Introduction The Delhi Sultanate P.1

The founder of the Delhi Sultanate in India, was Muhammad Ghori, a Turk, in the last decade of the twelfth century. By the sixteenth century, when the Mughals arrived in India, Islam, then over 900 years old, had lost much of its youthful proselytizing zeal, and none of the Mughals, not even Aurangzeb, was a rabid religious fanatic.

Yet Islam and Hinduism were radically opposite religions-Islam had a linear concept of time, beginning with the creation of the world and ending with the Last Judgement, while Hinduism considered time to be cyclic, without beginning or end; Hinduism was pantheistic, but in Islam god was transcendent; Hinduism believed in transmigration, Islam denied it; Islam was monotheistic, Hinduism was polytheistic at one level and monistic at another; Hindus were idolaters, Muslims were iconoclasts; Hindus were cow venerators, Muslims were beef eaters; while Islam was (relatively speaking) a unified religion with one scripture and one set of beliefs, Hinduism was polymorphic, with no one scripture or set of beliefs; Hinduism was passive and exclusive, Islam was aggressively proselytistic; Islam, in theory at least, made no distinction between man and man in society or in the eyes of god, but in Hinduism men were unequal both in society and in the eyes of god. As Albiruni put it in the eleventh century, "[The Hindus] totally differ from us (Muslims) in religion, as we believe in nothing in which they believe, and vice versa."

Despite such contrarieties, there were hardly any communal clashes in Mughal India. Nor was there any large scale conversion of Hindus to Islam, even though there were substantial material advantages to be gained by a Hindu on becoming a Muslim. A simple confession of faith and the cutting off of a bit of the foreskin were all that were required for a Hindu to cross over to the ruling class, but amazingly not very many were tempted. There were a few conversions here and there, even a few mass conversions---one of  the largest was in the reign of Shah Jahan, when the zemindar of Jogu and 5000 of his men were induced to become Muslims-but none of that amounted to much in the vast mass of Hindu population. There was no Muslim tide in India. Nor did the Muslim state, despite its theocratic nature, make any sustained effort to use coercive power to force conversions.

Over the centuries a certain amount of cross-fertilization took place between Islam and Hinduism, with mystics and philosophers finding several affinities between the two religions. Even the rigidly orthodox Firuz Tughluq in the mid-fourteenth century was interested in Hinduism, and had a number of Sanskrit works translated into Persian. Sang Amir Khusrau, the greatest Indian Muslim poet of the age: The Hindu, though a non-believer, Believes in much that I believe.

Such sentiments, though spurned by orthodox Muslims, were commonly held by the adherents of the Muslim mystical sect of Sufism, who fraternized comfortably with Hindus and even adopted several Hindu religious practices in their worship. Hindu ascetics, especially those of the Vaishnava sect, on their part reciprocated these sentiments and welcomed men of all castes and religions into their fold. At another level, efforts were made to blend Islam and Hinduism philosophically, arguing that the differences between them were superficial and immaterial. That was the thrust of Akbar's religious quest. Typical of the syncretic spirit of the age was a book titled Allah Upanishad, written by a courtier of Akbar, which opened with the Hindu mantra Om! and went on to identify Hindu gods with Allah. Dara continued such explorations, translating the Upanishads into Persian, and writing treatises expounding the harmonies between Islam and Hinduism.

Elsewhere, a Hindu sage said to be the Raja of Bundelkhand, wrote a book titled MahitAriyal, carrying verses from the Koran and the Vedas side by side to prove that their messages were essentially the same. In Bijapur, Ibrahim Adil Shah II was closely associated with Hindu culture; a votary of Carnatic music and an ardent devotee of Saraswati, the Hindu goddess of the arts, he proudly bore the Hindu title Jagad-guru, universal sage.

Significantly, even in their rapprochement the two communities revealed their differences. Among Muslims, it was the elite that developed an affinity for Hinduism, while the common folk generally remained aloof, but the reverse was the case with Hindus, indicating that the Muslim response was intellectual while the Hindu response was devotional. Intellectually, Islam was still alive, relatively speaking, but Hinduism was comatose.

On the other hand, Hindus were far more tolerant towards Islam than Muslims towards Hinduism. That was natural. Hinduism with its innumerable gods and goddesses and variegated beliefs and practices could accommodate Islam in its capacious fold without adding much to its load of deities or significantly altering its ethos, but Islam could not take on the immense load of the Hindu pantheon without violating its basic monotheistic principle. Muslims had to go through complex intellectual manoeuvres to harmonize Hinduism with their religion. It was therefore rare for Muslims to join Hindus in worship, but it was not uncommon for Hindus to venerate Muslim saints and visit places of Muslim pilgrimage. Both Shivaji and his father Shahji, for instance, were devoted to Muslim sages, and the Raos, the Hindu kings of Kuchchh, routinely offered worship at temples as well as at mosques.

In fact many of the Muslim reform movements that flourished in Mughal India were of Middle Eastern and Central Asian origin, and had entered India before the Mughals, though they thrived best in the liberal environment of the Mughal court. Islam had come under the influence of Greek thought quite early in its history and the Muslim world everywhere has always been alive with philosophical disputations-about whether man had free will or not, whether it was possible for man (the finite) to comprehend god (the infinite); some held an atomist view of the world; AI-Farabi in the tenth century was a Platonist who identified god with absolute good; Avicenna in the eleventh century asserted the primacy of the knowledge of the Being over the knowledge of the physical world. So raged many happy and bitter controversies.

These speculations were not to the liking of orthodox Muslims, who believed that all that was necessary for man to know about the world was in the Koran, so there was no need for him to flog his puny brain for it. The Muslim traditionalist in India had the additional vexation of having to cope with the Hindu influences that seeped into Islam. Barani, a fourteenth century Indian historian, roundly condemned philosophy as a pernicious v'inity, perhaps seeing its effect on his quixotic patron and king, Muhammad bin Tughluq.

Metaphysical speculations were in any case the indulgence of the privileged few. Ordinary Muslims, like ordinary Hindus, lived yoked to custom. But the yoke, in India, was heavier on Muslims than on Hindus. For the Hindu, there was no difficulty in conforming to customary regulations, for his religion and culture were of his land, and their practices suitable to the Indian environment. But Islam came from another land: another setting, which made it awkward at times for Muslims to strictly observe Arab regulations in India.

The straight and narrow path was the razor's edge for the orthodox Muslim, and he had to be watchful of every step he took. "Know that the key of happiness is in following the Sunna and imitating God's apostle in all his goings out and comings in, in his movements and times of quiescence, even in the manner of his eating, his deportment, his sleep, and his speech ... , " wrote Shah Wali-Ullah, an Indian Muslim scholar of the mid-eighteenth century. " You must sit while putting on trousers and stand while putting on a turban; you must begin with the right foot when putting on your sandals, and eat with your right hand; when cutting your nails you must begin with the forefinger of the right hand and finish with its thumb; in the foot you must begin with the little toe of the right foot and finish with the little toe of the left . . . Muhammad b. Aslam used not to eat a melon because the manner in which God's apostle ate it had not been transmitted to him ... Now it is not fitting to be lax in such matters and say that this is one of the things which pertain to use and wont, so that there is no point in following the Prophet regarding it, because that will lock against you an important gate of happiness."

From the orthodox point of view, discretionary behavior, the exercise of free will, was the greatest threat to peace and contentment in life, not to speak of happiness in the life hereafter. A devout Muslim prayed five times a day, at every three hours from sunrise to sunset; he also went on regular pilgrimages, and observed various fasts and austerities-"thus taking more paines to goe to hell then any Christian I know doth to goe to heaven," as Terry's jaundiced eyes saw it.

Pilgrimage to Mecca was the high point in the religious life of  Muslims, and it was often financed by the state-thus Akbar in 1575 ordered that anyone wishing to go on pilgrimage could do so at state expense. Sometimes the emperor sent a troublesome relative or Amir on a pilgrimage to Mecca as a polite way of exiling him. In Mughal times pilgrims usually travelled by· sea to Arabia, embarking from Surat, after securing from the Portuguese a permit for safe passage. A round trip to Mecca usually took a couple of years, often more.

Like all religions, Islam was a melange of sophistication and naivety. There were a number of great sages and saints in Islam, but there were also many crooks and charlatans who exploited the credulity of ordinary people. Thus when Khusrav, the rebel son of Jahangir died (or was murdered), he was acclaimed as a saint by some, who turned his tomb, as well as the places where his body was kept at night on the way from Burhanpur to Allahabad, into shrines, claiming that "God had in their sleep ordered them to do so, because Khusrav was an innocent martyr," reports Pelsaert. "This devilish folly made such headway in various towns ... that both Hindus and Moslems in vast numbers went in procession every Thursday with flags, pipes, and drums to his worship," continues Pelsaert. Mendicants "on the day of worship used to gather on the road in thousands and swarm like flies, so that no one could walk a yard without molestation", and confectioners "used to line the whole road in great numbers with stalls of sweet-stuffs, and sold great quantities, together with the hawkers of toys ... The roads and open places were full, too, of jugglers, dancers, players, and such rabble; the noise was deafening, and the crowd made it even more impossible to see, or find room to move." Jahangir was not impressed by the popular fervour; he sensibly argued that Khusrav in his lifetime was a sinful and rebellious son, and if indeed he was murdered, "the guilt attached to the murderer, but did not operate to absolve Khusrav." The emperor therefore ordered the Khusrav shrines to be demolished and the receivers of offerings driven away.

As is well know, Islam has two basic groups, Shiah and Sunni, each with several subgroups of its own. The schism between Shiahs and Sunnis arose out of a political rather than a religious dispute-Shiahs wanted the Caliphate to be hereditary through Ali, the Prophet's son-in-law, while the Sunnis wanted it to be elective-but later their religious traditions also diverged. Mughal India was predominantly Sunni, but Shiahs were active in outlying provinces, especially in Kashmir, Sind, Gujarat and the Deccan.

Most of the Persians in Mughal service were Shiahs, but they were careful not to let religion interfere with their work, and adjusted so well to the Mughal environment that even Aurangzeb had no difficulty in retaining them in high positions.

Over the centuries, as Islam evolved, it spawned numerous religious movements, mystical, reformist or fundamentalist. The most remarkable of these movements in Mughal India was the Mahdawi cult. It was a belief common among Muslims that at the end of the first millennium of Islam, a savior, Imam Mahdi, the Lord of the Age, would appear to stamp out crime and vice, and restore the pure shining faith. And on that belief rode many would-be prophets, men of vision as well as those with a sharp eye for the main chance.

However the Mughals ruled by the drawn sword. The quality of their army was therefore decisive in determining their destiny. Babur invaded India with an absurdly small army, but as the Mughal empire swelled in size, its army too bloated. What the army gained in mass, it lost in energy. It is significant that while Babur won at Panipat with a small force against a mammoth Afghan army, Humayun lost at Kanauj with a mammoth army against a much smaller Afghan force. And when Humayun won back the empire, it was again with a lean, mean army, proving that discipline, spirit and energy were everything in war, and that a small, sinewy army could smash into a much larger enemy with explosive force and annihilate it.

In Kabul, Babur could exercise direct command over his small army. In India, the Mughals had to marshal their army differently, because of its huge size, but not even Akbar, for all his daring reforms, developed the needed hierarchical organization. Instead, he dealt with the problem of size by simply dividing the army into units and apportioning them to mansabdars to recruit and maintain. In times of war, these various units were brought together-but brought together only physically, without integrating them into a unified fighting force.

Mughal soldiers had no common uniform to make them feel as one army, no drill to weld them together, not even a common fighting style. Each race and clan fought in separate units, the Rajputs by themselves, the Afghans by themselves, and so on, under their own commanders, with their own war cry, with their own preferred weapons, in their own special way of fighting. In effect, what the Mughals had was not an army but an assortment of armies.

A further problem was that Mughal commanders were not fulltime military officers, sometimes were not even combatants, as even poets and physicians were at times called to serve in the field. The army had no command structure, only ad hoc assignments, and an Amir in charge of one campaign could be a subordinate officer in another or even in the same campaign, if the emperor so decided. The amirs therefore constantly jockeyed for position, thwarting each other's moves to create openings for their own advancement, in reckless disregard for the military objectives of the empire. Further, there was a low proportion of senior officers to men in the Mughal army, one captain for every 5000 or-so according to one estimate, which meant that soldiers were barely under control during battle. If a captain died in the midst of a battle, there was no one to take charge of his soldiers, and they usually scattered. Without a command grid to hold it together, the Mughal army was little more than a horde.

The main divisions of the Mughal army were the cavalry, infantry, artillery, and elephant divisions. But these were not organized into separate corps with their own commanders; instead, they were distributed haphazardly among high ranking mansabdars, each of whom had some of each of these divisions, except the artillery. The artillery was a specialized corps, which had its own designated commander, titled Mir Atish. The rest of the army was grouped according to the mode of their recruitment and maintenance, such as the central army directly under the emperor, then the forces maintained by mansabdars and rajas, and finally the local militia to be brought in by zemindars (indigo-planters later influential in the British Indian Association) constituted the and others for temporary service.

The core of the Mughal army was the central cavalry, a select regiment under the immediate command of the emperor. This was a small force, its strength under Akbar being less than 25,000. This core army had an inner core of its own, made up of superbly equipped gentlemen troopers called Ahadis, the emperor's Praetorian Guards, who were kept in a high state of military preparedness at all times. Bernier notes that Aurangzeb had some two or three thousand fine horse, presumably the Ahadis, "always at hand in case of emergency". Later, in the eighteenth century, with the decay of the empire, the status of the Ahadi declined; his post became a sinecure, and the term Ahadi a synonym for idler. The soldiers of the central army were recruited with care. All of them, soldiers as well as officers were individually selected and had to have a guarantor of good behavior. "All soldiers, captains, and generals, whatever their birth or position, are obliged to furnish sureties," says Niccolao Manucci. "Without this they will not be taken into the service." Every horseman in the king's service was required to have a Turkish horse, as the horses reared in India were "timid and restive". Periodical reviews of the central army were held by the Mir Bakshi, to check the men, horses and equipment. Anything deficient in a soldier's mount or equipment had to be made good within a specified period of time, otherwise his pay was liable to be docked. If his horse died, he had to produce proof of that on the same day, and was given seven days to buy a new horse.

Similar care was expected to be taken by the mansabdars (also system to generate land revenue) in the recruitment and maintenance of their soldiers, but they seldom even met their quota of troops, let alone kept up their quality.

Invariably they cheated by dressing up pages and servants as soldiers, or borrowed soldiers and horses from each other, to pass muster. Akbar endeavored to eliminate these irregularities by branding horses and maintaining the descriptive rolls of soldiers, and those practices-certainly the branding of horses-were continued by his successors. Manucci notes that during Aurangzeb's reign the horses in the emperor's service were branded on the right flank with a special sign, and that those of the mansabdars on the left flank, usually with the first letter of their name.

When the emperor sent a general on a campaign- it was, says Manucci, "necessary for that officer to appear on the river bank within sight of the palace windows and parade the whole of his cavalry and infantry. Three days after the inspection, he must begin his march." The rigour of inspection of the mansabdari forces slackened in later times, as evidenced by the fact that though these forces were originally mustered once a year, this became irregular later, and Aurangzeb in the Deccan altogether exempted mansabdars of the rank of 3000 and above from mustering.

In addition to the regular army, the local militia could be called up when necessary. Termed bhumi, the militia consisted mostly of infantry, but had some cavalry too, and sometimes even guns and boats. According to Abul Fazl the militia in the reign of Akbar had a potential aggregate strength of about 4.7 million men, of whom only some 385,000 were cavalrymen. Mostly peasants on temporary military service, militia infantrymen received no regular pay, and probably served only as camp-followers. The local cavalry, maintained by zemindars, constituted a more regular force. These local levies were not good enough to be used in imperial wars, but they helped to maintain law and order in rural India.

The cavalry (also later in the British Indian army) was the elite wing of the Mughal army, its main battle division, and great care was taken to procure good horses for troopers. More than 100,000 horses were brought into India every year, mainly from Balk, Bukhara and Kabul, and Manucci says that the emperor made good profit from their import: "At the crossing of the Indus alone a payment of twenty-five per cent on their value is made." Horses were expensive in India, especially in the Deccan; in Goa a horse cost about 500 pagodas (1000 rupees), while a slave-girl cost only twenty or thirty pagodas (about forty or sixty rupees) in the late sixteenth century. Few Rajputs could afford imported horses, and most of them rode "little ponies hardly as big as donkeys," says Monserrate.

In battle, horses and riders were clad in mail, and men were heavily armed, though the Mughals did not have the kind of heavy cavalry in use in Europe at this time. Says Terry: "I have seene horsemen there, who have carried whole armories about them, thus appointed: at their sides good swords; under them sheves of arrowes; on their shoulders bucklers, and upon their backs guns fastned with belts; at the left side bowes hanging in cases, and lances about two yards and a halfe long (having excellent steele heads), which they carrie in their hands."

The Mughal cavalry charge was an awesome sight, and a cavalier on the gallop"'a thing of beauty. The horses of amirs, says Careri, had embroidered saddles adorned with precious stones, and tassels of yak tails on the front and back of their saddles as well as on the heads of their horses, "so that when the Rider spurs on his Horse to a full speed, or if there be any wind, these tassels flying in the Air seem to be so many wings of the Horse, and yield a most pleasant prospect."

In contrast to the cavalry~ the infantry had a low status in the Mughal army, and they received the lowest pay. Even common soldiers disdained to fight on foot. In Akbar's time, porters, postal runners, gladiators, wrestlers, palanquin bearers, water-carriers and other menials were classed as infantry. In numbers, the size of the infantry. was immense, but as a fighting force it was nearly worthless-an illequipped and ill-disciplined rabble, it was often more a liability than an asset in war.

The common weapons in Mughal India were the sword, the bow and arrow, and the spear. The hand pike was the favourite weapon of Rajputs; "mounted or on foot, they have no weapon other than a short spear, with shield, sword, and dagger," says Pelsaert. Indian swords were renowned in the ancient world for their high quality steel, but in Mughal times they were clumsy and of poor quality. "Their swords are four fingers broad, very thick, and by consequence heavy; they are crooked a little, and cut only on the convex side," says Careri. "The guard is very plain ... The swords made by the Indian are very brittle; but the English furnish them with good ones brought from England." European sword-blades were in great demand in India, notes Terry.

Everyone had a dagger a foot long stuck into the girdle, and sometimes a pistol too. Their shields, made of leather, were two feet in diameter, had a great many inch-long nails sticking out from them, and were often "varnished over with Black," says Thevenot. In battle, soldiers wore a coat of mail, but emperors seem to have preferred the jubba, "a coat made of very stq:mg quilted silk or cotton, used as armour ... [which would] turn the sharpest sword, or a spent ball." Says Tavernier about the weapons of the Golconda soldier: "They do not wear a sabre like Persians, but a broad sword like the Swiss, with which they both cut and thrust, and they suspend it from a belt . . . Their cavalry carry bows and arrows, a buckler and a battle-axe, a head-piece and a jacket of mail, that hangs down from the head-piece over their shoulders."

Gunners were classed as infantry in the Mughal army, and had low status and poor equipment. "Those who carry fire-arms in their army are matchlock-men and people of no rank, known as tufangis," writes Manrique. "They carry arquebuses, which being poorly made, are, as it were, awkward arms." But Tavernier found Indian guns, at least in Golconda, superior to those of Europe. "The barrels of their muskets are stronger than ours, and much neater; for their iron is better, and not so subject to break," he says. Bernier too considered Indian guns, though short barrelled, to be of good quality, especially those of the Mughal royal guards.

Battles in Mughal India were mostly fought with sword and spear in hand, and the deadliest missile was still the arrow. But a change was coming about with the increasing use of muskets and cannons. Gunpowder, invented by the Chinese around the tenth century, was probably first used by the Arabs at the beginning of the fourteenth century to make guns (bamboo tubes reinforced with iron, using arrows as projectiles) and was introduced into India from the Middle East. There are references to the use of firearms in Kashmir, Gujarat and Kerala in the second half of the fifteenth century, though they were then probably little more than curiosities.

It was Babur who first used cannons and muskets effectively in field battle in India. Indians were largely unfamiliar with them. "The people of Bajaur had never seen matchlocks," writes Babur, "and at first were not in the least afraid of them, but, hearing reports of the shots, stood opposite the guns, mocking and playing unseemly antics." But once a few men were brought down by gunshots, "the defenders of the fort became so frightened that not a man ventured to show his head for fear of the matchlocks." The Rajputs had virtually no firearms even at the time of Rana Pratap Singh, and had to hire gunmen from other communities, though the Mughals had by then begun to use guns regularly. Akbar was keen on guns; he introduced several innovations, and a multi-barrelled cannon is said to have been invented by one Hakim Fathullah Shirazi under the emperor's patronage.

The Mughal guns were slow in firing, and their range limited. Sometimes cannons exploded while firing. Babur's cannons could fire a maximum of only sixteen times a day; the range of the great cannon that Us tad Ali-quli made for Babur was a mere 1600 paces, about 1200 metres. Abul Fazl gravely reports that when Akbar attacked Daulatabad, the defenders "fired a great gun and two men lost their lives at once . . . A wonderful thing was that in that rain of cannonballs no injury was done to the imperialists." Says Manucci about cannons in forts: "Their only use is to make a great noise and smoke on days when a new moon appears, or when it is intended to frighten someone; for to go through any drill with them, or to teach how to aim them in one direction or another, that is an impossible thing." Lighter field pieces presumably had a greater fire rate and effectiveness. As for the Mughal musketeers, they were "terribly afraid of burning their beards or bursting their guns" while firing, says Bernier; to fire, they squatted and rested the musket on a "wooden fork which hangs to them".

One of the largest deployments of Mughal artillery was in Dara's Kandahar campaign. The prince carried with him 30,000 cannon balls, small and great, 187,000 kilograms of gunpowder, 93,000 kilograms of lead, and 1400 rockets. Among the cannons in his train were two which could fire iron shots of between forty-five and fifty kilograms in weight. Even with all that firepower, the Mughals could not breach the Kandahar fortifications, and had to retreat ignominiously. Cannonading was mostly for atmospherics. Even in field battles the role of guns was secondary to that of the cavalry. Mughal guns were not effective enough to win battles by themselves. Their main function was to break up the enemy array; battles were still won by the cavalry charge that followed.

The Mughals however attached great importance to artillery, and it was kept directly under the control of the emperor. Europeans were valued as cannoneers and matchlockmen, and were paid highly. Manucci, when he served in Shah Jahan's artillery, was paid eighty rupees a month, which was raised to 150 rupees by Dara; later Aurangzeb fixed the pay of European artillerymen at four rupees a day, and Manucci says that he was as a special case offered five rupees a day, which he declined to accept, saying that he wanted to return to his homeland. The real reason for Manucci's decision was probably that while European gunners were previously required only to aim and fire the guns, Aurangzeb insisted that they should also load them, which they considered beneath their status, and several of them left the Mughal service.

With the growing prominence of artillery, the elephant, which was once the battle tank of India, began to lose its military importance. Elephants "are naturally timid-, says Bernier, "and have a particular dread of fire, which is the reason why elephants have been used with so very little advantage in armies since the use of fire-arms." Because of their fear of fire, elephants were inducted into war only after years of training and familiarization with musket fire. Further, to overcome their timidity and to make them ferocious, elephants were, says Monserrate, given "eat's flesh to eat mixed with their other food".

For the Mughals, elephants were a new battle experience in India. Ibrahim Lodi had deployed a large number of them at Panipat, and so had Hemu, whose elephants, according Abul Fazl, were "capable of disordering a large force. They were especially calculated to confuse the onset of cavalry, as the horses had never seen such terrific forms." The Mughals themselves later greatly took to elephants. Akbar was an avid collector, and had, according to Abul Fazl, 5,000 elephants grouped in different categories, 100 of which, each having a name, were kept in the royal stables. After the reign of Akbar the use of elephants in war declined, and neither at Dharmat nor at Samogarh do we hear of elephants in action. They were there used mainly as mounts of princes. But at Khajwa, the Bengal elephants of Shuja wrought havoc in Aurangzeb's army.

Elephants were expensive. A good elephant could cost between 4,000 and 7,000 rupees, a rare elephant as much as 80,000 rupees (which was the value of an elephant Shah ]ahan presented to ]ahangir) or even 100,000 rupees (which was the estimated value of the elephant presented to Shah ]ahan by the sultan of Golconda).

The Mughals however , where attentive to land warfare,were entirely land creatures-they saw the ocean for the first time in India-and completely neglected the navy. In Asia, only China had a sizable navy in Mughal times. The Cholas in South India were once active in the eastern Indian Ocean, both in trade and war, but that was half a millennium before the coming of the Mughals, and the memory of their overseas adventures had long faded.

There was however a great amount of ship-building in India in Mughal times. In the 15th century Nicolo Conti and other travellers had noted the presence of large Indian-built vessels in the Arabian sea, used for transporting pilgrims to Mecca. Says Terry of what he saw in Jahangir's India: "The ship that usually goeth from Sur at to Moha (Mokha) is of exceeding great burthen. Some of them I beleeve, at the least fourteene or sixteene'-hundred tunnes; but ill built, and, though they have good ordnance, cannot well defend themselves. In these ships are yeedy abundance of passengers; for instance, in one ship returning thence, that yeere we left India, came seventeene hundred, the most of which number goe not for profit but out of devotion to visite the sepulchre of Mahomet at Medina." John Fryer speaks of Aurangzeb's pilgrim ships as "huge, misshapen things".

Indian ships were almost entirely for transport, not for battle, and they were easy prey to pirates, so the Mughals often had to seek the help of European warships for the protection of their ports and pilgrim traffic. The nearest thing to a navy that the Mughals had was the Dacca flotilla of 768 armed vessels and boats, mentioned in Todar Mal's 1582 revenue settlement of Bengal. It cost about 29,000 rupees a month to maintain, but was not particularly efficient in deterring pirates. In Bengal, boats were made "for purposes of war, carriage or swift sailing", says Abul Fazl. "For attacking a fort, they are so constructed that when run ashore, their prow overtops the fort and facilitates its capture." Moreland estimates that the aggregate tonnage of 'fighting ships' for all India at the end of Akbar's reign did not exceed 20,000 tuns, including the ships of the Portuguese and the pirates.

Manucci says that Aurangzeb planned to build a naval fleet to combat piracy; he indeed did fit out some ships in Surat in 1682, but nothing much came of the project. Aurangzeb however had a naval auxiliary in Sidi of Janjira, an Abyssinian naval captain who was originally in the employ of Bijapur but was taken into the Mughal service by paying him a subsidy to use his fleet against the Marathas. Sidi was virtually independent, and the English treated him as a separate power. The only other Indian naval forces active in Mughal times were the pirates of Arakan and Malabar, and the Maratha coastal fleet. "This last yeere the Malabarres vexed the PortugaIs and tooke or sunke of them at time sixtie saile or more," says William Finch. "They are good souldiers and carry in each frigat one hundred souldiers, and in their galots two hundred."

The Mughals were largely indifferent to what happened on the high seas. Throughout the sixteenth century and the first couple of decades of the seventeenth, the sea around India was dominated by the Portuguese, whose attitude, according to Hawkins, was that "these seas receive six or eight months' pay. Even that is not all in coin; they are always foisted off as respects two month's pay with clothes and old raiment from the household. Over and above this, there is almost always due to them the pay for two or three years' service."

To keep going, soldiers had to borrow money from shroffs, who would pay only twenty twenty-five rupees for a pay order of one hundred rupees, and were often in collusion with the generals with whom they shared the interest. "If anyone resigns service at his own request, they deduct two months' pay," notes Manucci. Even in the royal army soldiers were "harassed and crushed by the oppression of the thievish clerks," says Shihabuddin Talish. Sometimes soldiers had to resort to mutiny to get their pay. In the reign of Aurangzeb, Mughal artillerymen in the Deccan, who had not received their pay for fourteen months, once pulled out Tarbiyat Khan, the chief of artillery, from his palanquin "and made him sit down in their midst in rain" for several hours, till they got satisfaction from the emperor, reports Hamiduddin Khan Nimacha.

With such irregular pay as they received, soldiers had no alternative but to sustain themselves by plunder, which in any case was their chief motive for taking to soldiering. Tempted by the prospect of spoils, they sometimes launched into action by themselves, and at such moments even Babur had difficulty in controlling them. On the other hand, when soldiers were loaded with booty, they preferred to avoid battle, for all that they wanted then was to get back home safe to enjoy the loot. Says Inayat Khan of a raid in the Deccan during the reign of Shah Jahan: "After carrying off almost all the cattle, wealth, and property belonging to the occupants of that town, the Khan (Khan Duran) next moved quickly to Narainpur ... where likewise he spared no exertions in killing, capturing and plundering the residents. He halted there for the night, as the troops were already heavily laden with spoils."

Soldiers, more so camp-followers, were totally intractable in the heat of plunder; they plundered everybody, the enemy, the people in their path, and sometimes even the camp of their own masters. After the battle of Deorai, the Rajput escorts specially engaged by Dara to guard his treasure, themselves plundered it. And during Jaswant Singh's desertion at Khajwa, the fleeing Rajputs plundered Aurangzeb's camp. It furthermore was, says Manucd, easy to recruit soldiers in India. "Whenever the king, or some commander in his name, wants to raise soldiers, infantry or cavalry, it is not necessary to make any great stir," he writes. "For a thousand at a time will attend to take service, and of these the best are chosen."

"The armies of those easteme warres oftentimes consist of incredible multitudes," says Terry. "The total amount of troops in Hindoustan is almost incredible/' writes Bernier. The stupendous growth in the size of the Mughal army was a development after the reign of Akbar. The largest army that Akbar ever led was in his Deccan campaign, and it had only 80,000 horsemen. The full strength of his army was of course a great deal more than that, but even then it was very much smaller than the armies of his successors. It is estimated that Shah Jahan's army in 1647 had 440,000 men, made up of 200,000 central cavalry, 8,000 mansabdars, 7,000 Ahadis, 40,000 musketeers and artillerymen, and 185,000 cavalry maintained by princes and amirs. In addition, there was the militia that could be called up from the districts, so that Shah Jahan was probably not exaggerating when he claimed that he was the master of 900,000 soldiers.

There were about a million paid soldiers in the whole of India in Mughal times, Moreland estimates-more than four per cent of the entire adult male population of the subcontinent. In the mid-17th century, those employed in the Mughal military and quasi-military services, along with their dependents, numbered some twenty-six million people, according to Tapan Raychaudhuri.

The Mughal army swelled to a phenomenal size under Aurangzeb, who had with him in the Deccan alone 170,000 cavalry, with several times as many infantrymen and non-combatants. Bernier says that the cavalry "commonly about the King's person, including that of the Rajas and Pathans, amount to thirty-five or forty thousand", and with the addition of the cavalry of the princes, his army came to "a total of more than two hundred thousand horse". The infantry around the emperor was much smaller, only about 15,000, "including musketeers, foot artillery, and generally, every person connected with that artillery", but when the emperor was on the march their size swelled with the addition of servants, traders and other camp-followers, many of whom were loosely reckoned as part of the infantry. It is in this sense that Bernier says that "the army immediately about the King's person, particularly when it is known that he intends to absent himself for sometime from his capital, may amount to about two, or even three hundred thousand infantry."

But the high martial spirit that had once characterized the Mughal army  was gone by the end of Shah Jahan's reign, as Manucci saw in the battle of Samogarh in 1658. "I saw in this action, as in so manny others where I was afterwards present, that the only soldiers who fought were those well to the front. Of those more to the rear, although holding their bared swords in their hands, the Moguls did nothing but shout, Ba-kush! ba-kush!, and the Indians, Mar! mar!" -Kill! kill! If those in the front advanced, those behind followed the example, and if the former retired the others fled, a custom of Hindustan quite contrary to that of Europe; and if they begin to take flight, by no method is it possible to stop them."

The quality of men entering the Mughal service had already begun to decline by the reign of Jahangir. Most Mughal soldiers, however well-armed and well-mounted, "dare not resist a man of courage, though he have for his defence but the worst of those weapons," says Terry. Tavernier in India during the reign of Shah Jahan believed that "a hundred Europeans might well beat a thousand Indians." Careri in the reign of Aurangzeb was even more harsh: "As for Courage neither Mahometans nor Gentiles have much of it." A common quip among the English in Mughal India was that one Portuguese could beat three Indians, and one Englishman could beat three Portuguese. Of the 100,000 men in camp of Aurangzeb's Vizier Asad Khan, there were, says Norris, only "4000 people who pretended to fight, and of those not 500 that dare looke a real enemy in the face."

These views cannot be dismissed as mere alien prejudice, for they proved to be all too true in fact, with the Marathas and the Persians routing the Mughals, and the Afghans and the British routing the Marathas. Manucci claimed that an army of 30,000 European soldiers could conquer the Mughal empire.

If wars are born in the minds of people, wars are also won in the minds of people. Basking in the damp heat and promiscuous luxury of India, the Mughal ardour, softened. Sebastien Manrique in the mid-seventeenth century considered that "the Mogors were weaklings and luxurious and enervated rather than fighters or warlike soldiers." The friar was overstating the case, but what he said was a pointer. In India, the Rajputs did a good amount of the fighting for the Mughals. But the Rajputs themselves, for all their vigor, needed to shore up their spirit with drugs, and invariably took a double dose of opium when they went into battle. "It is an interesting sight to see them on the eve of a battle," says Bernier, "with the fumes of opium in their heads, embrace and bid adieu to one another, as if certain of death." Muslim soldiers also took opium before battle; Sikandar Lodi once had to abandon a campaign plan because of the poor poppy harvest that year.

Martial spirit by itself was of course not enough to win battles. Discipline and generalship were essential. In fact, valor without discipline and generalship was a military liability, and was the main failing of the Rajputs. Says Monserrate: "The Musalmans say that these Rasputi [Rajputs] and Rati know how to die, but not how to fight." It was discipline and training that melded men into an army, and the early Mughals were strict in these matters. "Those not at their posts had their noses slit and were led round through the army," writes Babur. Says Monserrate, "Zelaldinus (Akbar) vigorously enforced military discipline, and would allow no breaches of it." Even Jahangir was strict in matters of discipline. Hawkins reports that captains who did not show spirit in battle had their heads and beards shaved and were made to wear women's dress, then were whipped and sent to prison. But standards fell sharply thereafter. Whereby also the impact of European gunnery turned out to be of far-reaching significance.

Thus despite of the enormous size of Indian armies, battles, even great battles deciding the fate of dynasties and empires, were astonishingly short affairs, seldom lasting more than half a day. "The armies on both sides usually beginne with most furious onsets," writes Edward Terry; "but in short time, for want of good discipline, one side is routed and the controversie, not without much slaughter, is decided." Desertion in the face of the enemy was common. "As soon as the battle has begun, flight is resorted to on one side or the other," says Manucci. "So great is their fear of cavalry, that forty thousand infantry will not stand against two thousand horsemen. As soon as these come in sight, the men on foot begin to run." Soldiers also fled if their commander fell in the field. "It is the ordinary custom of this country that on the death of a commander his soldiers forthwith take to flight," notes Manucci. The men were not fighting for a country or even a king, but only for their pay, and their pay was in jeopardy with the death of their commander. It made no sense to them to stay and fight after their commander fell.

The attitudes of officers were not much worthier than those of the common soldier. There were constant bickerings among the generals, as they worked at cross purposes, hindering each other and frustrating campaigns. Only the presence of a prince or the emperor himself could get the generals to pull together. Shah Jahan, says Inayat Khan, had to appoint young prince Aurangzeb as the commander of the Bundelkhand campaign "out of fear that the leaders might not act in concert through jealousy of one another, and that their bickerings might produce results fatal to the successful issue of the campaign." During Aurangzeb's Deccan campaign, Mughal officers at times even took money from the Marathas not to act against them-or gave money to the Marathas, to stop their harassment. Generals commanding armies far away from the emperor tended to dither and not pursue their campaigns assiduously, as they enjoyed great freedom and power as field commanders, says Bernier-it took Mughal general Zulfiqar Khan eight years to take the minor fort of Gingee.

Faith played a major role in medieval wars. Says Babur about his victory at Panipat: "This success I do not ascribe to my own strength, nor did this good fortune flow from my own efforts, but from the fountain of the favor and mercy of God." It was religious fervor that won the day for Babur at Khanua. Muslims as well as Hindus performed various rites before battle. Jauhar notes that once, while going into battle against Kamran, "his Majesty (Humayun), the Prince Akbar, and the general Abul Mauly, perfumed their heads, bathed, and said their Friday prayers, to be prepared for death." On setting out from Kabul to reconquer Hindustan, Humayun made Akbar bathe, wear new clothes and sit before him, and he read the Koran to the prince, breathing on him at the end of each verse. All Mughal campaigns were launched with a prayer for their success.

Battles were chaney affairs, and could not be won without divine favour-or luck. To be in tune with the cosmic rhythm, the Mughals consulted the stars before setting out on campaigns, and invariably took omens; in India they also added several Hindu practices to their own rich repertoire of superstition.

The Mughal army furthermore was like the migration of a whole people, involving several hundred thousand men, women and children, all those connected with the government and the army, along with their families. The army, says Norris, consisted of "wives, whores, children, eunuchs, shroffs, brokers, merchants & traders."

Significantly, Rajput women seldom moved with the army, as they were rooted in the land, and did not have to wander with the nomadic emperor. In the case of the Marathas, Shivaji strictly forbade women from travelling  with the army. .., "Armies never march in formed bodies," says Niccolao Manucci, "but always in long files. Almost every soldier has with him in camp his wife and children. Thus a soldier may be seen carrying under his arm an unweaned infant, and on his head a basket of cooking pots and pans. Behind him marches his wife with spears, or else his matchlock, upon her back. In place of a bayonet they stick into the muzzle of the gun a spoon, which, being long, is more conveniently carried there than in the basket borne by the husband upon his head."

Provisioning the vast horde that made up the Mughal army on the march would have strained the resources of even the best organized commissariat, and the Mughals did not even have a commissariat. Each unit, indeed each man, had to make his own arrangements for food and transport. Soldiers were provisioned by merchants who travelled with the army and set up bazaars at each encampment. The emperor's only responsibility was to ensure that traders moved with the army, and as an inducement for them to do so, they were exempted from the payment of all taxes. The system usually worked well.

Soldiers were normally advanced several month's salary when the army went on a campaign so they could buy provisions on the way. During active military campaigns the army foraged. Provisioning the Indian army was easy, says Bernier, because of "the temperance ... and simple nature of their diet." Only about ten per cent of the soldiers were regular meat eaters, notes Bernier; the rest were satisfied with kichery, "a mess of rice and other vegetables over which, when cooked, they pour boiled butter."

Sappers went ahead of the army to clear the way, cutting down jungles and building boat bridges. The availability of water was a major consideration in selecting the army's route, but river crossings were hazardous, and were carefully regulated, to prevent crowding and disaster. Antonio Monserrate, who accompanied Akbar on his Kabul campaign, reports that as the army advanced beyond the imperial frontiers, scouts were deployed 18 miles in each direction to prevent ambush, and heralds were sent out ahead to warn the local chiefs against hostile action and to reassure them that they themselves had nothing to fear. The emperor usually travelled in easy stages, hunting along the way, though he would career headlong in an emergency.

The normal rate of travel of the Mughal army was about "ten or twelve miles a day," says Terry. The emperor and the princes were careful to maintain great magnificence while leading the army. Says Manucci about the splendours of Dara's camp when the prince was on the way to fight the fatal battle against Aurangzeb at Samogarh: "When placed in the field our army was so well distributed that it looked like a lovely city adorned with beautiful tents, flying innumerable flags of all colors and different shapes, each tent having its own flag and device so that it might be recognized."

It was a different scene altogether by the end of Aurangzeb's reign. Says Manucci: "His (Aurangzeb's) army is a filthy, dirty place, more like a scourge sent by God, judging by the daily mortality of men and animals. The common people are dealt with as mere animals after they are dead. Their bodies are searched to see if they have any money, and after the feet have been tied together with rope, they are dragged out of the camp and thrown into the first hole to be found. The same is done to the animals, and both serve as aliment for wolves, dogs and crows."

The Mughal camp might have been filthy, but officers and men dressed their best for going into battle, as if for the last rite of their lives. Khafi Khan says that Raja Ram Singh "wound a string of costly pearls round his head" when he made the suicidal assault on Prince Murad at Samogarh. There were no uniforms, no dress code of any kind for Mughal soldiers. Each contingent dressed in the fashion of its clan or community, and each individual according to his fancy. This, and the fact that rival armies were made up of men of the same racial types and communities, created problems in distinguishing friend from foe in the thick of battle.

Passwords helped to avoid some of that confusion. "Passwords are of two kinds," says Babur. "In each tribe there is one for use in the tribe, such as darwana or tuqqai or lulu; and there is one for use for the whole army. For a battle, two words are settled on as pass-words so that two men meeting in the fight, one may give one, the other give back the second, in order to distinguish friends from foes, own men from strangers." In addition, there were war-eries-for Muslims, Allahu Akbar! and Ya Muin!, for the Rajputs, Ram-Ram!, for the Marathas, Harhar Mahadev!-but such shouts were of little help in identifying the armies, as soldiers on both sides belonged to the same assortment of faiths and sects.

War cries were nevertheless important in medieval battles, for it was on the roll of the whoop that adrenaline surged in the army. The Mughals in particular rode into the battle on a wave of martial frenzy, which struck terror in the enemy-and that was half the battle won. So the Mughals were often deliberately savage in combat. Thus Babur, for all his high culture, did not hesitate to slaughter captured prisoners in cold blood and erect victory towers with their severed heads, to mark his bloody passage through a land. "Those our men had brought in as prisoners were ordered to be beheaded and a pillar of their heads was set up in our camp," writes Babur in one of the numerous such accounts in his memoirs. "I had him flayed alive," he says of another captive. Cutting off enemy heads was for the Mughals an almost orgasmic act.

Later, as they grew sedate, and their power secure, the Mughals would abandon such gory customs, though terror would still remain an important element in their warfare. Says Inayat Khan about Shah Jahan's Deccan campaign: "The various forces were to make the territory of Bijapur such a scene of horror and devastation as to force both the rebels and Adil Khan to return to the royal authority." Often the Mughals willfully employed brigands-"privileged and recognized thieves" called Bidaris-in their army to ravage the enemy country, says Manucd.

The ferocity of the early Mughals was finely balanced by their intelligent and thorough preparation for every battle. Timur, the founder of the Mughal clan, had a striking ability to innovate winning strategies. Thus when he faced the onslaught of elephants in India, an unfamiliar hazard, he planted spikes and caltrops to obstruct their advance, and drove into their midst camels and buffaloes with piles of straw burning on them, so as to frighten and distract them. Similarly, Babur won at Panipat and Khanua by his superior strategy and careful defensive preparations.

In contrast, Babur's Indian adversaries were set in their military conventions. Says Babur: "Tho ugh the men of Hindustan are often brave swordsmen, yet they are extremely ignorant of the art of war, and of the disposition and conduct of troops . . ." Both Babur and Humayun discussed tactics in war councils, to draw on the experience of their generals, and their discussions were frank, sometimes even heated. Later, smug in their power, believing themselves to be invincible, the Mughals would lose the capacity to innovate, and that would prove fatal in their tussle with the Marathas.

A greater problem was that military technology was changing at this time. The infantry, armed with cannons and muskets, was coming increasingly into prominence, and would eventually displace the cavalry from its dominant role in battle. To use the new technologies effectively, new military discipline, new formations and tactics, were essential, but no Indian state was responsive to such challenges. While the power of the cavalry was in its kinetic energy and impetuosity, the power of the infantry was in its precisely controlled and concerted fire drill, which required a tightness or discipline and training quite unlike the traditional Indian methods. Also, for gun battles it was imperative to array the army in a manner different form the conventional centre-andwings formation of cavalry battles. A close formation, valuable in man to man combat, now became lethal, as the massed, compacted army of a couple of hundred thousand men was more fodder for guns than a fighting force. Yet Indian armies would continue to be organized in this manner for many decades, and that would put them at a great disadvantage in their tussle with European powers. In India, unlike in Europe, says Manucci, "one division was close to another as trees of a pinewood."

In conventional Mughal battles, the cavalry charge was decisive. Akbar usually charged the moment the enemy came into sight, but sometimes (as in the case of Hurnayun's battles with Sher Shah) the opposing forces would lie encamped for weeks, facing each other at close quarters, without engaging. The battle itself began, from the reign of Shah Jahan on, with prolonged artillery barrages, which often did little damage, as the troops stood beyond the range of the cannons. Then carne the cavalry onset, which invariably decided the battle in a few hours.

The Rajputs and the Mughals usually disdained to make sneak attacks, for, as Abul Fazl puts it, "a night attack is the trade of cowards". But Sher Shah and the Marathas used such tactics with great effect. For the Rajput-and sometimes for the Mughals and Afghanswar was often a sport. Once, when Sher Shah was besieging Raisen, a group of Afghans, provoked by the Rajput claims to superior valour, challenged them to a contest, and the two teams fought on the maidan at the entrance of the fort, while Puran Mal, the Rajput chieftain, "himself took his seat above the gateway" to watch the bloody sport, says Abbas Khan. The Afghans won the fight-according to Afghan sources.

In spite of that victory, the siege of Raisen dragged on, and eventually Sher Shah had to use a ruse to take the fort. The capture of forts was a slow, tedious exercise in Mughal times, as medieval cannons were not good enough to breach fort walls, and mining them was an arduous procedure which was often foiled by counter-mining by the defenders to remove the explosives. On the other hand, it was extremely risky to attempt to storm a fort, for the defenders, says Abul Fazl, "discharged confusedly bricks, stones, arrows and bullets and also boiling pitch" on the assaulters; they also fired cannons, threw lighted bombs, blazing sheets steeped in naphtha and bundles of burning grass. It was all rather primitive, but, effective. Sieges were usually a stand-off, and often non-military means had to be used to capture forts. Akbar had to resort to stratagem to capture Asirgarh; Shah Jahan failed disgracefully in his three attempts on Kandahar; in the Deccan, Aurangzeb captured forts mostly by bribery, Shivaji mostly by artifice.

The mode of Maratha warfare was, in the beginning, entirely different from that of the Mughals and Rajputs, and was appropriate for the lay of their land and the genius of their people. The infantry, ideal for hill warfare, was the backbone of Shivaji's army, though cavalry would become prominent in later times, when Maratha power expanded beyond their homeland. The Maratha specialty was guerrilla war, and their success depended on speed of movement, surprise, and quick retreat into their mountain strongholds, where the Mughals could not deploy their massed strength.

"They set off with little provision, no baggage except the blanket on their saddles, and no animals but led horses, with bags prepared for the reception of their plunder," writes Duff. "If they halted during a part of the night ... they slept with their bridles in their hands; if in the day, whilst the horses were fed and refreshed, the men reposed with little or no shelter from the scorching heat, excepting such as might be occasionally found under a bush or a tree; and during that time their swords were laid by their sides, and their spears were generally at their horses' heads struck in the ground; when halted on a plain, groups of four or five might be seen stretched on the bare earth sound asleep, their bodies exposed to the noon-day sun, and their heads in a cluster, under the precarious shade of a black blanket or tattered horse-cloth extended on the point of their spears."

Organizationally, the Marathas had a great advantage over the Mughals, in that their army had a well defined command structure. But what distinguished them more than anything else was their fighting spirit. There could be no greater contrast than that between the Maratha and the Rajput approaches to battle. For the Marathas, victory was all, whatever be the means by which it was achieved; for the Rajput, honour was all. In desperate straits, the Rajput would court honourable death, while the Maratha would run away, to give himself another chance. The Marathas had no custom like jauhar. They saw no merit in death.

The Maratha strength was that they were not romantics pursuing some impossible dream, but were practical men, who did what was necessary and possible.. But the rugged pragmatism of the Marathas also had its limitations, in denying them grandness of vision. They looked for gain, not for glory. There would be no Maratha empire.
The decay of the Mughal Empire however was bad for business, even for the Europeans.

During the closing years of the Delhi Sultanat, one Sayyid Muhammad of Jaunpur claimed himself to be the Mahdi and gathered around him a good many followers, but died inopportunely before he could save the world. The flame of the saviour who died too soon was however kept alive by his disciples, and their fervent appeal to rigid puritanism and voluntary poverty attracted the devout among the poor, and even a few nobles. The followers of the sect kept absolutely no worldly possessions. "Many a one thought it was his duty to empty his cooking vessels at nightfall of the necessities of life, even his salt and flour and water, and let them remain upside down," says Badauni, "and they kept nothing in the way of means of existence by them ... saying 'Each day brings a new provision.'" They spent most of their time in prayers, and once a week made public confessions of their sins.

The Mahdawis, though ascetics, were not hermits, but were active in society, and functioned as a theocratic vigilante group. Says Nizamuddin Ahmad: "They always carried swords and shields, and all kinds of weapons, and going into cities and bazaars, wherever they saw anything that was contrary to the law of the prophet, at first they forbade these things, with gentleness and courtesy. If this did not succeed, they made people give up the forbidden practices, using force or violence for the purpose."

During the reign of Islam Shah, the son and successor of Sher Shah, several powerful amirs fell to the temptation of exchanging the fleeting pleasures of the temporal life for the promise of eternal bliss in the life after death, and joined the Mahdawi cult. "Matters came to such a pass that fathers left their sons, brother left brother, and wife left husband and entered the charmed circle of the Mahdi, voluntarily submitting to poverty and extinction," says Badauni. Almost every day reports reached the sultan of some Afghan general or other renouncing his office and family and joining the Mahdawis. But the very success of the Mahdawis proved to be their undoing, as they threatened to subvert the established political and religious order. In the end Islam Shah, under pressure from orthodox Muslim leaders, ordered the Mahdawi movement to be suppressed as heresy. The movement then gradually died out in Hindustan, though it continued to have some hold in the Deccan for a while longer.

 

The sources of quotations are given in the text.

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