered with plates of iron placed on the back of an elephant. The howdah was tied to the elephant’s trunk with ropes Hereditary land grant issued to the Turkish military aristocracy by the Sultan for maintaining a cavalry contingent. Iqtas of the Delhi Sultanate were precursors of the Mughal jagirs Non-heritable land grant issued by the Mughal monarchy to the mansabdar for maintaining cavalry

Glossary Jagirdar Janissaries Jihad

Kantar Kapikulu Karkhana Khas

Kos Lakh Madrasa Malik Mamluks

Manjaniq Mansabdar Mirza Niru Pace

Padhsah/Badshah Paik/Piyada Palanka Pomeste Qizilbash Raja Rajput Shutarnal Sipahi/Spahi

203

Holder of jagir grant. At times, a jagirdar could also be a mansabdar or a feudatory of a local ruler Slave soldiers of the Ottoman Empire. They were elite disciplined infantry and, from the 1450s, were equipped with handguns Holy war in the name of Islam conducted by the jihadis. The objective was to convert dar al harb (land of darkness inhabited by the heathens) into dar al Islam (land of light inhabited by the pure) Ottoman measurement of weight. One kantar was equivalent to 120 pounds (55 kg) Standing army of the Ottoman Sultan Large manufacturing unit, a sort of proto-factory in Mughal India Also known as khasa or mamalik land. Land belonging to central government (especially under the direct administration of the crown) of an Islamic polity was called khas. In Mughal India, crown land was known as khalisa Unit of measurement for distance. One kos was equivalent to 1.5 miles (2.5 km) 100,000. 10 lakhs = 1 million Islamic theological school Muslim landlords who at times were also chieftains Also known as ghilmans/ghulams. Slave soldiers of Islam. They mostly fought on horseback. These slaves were indeed the elite and often formed ruling dynasties Catapult used by medieval Islamic polities Holder of an imperial rank (mansab) in the Mughal Empire Royal Muslim prince A unit in the Manchu Banner army equivalent to Western armies’ company In pre-modern China, one pace was between 5 and 10 feet (1.5–3 m). In Muscovy and the Ottoman Empire, one pace was 2.5 feet (0.75 m) Mughal emperor Irregular infantry of medieval India Wooden watchtower constructed in East Europe Service estate held by the Muscovite nobles in exchange for maintaining cavalry contingents Persian (Shia) troopers who wore 12-gore red hats Hindu king Hindu warriors belonging to the Kshatriya community Also known as zamburak. It was a camel swivel gun Persian term for soldier. The British word ‘sepoy’, designating an Indian infantry soldier, evolved from this term

204 Suba Subadar Taulqama

Timar Timariot Toman Tufangchi Tumen

Tuyul

Vali Vilayet Vizir/Vizier Waqf Wazir Zarb Zan

Military Transition, 1400–1750 Mughal province Mughal provincial governor Attack on the flanks and rear of the hostile force by mounted archers. This resulted in encirclement, envelopment and elimination of the enemy force Land grant in the Ottoman Empire for maintaining light cavalry; initially a non-heritable fief Holder of a timar grant Persian currency. In the early eighteenth century, one toman was equivalent to 2.3 pounds sterling Mounted Persian musketeer, equivalent to the Western army’s dragoon A Mongol division consisting of 10,000 horsemen and about 40,000 horses. This was of course the theoretical strength. In reality, a lesser number of horsemen and horses was present Equivalent to Mughal jagir and Ottoman timar. Tuyul is land granted to a noble in the Safavid Empire for maintaining a cavalry contingent Ottoman provincial governor Ottoman province Ottoman prime minister, equivalent to Mughal Wazir Land not taxed and granted to charity, i.e. to the madrasas or the ulemas, etc. Prime minister. The Wazir had the right to supervise all departments and report directly to the sultan/shah/emperor Light field gun of the Mughal army

Notes Introduction 1 In this book, the term ‘West Europe’ refers roughly to Cold War NATO Europe: Scandinavia, West Germany, the Low Countries, France, Britain, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Austria. 2 People from colder climates are genetically better equipped than those of hot tropical regions. Moreover, while the ‘Orient’ was decadent, the Occident’s conquest of the Orient was a case of ‘manifest destiny’. The seeds of this theory can be traced back to Herodotean division of the world into Orient and Occident and comparison of the ostentatious, luxuriant and debauched Persians with the hardy warriors of Greece. Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 1158 AD–1453 AD, vol. 3 (New York: Modern Library, n.d.); Niall Ferguson (ed.), Virtual History: Alternatives and Counterfactuals (1997, reprint, London: Penguin, 2011), p. 27; Peter Robb, ‘Introduction: South Asia and the Concept of Race’, in Robb (ed.), The Concept of Race in South Asia (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 1–76. 3 T. H. Aston and C. H. E. Philpin (eds), The Brenner Debate: Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe (1985, reprint, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). 4 Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, 1492: The Year Our World Began (London/New York: Bloomsbury, 2010). 5 Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe and the Making of the Modern World Economy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000). 6 David Day, Conquest: How Societies Overwhelm Others (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). 7 Edward Creasy, Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World: From Marathon to Waterloo (1908, reprint, London: Dent, 1963); Colonel G. B. Malleson, The Decisive Battles of India from 1746 to 1849 Inclusive (1883, reprint, Jaipur: Aavishkar Pulishers, 1986); Major-General J. F. C. Fuller, The Decisive Battles of the Western World, and Their Influence Upon History, 2 vols. John Terraine (ed.) (London: Paladin, 1970). In modern times, Fuller’s tradition has been continued by Victor Davis Hanson. 8 For the Military Revolution thesis see Geoffrey Parker, The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). For a historiography of the debate on Military Revolution in West Europe, see Clifford J. Rogers (ed.), The Military Revolution Debate: Readings on

206

9

10 11

12

13

Notes the Military Transformation of Early Modern Europe (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1995). See Jeremy Black, A Military Revolution? Military Change and European Society, 1550–1800 (Houndmills, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991) for the view point that early modern Europe experienced slow and gradual change in the military sphere. Parker, The Military Revolution; Geoffrey Parker, ‘The “Military Revolution,” 1955–2005: From Belfast to Barcelona and The Hague’, Journal of Military History, vol. 69, no. 1 (2005), pp. 205–9; Harold Dorn, ‘The “Military Revolution”: Military History or History of Europe?’, Technology and Culture, vol. 32, no. 3 (1991), pp. 656–8. Carlo M. Cipolla, Guns and Sails in the Early Phase of European Expansion: 1400–1700 (London: Collins, 1965). Macgregor Knox and Williamson Murray (eds), The Dynamics of Military Revolution: 1300–2050 (2001, reprint, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). Several essays in this volume point out that a series of RMAs had occurred in various parts of West Europe between the fourteenth century and 1940. RMA is conceptualized as more technologically oriented military innovation and as less rooted in social and cultural matrices compared with the more expansive Military Revolution concept. The big question is: why are all these innovations occurring in that small part of the world? Geoffrey Parker and his team (especially Victor Davis Hanson) in Parker (ed.), The Cambridge Illustrated History of Warfare: The Triumph of the West (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) portray the triumphant march of the West from 600 BC to the last decade of the twentieth century. There is not even a chapter on China, which dwarfed the so-called ‘West’ in demographic and economic resources at least till circa 1750. Drawing on Victor Davis Hanson’s dubious assumption, the above-mentioned volume asserts that the Classical Greeks gave birth to the seeds of the distinctive Western Way of Warfare. Focus on decisive battles, democratic militarism (with the attendant advantages of democracy), emphasis on technology and military theory rather than religio-cultural inhibitions, etc. are the principal characteristics of the lethal and ever-victorious Western Way of Warfare. A somewhat crass account of the Western Way of Warfare is Victor Davis Hanson’s Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power (New York/ London: Doubleday, 2001). Hanson, like Edward Creasy and J. F. C. Fuller, focuses on nine great battles fought by the Western powers. From 1945, USA, the mirror image of West European Civilization, becomes the West for him. Hanson claims that the unique Western culture based on civic militarism (the product of agrarian populism of the Classical Greek Civilization) generated the ever-victorious Western Way of Warfare. For military superiority of the West Europeans in the extra-European world from the late Middle Ages, see Peter Wilson, ‘European Warfare: 1450–1815’, in Jeremy Black (ed.), War in the Early Modern World: 1450–1815 (1999, reprint, London/

Notes

14 15 16

17

18 19 20 21

22 23

24

207

New York: Routledge, 2004), pp. 178–9. However, Michael Axworthy, The Sword of Persia: Nader Shah, from Tribal Warrior to Conquering Tyrant (London: I. B. Tauris, 2006), pp. xv–xvi asserts that the army created by the Persian conqueror was more combat-effective than any other contemporary Eurasian armies. Jeremy Black’s War and the World: Military Power and the Fate of the Continent, 1450–2000 (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 2000) provides a balanced view of the military power of the West vis-à-vis other regions of the world. William H. McNeill, The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force, and Society since AD 1000 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983). Jeremy Black, War in the World: A Comparative History, 1450–1600 (Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave, Macmillan, 2011), p. 219. In terms of geography and culture, each of the above-mentioned regions constitutes a zone. However, when we discuss China, we must discuss Korea and Japan due to the strong interconnections among these three regions. So, we will be discussing the Far East but the focus will remain on China. Similarly, when we discuss South Asia and Persia, we have to take into account the histories of Afghanistan and Central Asia due to the strong interlinks among historical trajectories of these four regions. For the same reason, when we discuss West Asia, we must take into account historical changes in North Africa (especially Egypt), Crimea and, partly, Muscovy. Marshall G. S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization, The Gunpowder Empires and Modern Times, vol. 3 (1958–1961, reprint, Lahore: Vanguard Books, 2004). Jeremy Black, Britain as a Military Power: 1688–1815 (London: UCL, 1999), p. 267. Robert M. Citino, ‘Military Histories Old and New: A Reintroduction’, American Historical Review, vol. 112, no. 4 (2007), p. 1079. Hans J. Van de Ven, ‘War in the Making of Modern China’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 30, no. 4 (1996), p. 742. Major-General J. F. C. Fuller, Armament and History: The Influence of Armament on History from the Dawn of Classical Warfare to the End of the Second World War (1946, reprint, New York: Da Capo, 1998), pp. 31, 33. Bert S. Hall and Kelly R. DeVries, ‘Essay Review—the “Military Revolution” Revisited’, Technology and Culture, vol. 31 (1990), pp. 500–7. Barry R. Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain and Germany between the World Wars (Ithaca/London: Cornell University Press, 1984), pp. 17, 55, 73, 224, 236, 245–6. Dirk Kolff asserts that the age-old Hindu concept of bheda and the Islamic concept of fitna generated continuous internecine struggles in pre-British India, and this prevented the rise of centralized polities in South Asia before 1800. Kolff, ‘A Millennium of Stateless Indian History?’, in Rajat Datta (ed.), Rethinking A Millennium: Perspectives on Indian History from the Eighth to the Eighteenth Century, Essays for Harbans Mukhia (New Delhi: Aakar, 2008), pp. 51–67.

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Notes

25 Tim Hallett, ‘Symbolic Power and Organizational Culture’, Sociological Theory, vol. 21, no. 2 (2003), pp. 131, 136. 26 Nicola Di Cosmo, ‘Introduction’, in Cosmo (ed.), Military Culture in Imperial China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), pp. 3–4. 27 Christopher Tuck, ‘ “All Innovation Leads to Hellfire”: Military Reform and the Ottoman Empire in the Eighteenth Century’, Journal of Strategic Studies, vol. 31, no. 3 (2008), p. 488. 28 An ecological determinist perspective otherwise mars the excellent overview by Kenneth Chase, Firearms: A Global History to 1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). Chase writes that the early gunpowder weapons were ineffective against mounted archers. The Asian civilizations (except Japan), unlike the West European states being threatened by the Inner Asian steppe nomads, had no incentive to develop gunpowder weapons on a systematic basis. Among the mainland Asian states, since the Ottomans, and the Russians’ western frontiers were threatened by gunpowder armies, these two states had to pay some attention to gunpowder technology unlike China, Persia and South Asia. To sum up, the geographical proximity of the steppe nomads prevented the incremental evolution of gunpowder technology in the mainland states of Asia. Peter A. Lorge, The Asian Military Revolution: From Gunpowder to the Bomb (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 16, accepts the uselessness of gunpowder technology against the ‘hit and run’ attacks launched by the extremely mobile steppe nomads. 29 A social determinist work is Stephen Peter Rosen’s, Societies and Military Power: India and Its Armies (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994). In a longue durée history of Indian armies, Rosen claims that social divisions are actually reflected in the force structure spawned by the host society. The caste system is the signature of the Indian society from the dawn of civilization in South Asia, and internal societal divisions from the Vedic to the Nuclear Age have resulted in internally fragmented armies throughout Indian history, which collapsed repeatedly against the combat-effective armies spawned by more internally cohesive societies. 30 Wayne E. Lee, ‘Warfare and Culture’, in Lee (ed.), Warfare and Culture in World History (New York: New York University Press, 2011), p. 9. 31 Jeremy Black, ‘European Military Development 1450–1800 Reconsidered’, in Lars Bisgaard, Michael Bregnsbo, Finn Stendal Pedersen and Aage Trommer (eds), Krig fra forst til sidst (Syddansk Universitetsforlag: University of Southern Denmark, 2006), pp. 15–31. 32 The Indian Marxist Muslim historian M. Athar Ali asserts that the Islamic world suffered from a cultural failure vis-à-vis the West. Ali, ‘The Passing of Empire: The Mughal Case’, in Ali (ed.), Mughal India: Studies in Polity, Ideas, Society, and Culture (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 337–49. Douglas E. Streusand’s

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Islamic Gunpowder Empires: Ottomans, Safavids and Mughals (Boulder, CO: Westview, 2011) attempts a general comparison of the three Islamic empires but has nothing much to say about their differing military evolutions. 33 Lorge, The Asian Military Revolution, is an excellent analysis of the origins of gunpowder technology in China and its spread to different parts of Asia. 34 The Manchu/Qing Dynasty lasted from 1644 till 1911. 35 The Safavids collapsed in 1722.

Chapter 1 1 Peter Lorge, War, Politics and Society in Early Modern China: 900–1795 (2005, reprint, London/New York: Routledge, 2008), p. 63. 2 Kenneth Chase, Firearms: A Global History to 1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 35–6. 3 Lorge, War, Politics and Society in Early Modern China, pp. 24, 55. 4 Anne Curry, ‘English Armies in the Fifteenth Century’, in Anne Curry and Michael Hughes (eds), Arms, Armies and Fortifications in the Hundred Years War (1994, reprint, Woodbridge, Sufflok: Boydell, 1999), pp. 41, 45. 5 Jeremy Black, War in the World: A Comparative History, 1450–1600 (Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave, Macmillan, 2011), p. 38. 6 Edward L. Dreyer, ‘The Poyang Campaign, 1363: Inland Naval Warfare in the Founding of the Ming Dynasty’, in Frank A. Kierman, Jr. and John K. Fairbank (eds), Chinese Ways in Warfare (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974), pp. 207–8, 217. 7 Louise Levathes, When China Ruled the Seas: The Treasure Fleet of the Dragon Throne (1994, reprint, Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 43. 8 Tansen Sen, ‘The Formation of Chinese Maritime Networks to Southern Asia: 1200–1450’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, vol. 49, no. 4 (2006), p. 422. 9 Levathes, When China Ruled the Seas, pp. 42–3. 10 Sen, ‘The Formation of Chinese Maritime Networks to Southern Asia: 1200–1450’, p. 423. 11 Levathes, When China Ruled the Seas, p. 32. 12 J. J. L. Duyvendak, ‘The True Dates of Chinese Maritime Expeditions in the Early Fifteenth Century’, T’oung Pao, Second Series, vol. 34, Livr. 5 (1939), pp. 341–56. 13 Levathes, When China Ruled the Seas, p. 20. 14 Black, War in the World, p. 15. 15 Ian Friel, ‘Winds of Change? Ships and the Hundred Years War’, in Curry and Hughes (eds), Arms, Armies and Fortifications in the Hundred Years War, p. 183.

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16 Robert Finlay, ‘Portuguese and Chinese Maritime Imperialism: Camoes’s Lusiads and Luo Maodeng’s Voyage of the San Bao Eunuch’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 34, no. 2 (1992), p. 227; Kuei-Sheng Chang, ‘The Maritime Scene in China at the Dawn of Great European Discoveries’, Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 94, no. 3 (1974), p. 348; Levathes, When China Ruled the Seas, p. 20. 17 Chang, ‘The Maritime Scene in China at the Dawn of Great European Discoveries’, p. 348. 18 Levathes, When China Ruled the Seas, pp. 20, 33, 126. 19 Peter C. Perdue, China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2005), pp. 19–23. 20 Gerard Chaliand, Nomadic Empires: From Mongolia to the Danube, tr. from the French by A. M. Berrett (New Brunswick/London: Transaction Publishers, 2004), pp. 8, 11. 21 Chaliand, Nomadic Empires, pp. 1–3, 12. 22 Chaliand, Nomadic Empires, pp. 7–8. 23 Chaliand, Nomadic Empires, pp. 10, 67. 24 Chase, Firearms: A Global History, p. 36. 25 Joseph Needham and Robin D. S. Yates, with the collaboration of Krzysztof Gawlikowski, Edward McEwen and Wang Ling, Science and Civilization in China, vol. 5, Chemistry and Chemical Technology, Part VI, Military Technology: Missiles and Sieges (1994, reprint, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 102, 104–5, 109. 26 Needham, et al., Science and Civilization in China, vol. 5, Part VI, pp. 109–12. 27 Timothy May, The Mongol Art of War (Barnsley, South Yorkshire: Pen & Sword, 2007), pp. 50–2. 28 Erik Hildinger, Warriors of the Steppe: A Military History of Central Asia 500 BC to 1700 AD (1997, reprint, Cambridge, MA: Da Capo, 2001), pp. 46, 205. 29 Chaliand, Nomadic Empires, p. 67. 30 Needham, et al., Science and Civilization in China, vol. 5, Part VI, pp. 112–13, 126. 31 Peter A. Lorge, The Asian Military Revolution: From Gunpowder to the Bomb (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 28. 32 Needham, et al., Science and Civilization in China, vol. 5, Part VI, pp. 120–2, 125. 33 David Nicolle, Cross and Crescent in the Balkans: The Ottoman Conquest of Southeastern Europe (Barnsley, South Yorkshire: Pen & Sword, 2010), p. 14. 34 Needham, et al., Science and Civilization in China, vol. 5, Part VI, p. 126. 35 Frederick W. Mote, ‘The T’u-mu Incident of 1449’, in Kierman, Jr. and Fairbank (eds), Chinese Ways in Warfare, pp. 263–5; Black, War in the World, p. 18. 36 Chase, Firearms: A Global History, p. 1. 37 Lorge, War, Politics and Society in Early Modern China, p. 48.

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38 Herbert Franke, ‘Siege and Defence of Towns in Medieval China’, in Kierman, Jr. and Fairbank (eds), Chinese Ways in Warfare, p. 171. 39 Wang Ling, ‘On the Invention and Use of Gunpowder and Firearms in China’, Isis, vol. 37, no. 3/4 (1947), p. 177. 40 L. Carrington Goodrich and Feng Chia-sheng, ‘The Early Development of Firearms in China’, Isis, vol. 36, no. 2 (1946), p. 123. 41 Lu Gwei-Djen, Joseph Needham and Phan Chi-Hsing, ‘The Oldest Representation of a Bombard’, Technology and Culture, vol. 29, no. 3 (1988), pp. 594–603. 42 Lorge, The Asian Military Revolution, p. 29; Black, War in the World, p. 15. 43 L. Carrington Goodrich, ‘Early Cannons in China’, Isis, vol. 55, no. 2 (1964), p. 193. 44 Charles E. Dana, ‘Cannon Notes in the Far off Past’, Bulletin of the Pennsylvania Museum, vol. 5, no. 18 (1907), pp. 21–2. 45 Arun Kumar Biswas, ‘Epic of Saltpetre to Gunpowder’, Indian Journal of History of Science, vol. 40, no. 4 (2005), pp. 542–3. 46 Ling, ‘On the Invention and Use of Gunpowder and Firearms in China’, p. 177. 47 Mansura Haidar, ‘Incendiary Warfare and the Use of Firearms in Central Asia’, in Mansura Haidar (ed.), Medieval Central Asia: Polity, Economy and Military Organization, Fourteenth to Sixteenth Centuries (New Delhi: Manohar, 2004), p. 324. 48 G. Schlegel, ‘On the Invention and Use of Fire-Arms and Gunpowder in China, prior to the Arrival of the Europeans’, T’oung Pao, Second Series, vol. 3, no. 1 (1902), p. 2. 49 Iqtidar Alam Khan, Gunpowder and Firearms: Warfare in Mughal India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 203. 50 Goodrich and Chia-sheng, ‘The Early Development of Firearms in China’, p. 123. 51 Haidar, ‘Incendiary Warfare and the Use of Firearms in Central Asia’, in Haidar (ed.), Medieval Central Asia, p. 329. 52 Thomas Esper, ‘Military Self-Sufficiency and Weapons Technology in Muscovite Russia’, Slavic Review, vol. 28, no. 2 (1969), pp. 187–8. 53 Goodrich, ‘Early Cannons in China’, p. 193. 54 Black, War in the World, pp. 14, 39. 55 Theodore A. Wertime, ‘Asian Influences on European Metallurgy’, Technology and Culture, vol. 5, no. 3 (1964), p. 395. 56 Schlegel, ‘On the Invention and Use of Fire-Arms and Gunpowder in China, Prior to the Arrival of the Europeans’, p. 9. 57 Sun Laichen, ‘Military Technology Transfers from Ming China and the Emergence of Northern Mainland Southeast Asia (c. 1390–1527)’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, vol. 34, no. 3 (2003), pp. 495–517. 58 Khan, Gunpowder and Firearms, pp. 18, 23, 225. 59 Politics and Society During the Early Medieval Period: Collected Works of Professor Mohammad Habib, vol. 2, ed. by K. A. Nizami (New Delhi: People’s Publishing House, 1981), pp. 6–8, 21, 28–9.

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60 John France, Western Warfare in the Age of Crusades: 1000–1300 (Ithaca/New York: Cornell University Press, 1999), p. 119. 61 Kate Raphael and Yotam Tepper, ‘The Archaeological Evidence from the Mamluk Siege of Arsuf ’, Mamluk Studies Review, vol. 9, no. 1 (2005), pp. 86–7, 90. 62 The Tarikh-i-Mubarakshahi of Yahiya Bin Ahmad Bin Abdullah Sirhindi, tr. into English from the Original Persian with Textual Notes and Index by H. Beveridge (1990, reprint, Delhi: Low Price Publications, 1996), pp. 9–11; France, Western Warfare in the Age of Crusades, p. 13. 63 Futuhu’s Salatin or Shah Namah-I Hind of Isami, tr. and Commentary, vol. 1, ed. by Agha Mahdi Hussain (1898, reprint, Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1967), pp. 150–1. In the First Battle of Tarain (1191 CE), while Govind Rai threw a spear that wounded Muhammad/Mahmud Ghori, the latter broke the former’s teeth in close-quarter combat. However, in this battle Ghori was forced to retreat to Afghanistan. Kaushik Roy, India’s Historic Battles: From Alexander the Great to Kargil (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2004), p. 39. 64 Tabakat-i-Nasiri by Maulana Minhaj-ud-din Abu-Umar ul-Usman (A General History of the Muhammadan Dynasties of Asia, Including Hindustan; from 810 to 1260), tr. from Original Persian Manuscripts by Major H. G. Raverty, vol. 1 (1881, reprint, Kolkata: Asiatic Society, 2010), pp. xxiii–xxiv; Simon Digby, War Horse and Elephant in the Delhi Sultanate (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1971). 65 A. B. M. Habibullah, The Foundation of Muslim Rule in India: A History of the Establishment and Progress of the Turkish Sultanate of Delhi, 1206–1290 CE (1961, reprint, Allahabad: Central Book Depot, 1976), pp. 52–3; Tarikh-i-Mubarakshahi of Yahiya Bin Ahmad Bin Abdullah Sirhindi, p. 11. 66 Jos Gommans, ‘Warhorse and Gunpowder in India: c. 1000–1850’, in Jeremy Black (ed.), War in the Early Modern World: 1450–1815 (1999, reprint, London/New York: Routledge, 2004), p. 112. 67 C. E. Bosworth, ‘Military Organization Under the Buyids of Persia and Iraq’, Oriens, vol. 18/19 (1965/1966), pp. 144, 148; J. W. Jandora, ‘Developments in Islamic Warfare: The Early Conquests’, Studia Islamica, no. 64 (1986), pp. 103, 107. 68 C. E. Bosworth, ‘The Armies of the Saffarids’, Bulletin of the School of the Oriental and African Studies, vol. 31, no. 3 (1968), pp. 542–8. 69 Jandora, ‘Developments in Islamic Warfare: The Early Conquests’, pp. 104–7. 70 U. N. Day, The Government of the Sultanate (1972, reprint, New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1993), p. 67. 71 The Tabaqat-i-Akbari of Khwaja Nizamuddin Ahmad, vol. 1, tr. by B. DE (1911, reprint, Calcutta: The Asiatic Society, 1973), pp. 169–70, 178. 72 The Tabaqat-i-Akbari of Khwaja Nizamuddin Ahmad, vol. 1, p. 155. 73 Ali Athar, Military Technology and Warfare in the Sultanate of Delhi (1206–1398) (New Delhi: Icon Publications, 2006), pp. 23–4, 31. 74 The Tabaqat-i-Akbari of Khwaja Nizamuddin Ahmad, vol. 1, p. 164.

Notes 75 76 77 78

79

80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97

98

99

213

Bosworth, ‘Military Organization Under the Buyids of Persia and Iraq’, pp. 146–7. Athar, Military Technology and Warfare in the Sultanate of Delhi, p. 25. Tarikh-i-Mubarakshahi of Yahiya Bin Ahmad Bin Abdullah Sirhindi, p. 71. B. P. Saxena, ‘Alauddin Khalji’, in Mohammad Habib and K. A. Nizami (eds), A Comprehensive History of India, vol. 5, Part 1, The Delhi Sultanat: 1206–1526 (1970, reprint, New Delhi: People’s Publishing House, 1996), pp. 337–41. The Tabaqat-i-Akbari of Khwaja Nizamuddin Ahmad, vol. 1, pp. 178–9; Saxena, ‘Alauddin Khalji’, in Habib and Nizami (eds), A Comprehensive History of India, vol. 5, Part 1, The Delhi Sultanat, pp. 392–3. The Tabaqat-i-Akbari of Khwaja Nizamuddin Ahmad, vol. 1, p. 163. Khan, Gunpowder and Firearms, pp. 19, 21. Biswas, ‘Epic of Saltpetre to Gunpowder’, pp. 557–8. M. S. Mate, ‘Daulatabad: Road to Islamic Archaeology in India’, World Archaeology, vol. 14, no. 3 (1983), pp. 336–7. Mate, ‘Daulatabad: Road to Islamic Archaeology in India’, p. 339. Day, Government of the Sultanate, p. 97. Tarikh-i-Mubarakshahi of Yahiya Bin Ahmad Bin Abdullah Sirhindi, p. 117. May, The Mongol Art of War, pp. 16, 21, 28. David Ayalon, ‘Studies on the Structure of the Mamluk Army-I’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, vol. 15, no. 2 (1953), pp. 203–28. Day, Government of the Sultanate, p. 97; Anil Chandra Banerjee, The State and Society in Northern India (Calcutta: K. P. Bagchi, 1982), p. 113. Banerjee, State and Society in Northern India, p. 113. Day, Government of the Sultanate, p. 55. Tarikh-i-Mubarakshahi of Yahiya Bin Ahmad Bin Abdullah Sirhindi, p. 153. Black, War in the World, pp. 43–4. Banerjee, State and Society in Northern India, p. 113. Mohammad Habib, ‘Amir Timur’, in Habib and Nizami (eds), A Comprehensive History of India, vol. 5, Part 1, The Delhi Sultanat, pp. 118–21, 123–5. Andrew C. S. Peacock, ‘Nomadic Society and the Seljuq Campaigns in Caucasia’, Iran & the Caucasus, vol. 9, no. 2 (2005), pp. 205, 208–11. Elizabeth A. Zachariadou, ‘Pachymeres on the “Amourioi” of Kastamonnu’, and ‘Trebizond and the Turks (1352–1402)’, in Elizabeth A. Zachariadou (ed.), Romania and the Turks (c. 1300–c. 1500) (London: Variorum Reprints, 1985), pp. 67, 334; Stephen F. Dale, The Muslim Empires of the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals (2010, reprint, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), p. 38. Zachariadou, ‘Trebizond and the Turks (1352–1402)’, in Zachariadou (ed.), Romania and the Turks, p. 336; John Freely, The Grand Turk: Sultan Mehmet II-Conqeuror of Constantinople and Master of an Empire (New York: Overlook Press, 2009), p. 2. Arthur Leon Horniker, ‘The Corps of the Janizaries’, Military Affairs, vol. 8, no. 3 (1944), p. 178.

214

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100 History of Mehmed the Conqueror, by Kritovoulos, tr. from the Greek by Charles T. Riggs (1954, reprint, Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1970), p. 15; Horniker, ‘The Corps of the Janizaries’, p. 179. 101 John A. Lynn, ‘The Pattern of Army Growth: 1445–1945’, in John A. Lynn (ed.), Tools of War: Instruments, Ideas, and Institutions of Warfare, 1445–1871 (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1990), pp. 1–2. 102 Virginia Aksan, ‘Ottoman War and Warfare: 1453–1812’, in Black (ed.), War in the Early Modern World, p. 151. 103 Dana, ‘Cannon Notes in the Far off Past’, p. 25; Carlo M. Cipolla, Guns and Sails in the Early Phase of European Expansion: 1400–1700 (London: Collins, 1965), p. 21. 104 T. F. Tout, ‘Firearms in England in the Fourteenth Century’, English Historical Review, vol. 26, no. 104 (1911), pp. 672–4. 105 Cipolla, Guns and Sails in the Early Phase of European Expansion: 1400–1700, pp. 22–3. 106 Robert Douglas Smith, ‘Monster Cannon: Wrought Iron Bombards of Europe’, Indian Journal of History of Science, vol. 40, no. 4 (2005), pp. 452, 461. 107 Robert D. Smith, ‘Artillery and the Hundred Years War: Myth and Interpretation’, in Curry and Hughes (eds), Arms, Armies and Fortifications in the Hundred Years War, p. 155. 108 Cipolla, Guns and Sails in the Early Phase of European Expansion: 1400–1700, pp. 23–4. 109 Smith, ‘Artillery and the Hundred Years War: Myth and Interpretation’, in Curry and Hughes (eds), Arms, Armies and Fortifications in the Hundred Years War, p. 155. 110 Cipolla, Guns and Sails in the Early Phase of European Expansion: 1400–1700, pp. 24–5, 27. 111 John R. Kenyon, ‘Coastal Artillery Fortification in England in the Late Fourteenth and Early Fifteenth Centuries’, in Curry and Hughes (eds), Arms, Armies and Fortifications in the Hundred Years War, pp. 146–9. 112 Weston F. Cook, Jr., ‘The Cannon Conquest of Nasirid Spain and the End of the Reconquista’, Journal of Military History, vol. 57, no. 1 (1993), pp. 49–51. 113 Cipolla, Guns and Sails in the Early Phase of European Expansion: 1400–1700, p. 90. 114 David Ayalon, ‘The Impact of Firearms on the Muslim World’, in David Ayalon (ed.), Islam and the Abode of War: Military Slaves and Islamic Adversaries (Aldershot, Hampshire: Variorum, 1994), pp. 35–6. 115 Gabor Agoston, ‘Ottoman Artillery and European Military Technology in the Fifteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, in Paul E. J. Hammer (ed.), Warfare in Early Modern Europe: 1450–1660 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 296–7; Cipolla, Guns and Sails in the Early Phase of European Expansion: 1400–1700, pp. 90–1.

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116 Cipolla, Guns and Sails in the Early Phase of European Expansion: 1400–1700, p. 25. 117 Nicolle, Cross and the Crescent, in the Balkans, pp. 17–8, 21. 118 Andrew C. Hess, ‘The Ottoman Conquest of Egypt (1517) and the Beginning of the Sixteenth-Century World War’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. 14, no. 1 (1973), pp. 61–2. 119 Elizabeth A. Zachariadou, ‘Manuel II Palaeologos on the Strife between Bayazid I and Kadi Burhan-al-Din Ahmad’, in Zachariadou (ed.), Romania and the Turks, pp. 471–2. 120 Chaliand, Nomadic Empires, p. 48; Archibald R. Lewis, ‘The Islamic World and the Latin West, 1350–1500’, Speculum, vol. 65, no. 4 (1990), p. 834. 121 History of Mehmed the Conqueror, by Kritovoulos, pp. 12–3. 122 History of Mehmed the Conqueror, by Kritovoulos, pp. 15–6, 18–21. 123 D. G. Hogarth, ‘Geography of the War Theatre in the Near East’, Geographical Journal, vol. 45, no. 6 (1915), p. 460; Steven Runciman, The Fall of Constantinople 1453 (1965, reprint, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 87. 124 Runciman, The Fall of Constantinople 1453, p. 87. 125 Runciman, The Fall of Constantinople 1453, pp. 87, 89, 91. 126 History of Mehmed the Conqueror, by Kritovoulos, pp. 34–7. 127 History of Mehmed the Conqueror, by Kritovoulos, p. 37. 128 Andrew C. Hess, ‘The Evolution of the Ottoman Seaborne Empire in the Age of Oceanic Discoveries’, American Historical Review, vol. 75, no. 7 (1970), fn 30, p. 1900. 129 History of Mehmed the Conqueror, by Kritovoulos, p. 37. 130 Runciman, The Fall of Constantinople 1453, p. 86. 131 History of Mehmed the Conqueror, by Kritovoulos, p. 38. 132 Runciman, The Fall of Constantinople 1453, pp. 91–2. 133 Christopher Duffy, Siege Warfare: The Fortress in the Early Modern World, 1494–1660 (1979, reprint, London/New York: Routledge, 1997), p. 214. According to one source, a Dacian gun founder aided the Ottomans in manufacturing bombards. Cipolla, Guns and Sails in the Early Phase of European Expansion: 1400–1700, Note 2, p. 94. 134 Cipolla, Guns and Sails in the Early Phase of European Expansion: 1400–1700, p. 96. 135 Chaliand, Nomadic Empires, p. 49. 136 Hogarth, ‘Geography of the War Theatre in the Near East’, p. 458. 137 Elizabeth A. Zachariadou, ‘The First Serbian Campaigns of Mehmed II (1454, 1455)’, in Zachariadou (ed.), Romania and the Turks, p. 837. 138 R. Rosetti, ‘Stephen the Great of Moldavia and the Turkish Invasion (1457–1504)’, Slavonic Review, vol. 6, no. 16 (1927), pp. 86–103. 139 Black, War in the World, p. 31. 140 Hess, ‘The Ottoman Conquest of Egypt (1517) and the Beginning of the Sixteenth-Century World War’, p. 63; Cipolla, Guns and Sails in the Early Phase of European Expansion: 1400–1700, Note 2, p. 96.

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141 Kaveh Farrokh, Iran at War: 1500–1988 (Oxford: Osprey, 2011), pp. 8–10. 142 V. Minorsky, ‘A Civil and Military Review in Fars in 881/1476’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, vol. 10, no. 1 (1939), p. 169. 143 P. S. Rawson, The Indian Sword (London: Herbert Jenkins, 1968), p. 16. 144 Andrew J. Newman, Safavid Iran: Rebirth of a Persian Empire (2006, reprint, London: I. B. Tauris, 2009), p. 10. 145 Carl M. Kortepeter, ‘Ottoman Imperial Policy and the Economy of the Black Sea Region in the Sixteenth Century’, Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 86, no. 2 (1966), p. 90; Minorsky, ‘A Civil and Military Review in Fars in 881/1476’, p. 169; Palmira Brummett, Ottoman Seapower and Levantine Diplomacy in the Age of Discovery (New York: State University of New York, 1994), p. 22. 146 Farrokh, Iran at War, p. 10. 147 Farrokh, Iran at War, pp. 10–13. 148 Black, War in the World, p. 29. 149 Virginia Aksan, ‘Ottoman War and Warfare: 1453–1812’, in Black (ed.), War in the Early Modern World, p. 150. 150 Kortepeter, ‘Ottoman Imperial Policy and the Economy of the Black Sea Region in the Sixteenth Century’, p. 104. 151 Chaliand, Nomadic Empires, p. 50. 152 Brian L. Davies, Warfare, State and Society on the Black Sea Steppe: 1500–1700 (London/New York: Routledge, 2007), p. 2. 153 Black, War in the World, p. 23. 154 Dianne L. Smith, ‘Muscovite Logistics: 1462–1598’, Slavonic and East European Review, vol. 71, no. 1 (1993), pp. 36–7. 155 Davies, Warfare, State and Society on the Black Sea Steppe, p. 7.

Chapter 2 1 Historians still debate the origins and evolution of the Janissaries. And like the Mughal mansabdari system, the Janissary System also evolved over time. 2 Gabor Agoston, ‘Empires and Warfare in east-central Europe, 1550–1750: The Ottoman-Habsburg Rivalry and Military Transformation’, in Frank Tallett and D. J. B. Trim (eds), European Warfare: 1350–1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 114–15; Virginia H. Aksan, ‘Ottoman Ethnographies of Warfare, 1500–1800’, in Wayne E. Lee (ed.), Empires and Indigenes: Intercultural Alliance, Imperial Expansion and Warfare in the Early Modern World (New York/London: New York University Press, 2011), p. 150. 3 Mesut Uyar and Edward J. Erickson, A Military History of the Ottomans: From Osman to Ataturk (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2009), p. 45.

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4 Simon Pepper, ‘Aspects of Operational Art: Communications, Cannon, and Small War’, in Tallett and Trim (eds), European Warfare: 1350–1750, p. 196. 5 Peter Wilson, ‘Warfare in the Old Regime: 1648–1789’, in Jeremy Black (ed.), European Warfare: 1453–1815 (London: Macmillan, 1999), p. 72. 6 Rhoads Murphey, Ottoman Warfare: 1500–1700 (London: UCL Press, 1999), p. 14. 7 David R. Jones, ‘Muscovite-Nomad Relations on the Steppe Frontier before 1800 and the Development of Russia’s “Inclusive” Imperialism’, in Lee (ed.), Empires and Indigenes, pp. 109–40. 8 David B. Ralston, Importing the European Army: The Introduction of European Military Techniques and Institutions into the Extra-European World, 1600–1914 (Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 1990), p. 17. 9 Dianne L. Smith, ‘Muscovite Logistics: 1462–1598’, Slavonic and East European Review, vol. 71, no. 1 (1993), p. 37. 10 R. M. Savory, ‘The Sherley Myth’, Iran, vol. 5 (1967), p. 73. 11 Simon Adams, ‘Tactics of Politics? “The Military Revolution” and the Habsburg Hegemony, 1525–1648’, in John A. Lynn (ed.), Tools of War: Instruments, Ideas, and Institutions of Warfare, 1445–1871 (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1990), p. 31. 12 Paul E. J. Hammer, ‘Introduction’, in Paul E. J. Hammer (ed.), Warfare in Early Modern Europe: 1450–1660 (Hampshire: Ashgate, 2007), p. xvi. 13 Kaveh Farrokh, Iran at War: 1500–1988 (Oxford: Osprey, 2011), p. 14. 14 Andrew J. Newman, Safavid Persia: Rebirth of a Persian Empire (2006, reprint, London: I. B. Tauris, 2009), p. 21. 15 Amin Banani, ‘Reflections on the Social and Economic Structure of Safavid Persia at its Zenith’, Iranian Studies, vol. 11, no. 1/4 (1978), p. 90. 16 Farrokh, Iran at War, p. 14. 17 Newman, Safavid Persia, p. 21. 18 Jonathan Grant, ‘Rethinking the Ottoman “Decline”: Military Technology Diffusion in the Ottoman Empire, Fifteenth to Eighteenth Centuries’, Journal of World History, vol. 10, no. 1 (1999), p. 182. 19 Douglas E. Streusand, Islamic Gunpowder Empires: Ottomans, Safavids and Mughals (Boulder, CO: Westview, 2011), p. 87. 20 Savory, ‘The Sherley Myth’, p. 73. 21 Erik Hildinger, Warriors of the Steppe: A Military History of Central Asia 500 BC–1700 AD (1997, reprint, Cambridge, MA: Da Capo, 2001), p. 145. 22 Robert Elgood, Firearms of the Islamic World in the Tareq Rajab Museum, Kuwait (London: I. B. Tauris, 1995), p. 113. 23 Farrokh, Iran at War, p. 14. 24 Rudi Matthee, ‘Unwalled Cities and Restless Nomads: Firearms and Artillery in Safavid Iran’, in Charles Melville (ed.), Safavid Persia: The History and Politics of an Islamic Society (1996, reprint, London: I. B. Tauris, 2009), p. 391.

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25 Elgood, Firearms of the Islamic World, p. 116. 26 Marshall G. S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization The Gunpowder Empires and Modern Times, vol. 3 (1958–1961, reprint, Lahore: Vanguard Books, 2004), p. 23. 27 Mansura Haidar, ‘Struggle with the Safavids’, in M. Haidar (ed.), Central Asia in the Sixteenth Century (New Delhi: Manohar, 2002), pp. 131–2. 28 Gabor Agoston, Guns for the Sultan: Military Power and the Weapons Industry in the Ottoman Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 194; Elgood, Firearms of the Islamic World, p. 116. 29 Geza Perjes, The Fall of the Medieval Kingdom of Hungary: Mohacs 1526-Buda 1541, tr. by Mario D. Fenyo (New Jersey: Atlantic Research and Publications, Distributed by Columbia University Press, 1989), p. 15. 30 Grant, ‘Rethinking the Ottoman “Decline”: Military Technology Diffusion in the Ottoman Empire, Fifteenth to Eighteenth Centuries’, pp. 182–3. 31 Matthee, ‘Unwalled Cities and Restless Nomads: Firearms and Artillery in Safavid Iran’, in Charles Melville (ed.), Safavid Persia, p. 392. 32 Rudi Matthee, ‘Between Aloofness and Fascination: Safavid Views of the West’, Iranian Studies, vol. 31, no. 2 (1998), pp. 238–9. 33 A Pepys of Mogul India: 1653–1708, being an Abridged Edition of the ‘Storia Do Mogor’ of Niccolao Manucci, tr. by William Irvine, Abridged Edition Prepared by Margaret L. Irvine (1913, reprint, New Delhi: Asian Educational Services, 1991), p. 16. 34 Stephen V. Grancsay, ‘The New Galleries of Oriental Arms and Armour’, Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, New Series, vol. 16, no. 9 (1958), p. 245. 35 Mansura Haidar, ‘Military Organization Under the Uzbeks’, in M. Haidar (ed.), Medieval Central Asia: Polity, Economy and Military Organization (Fourteenth to Sixteenth Centuries) (New Delhi: Manohar, 2004), pp. 304, 312–13. 36 Nabil Al-Tikriti, ‘Ottoman Iraq’, Journal of the Historical Society, vol. 7, no. 2 (2007), p. 201. 37 Uyar and Erickson, A Military History of the Ottomans, p. 43; Elgood, Firearms of the Islamic World, p. 116. 38 Hodgson, The Venture of Islam, vol. 3, p. 24. 39 David Ayalon, ‘The End of the Mamluk Sultanate: (Why did the Ottomans Spare the Mamluks of Egypt and Wipe out the Mamluks of Syria?)’, Studia Islamica, no. 65 (1987), pp. 127, 130. 40 Elgood, Firearms of the Islamic World, pp. 117–8. 41 Michael Axworthy, The Sword of Persia: Nader Shah from Tribal Warrior to Conquering Tyrant (London: I. B. Tauris, 2006), p. 21; Iqtidar Alam Khan, Gunpowder and Firearms: Warfare in Mughal India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 151; Banani, ‘Reflections on the Social and Economic Structure of Safavid Persia at its Zenith’, pp. 102–3; Elgood, Firearms of the Islamic World, p. 118.

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42 Elgood, Firearms of the Islamic World, pp. 118–19; Matthee, ‘Between Aloofness and Fascination: Safavid Views of the West’, fn 79, p. 236. 43 Al-Tikriti, ‘Ottoman Iraq’, p. 202. 44 Rudi Matthee, ‘Between Arabs, Turks and Iranians: The Town of Basra, 1600–1700’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, vol. 69, no. 1 (2006), pp. 53–78. 45 N. A. Sotavov, ‘The Circum-Caspian Areas Within the Eurasian International Relationships at the time of Peter the Great and Nadir Shah Afshar’, Iran & the Caucasus, vol. 5 (2001), p. 93. 46 Gunther E. Rothenberg, ‘The Origins of the Austrian Military Frontier in Croatia and the Alleged Treaty of 22 December 1522’, Slavonic and East European Review, vol. 38, no. 91 (1960), pp. 494–5. 47 Gabor Agoston, ‘Habsburgs and Ottomans: Defence, Military Change and Shifts in Power’, Turkish Studies Association Bulletin, vol. 22, no. 1 (1998), p. 126. 48 Perjes, The Fall of the Medieval Kingdom of Hungary: Mohacs 1526-Buda 1541, pp. 10–1, 27, 251–5, 257, 259. 49 Caroline Finkel, The Administration of Warfare: The Ottoman Military Campaigns in Hungary, 1593–1606 (Wien: VWGO, 1988), pp. 1, 8. 50 Dina Rizk Khoury, ‘The Ottoman Centre versus Provincial Power-Holders: An Analysis of the Historiography’, in Suraiya N. Faroqhi (ed.), The Cambridge History of Turkey, vol. 3, The Later Ottoman Empire: 1603–1839 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 147. 51 Gunhan Borekci, ‘A Contribution to the Military Revolution Debate: The Janissaries use of Volley Fire during the Long Ottoman-Habsburg War of 1593–1606 and the Problem of Origins’, Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungarian, vol. 59, no. 4 (2006), pp. 407–38. 52 Brian L. Davies, Warfare, State and Society on the Black Sea Steppe: 1500–1700 (London/New York: Routledge, 2007), p. 10. 53 L. J. D. Collins, ‘The Military Organization and Tactics of the Crimean Tatars, Sixteenth – Seventeenth Centuries’, in V. J. Parry and M. E. Yapp (eds), War, Technology and Society in the Middle East (London: Oxford University Press, 1975), p. 257. 54 Davies, Warfare, State and Society on the Black Sea Steppe, pp. 13, 16, 20–1. 55 Kazimierz Waliszewski, Ivan the Terrible, tr. from the French by Lady Mary Loyd (1904, reprint, Stroud, Gloucestershire: Nonsuch, 2006), pp. 150–1. 56 Richard Hellie, ‘Warfare, Changing Military Technology, and the Evolution of Muscovite Society’, in Lynn (ed.), Tools of War, p. 79. 57 Waliszewski, Ivan the Terrible, pp. 151–2. 58 Gervase Phillips, ‘ “Of Nimble Service”: Technology, Equestrianism and the Cavalry Arm of Early Modern Western European Armies’, Hammer (ed.), Warfare in Early Modern Europe: 1450–1660, pp. 65, 68. 59 Uyar and Erickson, A Military History of the Ottomans, p. 45.

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60 Waliszewski, Ivan the Terrible, p. 153. 61 Hellie, ‘Warfare, Changing Military Technology, and the Evolution of Muscovite Society’, in Lynn (ed.), Tools of War, p. 79. 62 Davies, Warfare, State and Society on the Black Sea Steppe, p. 17. 63 Davies, Warfare, State and Society on the Black Sea Steppe, pp. 18, 29. 64 Davies, Warfare, State and Society on the Black Sea Steppe, p. 20. 65 Davies, Warfare, State and Society on the Black Sea Steppe, p. 20; Collins, ‘The Military Organization and Tactics of the Crimean Tatars, Sixteenth – Seventeenth Centuries’, in Parry and Yapp (eds), War, Technology and Society in the Middle East, p. 258. 66 C. M. Kortepeter, ‘Gazi Giray II, Khan of Crimea, and the Ottoman Policy in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus, 1588–1594’, Slavonic and East European Review, vol. 44, no. 2 (1966), pp. 141, 144. 67 Finkel, The Administration of Warfare, pp. 1, 12, 34, 42. 68 Finkel, The Administration of Warfare, pp. 13, 15. 69 V. J. Parry, ‘La Maniere de combattre’, in Parry and Yapp (eds), War, Technology and Society in the Middle East, pp. 220, 223. 70 Finkel, The Administration of Warfare, pp. 19–20. 71 Agoston, ‘Habsburgs and Ottomans: Defence, Military Change and Shifts in Power’, p. 135. 72 C. F. Finkel, ‘French Mercenaries in the Habsburg-Ottoman War of 1593–1606: The Desertion of the Papa Garrison to the Ottomans in 1600’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, vol. 55, no. 3 (1992), pp. 451–71. 73 Gabor Agoston, ‘Muslim Cultural Enclaves in Hungary under Ottoman Rule’, Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungarian Tomus, vol. XLV, no. 2–3 (1991), fn 2, p. 181. 74 Gabor Agoston, ‘Gunpowder for the Sultan’s Army: New Sources on the Supply of Gunpowder to the Ottoman Army in the Hungarian Campaigns of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, Turcica, vol. 25 (1993), pp. 78–80. 75 Uyar and Erickson, A Military History of the Ottomans, p. 47. 76 Gabor Agoston, ‘Merces Prohibitae: The Anglo-Ottoman Trade in War Materials and the Dependence Theory’, Oriente Moderno, Nuova serie, vol. 20, no. 81 (2001), p. 189. 77 Uyar and Erickson, A Military History of the Ottomans, pp. 46–9. 78 Uyar and Erickson, A Military History of the Ottomans, p. 42. 79 Agoston, Guns for the Sultan, p. 198; Gabor Agoston, ‘Ottoman Warfare in Europe: 1453–1826’, in Jeremy Black (ed.), European Warfare: 1453–1815 (Hampshire/ London: Macmillan, 1999), p. 126. 80 Uyar and Erickson, A Military History of the Ottomans, pp. 40–1. 81 Agoston, ‘Empires and Warfare in East-Central Europe, 1550–1750: The OttomanHabsburg Rivalry and Military Transformation’, in Tallett and Trim (eds), European Warfare: 1350–1750, p. 127.

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82 Agoston, ‘Ottoman Warfare in Europe: 1453–1826’, in Black (ed.), European Warfare: 1453–1815, p. 135. 83 V. L. Menage, ‘Some Notes on the “Devshirme” ’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, vol. 29, no. 1 (1966), pp. 71–2. 84 Finkel, The Administration of Warfare, pp. 36–7, 41, 43. 85 Gabor Agoston, ‘Ottoman Artillery and European Military Technology in the Fifteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, in Hammer (ed.), Warfare in Early Modern Europe: 1450–1660, pp. 321–2; Jeremy Black, ‘Revolutionary and Napoleonic Warfare’, in Black (ed.), European Warfare: 1453–1815, p. 227. 86 Aksan, ‘Ottoman Ethnographies of Warfare, 1500–1800’, in Lee (ed.), Empires and Indigenes, p. 149. 87 John A. Mears, ‘The Thirty Years’ War, the “General Crisis,” and the Origins of a Standing Professional Army in the Habsburg Monarchy’, Central European History, vol. 21, no. 2 (1988), pp. 124–37. 88 M. D. Feld, ‘Middle-Class Society and the Rise of Military Professionalism: The Dutch Army, 1589–1609’, in Hammer (ed.), Warfare in Early Modern Europe: 1450–1660, pp. 242–3. 89 Hammer, ‘Introduction’, in Hammer (ed.), Warfare in Early Modern Europe: 1450–1660, p. xvi. 90 Jeremy Black, Britain as a Military Power: 1688–1715 (London: UCL, 1999), pp. 47, 50, 55. 91 Rhoads Murphey, ‘Ottoman Military Organization in South-Eastern Europe, c. 1420–1720’, in Tallett and Trim (eds), European Warfare: 1350–1750, p. 155. 92 Donald Ostrowski, ‘The Replacement of the Composite Reflex Bow by Firearms in the Muscovite Cavalry’, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, New Series, vol. 11, no. 3 (2010), pp. 513–34. 93 Brian L. Davies, ‘The Development of Russian Military Power: 1453–1815’, in Black (ed.), European Warfare: 1453–1815, p. 171. 94 Gabor Agoston, ‘Military Transformation in the Ottoman Empire and Russia, 1500–1800’, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, vol. 12, no. 2 (2011), pp. 281, 298. 95 Knud J. V. Jespersen, ‘Warfare and Society in the Baltic: 1500–1800’, in Black (ed.), European Warfare: 1453–1815, p. 194. 96 Virginia Aksan, ‘The One-Eyed Fighting the Blind: Mobilization, Supply and Command in the Russo-Turkish War of 1768–1774’, International History Review, vol. 15, no. 2 (1993), pp. 221–38. 97 Wilson, ‘Warfare in the Old Regime: 1648–1789’, in Black (ed.), European Warfare: 1453–1815, p. 80. 98 Mansura Haidar, ‘Military Organization under the Uzbeks’, in Haidar (ed.), Medieval Central Asia, p. 304.

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99 Haidar, ‘Struggle with the Safavids’, in Haidar (ed.), Central Asia in the Sixteenth Century, p. 145. 100 Babur-Nama, tr. from the Original Turki Text of Zahiruddin Muhammad Babur by A. S. Beveridge, 2 vols (reprint, New Delhi: Saeed International, 1989), vol. 1, pp. 139–40; vol. 2, p. 474. 101 Abul Fazl, The Akbar Nama, tr. From the Persian by H. Beveridge, 3 vols (1902–1939, reprint, New Delhi: Saeed International, 1989), vol. 1, pp. 240–1. 102 The History of India as Told by Its Own Historians: The Muslim Period, The Posthumous Papers of the Late H. M. Elliot, ed. and continued by John Dawson, 8 vols (1876–1877, reprint, Delhi: Low Price Publications, 2001), vol. 5, Tarikh-iSalatin-i-Afghana of Ahmad Yadgar, p. 28. 103 Fazl, The Akbar Nama, vol. 1, pp. 241–3. 104 Babur Nama, vol. 2, p. 538. 105 Fazl, The Akbar Nama, vol. 1, p. 243. 106 Fazl, The Akbar Nama, vol. 1, p. 260. 107 Babur Nama, vol. 2, pp. 547, 550, 557–8, 565–6. 108 Babur Nama, vol. 2, p. 564. 109 Babur Nama, vol. 2, p. 550, fn 2, 562. 110 Basheer Ahmad Khan Matta, Sher Shah Suri: A Fresh Perspective (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 92; Raziuddin Aquil, Sufism, Culture, and Politics: Afghans and Islam in Medieval North India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 64–6. 111 Aquil, Sufism, Culture, and Politics, pp. 76, 90. 112 John F. Richards, The New Cambridge History of India, I:5, The Mughal Empire (1993, reprint, New Delhi: Foundation Books, 2002), p. 11. 113 Akbar Nama, vol. 2, pp. 45, 47. 114 Adams, ‘Tactics or Politics? “The Military Revolution” and the Habsburg Hegemony’, in Lynn (ed.), Tools of War, p. 31. 115 Akbar Nama, vol. 2, pp. 46–50. 116 Babur Nama, vol. 1, p. 66. 117 Akbar Nama, vol. 2, pp. 54–5. 118 Akbar Nama, vol. 2, pp. 56–7. 119 Akbar Nama, vol. 2, pp. 58–60. 120 C. R. Boxer, ‘Asian Potentates and European Artillery in the 16th-18th Centuries: A Footnote to Gibson-Hill’, Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 38, no. 208 (1966), p. 157. 121 Richard M. Eaton, ‘From Kalyana to Talikota: Culture, Politics, and War in the Deccan, 1542–1565’, in Rajat Datta (ed.), Rethinking A Millennium: Perspectives on Indian History from the Eighth to the Eighteenth Century, Essays for Harbans Mukhia (New Delhi: Aakar, 2008), p. 102.

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122 Richard M. Eaton, ‘ “Kiss My Foot,” Said the King: Firearms, Diplomacy, and the Battle for Raichur, 1520’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 43, no. 1 (2009), pp. 289–90, 296–8. 123 Jadunath Sarkar, Military History of India (1960, reprint, New Delhi: Orient Longmans, 1970), pp. 91, 93. 124 Radhey Shyam, Life and Times of Malik Ambar (Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1968), p. 26. 125 Fazl, Akbar Nama, vol. 3, p. 1070–2. 126 Travels in the Mogul Empire: 1656–1668, by Francois Bernier, tr. on the basis of Irving Brock’s version and annotated by Archibald Constable, 2nd ed. revised by V. A. Smith (1934, reprint, New Delhi: Low Price Publications, 1999), p. 55. 127 Travels in the Mogul Empire: 1656–1668, pp. 48–9. 128 James B. Fraser, An Historical and Descriptive Account of Persia from the Earliest Ages to the Present Time: With a Detailed View of Its Resources, Government, Population, Natural History, and the Character of Its Inhabitants, Particularly of the Wandering Tribes; Including a Description of Afghanistan and Baluchistan (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, Tweeddale Court: MDCCCXXXIV), pp. 393–4. 129 Streusand, Islamic Gunpowder Empires, p. 84. 130 John A. Lynn II, ‘The Battle Culture of Forbearance: 1660–1789’, in Wayne E. Lee (ed.), Warfare and Culture in World History (New York: New York University Press, 2011), p. 91. 131 Uyar and Erickson, A Military History of the Ottomans, p. 42. 132 Robert Hardy, ‘The Longbow’, in Anne Curry and Michael Hughes (eds), Arms, Armies and Fortifications in the Hundred Years War (1994, reprint, Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell, 1999), pp. 161, 173. 133 Thomas Esper, ‘The Replacement of the Longbow by Firearms in the English Army’, Technology and Culture, vol. 6, no. 3 (1965), pp. 382–93. 134 Jos Gommans, ‘Warhorse and Gunpowder in India: c. 1000–1850’, in Jeremy Black (ed.), War in the Early Modern World: 1450–1815 (1999, reprint, London/New York: Routledge, 2004), pp. 116–17, 120. 135 P. S. Rawson, The Indian Sword (London: Herbert Jenkins, 1968), pp. 80–1. 136 Pranab Kumar Chattopadhyay, ‘Cannons of Eastern India’, Indian Journal of History of Science, vol. 40, no. 4 (2005), p. 467. 137 R. Balasubramaniam, ‘Development of Cannon Technology in India’, Indian Journal of History of Science, vol. 40, no. 4 (2005), pp. 506–7. 138 A. K. Bag, ‘Historical Notes: Sukraniti on Guns, Cannon and Gunpowder’, Indian Journal of History of Science, vol. 40, no. 4 (2005), pp. 657–60. 139 Bag, ‘Historical Notes: Sukraniti on Guns, Cannon and Gunpowder’, p. 660. 140 Grancsay, ‘The New Galleries of Oriental Arms and Armour’, p. 248. 141 Khan, Gunpowder and Firearms, pp. 24, 26, 29.

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142 Khan, Gunpowder and Firearms, pp. 218, 221, 225. 143 Travels in the Mogul Empire: 1656–1668, pp. 43, 47–8; Jadunath Sarkar, A Short History of Aurangzeb: 1618–1707 (1930, reprint, New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1979), pp. 55–6; Ronald G. Asch, ‘Warfare in the Age of the Thirty Years War 1598–1648’, in Black (ed.), European Warfare: 1453–1815, pp. 56–7. 144 Maasir-i-Alamgiri of Saqi Mustad Khan, tr. from the English and Annotated by Jadunath Sarkar (1947, reprint, Calcutta: The Asiatic Society, 1990), pp. 3–4, 6–8; Asch, ‘Warfare in the Age of the Thirty Years War 1598–1648’, in Black (ed.), European Warfare: 1453–1815, p. 57. 145 Maasir-i-Alamgiri, pp. 5, 10–11. 146 Elgood, Firearms of the Islamic World, p. 117. 147 Sotavov, ‘The Circum-Caspian Areas within the Eurasian International Relationships at the Time of Peter the Great and Nadir Shah Afshar’, p. 94. 148 Axworthy, The Sword of Persia, pp. 187, 190, 194–5. 149 Axworthy, The Sword of Persia, pp. 196–7. 150 Michael Axworthy, ‘The Army of Nader Shah’, Iranian Studies, vol. 40, no. 5 (2007), pp. 635–46. 151 S. R. Gilbert, ‘Mengzi’s Art of War: The Kangxi Emperor Reforms the Qing Military Examinations’, in Nicola Di Cosmo (ed.), Military Culture in Imperial China (Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard University Press, 2009), pp. 243, 255–6. 152 Kenneth M. Swope, A Dragon’s Head and a Serpent’s Tail: Ming China and the First Great Asian War, 1592–1598 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2009), pp. 19, 21. 153 Ralph D. Sawyer, ‘Military Writings’, in David A. Graff and Robin Higham (eds), A Military History of China (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2012), p. 97. 154 Jeremy Black, War in the World: A Comparative History, 1450–1600 (Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan: 2011), p. 216. 155 For the evolution of military thought in pre-British India see Kaushik Roy, Hinduism and the Ethics of Warfare in South Asia: From Antiquity to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). For the generation of military theories in ancient China see The Seven Military Classics of Ancient China Including the Art of War tr. by Ralph D. Sawyer (Boulder/San Francisco: Westview Press, 1993). 156 Sawyer, ‘Military Writings’, in Graff and Higham (eds), A Military History of China, pp. 111–12. 157 Paul Jakov Smith, ‘ “Shuihu zhuan” and the Military Subculture of the Northern Song, 960–1127’, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, vol. 66, no. 2 (2006), p. 415. 158 Peter C. Perdue, ‘Coercion and Commerce on Two Chinese Frontiers’, in Cosmo (ed.), Military Culture in Imperial China, p. 321. 159 Swope, A Dragon’s Head and a Serpent’s Tail, p. 20; David C. Wright, ‘The Northern Frontier’, in Graff and Higham (eds), A Military History of China, p. 76.

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160 Delmer M. Brown, ‘The Impact of Firearms on Japanese Warfare: 1543–1598’, Far Eastern Quarterly, vol. 7, no. 3 (1948), pp. 238–45. 161 Swope, A Dragon’s Head and a Serpent’s Tail, pp. 19–21. 162 Kenneth M. Swope, ‘Turning the Tide: The Strategic and Psychological Significance of the Liberation of Pyongyang in 1593’, in Peter Lorge (ed.), Warfare in China to 1600 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), p. 483. 163 Grace S. Fong, ‘Writing from Experience: Pastoral Records of War and Disorder in Jiangnan During the Ming-Qing Transition’, in Cosmo (ed.), Military Culture in Imperial China, p. 257. 164 Kenneth M. Swope, ‘Of Bureaucrats and Bandits: Confucianism and Anti-Rebel Strategy at the End of the Ming Dynasty’, in Lee (ed.), Warfare and Culture in World History, pp. 65, 77. 165 Smith, ‘ “Shuihu zhuan” and the Military Subculture of the Northern Song, 960–1127’, p. 415. 166 Joanna Waley-Cohen, ‘Militarization of Culture in Eighteenth-Century China’, in Cosmo (ed.), Military Culture in Imperial China, pp. 282, 284. 167 The Diary of a Manchu Soldier in Seventeenth Century China, ‘My Service in the Army’, by Dzengseo, Introduction, translation, and notes by Nicola Di Cosmo (London/New York: Routledge, 2006), Introduction, p. 3; F. W. Williams, ‘The Manchu Conquest of China’, Journal of Race Development, vol. 4, no. 2 (1913), pp. 152–3. 168 Swope, A Dragon’s Head and a Serpent’s Tail, p. 13. 169 The Diary of a Manchu Soldier in Seventeenth Century China, ‘My Service in the Army’, by Dzengseo, Introduction, pp. 3–4; Williams, ‘The Manchu Conquest of China’, pp. 155–6. 170 The Diary of a Manchu Soldier in Seventeenth Century China, ‘My Service in the Army’, by Dzengseo, Introduction, p. 4. 171 Nicola Di Cosmo, ‘Military Aspects of the Manchu Wars Against the Caqars’, in Nicola Di Cosmo (ed.), Warfare in Inner Asian History: 500–1800 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2002), pp. 361–2. 172 Chaoying Fang, ‘A Technique for Estimating the Numerical Strength of the Early Manchu Military Forces’, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, vol. 13, no. 1/2 (1950), pp. 192–3. 173 The Diary of a Manchu Soldier in Seventeenth Century China, ‘My Service in the Army’, by Dzengseo, Introduction, p. 1. 174 Edwin J. Van Kley, ‘News from China: Seventeenth-Century European Notices of the Manchu Conquest’, Journal of Modern History, vol. 45, no. 4 (1973), p. 564. 175 Fang, ‘A Technique for Estimating the Numerical Strength of the Early Manchu Military Forces’, pp. 202–3. 176 The Diary of a Manchu Soldier in Seventeenth Century China, ‘My Service in the Army’, by Dzengseo, Introduction, pp. 19–21.

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177 Hildinger, Warriors of the Steppe, p. 221. 178 Swope, A Dragon’s Head and a Serpent’s Tail, p. 18. 179 Peter Lorge, ‘War and Warfare in China: 1450–1815’, in Black (ed.), War in the Early Modern World, pp. 93–4. 180 The Diary of a Manchu Soldier in Seventeenth Century China, ‘My Service in the Army’, by Dzengseo, Introduction, p. 1; Kai-fu Tsao, ‘K’ang-Hsi and the San-Fan War’, Monumenta Serica, vol. 31 (1974–1975), p. 109; Peter C. Perdue, China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2005), pp. 135–7. 181 The Diary of a Manchu Soldier in Seventeenth Century China, ‘My Service in the Army’, by Dzengseo, Introduction, p. 17. 182 The Diary of a Manchu Soldier in Seventeenth Century China, ‘My Service in the Army’, by Dzengseo, Diary, pp. 50–1. 183 The Diary of a Manchu Soldier in Seventeenth Century China, ‘My Service in the Army’, by Dzengseo, Introduction, p. 17, Diary, pp. 66–7. 184 Tsao, ‘K’ang-Hsi and the San-Fan War’, fn 51, p. 114. 185 Paul Lococo Jr., ‘The Qing Empire’, in Graff and Higham (eds), A Military History of China, p. 127; C. J. Peers, Soldiers of the Dragon: Chinese Armies, 1500 BC–AD 1840 (New York/Oxford: Osprey, 2006), p. 224. 186 Perdue, China Marches West, p. 24. 187 Henry H. Howorth, ‘The Westerly Drifting of Nomads from the Fifth to the Nineteenth Century: Part VI, The Kirghiz, or Bourouts, the Kazaks, the Kamucks, Euzbegs, and Nogays’, Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, vol. 1 (1872), p. 232. 188 R. D. McChesney, ‘ “Barrier of Heterodoxy”?: Rethinking the Ties Between Iran and Central Asia in the Seventeenth Century’, in Melville (ed.), Safavid Persia, p. 231. 189 Peter C. Perdue, ‘Military Mobilization in Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century China, Russia, and Mongolia’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 30, no. 4 (1996), p. 758. 190 Perdue, China Marches West, pp. 140, 152–5, 157, 159, 161. 191 Peter C. Perdue, ‘Fate and Fortune in Central Eurasian Warfare: Three Qing Emperors and their Mongol Rivals’, in Cosmo (ed.), Warfare in Inner Asian History, pp. 374–5, 389; Richards, The Mughal Empire, pp. 132–3; Peers, Soldiers of the Dragon, p. 224. 192 Perdue, ‘Military Mobilization in Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century China, Russia, and Mongolia’, p. 764; Perdue, China Marches West, pp. 171, 175–6, 178–81. 193 Peter C. Perdue, ‘Culture, History, and Imperial Chinese Strategy: Legacies of the Qing Conquests’, in Hans van der Ven (ed.), Warfare in Chinese History (Leiden: Brill, 2000), p. 284. 194 Perdue, China Marches West, pp. 183–4.

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195 Peers, Soldiers of the Dragon, p. 224; Perdue, China Marches West, pp. 188–9, 195–202, 204. 196 Waley-Cohen, ‘Militarization of Culture in Eighteenth-Century China’, in Cosmo (ed.), Military Culture in Imperial China, p. 286. 197 Joanna Waley-Cohen, ‘Military Ritual and the Qing Empire’, in Cosmo (ed.), Warfare in Inner Asian History, p. 413. 198 Perdue, ‘Culture, History, and Imperial Chinese Strategy: Legacies of the Qing Conquests’, in Ven (ed.), Warfare in Chinese History, p. 282. 199 Jeremy Black, ‘Introduction’, in Jeremy Black (ed.), European Warfare: 1453–1815, pp. 20–2. 200 Howorth, ‘The Westerly Drifting of Nomads from the Fifth to the Nineteenth Century: Part VI, The Kirghiz, or Bourouts, the Kazaks, the Kamucks, Euzbegs, and Nogays’, p. 230. 201 Peers, Soldiers of the Dragon, p. 224. 202 Peers, Soldiers of the Dragon, p. 224. 203 Lococo Jr., ‘The Qing Empire’, in Graff and Higham (eds), A Military History of China, p. 130. 204 Peers, Soldiers of the Dragon, p. 226. 205 Black, ‘Revolutionary and Napoleonic Warfare’, in Black (ed.), European Warfare: 1453–1815, pp. 234, 238. 206 Perdue, China Marches West, p. 24. 207 Alexander Balisch, ‘Infantry Battlefield Tactics in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries on the European and Turkish Theatres of War: The Austrian Response to Different Conditions’, in Jeremy Black (ed.), Warfare in Europe: 1650–1792 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), p. 216.

Chapter 3 1 David Parrott, ‘The Utility of Fortifications in Early Modern Europe: Italian Princes and their Citadels, 1540–1640’, in Paul E. J. Hammer (ed.), Warfare in Early Modern Europe: 1450–1660 (Hampshire: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 129–30. 2 Geoffrey Parker, ‘The Artillery Fortress as an Engine of European Overseas Expansion: 1480–1750’, in Geoffrey Parker (ed.), Empire, War and Faith in Early Modern Europe (London: Allen Lane, 2002), pp. 194–218. 3 Christopher Duffy, Siege Warfare: The Fortress in the Early Modern World, 1494–1660 (1979, reprint, London/New York: Routledge, 1997), pp. 214–18. 4 Thomas F. Arnold, ‘War in Sixteenth-Century Europe: Revolution and Renaissance’, in Jeremy Black (ed.), European Warfare: 1453–1815 (Hampshire/London: Macmillan, 1999), p. 31.

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5 Arnold, ‘War in Sixteenth-Century Europe: Revolution and Renaissance’, in Black (ed.), European Warfare: 1453–1815, p. 33. 6 Gabor Agoston, ‘Muslim Cultural Enclaves in Hungary Under Ottoman Rule’, Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungarian Tomus, vol. XLV, no. 2–3 (1991), pp. 185–6. 7 Caroline Finkel and Victor Ostapchuk, ‘Outpost of Empire: An Appraisal of Ottoman Building Registers as Sources for the Archaeology and Construction History of the Black Sea Fortress of Ozi’, Muqarnas, vol. 22 (2005), pp. 150, 152–3. 8 Ihor Sevcenko, ‘Muscovy’s Conquest of Kazan: Two Views Reconciled’, Slavic Review, vol. 26, no. 4 (1967), pp. 543–4. 9 Kazimierz Waliszewski, Ivan the Terrible, tr. from the French by Lady Mary Loyd (1904, reprint, Stroud, Gloucestershire: Nonsuch Publishing, 2006), pp. 153–4, 156. 10 Waliszewski, Ivan the Terrible, pp. 153, 158. 11 A. N. Kurat, ‘The Turkish Expedition to Astrakhan in 1569 and the Problem of the Don-Volga Canal’, Slavonic and East European Review, vol. 40, no. 94 (1961), pp. 10, 16–20. 12 Brian Davies, ‘Village into Garrison: The Militarized Peasant Communities of Southern Muscovy’, Russian Review, vol. 51, no. 4 (1992), pp. 482–3. 13 Geza Palffy, ‘The Border Defence System in Hungary in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, in Laszlo Veszpremy and Bela K. Kiraly (eds), A Millennium of Hungarian Military History, tr. by Eleonora Arato (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), pp. 112, 114. 14 Geza Palffy, ‘The Habsburg Defence System in Hungary Against the Ottomans in the Sixteenth Century: A Catalyst of Military Development in Central Europe’, in Brian L. Davies (ed.), Warfare in Eastern Europe, 1500–1800 (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2012), p. 53. 15 Palffy, ‘The Habsburg Defence System in Hungary Against the Ottomans in the Sixteenth Century: A Catalyst of Military Development in Central Europe’, in Davies (ed.), Warfare in Eastern Europe, 1500–1800, pp. 43–5. 16 Mark L. Stein, Guarding the Frontier: Ottoman Border Forts and Garrisons in Europe (London: I. B. Tauris, 2007), pp. 2, 10–1. 17 Geza Perjes, ‘Count Miklos Zrinyi (1620–1664)’, in Veszpremy and Kiraly (eds), A Millennium of Hungarian Military History, pp. 144–7. 18 Stein, Guarding the Frontier, pp. 36–9, 41–2. 19 Stein, Guarding the Frontier, p. 21. 20 John Stoye, The Siege of Vienna: The Last Great Trial Between Cross and Crescent (2006, reprint, New York: Pegasus, 2007), p. 174. 21 David G. Chandler, Atlas of Military Strategy: The Art, Theory and Practice of War, 1618–1878, Cartography by Hazel R. Watson and Richard A. Watson (1980, reprint, London: Arms and Armour Press, 1996), p. 55. 22 Stoye, The Siege of Vienna, pp. 94–6.

Notes 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38

39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48

49

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Stein, Guarding the Frontier, pp. 40, 43. Stoye, The Siege of Vienna, p. 96. Stoye, The Siege of Vienna, pp. 97–8. Chandler, Atlas of Military Strategy, p. 55. Stoye, The Siege of Vienna, p. 167. Stoye, The Siege of Vienna, p. 168. Stoye, The Siege of Vienna, p. 169; Chandler, Atlas of Military Strategy, p. 56. Stoye, The Siege of Vienna, p. 174. Chandler, Atlas of Military Strategy, p. 56. Jozsef Zachar, ‘Hungarian Soldiers in the Habsburg and Foreign Armies, 1699–1789’, in Veszpremy and Kiraly (eds), A Millennium of Hungarian Military History, pp. 187–8. Chandler, Atlas of Military Strategy, pp. 56–7. Chandler, Atlas of Military Strategy, pp. 56–7. Zachar, ‘Hungarian Soldiers in the Habsburg and Foreign Armies, 1699–1789’, in Veszpremy and Kiraly (eds), A Millennium of Hungarian Military History, pp. 190–1. Michael Robert Hickok, Ottoman Military Administration in Eighteenth-Century Bosnia (Leiden: Brill, 1997), p. 14. Hickok, Ottoman Military Administration in Eighteenth-Century Bosnia, pp. xi, 14. History of the War in Bosnia During the Years 1737–1738 and 1739, tr. from the Turkish by C. Fraser (London: Oriental Translation Fund and J. Murray, 1830), pp. 1–2. According to Michael Robert Hickok, this account originally was not Turkish but German. The German account was published in Vienna in 1789. Hickok, Ottoman Military Administration in Eighteenth-Century Bosnia, p. 5. History of the War in Bosnia during the Years 1737–1738 and 1739, p. 3; Hickok, Ottoman Military Administration in Eighteenth-Century Bosnia, pp. 15–16. History of the War in Bosnia during the Years 1737–1738 and 1739, p. 4. History of the War in Bosnia during the Years 1737–1738 and 1739, p. 4; Hickok, Ottoman Military Administration in Eighteenth-Century Bosnia, pp. 17–18. History of the War in Bosnia during the Years 1737–1738 and 1739, pp. 4–5. History of the War in Bosnia during the Years 1737–1738 and 1739, pp. 5–6; Hickok, Ottoman Military Administration in Eighteenth-Century Bosnia, p. xix. History of the War in Bosnia during the Years 1737–1738 and 1739, p. 11. Hickok, Ottoman Military Administration in Eighteenth-Century Bosnia, p. 8. History of the War in Bosnia during the Years 1737–1738 and 1739, pp. 13–16. History of the War in Bosnia during the Years 1737–1738 and 1739, pp. 17–18. Hickok, Ottoman Military Administration in Eighteenth-Century Bosnia, pp. xx, 1, 6. According to one authority, peace was established with the signing of the Treaty of Belgrade on 1 September 1739. Robert W. Olson, The Siege of Mosul and Ottoman-Persian Relations 1718–1743: A Study of Rebellion in the Capital and War in the Provinces of the Ottoman Empire (1997, reprint, London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 9, 11, 165–9.

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50 Olson, The Siege of Mosul and Ottoman-Persian Relations 1718–1743, pp. 170–2, 181. 51 Olson, The Siege of Mosul and Ottoman-Persian Relations 1718–1743, p. 173; Chandler, Atlas of Military Strategy, p. 56. 52 Olson, The Siege of Mosul and Ottoman-Persian Relations 1718–1743, pp. 174–5. 53 Masashi Haneda, ‘The Character of the Urbanisation of Isfahan in the Later Safavid Period’, in Charles Melville (ed.), Safavid Persia: The History and Politics of an Islamic Society (1996, reprint, London: I. B. Tauris, 2009), pp. 369–72. 54 Robert Elgood, Firearms of the Islamic World in the Tareq Rajab Museum, Kuwait (London: I. B. Tauris, 1995), pp. 114–17. 55 Mansura Haidar, ‘Rise of Abdullah Khan Uzbeg’, in M. Haidar, Central Asia in the Sixteenth Century (New Delhi: Manohar, 2002), pp. 259–60, 266. 56 Elgood, Firearms of the Islamic World, p. 117. 57 R. D. McChesney, ‘ “Barrier of Heterodoxy”?: Rethinking the Ties Between Iran and Central Asia in the Seventeenth Century’, in Melville (ed.), Safavid Persia, p. 241. 58 Babur-Nama, tr. from the Original Turki Text of Zahiruddin Muhammad Babur by A. S. Beveridge, 2 vols (reprint, New Delhi: Saeed International, 1989), vol. 1, pp. 43–4, 53, 60, 80. 59 Babur Nama, vol. 2, pp. 536–7. 60 Babur Nama, vol. 2, p. 547. 61 History of Mehmed the Conqueror, by Kritovoulos, tr. from the Greek by Charles T. Riggs (1954, reprint, Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1970), p. 43. 62 Radhey Shyam, Life and Times of Malik Ambar (Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1968), pp. 20–1. 63 Abul Fazl, The Akbar Nama, tr. from the Persian by H. Beveridge, 3 vols (1902–1939, reprint, New Delhi: Saeed International, 1989), vol. 3, pp. 39–40. 64 Fazl, Akbar Nama, vol. 3, pp. 1047–8. 65 Shyam, Life and Times of Malik Ambar, pp. 22–4. 66 Fazl, Akbar Nama, vol. 3, pp. 1158–9. 67 Richard M. Eaton, ‘Tukaram (1608–1649): Non-Brahmin Religious Movements’, in R. M. Eaton (ed.), A Social History of the Deccan, 1300–1761: Eight Indian Lives, 1.8, The New Cambridge History of India (2005, reprint, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 129. 68 George MacMunn, Afghanistan from Darius to Amanullah (1929, reprint, Lahore: Sang-e-Meel Publications, 2002), p. 17. 69 The Empire of the Great Mogul, De Laet’s Description of India and Fragment of Indian History, tr. by J. S. Hoyland and Annotated by S. N. Banerjee (1928, reprint, New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1974), p. iii. 70 The Empire of the Great Mogul, De Laet’s Description of India and Fragment of Indian History, p. 55. 71 The Empire of the Great Mogul, De Laet’s Description of India and Fragment of Indian History, pp. 56–7, 70.

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72 The Jahangirnama: Memoirs of Jahangir, Emperor of India, tr., ed. and Annotated by Wheeler M. Thackston (New York: Oxford University Press in Association with the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, 1999), p. 21. 73 The Jahangirnama, p. 58. 74 The Jahangirnama, p. 58. 75 The Jahangirnama, p. 58. 76 The Jahangirnama, p. 66. 77 The Jahangirnama, p. 66. () mine. 78 The Jahangirnama, p. 59. Qara Beg was given the title of Khan. 79 The Jahangirnama, pp. 66, 89. 80 The Empire of the Great Mogul, De Laet’s Description of India and Fragment of Indian History, p. 56. 81 Inayat Khan, The Shah Jahan Nama, An Abridged History of the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan, Compiled by his Royal Librarian, ed. and Completed by W. E. Begley and Z. A. Desai (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 323. 82 Khan, The Shah Jahan Nama, p. 323. Brackets are mine. 83 Khan, The Shah Jahan Nama, pp. 323, 327–8. 84 John F. Richards, The Mughal Empire, The New Cambridge History of India, I:5 (1993, reprint, New Delhi: Foundation Books, 2002), p. 132. 85 Khan, The Shah Jahan Nama, pp. 328–30. 86 Khan, The Shah Jahan Nama, p. 331. 87 Abul Fazl, The Akbar Nama, vol. 1, p. 250. 88 Khan, The Shah Jahan Nama, p. 332. 89 Richards, The Mughal Empire, pp. 132–3. 90 Andre Wink, Akbar (Oxford: Oneworld, 2009), p. 78. 91 The History of India as Told by Its Own Historians: The Muslim Period, The Posthumous Papers of the Late H. M. Elliot, ed. and Continued by John Dawson, 8 vols (1876–1877, reprint, Delhi: Low Price Publications, 2001), vol. 7, Shah Jahan Nama of Inayat Khan, pp. 87–9. 92 History of India as Told by Its Own Historians, vol. 7, Shah Jahan Nama of Inayat Khan, pp. 89–91, 93–4. 93 History of India as Told by Its Own Historians, vol. 7, Shah Jahan Nama of Inayat Khan, pp. 95–6. 94 History of India as Told by Its Own Historians, vol. 7, Shah Jahan Nama of Inayat Khan, pp. 99–101. 95 C. R. Boxer, ‘Asian Potentates and European Artillery in the 16th–18th Centuries: A Footnote to Gibson-Hill’, Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 38, no. 208 (1966), p. 162. 96 A Pepys of Mogul India: 1653–1708, being an Abridged Edition of the ‘Storia Do Mogor’ of Niccolao Manucci, tr. by William Irvine, Abridged Edition Prepared by Margaret L. Irvine (1913, reprint, New Delhi: Asian Educational Services, 1991), p. 39.

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97 Travels in the Mogul Empire: 1656–1668, by Francois Bernier, tr. on the basis of Irving Brock’s Version and Annotated by Archibald Constable, 2nd ed. Revised by V. A. Smith (1934, reprint, New Delhi: Low Price Publications, 1999), pp. 7, 17, 38. 98 A Pepys of Mogul India: 1653–1708, Introduction, p. v. 99 A Pepys of Mogul India: 1653–1708, p. 49. 100 Jagadish Narayan Sarkar, The Life of Mir Jumla: The General of Aurangzeb (New Delhi: Rajesh Publications, 1979), pp. 218–19. 101 A Pepys of Mogul India: 1653–1708, p. 49. 102 Jos Gommans, ‘Warhorse and Gunpowder in India c. 1000–1850’, in Jeremy Black (ed.), War in the Early Modern World: 1450–1815 (1999, reprint, London/New York: Routledge, 2004), p. 114. 103 Travels in the Mogul Empire: 1656–1668, p. 31. 104 S. Jai Kishan, ‘Forge-Welded Cannons in the Forts of Karimnagar District in Andhra Pradesh’, Indian Journal of History of Science, vol. 40, no. 4 (2004), pp. 490, 493, 499. 105 R. Balasubramaniam, ‘Saltpetre Manufacture and Marketing in Medieval India’, Indian Journal of History of Science, vol. 40, no. 4 (2005), pp. 667–8. 106 Jean Deloche, ‘Gunpowder Artillery and Military Architecture in South India (Fifteenth–Eighteenth Century)’, Indian Journal of History of Science, vol. 40, no. 4 (2005), pp. 574–5. 107 Jeremy Black, ‘Introduction’, in Black (ed.), European Warfare: 1453–1815, p. 21. 108 Simon Pepper, ‘Aspects of Operational Art: Communications, Cannon, and Small War’, in Frank Tallett and D. J. B. Trim (eds), European Warfare: 1350–1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 186. 109 Arthur N. Waldron, ‘The Problem of the Great Wall of China’, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, vol. 43, no. 2 (1983), p. 663. 110 Waldron, ‘The Problem of the Great Wall of China’, p. 660. 111 Owen Lattimore, ‘Origins of the Great Wall of China: A Frontier Concept in Theory and Practice’, Geographical Review, vol. 27, no. 4 (1937), pp. 529–49. 112 David C. Wright, ‘The Northern Frontier’ in David A. Graff and Robin Higham (eds), A Military History of China (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2012), p. 63. 113 Arthur Waldron, The Great Wall of China: From History to Myth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 140–1. 114 Waldron, The Great Wall of China, pp. 140–1. 115 Waldron, The Great Wall of China, pp. 142–3. 116 M. J. Meijer, ‘A Map of the Great Wall of China’, Imago Mundi, vol. 13 (1956), pp. 110, 115; Waldron, The Great Wall of China, p. 142. 117 Meijer, ‘A Map of the Great Wall of China’, pp. 112–13. 118 Waldron, The Great Wall of China, pp. 146–7.

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119 Peter A. Lorge, The Asian Military Revolution: From Gunpowder to the Bomb (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 29. 120 Waldron, The Great Wall of China, p. 141. 121 Simon Pepper, ‘Sword and Spade: Military Construction in Renaissance Italy’, in Hammer (ed.), Warfare in Early Modern Europe: 1450–1660, p. 111. 122 Mahinder S. Kingra, ‘The Trace Italienne and the Military Revolution During the Eighty Years’ War, 1567–1648’, Journal of Military History, vol. 57, no. 3 (1993), pp. 438–9. 123 Jean Deloche, Senji (Gingee): A Fortified City in the Tamil Country (Pondicherry: Ecole francaise d’Extreme-Orient Institut de Pondichery, 2000), pp. 12, 218. 124 C. J. Peers, Soldiers of the Dragon: Chinese Armies, 1500 BC–AD 1840 (Oxford/ New York: Osprey, 2006), pp. 210–11. 125 Sen-Dou Chang, ‘Some Observations on the Morphology of Chinese Walled Cities’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, vol. 60, no. 1 (1970), pp. 1969–70. 126 Herbert Franke, ‘Siege and Defence of Towns in Medieval China’, in Frank A. Kierman, Jr. and John K. Fairbank (eds), Chinese Ways in Warfare (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974), p. 167. 127 Joseph Needham and Robin D. S. Yates with the Collaboration of Krzysztof Gawlikowski, Edward McEwen and Wang Ling, Science and Civilization in China, vol. 5, Chemistry and Chemical Technology, Part VI, Military Technology: Missiles and Sieges (1994, reprint, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 122. 128 Joseph Needham, with the Collaboration of Ho Pinng-Yu (Ho Peng Yoke), Lu Gwei-Djen and Wang Ling, Science and Civilization in China, vol. 5, Chemistry and Chemical Technology, Part VII, Military Technology; The Gunpowder Epic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 390. 129 Needham, et al., Science and Civilization in China, vol. 5, Part VII, p. 385. 130 Peers, Soldiers of the Dragon, p. 211. 131 Donald B. Wagner, ‘Iron Cannons of China’, Indian Journal of History of Science, vol. 40, no. 4 (2005), pp. 442–3. 132 Nicola Di Cosmo, ‘Military Aspects of the Manchu-Caqars Wars’, in Nicola Di Cosmo (ed.), Warfare in Inner Asian History: 500–1800 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2002), pp. 352–4. 133 Needham, et al., Science and Civilization in China, vol. 5, Part VII, pp. 401, 406. 134 Peers, Soldiers of the Dragon, pp. 223–4. 135 Peers, Soldiers of the Dragon, p. 237. 136 Peers, Soldiers of the Dragon, pp. 224, 237–8. 137 Parrott, The Utility of Fortifications in Early Modern Europe: Italian Princes and their Citadels, 1540–1640’, in Hammer (ed.), Warfare in Early Modern Europe: 1450–1660, p. 135.

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Chapter 4 1 Kenneth Chase, Firearms: A Global History to 1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 33–4. 2 Peter C. Perdue, ‘Coercion and Commerce on Two Chinese Frontiers’, in Nicola Di Cosmo (ed.), Military Culture in Imperial China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), p. 321. 3 Kathleen Ryor, ‘Wen and Wu in Elite Cultural Practices during the Late Ming’, in Cosmo (ed.), Military Culture in Imperial China, p. 221. 4 Jan Glete, ‘Warfare at Sea: 1450–1815’, in Jeremy Black (ed.), War in the Early Modern World: 1450–1815 (1999, reprint, London/New York: Routledge, 2004), pp. 28–9. 5 Kenneth M. Swope, A Dragon’s Head and a Serpent’s Tail: Ming China and the First Great Asian War, 1592–1598 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2009), pp. 5, 105. 6 Swope, A Dragon’s Head and a Serpent’s Tail, p. 89. 7 Iain Dickie, Martin J. Dougherty, Phyllis J. Jestice, Christer Jorgsen and Rob S. Rice, Fighting Technique of Naval Warfare 1190 BC-Present: Strategy, Weapons, Commanders, and Ships (New York: Thomas Dunne, 2009), p. 94. 8 Swope, A Dragon’s Head and a Serpent’s Tail, pp. 18, 119. 9 Dickie, et al., Fighting Technique of Naval Warfare 1190 BC-Present, pp. 95–6, 100. 10 Dickie, et al., Fighting Technique of Naval Warfare 1190 BC-Present, p. 97. 11 Kenneth M. Swope, ‘Crouching Tigers, Secret Weapons: Military Technology Employed During the Sino-Japanese-Korean War, 1592–1598’, Journal of Military History, vol. 69, no. 1 (2005), pp. 16, 31–2. 12 Swope, A Dragon’s Head and a Serpent’s Tail, p. 119. 13 Dickie, et al., Fighting Technique of Naval Warfare 1190 BC-Present, p. 100. 14 Swope, ‘Crouching Tigers, Secret Weapons: Military Technology Employed During the Sino-Japanese-Korean War, 1592–1598’, p. 32. Swope in his monograph writes that the Japanese had 82 ships at the beginning of the naval battle. Swope, A Dragon’s Head and a Serpent’s Tail, p. 120; Dickie, et al., Fighting Technique of Naval Warfare 1190 BC-Present, pp. 98–101. 15 Swope, A Dragon’s Head and a Serpent’s Tail, pp. 143–4. 16 Joseph Needham with the collaboration of Ho Ping-Yu (Ho Peng Yoke), Lu Gwei-Djen and Wang Ling, Science and Civilization in China, vol. 5, Chemistry and Chemical Technology, Part VII, Military Technology; The Gunpowder Epic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 367–9, 372–4. 17 Dickie, et al., Fighting Technique of Naval Warfare 1190 BC-Present, p. 71. 18 Needham, et al., Science and Civilization in China, vol. 5, Part VII, p. 392. 19 Quoted from Needham, et al., Science and Civilization in China, vol. 5, Part VII, pp. 373, 376.

Notes 20 21 22 23 24 25

26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37

38 39 40

41 42

235

Needham, et al., Science and Civilization in China, vol. 5, Part VII, p. 376. Glete, ‘Warfare at Sea: 1450–1815’, in Black (ed.), War in the Early Modern World, p. 34. Needham, et al., Science and Civilization in China, vol. 5, Part VII, p. 392. Joe J. Simmons, III, ‘Replicating Fifteenth and Sixteenth Century Ordnance’, Historical Archaeology, vol. 26, no. 4 (1992), pp. 14–20. Jonathan Clements, Pirate King: Coxinga and the Fall of the Ming Dynasty (Gloucestershire: Sutton, 2004), pp. 105–6. Peter Lorge, ‘Water Forces and Naval Operations’, in David A. Graff and Robin Higham (eds), A Military History of China (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2012), p. 93. Clements, Pirate King, pp. 113–15, 118, 137. Clements, Pirate King, pp. 121–5. Clements, Pirate King, pp. 126, 137, 141–2. Clements, Pirate King, pp. 171, 173–5. Edwin J. Van Kley, ‘Seventeenth-Century European Notices of the Manchu Conquest’, Journal of Modern History, vol. 45, no. 4 (1973), p. 564. Edward L. Dreyer, ‘Continuity and Change’, in Graff and Higham (eds), A Military History of China, p. 35. Lorge, ‘Water Forces and Naval Operations’, in Graff and Higham (eds), A Military History of China, p. 94. Mei-Ling Hsu, ‘Chinese Marine Cartography: Sea Charts of Pre-Modern China’, Imago Mundi, vol. 40 (1988), pp. 98–105. Jeremy Black, ‘Introduction’, in Black (ed.), War in the Early Modern World, pp. 7–9. P. S. Rawson, The Indian Sword (London: Herbert Jenkins, 1968), p. 94. Archibald Lewis, ‘Maritime Skills in the Indian Ocean: 1368–1500’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, vol. 16, no. 2/3 (1973), p. 248. Rhoads Murphey, ‘Ottoman Military Organization in South-Eastern Europe, c. 1420–1720’, in Frank Tallett and D. J. B. Trim (eds), European Warfare: 1350–1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 145. Jagadish Narayan Sarkar, The Life of Mir Jumla: The General of Aurangzeb (New Delhi: Rajesh Publications, 1979), pp. 238–9, 241. Pranab Kumar Chattopadhyay, ‘Cannons of Eastern India’, Indian Journal of History of Science, vol. 40, no. 4 (2005), p. 472. Naim R. Farooqi, ‘Moguls, Ottomans, and Pilgrims: Protecting the Routes to Mecca in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, International History Review, vol. 10, no. 2 (1988), pp. 209–10. Ahsan Jan Qaisar, The Indian Response to European Technology and Culture AD 1498–1707 (1982, reprint, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 26–7. G. V. Scammell, ‘The Pillars of Empire: Indigenous Assistance and the Survival of the “Estado da India” c. 1600–1700’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 22, no. 3 (1988), p. 480.

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43 Samira Sheikh, ‘A Gujarati Map and Pilot Book of the Indian Ocean, c. 1750’, Imago Mundi, vol. 61, no. 1 (2009), pp. 67, 69–70. 44 Jeremy Black, Britain as a Military Power: 1688–1815 (London: UCL, 1999), pp. 107–8, 231. 45 Ranabir Chakravarti, ‘Visiting Faraway Ports: India’s Trade in the Western Indian Ocean, ca. 800–1500 CE’, in Rajat Datta (ed.), Rethinking A Millennium: Perspectives on Indian History from the Eighth to the Eighteenth Century, Essays for Harbans Mukhia (New Delhi: Aakar, 2008), p. 258. 46 Andrew J. Newman, Safavid Persia: Rebirth of a Persian Empire (2006, reprint, London: I. B. Tauris, 2009), p. 21. 47 Michael Axworthy, ‘Nader Shah and Persian Naval Expansion in the Persian Gulf, 1700–1747’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Series 3, vol. 21, no. 1 (2011), p. 32. 48 Laurence Lockhart, ‘The Navy of Nadir Shah’, Proceedings of the Iran Society, vol. 1, Part 1 (9 Dec. 1936), pp. 7, 9. 49 Laurence Lockhart, ‘Nadir Shah’s Campaigns in Oman, 1737–1744’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, vol. 8, no. 1 (1935), pp. 160–2. 50 Axworthy, ‘Nader Shah and Persian Naval Expansion in the Persian Gulf, 1700–1747’, pp. 36–7. 51 Willem Floor, ‘The Iranian Navy in the Gulf During the Eighteenth Century’, Iranian Studies, vol. 20, no. 1 (1987), pp. 50–2. 52 Palmira Brummett, Ottoman Seapower and Levantine Diplomacy in the Age of Discovery (New York: State University of New York, 1994), pp. 8–9, 13–14. 53 Geza Perjes, The Fall of the Medieval Kingdom of Hungary: Mohacs 1526-Buda 1541, tr. by Mario D. Fenyo (New Jersey: Atlantic Research and Publications, Distributed by Columbia University Press, 1989), pp. 12–13. 54 Brummett, Ottoman Seapower and Levantine Diplomacy in the Age of Discovery, p. 14. 55 Machiel Kiel, ‘The Smaller Aegean Islands in the 16th–18th Centuries according to Ottoman Administrative Documents’, Hesperia Supplements, vol. 40 (2007), p. 35. 56 G. N. Clark, ‘The Barbary Corsairs in the Seventeenth Century’, Cambridge Historical Journal, vol. 8, no. 1 (1944), p. 22. 57 Jeremy Black, War in the World: A Comparative History, 1450–1600 (Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave, Macmillan, 2011), p. 196. 58 David Nicolle, Cross and Crescent in the Balkans: The Ottoman Conquest of Southeastern Europe (Barnsley, South Yorkshire: Pen & Sword, 2010), p. 47. 59 Brummett, Ottoman Seapower and Levantine Diplomacy in the Age of Discovery, p. 91. 60 Brummett, Ottoman Seapower and Levantine Diplomacy in the Age of Discovery, p. 252. 61 John Law, ‘On the Social Explanation of Technical Change: The Case of Portuguese Maritime Expansion’, Technology and Culture, vol. 28, no. 2 (1987), p. 233. 62 Susan Rose, ‘Islam Versus Christendom: The Naval Dimension, 1000–1600’, Journal of Military History, vol. 63, no. 3 (1999), p. 573.

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63 Law, ‘On the Social Explanation of Technical Change: The Case of Portuguese Maritime Expansion’, p. 234. 64 Brummett, Ottoman Seapower and Levantine Diplomacy in the Age of Discovery, pp. 22–3. 65 Svatopluk Soucek, ‘Naval Aspects of the Ottoman Conquests of Rhodes, Cyprus and Crete’, Studia Islamica, no. 98/99 (2004), p. 222. 66 Soucek, ‘Naval Aspects of the Ottoman Conquests of Rhodes, Cyprus and Crete’, pp. 219–21. 67 Palmira Brummett, ‘The Overrated Adversary: Rhodes and Ottoman Naval Power’, Historical Journal, vol. 36, no. 3 (1993), pp. 520, 527. 68 Bruce Ware Allen, ‘The Siege that made Suleiman Magnificent’, MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History, vol. 19, no. 1 (2006), pp. 8, 16. 69 Andrew C. Hess, ‘The Moriscos: An Ottoman Fifth Column in Sixteenth-Century Spain’, American Historical Review, vol. 74, no. 1 (1968), pp. 7–8. 70 George Hagerman, ‘High Admiral of the Ottoman Empire’, Military History (April 2001), pp. 35–6. 71 Andrew C. Hess, ‘The Battle of Lepanto and its Place in Mediterranean History’, Past & Present, no. 57 (1972), p. 58. 72 Christine Isom-Verhaaren, ‘ “Barbarossa and his Army who Came to Succor all of us”: Ottoman and French Views of their Joint Campaign of 1543–1544’, French Historical Studies, vol. 30, no. 3 (2007), pp. 401–2. 73 The History of the Maritime Wars of the Turks, tr. from the Turkish of Haji Khalifeh by James Mitchell (London: Oriental Translation Fund, 1831), p. 56. 74 The History of the Maritime Wars of the Turks, p. 57. 75 The History of the Maritime Wars of the Turks, pp. 57–8. 76 The History of the Maritime Wars of the Turks, p. 58. 77 Hess, ‘The Moriscos: An Ottoman Fifth Column in Sixteenth-Century Spain’, p. 9. 78 The History of the Maritime Wars of the Turks, pp. 53–5. 79 Kiel, ‘The Smaller Aegean Islands in the 16th–18th Centuries according to Ottoman Administrative Documents’, p. 36; The History of the Maritime Wars of the Turks, p. 59. 80 The History of the Maritime Wars of the Turks, pp. 60–4. 81 Isom-Verhaaren, ‘ “Barbarossa and his Army who Came to Succor all of us”: Ottoman and French Views of their Joint Campaign of 1543–1544’, pp. 405–7. 82 Caroline Finkel, Osman’s Dream: The Story of the Ottoman Empire, 1300–1923 (2005, reprint, London: John Murray, 2006), p. 158. 83 Finkel, Osman’s Dream, p. 158. 84 Brummett, Ottoman Seapower and Levantine Diplomacy in the Age of Discovery, p. 46. 85 Finkel, Osman’s Dream, pp. 159–60. 86 Finkel, Osman’s Dream, p. 160.

238 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104

105

106 107 108

109 110

Notes Dickie, et al., Fighting Technique of Naval Warfare 1190 BC-Present, pp. 70–2. Needham, et al., Science and Civilization in China, vol. 5, Part VII, p. 408. Dickie, et al., Fighting Technique of Naval Warfare 1190 BC-Present, pp. 72–3. Finkel, Osman’s Dream, pp. 160–1. Dickie, et al., Fighting Technique of Naval Warfare 1190 BC-Present, p. 80. Douglas E. Streusand, Islamic Gunpowder Empires: Ottomans, Safavids and Mughals (Boulder, CO: Westview, 2011), p. 52. Hess, ‘The Battle of Lepanto and its Place in Mediterranean History’, p. 54. Clark, ‘The Barbary Corsairs in the Seventeenth Century’, p. 24. J. C. Hurewitz, ‘Military Politics in the Muslim Dynastic States, 1400–1750’, Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 88, no. 1 (1968), p. 103. F. Babinger, ‘Seyyid Nuh and his Turkish Sailing Handbook’, Imago Mundi, vol. 12 (1955), pp. 180–1. John H. Parry, ‘Ships and Seamen in the Age of Discovery’, Caribbean Quarterly, vol. 2, no. 1 (1951/1952), pp. 29–30. Rose, ‘Islam Versus Christendom: The Naval Dimension, 1000–1600’, p. 573. Richard W. Unger, ‘Warships and Cargo Ships in Medieval Europe’, Technology and Culture, vol. 22, no. 2 (1981), pp. 247–8. Parry, ‘Ships and Seamen in the Age of Discovery’, p. 26. Brummett, Ottoman Seapower and Levantine Diplomacy in the Age of Discovery, p. 35. Lewis, ‘Maritime Skills in the Indian Ocean: 1368–1500’, pp. 254–7. Perjes, The Fall of the Medieval Kingdom of Hungary: Mohacs 1526-Buda 1541, p. 13. Andrew C. Hess, ‘The Evolution of the Ottoman Seaborne Empire in the Age of the Oceanic Discoveries, 1453–1525’, American Historical Review, vol. 75, no. 7 (1970), pp. 1892–919. Albrecht Fuess, ‘Rotting Ships and Razed Harbours: The Naval Policy of the Mamluks’, Mamluk Studies Review, vol. 5 (2001), pp. 58–9; Brummett, Ottoman Seapower and Levantine Diplomacy in the Age of Discovery, pp. 40–1, 69. Fuess, ‘Rotting Ships and Razed Harbours: The Naval Policy of the Mamluks’, p. 59. Brummett, Ottoman Seapower and Levantine Diplomacy in the Age of Discovery, p. 75. Robert Finlay, ‘Portuguese and Chinese Maritime Imperialism: Camoes’s Lusiads and Luo Maodeng’s Voyage of the San Bao Eunuch’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 34, no. 2 (1992), fn 10, pp. 227–8. Perjes, The Fall of the Medieval Kingdom of Hungary: Mohacs 1526-Buda 1541, p. 15. Giancarlo Casale, The Ottoman Age of Exploration (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 84–8.

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111 Casale, The Ottoman Age of Exploration, p. 92. 112 Rudi Matthee, ‘Between Arabs, Turks and Iranians: The Town of Basra, 1600–1700’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, vol. 69, no. 1 (2006), p. 53. 113 Casale, The Ottoman Age of Exploration, pp. 90–1. 114 Casale, The Ottoman Age of Exploration, p. 95. 115 Casale, The Ottoman Age of Exploration, pp. 93–4. 116 R. P. Anand, ‘Maritime Practice in South-East Asia Until 1600 AD and the Modern Law of the Sea’, International and Comparative Law Quarterly, vol. 30, no. 2 (1981), p. 441. 117 Casale, The Ottoman Age of Exploration, pp. 96–7. 118 Casale, The Ottoman Age of Exploration, pp. 97–8. 119 Anand, ‘Maritime Practice in South-East Asia until 1600 AD and the Modern Law of the Sea’, p. 445. 120 Graham Irwin, ‘Malacca Fort’, Journal of Southeast Asian History, vol. 3, no. 2 (1962), p. 22. 121 Pierre-Yves Manguin, ‘Of Fortresses and Galleys: The 1568 Acehnese Siege of Melaka, After a Contemporary Bird’s Eye View’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 22, no. 3 (1988), pp. 613–14. 122 Irwin, ‘Malacca Fort’, pp. 24–5. 123 D. R. Sardesai, ‘The Portuguese Administration in Malacca, 1511–1641’, Journal of Southeast Asian History, vol. 10, no. 3 (1969), p. 510. 124 Scammell, ‘The Pillars of Empire: Indigenous Assistance and the Survival of the “Estado da India” c. 1600–1700’, p. 485. 125 J. Kathirithamby-Wells, ‘Achehnese Control Over West Sumatra up to the Treaty of Painan, 1663’, Journal of Southeast Asian History, vol. 10, no, 3 (1969), pp. 453, 455. 126 C. R. Boxer, ‘A Note on Portuguese Reactions to the Revival of the Red Sea Spice Trade and the Rise of Atjeh, 1540–1600’, Journal of Southeast Asian History, vol. 10, no. 3 (1969), pp. 415–18; Anthony Reid, ‘Sixteenth Century Turkish Influence in Western Indonesia’, Journal of Southeast Asian History, vol. 10, no. 3 (1969), p. 396, 400. 127 Manguin, ‘Of Fortresses and Galleys: The 1568 Acehnese Siege of Melaka, After a Contemporary Bird’s Eye View’, p. 620. 128 Sardesai, ‘The Portuguese Administration in Malacca, 1511–1641’, fn 55, p. 510. 129 Muhammad Zia-ud-Din Hamid Hassan Khan, ‘Diplomatic Relations between the Mughal and Ottoman Empires during the Reign of Akbar the Great’, Journal of Asian Civilizations, vol. 33, no. 1 (2010), p. 192. 130 Khan, ‘Diplomatic Relations Between the Mughal and Ottoman Empires during the Reign of Akbar the Great’, p. 193. 131 D. K. Bassett, ‘Changes in the Pattern of Malay Politics, 1629-c. 1655’, Journal of Southeast Asian History, vol. 10, no. 3 (1969), pp. 429–30.

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132 Robert F. Voertman, ‘The Sailing Ship Complex and the Decline of Iberian Maritime Enterprise: Some Neglected Factors in the Analysis of Cultural Change’, American Journal of Economics and Sociology, vol. 14, no. 1 (1954), p. 80. 133 Stephen P. Dale, The Muslim Empires of the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 108. 134 Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 (1988, reprint, London: Fontana, 1990). 135 Voertman, ‘The Sailing Ship Complex and the Decline of Iberian Maritime Enterprise: Some Neglected Factors in the Analysis of Cultural Change’, p. 78. 136 For the South Asian case see Kaushik Roy, War, Culture and Society in Early Modern South Asia, 1740–1849 (London/New York: Routledge, 2011). 137 Black, Britain as a Military Power, p. 7.

Chapter 5 1 Jeremy Black, ‘Introduction’, in Jeremy Black (ed.), War in the Early Modern World: 1450–1815 (1999, reprint, London/New York: Routledge, 2004), p. 11. 2 John Lynn II, ‘The Battle Culture of Forbearance’, in Wayne E. Lee (ed.), Warfare and Culture in World History (New York: New York University Press, 2011), p. 90. 3 Peter Wilson, ‘European Warfare: 1450–1815’, in Black (ed.), War in the Early Modern World: 1450–1815, p. 177. 4 David B. Ralston, Importing the European Army: The Introduction of European Military Techniques and Institutions into the Extra-European World, 1600–1914 (Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 1990), p. 47. 5 Gabor Agoston, Guns for the Sultan: Military Power and the Weapons Industry in the Ottoman Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 192. 6 William R. Thompson, ‘The Military Superiority Thesis and the Ascendancy of Western Eurasia in the World System’, Journal of World History, vol. 10 (1999), pp. 143–78. 7 William H. McNeill, The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force, and Society since AD 1000 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983). 8 Brian M. Downing, ‘Constitutionalism, Warfare, and Political Change in Early Modern Europe’, Theory and Society, vol. 17, no. 1 (1988), pp. 7–56. 9 David S. Landes, ‘Why Europe and the West? Why not China?’, Journal of Economic Perspectives, vol. 20, no. 2 (2006), pp. 5–7. 10 John Brewer, The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State, 1688–1783 (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989). 11 Both the liberal Marxist tradition and the non-Marxist historians dealing with premodern India such as Romila Thapar, Burton Stein, Dirk Kolff and Jos Gommans,

Notes

12 13

14 15

16 17 18

19 20 21 22

23

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accept that before the establishment of the British Empire in India, South Asian polities were relatively weak. Even historians writing text books on South Asia claim that shared rights and divisive sovereignty were the norms in pre-British India and that unitary sovereignty was a unique idea imported by the British from West Europe to the Indian subcontinent. See Sugata Bose and Ayesha Jalal, Modern South Asia: History, Culture, Political Economy (1998, reprint, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2010). Jos Gommans, ‘Warhorse and Post-Nomadic Empire in Asia, c. 1000–1800’, Journal of Global History, vol. 2 (2007), p. 6. Jos Gommans, ‘The Eurasian Frontier after the First Millennium AD: Reflections along the Fringe of Time and Space’, Medieval History Journal, vol. 1, no. 1 (1998), pp. 125–43. Peter Lorge, War, Politics and Society in Early Modern China: 900–1795 (2005, reprint, London/New York: Routledge, 2008), pp. 2–3. Edward L. Dreyer, ‘Continuity and Change’, in David A. Graff and Robin Higham (eds), A Military History of China (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2012), p. 34. Charles O. Hucker, ‘Governmental Organization of the Ming Dynasty’, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, vol. 21 (1958), pp. 19–20. Robin Higham and David A. Graff, ‘Introduction’, in Graff and Higham (eds), A Military History of China, p. 5. Kenneth M. Swope, ‘Civil-Military Coordination in the Bozhou Campaign of the Wanli Era’, in Peter Lorge (ed.), Warfare in China to 1600 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), p. 487. Wang Yu-Chuan, ‘The Rise of Land Tax and the Fall of Dynasties in Chinese History’, Pacific Affairs, vol. 9, no. 2 (1936), p. 201. Irfan Habib, The Agrarian System of Mughal India: 1556–1707 (1963, reprint, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2010). William S. Atwell, ‘A Seventeenth Century “General Crisis” in East Asia?’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 24, no. 4 (1990), pp. 661–82. Ramon H. Myers and Yeh-chien Wang, ‘Economic Developments: 1644–1800’, in Denis Twitchett and John K. Fairbank (General Editors), The Cambridge History of China, vol. 9, Part 1, Willard J. Peterson (ed.), The Ching Empire to 1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 564. David D. Zhang, Jane Zhang, Harry F. Lee and Yuan-qing He, ‘Climate Change and War Frequency in Eastern China Over the Last Millennium’, Human Ecology, vol. 35, no. 4 (2007), pp. 403–14. Satish Chandra, The Eighteenth Century in India: Its Economy and the Role of the Marathas, the Jats, the Sikhs and the Afghans (1986, reprint, Calcutta: Forma KLM, 1991).

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25 G. Perjes, ‘Army Provisioning, Logistics and Strategy in the Second Half of the 17th Century’, in Jeremy Black (ed.), Warfare in Europe: 1650–1792 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), p. 109. 26 Michael Axworthy, The Sword of Persia: Nader Shah, from Tribal Warrior to Conquering Tyrant (London: I. B. Tauris, 2006), p. 29. 27 William T. Rowe, ‘Social Stability and Social Change’, in Peterson (ed.), The Cambridge History of China, vol. 9, Part 1, The Ching Empire to 1800, pp. 475, 478. 28 Higham and Graff, ‘Introduction’, in Graff and Higham (eds), A Military History of China, pp. 2–3. 29 Yingcong Dai, ‘Military Finance of the High Qing Period’, in Nicola Di Cosmo (ed.), Military Culture in Imperial China (Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard University Press, 2009), pp. 298–9, 302. 30 Jonathan Spence, ‘The Seven Ages of Kang Hsi (1654–1722)’, Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 26, no. 2 (1967), pp. 205, 207–8. 31 Yu-Chuan, ‘The Rise of Land Tax and the Fall of Dynasties in Chinese History’, p. 201. 32 David A. Graff, ‘State Making and State Breaking’, in Graff and Higham (eds), A Military History of China, pp. 44–5. 33 Jeremy Black, War in the World: A Comparative History, 1450–1600 (Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave, Macmillan, 2011), p. 210. 34 Leo K. Shin, ‘The Last Campaigns of Wang Yangming’, T’oung Pao, Second Series, vol. 92, Fasc. 1/3 (2006), pp. 101–2. 35 Myers and Wang, ‘Economic Developments: 1644–1800’, in The Cambridge History of China, vol. 9, Part 1, Peterson (ed.), The Ching Empire to 1800, p. 564. 36 Rowe, ‘Social Stability and Social Change’, in Peterson (ed.), The Cambridge History of China, vol. 9, Part 1, The Ching Empire to 1800, p. 503. 37 Kenneth Pomeranz, ‘Is There an East Asian Development Path? Long-Term Comparisons, Constraints, and Continuities’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, vol. 44, no. 3 (2001), pp. 322–47. 38 Pomeranz, ‘Is There an East Asian Development Path? Long-Term Comparisons, Constraints, and Continuities’, p. 348. 39 Terje Tvedt, ‘Why England and not China and India? Water Systems and the History of the Industrial Revolution’, Journal of Global History, vol. 5 (2010), pp. 29–50. 40 Sevket Pamuk, ‘Institutional Changes and the Longevity of the Ottoman Empire, 1500–1800’, in Sevket Pamuk (ed.), The Ottoman Economy and its Institutions (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2009), p. 225. 41 Irfan Habib, ‘Potentialities of Capitalist Development in the Economy of Mughal India’, Journal of Economic History, vol. 29, no. 1 (1969), pp. 32–78. 42 M. N. Pearson, ‘Shivaji and the Decline of the Mughal Empire’, Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 35, no. 2 (1976), pp. 223–4.

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43 Marshall Poe, ‘The Consequences of the Military Revolution in Muscovy: A Comparative Perspective’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 38, no. 4 (1996), pp. 613–15; Andre Wink, ‘Post-Nomadic Empires: From the Mongols to the Mughals’, in Peter Fibiger Bang and C. A. Bayly (eds), Tributary Empires in Global History (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pp. 120–31. 44 S. Nurul Hasan, ‘Zamindars under the Mughals’, in Religion, State and Society in Medieval India: Collected Works of S. Nurul Hasan (2005, reprint, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 136–8. 45 M. Athar Ali, The Mughal Nobility under Aurangzeb (1966, reprint, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 3. 46 Shireen Moosvi, ‘Urban Population in Pre-Colonial India’, in Shireen Moosvi (ed.), People, Taxation, and Trade in Mughal India (2008, reprint, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 120. 47 S. Nurul Hasan, ‘New Light on the Relations of the Early Mughal Rulers with their Nobility’, in Hasan (ed.), Religion, State and Society in Medieval India, p. 113. 48 S. Nurul Hasan, ‘The Problem of Nationalities in Medieval India’, in Hasan (ed.), Religion, State, and Society in Mughal India, p. 108. 49 Moosvi, ‘Urban Population in Pre-Colonial India’, in Moosvi (ed.), People, Taxation, and Trade in Mughal India, p. 121. 50 Shireen Moosvi, ‘The Silver Influx, Money Supply, Prices and Revenue-Extraction in Mughal India’, in Moosvi (ed.), People, Taxation, and Trade in Mughal India, pp. 36–7, 46. 51 John F. Richards, The Mughal Empire, 1.5, The New Cambridge History of India (1993, reprint, New Delhi: Foundation Books, 2002), pp. 67, 71–2, 75–6. 52 Christopher Storrs, ‘Introduction: The Fiscal-Military State in the “Long” Eighteenth Century’, in Christopher Storrs (ed.), The Fiscal-Military State in Eighteenth-Century Europe: Essays in Honour of P. G. M. Dickson (Surrey: Ashgate, 2009), p. 14. 53 Shireen Moosvi, ‘Expenditure on Buildings Under Shah Jahan: A Chapter of Imperial Financial History’, in Moosvi (ed.), People, Taxation, and Trade in Mughal India, p. 199. 54 David R. Jones, ‘Muscovite-Nomad Relations on the Steppe Frontier Before 1800 and the Development of Russia’s “Inclusive” Imperialism’, in Wayne E. Lee (ed.), Empires and Indigenes: Intercultural Alliance, Imperial Expansion and Warfare in the Early Modern World (New York/London: New York University Press, 2011), p. 133. 55 Ali, Mughal Nobility under Aurangzeb, p. 7. 56 Moosvi, ‘Expenditure on Buildings under Shah Jahan: A Chapter of Imperial Financial History’, in Moosvi (ed.), People, Taxation, and Trade in Mughal India, p. 200. 57 John A. Mears, ‘The Thirty Years’ War, the “General Crisis,” and the Origins of a Standing Professional Army in the Habsburg Monarchy’, Central European History, vol. 21, no. 2 (1988), pp. 122–41.

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58 Ali, Mughal Nobility under Aurangzeb, pp. xv–xviii. 59 Richards, The Mughal Empire, p. 1. 60 Shireen Moosvi, ‘The Indian Economic Experience, 1600–1900: A Quantitative Study’, in Moosvi (ed.), People, Taxation, and Trade in Mughal India, pp. 2, 4. 61 Karen Leonard, ‘The “Great Firm” Theory of the Decline of the Mughal Empire’, in Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam (eds), The Mughal State: 1526–1750 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 403, 405. 62 Moosvi, ‘The Indian Economic Experience, 1600–1900: A Quantitative Study’, in Moosvi (ed.), People, Taxation, and Trade in Mughal India, pp. 10–12. 63 Shireen Moosvi, ‘The Mughal Empire and the Deccan: Economic Factors and Consequences’, ‘Scarcities, Prices, and Exploitation: The Agrarian Crisis, 1658–1670’, in Moosvi (ed.), People, Taxation, and Trade in Mughal India, pp. 220–1, 230–1. 64 Jadunath Sarkar, History of Aurangzib, 5 vols, vol. 4, Southern India, 1645–1669 (1919, reprint, New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1972), pp. 13–14. 65 Maasir-i-Alamgiri of Saqi Mustad Khan, tr. from the English and Annotated by Jadunath Sarkar (1947, reprint, Calcutta: The Asiatic Society, 1990), pp. 28, 33. 66 Pearson, ‘Shivaji and the Decline of the Mughal Empire’, pp. 226–7. 67 J. F. Richards and V. Narayana Rao, ‘Banditry in Mughal India: Historical and Folk Perceptions’, in Alam and Subrahmanyam (eds), The Mughal State, pp. 491–503. 68 Muzaffar Alam, ‘Aspects of Agrarian Uprisings in North India in Early Eighteenth Century’, in Alam and Subrahmanyam (eds), The Mughal State, p. 452. 69 Richard Tapper, ‘Shahsevan in Safavid Persia’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, vol. 37, no. 2 (1974), p. 323–4; Andrew J. Newman, Safavid Persia: Rebirth of a Persian Empire (2006, reprint, London: I. B. Tauris, 2009), p. 2. 70 Newman, Safavid Persia, p. 2. 71 Tapper, ‘Shahsevan in Safavid Persia’, p. 324. 72 Newman, Safavid Persia, pp. 15, 22–3. 73 Newman, Safavid Persia, pp. 9, 17, 25. 74 Roger Savory, ‘The Safavid State and Polity’, Iranian Studies, vol. 7, no. 1/2, Part 1 (1974), p. 195; Amin Banani, ‘Reflections on the Social and Economic Structure of Safavid Persia at its Zenith’, Iranian Studies, vol. 11, no. 1/4 (1978), pp. 85–6. 75 Savory, ‘The Safavid State and Polity’, pp. 195–6. 76 H. R. Roemer, ‘The Safavid Period’, and R. M. Savory, ‘The Safavid Administrative System’, in Peter Jackson and Laurence Lockhart (eds), The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 6, The Timurid and Safavid Periods (1986, reprint, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 344, 364. There is some confusion among scholars regarding the term ‘mamalik land’. Some regard mamalik land as land under provincial administration, but all agree that Shah Abbas I brought much of the land that was previously under tribal and provincial control under the direct control

Notes

77 78 79 80

81

82

83

84 85 86 87 88 89

90 91 92

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of central government, something that Aurangzeb also tried to do in the late seventeenth century. Newman, Safavid Persia, p. 3. Masashi Haneda, ‘The Evolution of the Safavid Royal Guard’, Iranian Studies, vol. 22, no. 2/3 (1989), pp. 57–85. Savory, ‘The Safavid Administrative System’, in Jackson and Lockhart (eds), The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 6, p. 367. Axworthy, The Sword of Persia, p. 19. James A. Fraser, An Historical and Descriptive Account of Persia from the Earliest Ages to the Present Time: With a Detailed view of its Resources, Government, Population, Natural History, and the Character of its Inhabitants, Particularly of the Wandering Tribes; Including a Description of Afghanistan and Baluchistan (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, Tweeddale Court, MDCCCXXXIV), pp. 293–4. Marshall G. S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization, 3 vols, vol. 3, The Gunpowder Empires and Modern Times (1958–1961, reprint, Lahore: Vanguard Books, 2004), pp. 41, 55; Stephen F. Dale, The Muslim Empires of the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals (2010, reprint, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 115–16. Willem Floor, ‘The Dutch and the Persian Silk Trade’, in Charles Melville (ed.), Safavid Persia: The History and Politics of an Islamic Society (1996, reprint, London: I. B. Tauris, 2009), p. 336. Edmund M. Herzig, ‘The Rise of the Julfa Merchants in the Late Sixteenth Century’, in Charles Melville (ed.), Safavid Persia: The History and Politics of an Islamic Society (1996, reprint, London: I. B. Tauris, 2009), pp. 305, 308, 310, 312. Dale, The Muslim Empires, pp. 120–1. Floor, ‘The Dutch and the Persian Silk Trade’, in Melville (ed.), Safavid Persia, pp. 323–4. Fraser, An Historical and Descriptive Account of Persia from the Earliest Ages to the Present Time, p. 295. Axworthy, The Sword of Persia, p. 28. Fraser, An Historical and Descriptive Account of Persia from the Earliest Ages to the Present Time, p. 292. Storrs, ‘Introduction: The Fiscal-Military State in the “Long” Eighteenth Century’, in Storrs (ed.), The Fiscal-Military State in Eighteenth-Century Europe: Essays in Honour of P. G. M. Dickson, p. 12. John Foran, ‘The Long Fall of the Safavid Dynasty: Moving Beyond the Standard View’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. 24, no. 2 (1992), pp. 281–304. Banani, ‘Reflections on the Social and Economic Structure of Safavid Persia at its Zenith’, pp. 86–7. D. M. Lang, ‘Georgia and the Fall of the Safavi Dynasty’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, vol. 14, no. 3 (1952), pp. 523–39.

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93 Perjes, ‘Army Provisioning, Logistics and Strategy in the Second Half of the 17th Century’, in Black (ed.), Warfare in Europe: 1650–1792, p. 109. 94 Ralston, Importing the European Army, p. 25. 95 Rhoads Murphey, Ottoman Warfare: 1500–1700 (London: UCL Press, 1999), pp. 3, 5, 36–7. 96 Alexander Balisch, ‘Infantry Battlefield Tactics in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries on the European and Turkish Theatres of War: The Austrian Response to Different Conditions’, in Black (ed.), Warfare in Europe: 1650–1792, p. 221. 97 Douglas E. Streusand, Islamic Gunpowder Empires: Ottomans, Safavids and Mughals (Boulder, CO: Westview, 2011), p. 85. 98 Halil Inalcik, ‘Ottoman Methods of Conquest’, Studia Islamica, no. 2 (1954), pp. 107–8. 99 David Nicolle, Cross and Crescent in the Balkans: The Ottoman Conquest of Southeastern Europe (Barnsley, South Yorkshire: Pen & Sword, 2010), p. 15. 100 Inalcik, ‘Ottoman Methods of Conquest’, pp. 114–21. 101 Geza Perjes, The Fall of the Medieval Kingdom of Hungary: Mohacs 1526-Buda 1541, tr. by Mario D. Fenyo (New Jersey: Atlantic Research and Publications, Distributed by Columbia University Press, 1989), pp. 28–9. 102 Virginia Aksan, ‘War and Peace’, in Suraiya N. Faroqhi (ed.), The Cambridge History of Turkey, vol. 3, The Later Ottoman Empire: 1603–1839 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 82, 88. 103 Caroline Finkel, Osman’s Dream: The Story of the Ottoman Empire, 1300–1923 (2005, reprint, London: John Murray, 2006), pp. 152–3. 104 Sevket Pamuk, ‘The Ottoman Monetary System and Frontier Territories in Europe: 1500–1700’, in Pamuk (ed.), The Ottoman Economy and its Institutions, p. 175. 105 Pamuk, ‘The Ottoman Monetary System and Frontier Territories in Europe: 1500–1700’, in Pamuk (ed.), The Ottoman Economy and its Institutions, pp. 177–8. 106 Perjes, The Fall of the Medieval Kingdom of Hungary: Mohacs 1526-Buda 1541, p. 16. 107 Dale, The Muslim Empires, pp. 114, 116. 108 Leila Erder and Suraiya Faroqhi, ‘Population Rise and Fall in Anatolia: 1550–1620’, Middle Eastern Studies, vol. 15, no. 3 (1979), pp. 322–3. 109 Habib, Agrarian System of Mughal India; M. Athar Ali, The Mughal Nobility Under Aurangzeb. 110 Muzaffar Alam, The Crisis of Empire in Mughal North India: Awadh and the Punjab, 1707–1748 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1986). 111 Pamuk, ‘Institutional Changes and the Longevity of the Ottoman Empire, 1500–1800’, in Sevket Pamuk (ed.), The Ottoman Economy and its Institutions, p. 226. 112 Perjes, The Fall of the Medieval Kingdom of Hungary: Mohacs 1526-Buda 1541, p. 21.

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113 Sevket Pamuk, ‘The Price Revolution in the Ottoman Empire Reconsidered’, in Pamuk (ed.), The Ottoman Economy and its Institutions, pp. 73–4. 114 Sevket Pamuk, ‘The Evolution of Financial Institutions in the Ottoman Empire: 1600–1914’, in Pamuk (ed.), The Ottoman Economy and its Institutions, pp. 11–13. 115 Pamuk, ‘The Price Revolution in the Ottoman Empire Reconsidered’, in Pamuk (ed.), The Ottoman Economy and its Institutions, p. 83. 116 Linda T. Darling, ‘Public Finances: The Role of the Ottoman State’, in Faroqhi (ed.), The Later Ottoman Empire: 1603–1839, p. 118. 117 Dina Rizk Khoury, ‘The Ottoman Centre Versus Provincial Power-Holders: An Analysis of the Historiography’, in Faroqhi (ed.), The Later Ottoman Empire: 1603–1839, p. 147. 118 Oktay Ozel, ‘Population Changes in Ottoman Anatolia During the 16th and 17th Centuries: The “Demographic Crisis” Reconsidered’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. 36, no. 2 (2004), pp. 186–7. 119 Erder and Faroqhi, ‘Population Rise and Fall in Anatolia: 1550–1620’, pp. 336–45. 120 Abdul-Rahim Abu-Husayn, ‘Problems in Ottoman Administration in Syria During the 16th and 17th Centuries: The Case of Sanjak of Sidon-Beirut’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. 24, no. 4 (1992), pp. 665–8. 121 Abu-Husayn, ‘Problems in Ottoman Administration in Syria During the 16th and 17th Centuries: The Case of Sanjak of Sidon-Beirut’, pp. 668–9. 122 Finkel, Osman’s Dream, p. 155. 123 Ozel, ‘Population Changes in Ottoman Anatolia During the 16th and 17th Centuries: The “Demographic Crisis” Reconsidered’, pp. 188–9. 124 Robert W. Olson, The Siege of Mosul and Ottoman-Persian Relations, 1718–1743: A Study of Rebellion in the Capital and War in the Provinces of the Ottoman Empire (1997, reprint, London: Routledge, 2006), p. 3. 125 Jeremy Black, Britain as a Military Power: 1688–1815 (London: UCL, 1999), pp. 11, 15, 25. 126 David Ayalon, ‘Impact of Firearms on the Muslim World’, in David Ayalon (ed.), Islam and the Abode of War: Military Slaves and Islamic Adversaries (Aldershot, Hampshire: Variorum, 1994), p. 35. 127 Agoston, Guns for the Sultan, pp. 136, 200–1. 128 Christopher Tuck, ‘ “All Innovation Leads to Hellfire”: Military Reform and the Ottoman Empire in the Eighteenth Century’, Journal of Strategic Studies, vol. 31, no. 3 (2008), p. 477. 129 Hamish Scott, ‘The Fiscal-Military State and International Rivalry During the Long Eighteenth Century’, in Storrs (ed.), The Fiscal-Military State in EighteenthCentury Europe: Essays in Honour of P. G. M. Dickson, pp. 39, 44–5. 130 Brian L. Davies, ‘The Development of Russian Military Power: 1453–1815’, in Jeremy Black (ed.), European Warfare: 1453–1815 (Hampshire/London: Macmillan, 1999), p. 177.

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131 ‘An Account of the City of Prusa in Bithynia, and a Continuation of the Historical Observations Relating to Constantinople, by the Reverend and Learned Tho. Smith D. D. Fellow of Magd. Coll. Oxon. And of the Royal Society’, Philosophical Transactions (1683–1775), vol. 14 (1684), p. 438. mine. 132 ‘An Account of the City of Prusa in Bithynia, and a Continuation of the Historical Observations Relating to Constantinople, by the Reverend and Learned Tho. Smith D. D. Fellow of Magd. Coll. Oxon. And of the Royal Society’, p. 439. 133 Svat Soucek, ‘Piri Reis and Ottoman Discovery of the Great Discoveries’, Studia Islamica, no. 79 (1994), pp. 126–7. 134 Sevket Pamuk, ‘Ottoman Interventionism in Economic and Monetary Affairs’, in Pamuk (ed.), Ottoman Economy and its Institutions, pp. 361–3. 135 Soucek, ‘Piri Reis and Ottoman Discovery of the Great Discoveries’, p. 128. 136 Prasannan Parthasarathi, Why Europe grew Rich and Asia did not: Global Economic Divergence, 1600–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 185–222. 137 Archibald R. Lewis, ‘The Islamic World and the Latin West, 1350–1500’, Speculum, vol. 65, no. 4 (1990), pp. 840–1. 138 Marina Tolmacheva, ‘The Early Russian Exploration and Mapping of the Chinese Frontier’, Cahiers du Monde russe, vol. 41, no. 1 (2000), pp. 43–4. 139 J. C. Hurewitz, ‘Military Politics in the Muslim Dynastic States, 1400–1750’, Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 88, no. 1 (1968), pp. 96–101. 140 Marshall Poe, ‘The Truth about Muscovy’, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, vol. 3, no. 3 (2002), pp. 473–86.

Conclusion 1 2 3

4

Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 3 vols, vol. 3, 1185 AD–1453 AD (New York: Modern Library, n.d.), pp. 667, 686. John F. Richards, The Mughal Empire, The New Cambridge History of India, I:5 (1993, reprint, New Delhi: Foundation Books, 2002), p. 254. For such an account see Niall Ferguson (ed.), Virtual History: Alternatives and Counterfactuals (1997, reprint, London: Penguin, 2011). A more popular version is available in Robert Cowley (ed.), What if? Military Historians Imagine What Might Have Been (1999, reprint, London: Pan, 2001). The cash reserve of the Mughal Empire at the time of the death of Aurangzeb in 1707 was greater than that at the disposal of central government after the death of Akbar. Richards, The Mughal Empire, p. 253. For resilience of the pre-modern Indian economy, see Prasannan Parthasarathi, Why Europe Grew Rich and Asia did not: Global Economic Divergence, 1600–1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).

Notes 5

6

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Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘Dreaming an Indo-Persian Empire in South Asia, 1740–1800’, in Subrahmanyam (ed.), Explorations in Connected History: Mughals and Franks (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 173–209. Maratha military modernization, which involved Westernization/Europeanization (gunpowder infantry supported by mobile light field artillery) started in the 1780s. Before that, the Marathas were capable of fielding light cavalry, which could only conduct ganimi kava (long-range mobile guerrilla warfare). Surendranath Sen, The Military System of the Marathas (1977, reprint, Calcutta: K. P. Bagchi, 1979).

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Index Note: The letter ‘n’ following locators refers to notes. Abbas I, Shah 46, 51, 110 military reforms 48 Abbas II, Shah 47, 105, 177 Abbasid Caliphate (751–1258) 47 Abdullah Khan 105 Abu-Husayn, Abdul-Rahim 246n Abul Fazl (Mughal intellectual) 81 Achehnese Sultanate 155, 157 Adams, Simon 216n, 221n Afghanistan 22, 24, 27 see also Mahmud Ghori Afshar (tribes) 45 agnichurna see saltpetre Agoston, Gabor 57, 60, 62, 161, 189, 213n, 215n, 217n, 218n, 219n, 220n, 227n, 239n, 246n ahadis 110 Ahmad Ibn Majid 137 Ahmad Khan (Tupci Bashi) 74 Ajam (Iraq) 22, 47 Akat Khan 25 Akbar 66–7, 81 military connections, Afghanistan 108 Akkoyunlu (White Sheep) 38–9 Aksan, Virginia 40, 60, 183, 213n, 215n, 220n, 245n Alam, Muzaffar 243n, 245n Alam Shah Begum 39 Alauddin Khalji 24–6 Alawi Dynasty 148 Ali (Haidar’s son) 39 Ali, M. Athar 207n, 211n, 212n, 242n, 245n Ali Mughyat Shah, Sultan 155 al-Kurdi, Husayn (Mamluk) 151 alla moderna 89 Allahvardi Khan 48 Allen, Bruce Ware 236n Al Mutasim 24

altamash 67 Altan Khan (Mongol leader) 77 Al-Tikriti, Nabil 217n, 218n Amir-ul-Umara 110–11 Anadolu Hissar (fortress) 92 Anand, R. P. 238n Anatolia copper mines 37 maritime community 33 Mongol invasion of 29 Ottoman army at 39 Persianate Turkoman Confederations 38 Anthonisz, Adriaan 120 Aquil, Raziuddin 221n Arabs in Caliphate 23–4 gunpowder, described 19 manjaniqs 26 siege warfare 21–2 in Uzun Hasan’s army 38 Arnold, Thomas F. 90, 91, 226n, 227n Arthasastra 19 Aruj (Yakub’s son) 143 Asalat Khan (Mir Bakshi) 110 Asch, Ronald G. 223n Ashraf, Afghan 105 Asian polities coastal forts 89 cultural failures 190 economic basis 161 gunpowder weapons 5 infantry 88 maritime experiences 158 military capacity 4 traditional military system 43 see also specific entries Aston, T. H. 204n Atwell, William S. 240n Aulic War Council 93–4

Index Aurangzeb (Shah Jahan’s son) 72–3 against Uzbeks 112–16 civil war 73 death of 74 Jizya 184 sea fleet of 136–7, 159 siege warfare 173–4 Axworthy, Michael 75, 206n, 217n, 223n, 235n, 241n, 244n Ayalon, David 189, 212n, 213n, 217n, 246n Azerbaijan 38, 39 Babinger, F. 237 Babur, Zahir-ud-din Muhammad autobiography 106–7 conquest of India 63–5 gunpowder weapons 197 see also First Battle of Panipat; Mughal Army/Dynasty Bag, A. K. 222n Bahmani Sultanate (Deccan) 21 Bairam Khan 66–7 Balasubramaniam, R. 222n, 231n Balisch, Alexander 226n, 245n Baltaoglou (Ottoman admiral) 36 Banani, Amin 216n, 217n, 243n, 244n Bandar Nadiriya (Portuguese fort) 138 bandits 78, 168, 174–5, 194 Banerjee, Anil Chandra 212n banjaras (grain traders) 84 bans (handheld rockets) 21, 72 Barmal 65 Bartolomeo Soligo 36 Bassett, D. K. 238n Battle of Al-Qadisiya 24 Battle of Angora 196 Battle of Ankara 33, 196 Battle of Bosworth 28 Battle of Chaldiran 45 Battle of Delhi 28, 66–7 Battle of Deorai 73 Battle of Gulnabad 74, 181 Battle of Hansan Island 130 Battle of Khajwa 73 Battle of Lepanto 146–8 Battle of Mohacs 51 Battle of Nagashino 77 Battle of Panipat 27, 63, 64, 66–7, 73, 77 Battle of Petervarad 99 Battle of Poitiers 30

273

Battle of Raichur 68 Battle of Samugarh 72 Battle of Sarhu (Sahu) 79 Battle of Tabarasan 39 Battle of Talikota 68 Battle of Tarain 22 Battle of Terjan 38 Battle of Ulan Butong 83 Battle of Vienna 98 Bayazid (Ottoman Prince) 105 Beg Khan, Shah (Governor of Kandahar) 109 Bengal Sultanate 65 Bernier, Francois 69 Bhils 195 Bijoy Dev 22 Bir Singh Deo 65 Biswas, Arun Kumar 210n, 212n Black, Jeremy 4, 86, 135, 161, 188, 205n, 206n, 207n, 208n, 211n, 216n, 219n, 220n, 222n, 223n, 226n, 231n, 233n, 234n, 235n, 239n, 241n, 246n Borekci, Gunhan 51, 218n Bose, Sugata 240n Bosworth, C. E. 28, 211n, 212n Botelho, Nuno Alvares 157 Boxer, C. R. 221n, 230n, 238n bows composite 16–18, 23 cross 17–18, 34 described 16–17 Bregnsbo, Michael 207n Brescian/Bergamasque process 21 Brewer, John 163, 239n British Army (1500–1750) cavalry 61 firearms, use of 53, 70 fortification 31–2 military forces, described 11–12 recruitment 80 British East India Company (EIC) 46, 137, 198–200 British Navy 129 cannons 129 cast iron guns 132 Royal 137–8, 188 Brown, Delmer M. 224n Brummett, Palmira 215n, 235n, 236n, 237n

274

Index

Burma civil war 87 musketeer–elephant structure 80–1 Byzantine Empire 18, 22, 29, 33, 34, 35, 37 Caliphate 24, 29 camiciatura 120 camis 91 Cantacuzenus, John 35 Casale, Giancarlo 140, 151, 237n, 238n cavalry operation of Bedouins 23 of Byzantine 40 in Castilian civil war 32 in China 11 of Chingiz Khan 27 of Delhi Sultanate (Muhammad bin Tughluq) 27 Ghori’s strength 22, 23 gunpowder weapons vs 21 in India 11 iqta system 24 of Mallu Iqbal 28 of Mehmed the Conqueror 35–6 of Mongols 25 of Muscovite 40 of Ottoman 29, 38 of Rajputs 23 of steppe nomads 17–18 of Targhi 25 of Uzun Hasan 38 Celali rebellions 188 Chakravarti, Ranabir 235n Chaliand, Gerard 15, 16, 209n, 214n, 215n Chandler, David G. 227n, 228n, 229n Chandra, Satish 240n Chang, Kuei-Sheng 209n Chang, Sen-Dou 232n Chao Hui (Manchu General) 86 Charles V (Duke of Lorraine) 97 Charles V (Holy Roman Emperor) 146 Charles VI (Habsburg Emperor) 99 Chase, Kenneth 11, 207n, 208n, 209n, 233n Chattopadhyay, Pranab Kumar 222n, 234n chaudhuris (village headmen) 24 Chelbi Rumi Khan 68 Chi Chi-kuang (Chi Chou commander) 119 Chi Dynasty (Northern) 119

Chi-Hsing, Phan 210n China composite cannons 121–2 hand grenades, use of 58 infantry 81 logistical problems, internal disorders 189 military mobilization (1768–1770) 87 siege guns 121 see also specific entries Chinese Navy (1450–1815) folangis 130–1 meng chong crafts 128–9 piracy, suppression 128 politico-military establishment 131–2 Chinese society nomadic warriors 163, 171 values and structure of 162 Chinese warfare (till Circa 1500) cannons 19 under Emperor Yong Le 12–13 flame-throwing devices 19 gunpowder weapons 19 Ming regime 14 naval operations 12 ship construction 13 use of bows 18 Chingiz Khan 20, 27 Chong Pal 128 Cipolla, Carlo M. 3, 4, 31, 32, 205n, 213n, 214n Citino, Robert M. 5, 206n Clark, G. N. 235n, 237n Clements, Jonathan 234n COIN (Counter-Insurgency) 78, 168, 188, 194–5 Collins, L. J. D. 218n, 219n Colombe, Philippe 74 Constantinople land walls, description 34–5 Ottoman army at 36 Turkish siege of 37 Cook, Weston F., Jr. 213n Cosmo, Nicola Di 6, 122, 207n, 224n, 232n Council of Five 96 Cowley, Robert 247n Coxinga 133–5 Coyett, Frederick (Dutch Governor) 134 Creasy, Edward 204n, 205n

Index Crimean Khanate against Muscovy 53 alliance with Muscovy 52 military structure 54–5 Curry, Anne 208n, 213n, 222n Dai, Yingcong 241n Dalai Lama 87 Dale, Stephen F. 212n, 239n, 244n, 245n Dana, Charles E. 210n, 213n Dara (Shah Jahan’s eldest son) 72 Darb-i-Hasanabad (southern gate) 105 Davies, Brian L. 215n, 218n, 220n, 246n Dawa Khan 25 Day, David 2, 204n Day, U. N. 211n de Bonneval, Claude Alexandre Comte 189 Deccani sultanate 68, 107, 173–5 de Gribeauval, Jean 60 De Laet, Joannes (Director, Dutch East India Company) 108 Delhi Sultanate army under Firuz Shah Tughluq 27 army under Muhammad bin Tughluq 27 iqta system 24 military structure 21, 23, 40 Mongol invaders 25–7 under Sayyids 28 siege warfare 26 tribal support 28 Turko-Mongol-Persian traditions 24 use of bans 21 Deloche, Jean 116, 231n, 232n del Sem, Francisco Coutinho 157 de Noronha, Afonso (Portuguese Viceroy) 153 de Noronha, Dom Paio 152 DeVries, Kelly R. 6, 206n devsirme/devshirme (collection) system 43, 59, 191 Dhul-Ghadr (tribes) 45 Dickie, Iain 233n, 237n Di Cosmo Nicola 122 Digby, Simon 211n diwan-i-arz 25 Dorea, Andrea 144 Dorn, Harold 205n Dougherty, Martin J. 233n

275

Downing, Brian M. 162, 239n Dreyer, Edward L. 208n, 234n, 240n Duffy, Christopher 90, 91, 214n, 226n durbar 110 Dutch East India Company 108 Duyvendak, J. J. L. 208n Dvelet Giri, Khan 52–3 Dzengseo (Manchu military officer) 81 Dzhanibek Giri, Khan 54 Eaton, Richard M. 221n, 222n, 229n Edrine peace treaty 51 Elgood, Robert 45, 216n, 217n, 218n, 223n, 229n Elias Pasha 144 Emmanuel, Max 97 Empire of Rum (Rome) see Byzantine Empire Erder, Leila 187, 245n, 246n Erickson, Edward J. 70, 215n, 217n, 218n, 219n, 222n Esper, Thomas 210n, 222n Eugene (Prince of Savoy) 99–100 Eurasia geography 15 turbulence zone in 15–16 warfare in (till 1750) 15 European polities (West and Central) permanent army, structure of 60–1 see also specific entries falconete 32 Fang, Chaoying 224n Farnese, Alessandro (Imperial Governor of the Low Countries) 120 Farooqi, Naim R. 234n Faroqhi, Suraiya 187, 245n, 246n Farrokh, Kaveh 215n, 216n Farrukhsiyar 39, 44 faujdar 175 Fazil, Ahmed Koprulu 94 Fazl, Abul 81, 107, 172, 221n, 222n, 229n, 230n Feld, M. D. 60, 220n Feng the Phoenix 133–4 feranghis 105, 149, 151 Ferdinand I 50 Ferdinand III 60 Ferdinand V, Spain 143 Ferguson, Niall 204n, 247n

276 Fernandez-Armesto, Felipe 1, 204n Figueira Luiz (Portuguese Squadron Commander) 153 Finkel, Caroline 51, 218n, 219n, 220n, 227n, 236n, 237n, 245n, 246n Finlay, Robert 209n, 237n First Battle of Panipat 27, 63, 64, 67, 73, 77 Firuz Shah Tughluq 27 Floor, Willem 235n, 244n folangis 130–1 Fong, Grace S. 224n Foran, John 244n France, John 211n Franke, Herbert 210n, 232n Fraser, James B. 69, 70, 222n, 244n Frederick, George (Prince of Waldeck) 97 Freely, John 212n French Army (1500–1750) firearms, use of 53 garrisons of, 57 military strength 30 in Picardy campaigns 44 ships of 139, 143 war debt 189–90 French Revolution 54, 189 Friel, Ian 208n Fuess, Albrecht 237n Fu Kang (Manchu General) 87 Fuller, J. F. C. 5, 204n, 205n, 206n Galdan Khan (b. 1644; r. 1671–4 April 1697) 83 garrison of Vienna 96 Gedik Ahmad Pasha 38 Geng Zhongming (Ming General) 81 ghazis/gazis 25, 64, 95, 142 Ghaznavids 18, 24 Ghorid Dynasty 18, 22 ghulams 23, 24, 25, 27 Gibbon, Edward 196, 204n, 247n Gilbert, S. R. 223n Giorgi of Kartli 181 Giri Dynasty 51 Giustiniani 36 Glete, Jan 128, 233n, 234n Golden Horde 40, 55, 193 Golkunda Sultanate 116 Gommans, Jos 23, 71, 115, 163, 211n, 222n, 231n, 239n, 240n

Index gonullus 95 Goodrich, L. Carrington 210n Graff, David A. 167, 240n, 241n Grancsay, Stephen V. 217n, 222n Grant, Jonathan 216n, 217n Great Wall of China 117, 119, 122 Guan the Stork 134 gulai gorod 37 gunpowder weapons in Asian regions 11 Chinese invention of 19 detonating effect of 19 in French cannons 30 Inner Asian nomads 20 in medieval India 19–21 in Ming army 21 in Mongol invasions 26, 28 in Ottoman Army 32, 37 saltpetre in 19–21, 26 sulphur in 19–20, 26 in West European armies 11–12, 20 Gurkha Kingdom 87 Gwei-Djen, Lu 210n, 232n, 233n Habib, Irfan 165, 170, 240n, 241n, 245n Habib, Mohammad 212n Habibullah, A. B. M. 211n Habsburg Empire chain of fortresses 93 confrontation with Ottoman Army (1500–1700) 56–7 military manpower 87 Hadim Suleiman 151 Hagerman, George 236n Haidar, Mansura 210n, 217n, 220n, 229n Haidar, Shaikh 39, 176 Haj Husain Pasha Jalali 103 Haj pilgrim 136 Hall, Bert S. 6, 206n Hallett, Tim 207n Hammer, Paul E. J. 44, 216n, 220n, 226n Haneda, Masashi 229n, 244n Hanson, Victor Davis 204n, 205n harawal-i-manqula 66–7 Hardy, Robert 70, 222n hawais (rockets) 21 He, Yuan-qing 240n Hekimoglu Ali Pasha (Vizir of Bosnia) 102 Hellie, Richard 218n, 219n

Index Hemu (Hindu General of Suri Sultanate) 66–8 Henri IV military structure 53 Herzig, Edmund M. 244n Hess, Andrew C. 150, 214n, 236n, 237n Hickok, Michael Robert 228n Higham, Robin 240n, 241n Hildinger, Erik 209n, 216n, 225n Hindu order of battle (ORBAT) 23 Hindu Shahi Dynasty 27 Hindu society Brahmins, role in 192 cultural zone 192 Hodgson, Marshall G. S. 5, 46, 206n, 217n, 244n Hogarth, D. G. 214n Hohenloe 94 Hong, Park 128 Horniker, Arthur Leon 212n, 213n horses Indian tribute to China 12 of steppe 16 Hossein, Shah 181 howdah 23 Howorth, Henry H. 225n, 226n Hsu, Mei-Lung 234n Hucker, Charles O. 240n hui-hui pao 20 Humayun (Mughal Emperor) death of 109 expulsion from India 66 in Rajaput camp, 64 Hundred Years War 70 Hungary Border Fortress Captain Generals 94 defensive fortifications 93–4 fall of Buda 93 huo chiang 26 Hurewitz, J. C. 192, 237n, 247n Husain Pasha of Aleppo 103 Husayn Khan (Governor of Herat) 109 Ibn Battuta 191 Ibn Saif II 138 Ibrahim (Haidar’s son) 39 Ibrahim Khan 65 Ibrahim Lodhi Sultan 63, 64 Imam Ali 39 Imam of Musqat 139

277

Inalcik, Halil 245n Inayat Khan 110 India civil war (1657–1659) 72–3 composite cannons 121–2 defensive fortification 120 gunpowder and cannons (Mughal army) 68 logistical problems, internal disorders 189 musketeer–elephant structure 80–1 pre-Islamic period 26–7 Rajput cavalry 53, 61, 67, 71, 73, 88 Rajput polites in 22–3 saltpetre, availability 72 see also Deccani Sultanate; Delhi Sultanate; Mughal Army/Dynasty Indian Navy 132 cartographic knowledge 137 Mughal naval activity 136–7 ship construction 136 infantry in Castilian Civil War 32 in China 11, 18 crossbow, use of 18 in Delhi Sultanate’s army 40 in India 11 in Islamic armies 25 Mallu Iqbal’s 28 Mehmed the Conqueror 36 in Ming army 21 in Ottoman Empire 29, 40 in Rajput Army 23 paiks under Sultans 25 pikemen operation 12 Uzun Hasan’s 38 iqtas 27 Iquan,Nicholas 133 iradas 22 Irwin, Graham 238n Isha Khan 136 Iskander Khan Uzbek 66 Iskander Muda 157 Islamic world madrasa’s, role in 191 religious studies 192 use of crossbow 18 Ismail, Shah army, strength of 44–6 conquest of Georgia 181

278 founder, Safavid Dynasty 39 Persian navy, under 138 as Shia Imam 176 Isom-Verhaaren, Christine 236n Ivan the ‘Terrible’ (1530–1584) military structure 52–3 jagirdar 109, 116, 182 jagirs 40, 171–4, 185 Jahan, Shah 38, 48, 110, 111, 112, 114, 174, 195 Jahangir (Mughal Emperor) 108–10 high way construction 108–9 Jai Singh 174 Jalal, Ayesha 240n Jalal Khan 65 Jalaluddin Khalji 21 Jandora, J. W. 211n Janissaries conquest of Astrakhan 92–3 corporate interest 190 during peacetime 58 financial troubles 186 Hungarian Army and 50–1, 55–6 in Istanbul garrison 52 merits and demerits 183–4 under Muhammad II 29–30 Safavids and 47 sea warfare 148 under Shah Ismail 46 siege techniques 95–6 strength in 17th century 61–2 under Sultan Suleiman 44, 145 technical and organizational problems 59 use of firearms 53 Japan handheld firearms 77 Korean invasion 128 sail designs 128 javelins (zupins) 25 Jespersen, Knud J. V. 220n Jestice, Phyllis J. 233n Jesuit Atlas 86 Jiajing (Ming Emperor) 76 Jidu (Manchu Prince) 134 jihad 148, 190 Jin Dynasty 78 John, Don (Austria) 146

Index Jones, David R. 44, 216n, 242n Jorgsen, Christer 233n Junaid, Shaikh 176 Jurchen tribes 78 Kang Hsi 81, 167, 195 Kangxi (Manchu Emperor) 84, 86 kantar 100 kapikulu 43–4, 53 Kara Mustafa 96–9 karkhana 172 Kathirithamby-Wells, J. 238n Kautilya 19 Kazaks 86 Keng Chi-mao (Ming General) 81 Kennedy, Paul 239n Kenyon, John R. 213n Khalifeh, Haji 144 Khalil Pasha 99 khandas 23 Khan, Inayat 110, 114, 230n Khan, Iqtidar Alam 21, 210n, 217n Khan Khanan 107 Khan, Muhammad Zia-ud-Din Hamid Hassan 238n khas 59 Khizr-ud-din/Hayreddin (Ottoman admiral) 144–6 Khizr/Khair-ud-din (Yakub’s son) 143–4 Khoury, Dina Rizk 218n, 246n Khusrau (Jahangir’s son) 109 Khwaja Aqil (bakshi) 109 Khwarazam Empire 27 Kiel, Machiel 235n, 236n Kingra, Mahinder S. 232n Kipchak Khanate 83 Kishan, S. Jai 231n kleinkrieg (small war) 51 Knox, Macgregor 205n kobuksons ((turtleboats/turtleships) 129 Koc Pasha (Governor of Koy Sancak) 103–4 Kolff, Dirk 206n, 239n Kong Yude (Ming General) 81 Konishi Yukinaga 128 Korean Navy 129–30 Kortepeter, Carl M. 215n, 219n kos 22, 54, 64, 67, 73, 110, 114 Kurat, A. N. 227n

Index Laichen, Sun 21, 210n Lajos II, king 50 Lala Mustafa 188 Landes, David S. 162, 239n Lang, D. M. 244n Latif Khan 138 Lattimore, Owen 117, 231n Law, John 235n Lee, Harry F. 240n Lee, Wayne E. 7, 207n Leonard, Karen 243n Leopold I (Emperor) 96 levant trade, Venetians 150 Levathes, Louise 208n, 209n Lewis, Archibald R. 192, 214n, 234n, 237n, 247n Ling, Wang 19, 209n, 210n, 232n, 233n Li Tzucheng 79 Lockhart, Laurence 235n Lococo, Paul, Jr. 225n, 226n Lodhi Sultanate 63 lombardas 32 Lorge, Peter A. 80, 164, 207n, 208n, 209n, 210n, 225n, 232n, 234n, 240n Louis XIV 60, 86, 122–3 Low Countries siege warfare techniques 120, 122–3 Lufti Pasha 144 Lynn, John A. II 30, 161, 213n, 222n, 239n MacMunn, George 229n madrasa 191 maghribis 22 Maginot Line see Great Wall of China Mahmud Ghazni 27–8 Mahmud Ghori 22–3 Indian invasion 22–3 strength of army 22–3 Malik Nayak (Malik Kafur) 25 Malleson, Colonel G. B. 204n mamluks 22, 27, 32, 39, 48 Sultanate 30, 44, 47–8, 150 Manchu Army/Dynasty cavalry, armour 80 combat effectiveness 86–7 defeat at Vietnam 87 dynasty, formation of 78 Eight Banner system 79–80 expansion, in late 17th century 123

279

expeditions 87 Green Standard troops 82 Hung/Hong Taiji 78 invasion of China 80 under Kangxi Emperor 86 military structure 80 Mongolian expansion 82–3 navy 134 Nurhaci 78–9 royal hunting, impact on 86 Russian invasion of 123 Manchu/Qing Dynasty 78 Wu Sangui’s rebellion 82 Manguin, Pierre-Yves 238n manjaniqs 22, 26 Manowar Khan (grandson of Isha Khan) 136 mansabdari system 74, 110, 170–1 Maratha Movement 74, 174 Mate, M. S. 26, 212n Matta, Basheer Ahmad Khan 221n Matthee, Rudi 216n, 217n, 218n, 238n Matthias, Archduke (brother of Rudolf) 55 Maw Shan 21 Maximilian (Archduke of Austria) 20 May, Timothy 209n McChesney, R. D. 225n, 229n McNeill, William H. 4, 162, 206n, 239n Mears, John A. 220n, 242n Mehmed Aga 101 Mehmed II 36, 37, 38 janissari corps under 29–30 Mehmed IV, Sultan 148 Mehmed the Conqueror see Mehmed II Meijer, M. J. 231n Menage, V. L. 220n Miklos Zrinyi 94–5 Military Revolution (Muscovy) 44 Ming Army/Dynasty 11 counter-insurgency (COIN) campaigns 78 death of Timur, impact on 14 defensive fortification 118–20 Great Wall, building 118 mercenary army 77–8 military structure 75–8 nine border garrisons 118 Western cannon technology 131–2 see also Great Wall of China

280 Minorsky, V. 215n Mir Atish ((Superintendent of Artillery) 136 Mir Muhammad 181 Mir Vayas 181 Mirza Ghazi 109–10 Mirza Sulaiman 67 mirzas, army of 109 Moldavian Army 37 Mongke Khan 27 Mongol Army/Dynasty under Altan Khan 77, 117 bow makers 17 cannons 20 cavalry 18, 45, 81 decline of 87 explosive weapon 20 invasion of Anatolia 29 horses 16 Manchu Banners and 79 military strength 27 nomads 15–16 way of warfare 122 see also Yuan Dynasty; Zunghars (Mongol tribe) Moosvi, Shireen 242n, 243n Mote, Frederick W. 209n mudaraba 186 mufawada 186 Mughal Army/Dynasty after the death of Aurangzeb 74 annexation of Deccani sultanate 68–9 artillery 71, 73 Bernier’s account on 69 cannon manufacturing 71 cavalry troopers’ armour 47, 71 collapse, reasons for 175, 185 confrontation with Sher Khan 65 defensive fortification 107–8 division 67 garrison in Kabul 74 gunpowder weapons 65–6 introduction of gunpowder and cannons 68 land revenue system 171–4 military structure 63–4 musketeer infantry 73 under Nadir Shah 75 ORBAT at Khanwa 64, 67 as paper empire 171

Index role of gunpowder weapons 107 Safavid’s siege of Kandahar 109 siege warfare 108–16 taulqama/tulughnama 63 Uzbeks in 84 Muhammad Beg (Safavid chief minister) 47 Muhammad IV, Sultan 96 Muhammad Muazzam (Mughal Prince) 174 Muhammad Quli Khan Shamlu 181 Muhammad Shah 74 Muhammad Taqi Khan 139 Muhsinzade Abdullah/Ali Pasha (Governor of Bosnia) 100 Murad (Mughal Prince) 107 Murphey, Rhoads 44, 216n, 220n, 234n, 245n Murray, Williamson 205n murshid-i kamil 176 Musa Al Kazem 39 Muscat Fleet 138 Muscovite Army 51 alliance with Crimean Khanate 51, 52 cavalry 44, 53, 61–2 under Czardom 193 field fortifications 53–4 geographical luck 193 under Prince George Ivanovitch Pronski 92 reflex recurve bow, use of 61 siege warfare 53, 61–2 size of 62 Western-style cannons 53 Muslim polities in Deccan 21 gunpowder technology 161 in post-Caliphate era 44 policy of succession 192–3 see also specific entries Mustafa Pasha 144 Mutahhar Ibn Sharaf al-din, Imam 188 Myers, Ramon H. 168, 240n, 241n Nadir Shah 74, 103–4 military structure 75 naval fleet 138–9 Napoleon 87 Grande Armee 87 Naqdi Beg 109 Narpat Hara 65

Index Narsingh Deo 22 NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) 124 naus (Portuguese ships) 149 Nazar Muhammad 110 Needham, Joseph 131, 147, 209n, 210n, 232n, 233n, 234n, 237n Netherlands (old) System, fortification 120 Newman, Andrew J. 215n, 216n, 235n, 243n Nguyen Dynasty 87 Nicolle, David 209n, 214n, 235n, 245n niru 80 Nizam Shah of Ahmadnagar 68 Nogay/Nogai (tribes) 52, 55 nomads Central Asian 17 defined 16 of Mongolia 17, 41 steppe 17–18 Turkish 40 of Ukraine 40–1 Nurhaci fortifications 122 four banner system 80 Ming connections 78–9 Olson, Robert W. 228n, 229n, 246n Osman Pasha 51 Ostrowski, Donald 61, 220n Ottoman Army/Dynasty Acemi Ocagi 58 annual campaign (Hungary) 50, 55 Battle of Chaldiran 45 cannon manfacturing 32 cavalry 40 Cebeci Ocagi 58 confrontation with Habsburgs 56–7 control over Western coast 41 defeat of Hungarians 50 devsirme/devshirme (collection) system 43 eastern and western fronts, compared 49–50 expeditions 33, 37–8 fighting with Uzbecks 46 Grenzer (light infantry) 44 gunpowder weapons 32, 46, 57 Habsburg war, in Hungary 56 hussar (cavalry) 44

281

infantry regiments 51 Janissaries, role in 58–60 kapikulu 43–4 military reforms 62 military threat (Shia ideology) 45 mounted archers in 18 northern front, expansion of 51–2 Persian invasion 39, 44 Safavid’s defeat and victory 45–6 sakrids 58 siege warfare 29–30, 37 slave soldiers, Islam 43–4 stradiotti (irregular light cavalry) 44 under Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent 44, 50 timar-based cavalry 43–4, 55, 60 wagenburg technique 45 weapon manufacturing 58 see also Ottoman Navy; Ottomans after 1750; Ottoman siege warfare Ottoman Navy conquest of Basra 151 conquest of Rhodes 142–3 Euro-Asian control 140 mercantilist trends, seventeenth century 140–1 semi-autonomous pirate polities, creation of 148 trade route 140 traded commodities 140 Venetian War 141–4 Ottoman siege warfare at Baghdad 96 camis 91 chain of fortresses 91–2 gallaries, described 95 garrison in Bosnia 100 ghazis/gazis 95–6 gonullus 95–6 in Hungary 93 under Kasim Pasha 92–3 palankas 90 sican yollari 95 sipahi 95 timars 96 Turkish fortresses 90 at Vienna 96–9 yeniceri 95 Ottoman–Habsburg Long War 57, 94 Ottoman–Mamluk War 146

282

Index

Ottoman–Venetian War 141–4 Ottomans after 1750 armed forces 161–2 budget, military 186–7 central bureaucracy’s objectives 191 cultural ‘backwardness’ 190 financial troubles 184–6, 189–90 gaza 190 Islam, role in 190–1 military administration (17th and 18th century) 182–4 siege cannons 106 under Suleiman I 182–3 Ozel, Oktay 246n pace 11, 131 paigah 27 paiks 25 palankas 90 Palffy, Geza 227n Pamuk, Sevket 170, 186, 241n, 245n, 246n, 247n panchhazari (mansabdar of 5,000 troopers) 174 panokson (board-roofed ship) 129–30 panzerfaust 72 Parker, Geoffrey 3, 4, 89, 204n, 205n, 226n Parrott, David 124, 226n, 232n Parry, John H. 237n Parry, V. J. 219n Parthasarathi, Prasannan 192, 247n pasabolante 32 Patrona Rebellion 188 patwaris (village accountant) 24 payada 29 Peace of Westphalia 60 Peacock, Andrew C. S. 212n Pearson, M. N. 170, 241n, 243n pederosas 32 Peers, C. J. 225n, 226n, 232n Pepper, Simon 216n, 231n, 232n Perdue, Peter C. 85, 209n, 223n, 225n, 226n, 233n periers (light cannons) 147 Perjes, Geza 217n, 218n, 227n, 235n, 237n, 241n, 245n Persia cavalry troopers’ armour 47 gun barrel manufacturing 48

Military Revolution (1736 and 1747) 75 pre-Safavid polities 176 rad-andaz 45 see also Safavid Army/Dynasty Persian Navy 138–9 Peter the Great (1682–1725) 62 Philip II (Spain) 146 Phillips, Gervase 218n Philpin, C. H. E. 204n pilkhana 27 Pir Muhammad (Timur’s grandson) 28 pischali (small-calibre guns) 20 piyada 29 Poe, Marshall 170, 171, 193, 242n, 247n Pomeranz, Kenneth 2, 4, 168, 169, 204n, 241n pomeste 40, 93 Portuguese anti-Ottoman alliance with Akber 156 carracks, described 149–50 conquest of Malacca 154–55 Euro-Asian control 140 expedition of 1629 157 gunpowder storage 154 maritime strategy, in Indian Ocean 149–53 Portuguese Navy 131 Posen, Barry R. 6, 206n Prasannan Parthasarathi 192 principle of primogeniture 193 Prithviraj Chauhan 22 Qaisar, Ahsan Jan 234n Qajar (tribes) 45 Qara Khan 109 Qaraoyunlu (Black Sheep) 38–9 Qasre-Shirin (Zohab/Zuhab) Treaty of 1639 49 Qi Jiguang (Ming General) 76 Qi Xiang (Ming General) 76 Qianlong Emperor 87 Qilich Beg 109 Qing empire administrative structure 87 logistics 85 Qizilbash 39, 45, 46, 48, 49 Qorchi Corps 177 Quli, Ustad Ali 106 qullar 181 Qutlugh Khwaja 25

Index Qutub Sahi Sultanate 116 Qutubuddin Aibak 23 rad-andaz 45 Raja Ali Khan 107 Raja Ibrahim 155 Raja Jagat Singh 111 Raja Jai Singh 115, 174 Raja Jaichandra 22 Ralston, David B. 161, 216n, 239n, 245n Rao, V. Narayana 243n Raphael, Kate 211n Rawson, P. S. 215n, 222n, 234n Razia Sultana 25 Reis, Piri 153 ribadoquines 32 Rice, Rob S. 233n Richards, John F. 221n, 225n, 230n, 242n, 243n, 247n Robb, Peter 204n Rogers, Clifford J. 204n Rose, Susan 235n, 237n Rosen, Stephen Peter 207n Rosetti, R. 214n Rothenberg, Gunther 218n Rowe, William T. 241n Roy, Kaushik 211n, 223n, 239n Rumeli Hissar (fortress) 92 Rumelian Army 50 Rumlu 45 Runciman, Steven 214n Russia first book on military matters 86 map making 192 Rustam (Wakhtang’s brother) 181 Rustem, Pasha 151–3 Ryor, Kathleen 233n Safavid Army/Dynasty under Abbas I, Shah 48, 177 cannons, use of 105 cavalry 47, 69–70 collapse, reasons for 179–81 conquest of Georgia 181 economic problems 177–8 fortification 104–5 garrison of Herat 105 Hamzabeg (master-gunner) 105 military structure 46–7 under Shah Hussein 49

283

under Shah Ismail 39 siege of Kandahar 109 spiritual movement 175–6 tribal support 176 tripolar (ethnic) struggle, impact on 181 wall of Isfahan 105 Safi al Din, Shaikh 175 sakrids 58 Salim (Akber’s son) 109 saltpetre 19–20, 21, 26 sancak 51 sang-i-maghribi 22 Sangram Singh, Rana 64–5 Sardesai, D. R. 238n Sarkar, Jagadish Narayan 222n, 223n, 231n, 234n, 243n sar-kob (platform) 105 Savory, R. M. 216n, 243n, 244n Sawyer, Ralph D. 223n Saxena, B. P. 212n Sayyid Nuh 148 Scammell, G. V. 234n, 238n Schlegel, G. 20, 210n Scott, Hamish 246n Second Battle of Panipat 67–8 Second Battle of Tarain 22 Sefer Reis 152–3 Selim I (Ottoman Sultan) 30, 44, 45, 143 Selim I, Sultan (the Grim) see Selim I (Ottoman Sultan) Selim II (Ottoman Sultan) 51, 148 Sen, Surendra Nath 248n Sen, Tansen 208n Sevcenko, Ihor 227n Seven Years War 190 Shah Ismail 39, 44–6 Shah Jahan (Mughal Emperor) 72, 110 Shah Nama 23 Shahi Dynasty 27 Shaibani Khan (Uzbek chieftain) 63 Shaikh Junaid 39 Shaikh Safi 39 Shaikh Zahid Gilani 39 Shaista Khan 136, 174 Shamlu 45 Shan-hai-kuan (fortress complex) 119 Shang Kexi (Ming General) 81 Sheikh, Samira 137, 235n shen chi chien 147

284 Sher Khan 65 military structure 65–6 Sher Shah Suri see Sher Khan Shi Lang 134 Shin, Leo K. 241n Shirley, Sir Robert 48 Shirvan Shah Farrukhsiyar 39 Shivaji (Maratha ruler) 120, 174 Shuja (Shah Jahan’s son) 73 shutarnal 73, 114 Shyam, Radhey 222n, 229n sican yollari 95 Siddi Yaqut Khan 137 Sigismund, John 51 Siladin of Raisin 65 silk trade 82, 180, 195 Simmons, III, Joe J. 132, 234n Sinan Pasha 45 sipahis/spahis 53, 95 Smith, Dianne L. 215n, 216n Smith, Paul Jakov 223n Smith, Reverend Tho, D. D. 190 Smith, Robert D. 31, 213n Sobieski, John III (Polish king) 97 Song Empire 12, 19 Songgotu (Manchu prince) 124 Sotavov, N. A. 218n, 223n Soucek, Svat 190, 247n Soucek, Svatopluk 236n South Asian warfare in pre-1500 21–2 Spence, Jonathan 241n Starhemberg, Ernest Rudiger 97 Stein, Mark L. 227n, 228n Stephen the Great 37 Storrs, Christopher 242n, 244n Stoye, John 227n, 228n Streusand, Douglas E. 45, 216n, 222n, 237n, 245n suba 110 subadar 174–5 Subrahmanyam, Sanjay 248n Sukracharya 71 Sukraniti 72 Suleiman (Grand Vizir) 37 Suleiman (the Lawgiver/ the Magnificent, 1520–1566) 44, 50–1, 96, 144 Suri Sultanate 66 Suvaris 53 Swope, Kenneth M. 130, 223n, 224n, 225n, 233n, 240n

Index Tahmasp Shah 46, 105 Takkalu (tribes) 45 Talish tribesmen 176 Tapper, Richard 243n Tardi Beg Khan 66 Tatars 51–4 taulqama/tulughnama tactics 63–4 Tepper, Yotam 211n tercios 71 Thirty Years War 60, 72 Thompson, William R. 161, 239n timar 9, 43–4, 56, 60, 182–3 timariots 60, 182–3, 185 Timur (Amir) death of 14 defeat of Sultan Bayazid 33 gunpowder, use 20 Persian campaign 39 Tolbuzin (Russian commander) 123 Tolmacheva, Marina 247n tomans 139 Tomori (Commander-in-Chief of the Hungarian Army) 50 Tong Guogang 83 Tout, T. F. 30, 213n Toyotomi Hideyoshi 128 trace italienne 89 Treaty of Amasya 49 Treaty of Belgrade 102 Treaty of Istanbul 49 Treaty of Nerchinsk 84, 124 Treaty of 1503 (Ottoman–Venetian) 142 Treaty of Passarowitz (Pozsaravec) 100 Trim, D. J. B. 215n, 216n, 219n, 220n, 231n, 234n Tsao, Kai-fu 225n Tuck, Christopher 207n, 246n tufangchis 46–7, 75, 177 tumen 25 Tuqay-Timurids (1598–1785) 83 Turcoman tribes 29, 47, 138, 176–7, 180, 181 see also Anatolia Turkenschanz Fort 98 tuyul assignmentsl 48, 171, 176–7 Tvedt, Terje 169, 241n Udai Singh 65 ulema 190, 192 Ulugh Khan 25

Index Unger, Richard W. 237n Ustad Quli Khan 63 Ustajlu (tribes) 45 Uyar, Mesut 70, 215n, 217n, 218n, 219n, 222n Uzbeks aid from Ottoman 47 logistical failures 84 in Nadir Shah’s army 75 vs Ottoman Army (1500–1700) 46 vs Safavids 46, 48 taulqama technique 63 Uzun Hasan army of 38 Qaraoyunlu, defeat 39 White Sheep Confederation of 39 Vali 103 Van de Ven, Hans J 5 Van Kley, Edwin J. 224n, 234n Vasco da Gama 150 Vijayanagara Empire 68 vilayet 94 vizir/vizier 145, 176 Voertman, Robert F. 239n von Stahremberg, Ernst 96 Wagner, Donald B. 232n Wakhtang 181 Wakizaka Yasuharu 130 Waldron, Arthur N. 117, 118, 119, 231n, 232n Waley-Cohen, Joanna 224n, 226n Waliszewski, Kazimierz 218n, 219n, 227n wall of Isfahan 105 Wang Shouren 76 Wang, Yeh-chien 168, 240n waqf 59, 179 wazir 176 Wertime, Theodore A. 210n West Asian warfare arquebuses and cannons 30 Janissary corps 29–30 Seljuq invasion of Caucasia 29 see also Constantinople and specific Ottoman entries

285

Western European armies alla moderna 89 artillery 31 bombards 30 crossbow and longbow, use of 17, 70 fiscal militarism 163 fortification 89–90 internal disorders 192 Islamic culture, role in 191 map making 192 military manual 86 military revolution 89 pikemen, operation 12 in pre-1500 era 11–12 trace italiene 89 Williams, F. W. 224n Wilson, Peter 205n, 216n, 220n, 239n wokou (Japanese pirate raids) 128 Won Kyun 128–9 Wright, David C. 223n, 231n Wu Sangui (Ming general) 79, 81 Yaqub (Akkoyunlu leader) 39 Yates, Robin D. S. 209n, 232n yeniceri 95 Yi Sunsin (admiral) 129 Yong Le (Emperor) 12–14 Yuan Dynasty 19, 121 Yu-Chuan, Wang 164, 165, 240n, 241n Yu Tzu-Chun 118, 119 Zachar, Jozsef 228n Zachariadou, Elizabeth A. 212n, 214n Zafar Khan 25 zamburak 73, 75, 88 shutarnals 73 Zamorins 136 Zapolya, John 50 zarb zan 71 Zhang, David, D. 240n Zhang, Jane 240n Zheng Chenggong (Coxinga) 133 Zheng Navy 133–4 Zunghars (Mongol tribe) 82–6 first and second campaign 84–5