Nature of Gunpowder Artillery in India during the Sixteenth Century: A Reappraisal of the

Impact of European Gunnery

Author(s): Iqtidar Alam Khan
Source: Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Third Series, Vol. 9, No. 1 (Apr., 1999), pp. 27-34
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great
Britain and Ireland
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 Nature of Gunpowder Artillery in India during the

? a
Sixteenth Century Reappraisal of the Impact of

European Gunnery

IQTIDAR ALAM KHAN

The opening line of Abu'l in A*ln-i Akbarx on "top" (gunpowder artillery)

Fazl's notice
describes it as "a wonderful lock (qufl-i shiqarf) for securing the august edifice of royalty
(iqbal sara-i jahanbani) and a key (kulxd-i dilkusha) to the door of conquest (darwaza-i
kishwarsitant)" He then to claim that except for the Mediterranean/Ottoman
proceeds
territories in no other was available in such
(Rumistan), place gunpowder artillery
abundance as in the These statements cannot be brushed aside as
Mughal Empire.1 simple
rhetoric. On the may well be as the
contrary, they perceived reflecting significance
had come to with to two matters,
gunpowder artillery acquire regard important namely, (a)

strengthening of central authority and (b) rapidmilitary conquests leading to the annexation
of vast territories. He also very asserts that in the of the world known to
accurately regions
him more intimately (which would naturally exclude Europe and China) itwas only in the
Ottoman that was in greater abundance than in the Mughal
Empire gunpowder artillery
While this assertion Abu'l Fazl takes care to mention Rumistan rather than
Empire. making
Rum, as he, wished to indicate that not the Turkish core of the Ottoman
perhaps, only

Empire comprising Anatolia and Thrace (Rum proper of the Persian and Arabic texts), but
territories like Syria, Palestine, Egypt and theMaghrib, conquered by the Ottomans in the
sixteenth century, were also advanced in this
early quite gunpowder artillery. Again
statement also suggests implicitly the superiority of Mughal artillery over those of the
Safavids of Iran and the Shaibanids of Central Asia.
Under the first three Timurid rulers of India, gunpowder artillery had certainly emerged
as an of war, to the establishment of a
important equipage contributing significandy highly
centralized state structure under Akbar and to the consolidation of Mughal rule in the

territories. This paper attempts to some of the new skills of gunnery

conquered identify
introduced into India from the West at the beginning of the sixteenth century, gradual
of which, under the Timurid rulers, appears to have contributed to
adoption particularly
the emergence of Akbar's artillery described by Abu'l Fazl inA'in-i Akbarx.
In the discussion, apart from contemporary Persian texts, notice is also taken of
ensuing
the European accounts, especially that of Varthema which dates back to the period
(1503-8) when the flow of European skills in gunnery to India had just begun. To a
limited extent information on pre-modern artillery pieces surviving in South Asia has also
been used in this paper. This information is often recorded in a haphazard way, making it

1
A'in-i Akbar't, i (Lucknow, 1893), p. 82.

JRAS, Series 3, 9, 1 (1999), pp. 27-34

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 28 IqtidarAlam Khan

difficult to put it in a frame; more it covers a very small of the

meaningful importantly part
total number of cannons believed to be unnoticed. I am
pre-modern lying currently

engaged in putting data to measurements, nature of metal

together specific relating designs,
and process of manufacture of the individual artillery pieces surviving in South Asia from
the sixteenth century. Such data, when would many of
analysed properly, perhaps modify
the points made in this paper. To that extent made in the discussion
suggestions ensuing
should be treated as tentative
strictly propositions.
The presence of firearms of varying sizes and designs in India during the second half of
the fifteenth century and in Central Asia and Iran as early as Timur (d. 1405) is fairly well
established on the of evidence derived from Persian texts as well as
strength European
travellers' accounts.2 Mir Khwand's notice of the trial of a newly made racd at Samarqand in

1443?4 suggests its being a mortar cast in bronze and of a stone

heavy capable throwing

projectile weighing 400 mann/1200kg. (if one mann equalled 3 kg.).3 This specific case
tends to suggest that racd/kaman-i racd of the Persian texts of the fifteenth century written in

Central Asia and Khurasan was an cast in brass or bronze. One is

basically artillery piece
then led to that the racd/kaman-i racd mentioned Persian texts written in India
imagine by

during fifteenth century, like Shihab Hakim's Ma'asir-i Mahmud Shdhi and Mahmud
Gawan's Insha\ was also an of a similar make.4 Such a is
Riyazu'l artillery piece supposition
the of the Italian traveller, Manucci, who was in India
supported by testimony during
1653?1708 and had also served for some time as a gunner under eldest son,
Shahjahan's
Dara Shukoh. Manucci claims that he had seen pre-Mughal guns captured by Akbar during
his military in various parts of the subcontinent. These to him, were
campaigns according
of excellent "metal" i.e. hardened copper or brass.5 Manucci does
Significantly enough,
not mention guns in this context.
wrought-iron
In this light, Fitzclarence's remark in 1818 that in their earliest attempts to make cannons

Indians used the of forging "bars of iron is no tenable.

technique hooped together", longer
It seems that Fitzclarence formed this view on the basis of his observation that many of the

cannon used in India the "natives" down to the of the nineteenth

pieces by beginning

century barrels "with molten brass cast round them".6 He appears

comprised wrought-iron
to have deduced, from a of the two of that making
mixing up techniques gun-making,
barrels bars was the known to the
by forging wrought-iron hooped together technique
Indians in the beginning, which they later tried to combine with the casting of cannons in
brass or bronze. However, it is permissible to see the mixed structures of these cannons as

2
For a detailed discussion of this evidence see my articles, "Early use of cannon and musket in India: A.D.
1442-1526", Journal of Economic and Social History of theOrient, XXIV, Part II (1980), pp. 158-64 and "Firearms in
Central Asia and Iran during the fifteenth century, and the origin and nature of firearms brought by Babur",
Proceedings of Indian History Congress, 56th session, Calcutta, 1995, pp. 435-8.
3
Rauzat al-safa, vi (Lucknow, 1891), p. 242.
4
For references to the use ofra'd/kaman-i racd in the Persian texts written in India during fifteenth century see,
Shihab Hakim, Ma'asir-i Mahmud Shahi, edited by Nurul Hasan Ansari (Delhi, 1968), pp. 38, 87 and Mahmud
Gawan, Riyazul-Insha*, edited by Shaikh Chand (Hyderabad, 1948), p. 72. My comments on this evidence may be
seen in "Early use of Cannons and Musket in India, A.D. 1442-1526", cited in n. 2, pp. 162-4.
5
Nicolas Manucci, Storia doMogor, tr.W. Irvine, i (London, 1907-08), pp. 150-1. For the use of the term
"metal" in the contemporary European records to denote "hardened copper or brass" see T.F. Tout in English
Historical Review, XXVI (1911), p. 682.
6
Fitzclarence, Journal of a Route Across India, 1817-18, cited by William Irvine, The Army of the Indian Moghuls
(reprint, Delhi, 1962), p. 115.

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 Gunpowder artillery in India during sixteenth-century 29

to a contrary sequence of It may be that the

belonging techniques. argued originally
Indians were familiar only with the skill of casting barrels in brass or bronze and that they
later tried to combine this with the of barrels, which was
technique forging wrought-iron

possibly brought to India from Europe by the Portuguese in the beginning of the sixteenth
century. Such a sequence would appear plausible in the light of our reading of the
references to firearms (racd/kaman-i racd) in Persian texts written the fifteenth
during

century.
Abu'l Fazl's of two ways of making barrels for muskets
description wrought-iron

(banduq) and carbines (damanak)7 does, however, suggest that possibly the technique of
barrels for cannons bars and was also
making by forging together wrought-iron rings
known in India during the sixteenth century. Two wrought-iron guns lying in the public

gardens at Khandwa (Madhya Pradesh) which bear inscriptions of 1585 and 1589
support this Still, it remains a moot as to whether the
respectively supposition.8 question
of cannons which, as the was
technique forging wrought-iron surviving pieces suggest,
in Khandesh the last quarter of the sixteenth century, was known in
being practised during
this region before the coming of the Portuguese (1498). Whether this technique in its
Indian variants or came to India from the West where
originated locally forging wrought
iron barrels was as as the late fourteenth and, if it came from
being practised early century9
the West, when and how this transfer of took are some other relevant
technology place,
which need to be answered. A closer examination of Varthema's account,
questions

especially of passages where he dilates on the new skills of gunnery imparted by the
deserters to the local artisans at Calicut in 1506, may us to find answers to
Portuguese help
some of these questions.
In 1503, when he was visiting Mecca disguised
as an
Egyptian Varthema came
pilgrim,
to know through an Indian merchant that there was demand in India for skilful makers of
large mortars. The enthusiasm with which this merchant is reported to have helped
Varthema to separate himself from the caravan of Egyptian pilgrims and directed him to the
"king of Deccan"10 indicates that, at this time, in gun-making available in India
expertise
was not considered for mortars in size and
adequate producing heavy comparable strength
to those in the West as well as the Ottoman
currently popular Empire.
Itmay be recalled that large guns of bombard type first appeared in Europe in the last
quarter of the fourteenth century and remained there down to late fifteenth
popular

century. Most of the heavy cannons, so-called mortars, in Europe this

during period

(1375-1500) were guns made bars and These were

wrought-iron by forging rings.
over those cast in bronze not because was
preferred only wrought-iron comparatively

7
A'in-i Akbarx, i, p. 83. For a more accurate translation of the relevant passage see Irfan Habib, "Akbar and
technology" in Akbar And His India, ed. Irfan Habib (Delhi, 1997), p. 142. Cf. Iqbal Ghani Khan, "Metallurgy in
-
medieval India the case of the iron cannons", Proceedings of the Indian History Congress (45th Session at
Annamalainagar) (Delhi, 1985), pp. 488-9. In his view, one way of forging barrels described by Abu'l Fazl was
also applicable to wrought-iron cannons.
8
Cf. Hira Lai, Descriptive List of Inscriptions in theCentral Provinces and Berar (Nagpur, 1916), p. 73.
9
Carlo M. Cipolla, Guns And Sails in the Early Phase of European Expansion, 1400-1700 (London, 1965), pp.
23-4. In the beginning, iron guns in Europe were mainly made by smiths "from bars of wrought-iron welded
into crude tubes which were further strengthened by thick iron hoops shrunk over the tubes". See also T.F. Tout,
op. cit., p. 682.
10
The Travels ofLudovico di Varthema 1503-1508, tr. J.W.Jones and G.P. Badger (London, 1863), pp. 50-1.

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 3 o IqtidarA lamKhan

but also to the that cast-bronze mortars were far less

cheaper owing general impression
reliable.11 By the end of the fifteenth century the popularity of mortars appears to have
to the Ottoman It was, the transfer of skills
spread Empire. perhaps, accompanied by
in Europe for making cast-bronze as well as mortars.12
developed wrought-iron
That by this time gun-makers in the Islamic world were already proficient in casting in
or a of mortar
brass bronze crude type is borne by Mir Khwand's reference, already

noticed, to the of a racd at in 1444.13 It was, this

casting large Samarqand apparently,
that Babur's Ustad cAli Quli, an Iranian
expertise gun-founder, possibly by origin, brought
into when he cast a bronze or brass mortar of Babur's at Agra in
play (kazan description)

1526. The fatal of the available skill in casting bronze or brass mortars in the
deficiency
Islamic world till this time is borne out by Babur's reference to Ustad cAli Quli's
a in and also notice on the
"miscalculation" during casting operation 1526 by his exploding
of a mortar made the same at on 24 November But, on
(possibly by person) Agra 1527.14
the other hand, there is no basis for imagining that gun-makers in the Ottoman Empire

(not to speak of other regions of the Islamic world) were familiar with the technique of
mortars before it was introduced there from Europe towards the end
making wrought-iron
of the fifteenth century.
It is, however, that 1516 the Ottomans had succeeded in
noteworthy already by
mortars (basilisks of the records) which compared
producing wrought-iron European
with guns of the same One may guess that the of
favourably European type.15 technique
mortars learnt the Ottomans, from their adversaries in
forging wrought-iron by possibly
Eastern some time before the end of the fifteenth was to be
Europe century, sought
concealed by them from their neighbours in the Islamic world. Apparently, as late as 1526,
this was not well known in Central Asia. Mortars that Babur was
technique (kazans)
in his were in all probability cast-bronze or brass guns. There
occasionally using campaigns
is no evidence to the familiarity of the Mughal gun-makers with the technique of
pointing
barrels of any type before Akbar's reign. It is, however, under
forging wrought-iron
standable that around the time Varthema came to Mecca the fame of these new and
(1503)
of the Ottoman had reached the ears of some of the
very impressive guns artillery already
Indian rulers them interested in recruiting gun-makers who could replicate them
making
for their use. It is also that sometimes persons to the Holy Places for
possible going

11
Cf. Carlo M. Cipolla, Guns and Sails, pp. 22-3 and T.F. Tout, op. cit., p. 682.
12
According to Djurdjice Petrovic ("Firearms in the Balkans on the eve of and after the Ottoman conquests of
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries" in War Technology and Society in theMiddle East, ed. VJ. Parry and M.E.
Yapp, London, 1975, pp. 175-6), artillery in the Balkans during the fifteenth century consisted of cannons that
were larger than those of the preceding century. That subsequently this tendency to make large cannons spread to
the Ottoman Empire is indicated by the presence of mortars, including wrought-iron ones, in the Ottoman
one such gun, a wrought-iron
artillery during the first quarter of the sixteenth century. For references to muzzle
cannons including wrought-iron mortars present at
loading cannon made in 1516 and to an inventory of Ottoman
Jedda in 1525, seeJ.F. Guilmartinjr., Gunpowder And Galleys: Changing Technology And Mediterranean Warfare at Sea
In The Sixteenth Century (London, 1974), p. 11, n. 5.
13
Rauzat al-safa, vi, p. 242.
14 The Babur-nama in
Cf. Babur-Nama, (Vaqayi*), ed. Eiji Mano (Kyoto, 1995), pp. 487-8, and A.S. Beveridge,
English (reprint, London, 1969), pp. 536, 588.
1:5
See Guilmartin, Gunpowder and Galleys, p. 11 for reference to a Portuguese account commenting that Salman
Reis's artillery in the Red Sea which included wrought-iron mortars was of Ottoman origin. His own assessment
is that from sixteenth century standards these were "first-class guns fired by first-class gunners".

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 in India 31
Gunpowder artillery during sixteenth-century

were these rulers to invite the West Asian experts of to

pilgrimage encouraged by artillery

join their service.

On Calicut in 1506, Varthema found Portuguese deserters for its ruler

reaching making
of a of were also local artisans in the art of
artillery pieces variety types. They training
the latest In 1507, to Varthema, had
making European guns.16 according they already
"between four or five hundred of ordnance and small". One may
produced pieces large
that these guns of different calibres and sizes were after the latest
conjecture designed
cannons meant for use as field These were cannons cast in
European artillery.17 portable
bronze and were, similar to the (zarbozans) of Babur.18
possibly, field-guns
These guns were cast in bronze a process more efficient than the one
possibly through
till then practised in the Islamic world (including the Ottoman Empire) and India. The
deficiency of the Indian and Islamic world's casting techniques mainly resulted from the

molten metal to be released into the mould from diverse furnaces and thus not
having

being of uniform liquidity. Obviously, the gun-makers in these regions faced difficulty in
bronze or brass in one furnace to fill the mould of even a medium-size
smelting big enough
cannon.19 It was, to this that in 1571 all the 225
apparently, owing deficiency pieces
the Venetians from the Ottomans were condemned for the poor of
captured by quality
their metal and were melted down for Thevenot writing in 1666 testifies that
recasting.20
this deficiency in the casting of bronze cannons persisted in India down to his time.21 One
may that in 1506 the deserters tried to solve this for the
conjecture Portuguese problem
of Calicut the size of the moulds so that these were filled with as
gun-makers by reducing
small a number of furnaces as The number (400 to 500) of "ordnance" cast
possible. large
the deserters and Varthema's statement that these were of sizes and
by varying ("large
tend to that the on this occasion was to reduce the size of the
small") suggest attempt

average pieces cast with

the possible aim of improving the quality of casting within the
constraints imposed by the use of inefficient bellows. One could, perhaps, link this attempt
at innovation with what in North India years later. In 1543, Sher
happened thirty-seven
Shah Sur is reported to have cast in bronze or brass four thousand cannons each
light

weighing 4 mann i.e. approximately 221.28 lbs.22

Another statement of Varthema suggests that towards the of the sixteenth

beginning

16
The Travels ofLudovico di Varthema, 1503-1508, p. 262.
17
Carlo M. Cipolla, Guns and Sails, p. 28. According to a contemporary Italian text cited by the author,
already by 1494, French armies invading Italy were carrying light guns, all cast in bronze which "were drawn by
horses with such dexterity that they could keep up with the marching speed of army". These guns were "shot at
very short intervals".
18
On zarbozans, compare Babur-nama in English, pp. 569, 656. A.S. Beveridge has translated the term zarbozan
as "culverine". ForWilliam Irvine's brief notice, see The Army of the IndianMoghub, p. 113.
19
Irfan Habib, "The technology and economy of Mughal India", The Indian Economic and Social History Review,
XVII, No. 1, p. 19. Compare also Iqbal Ghani Khan, "Metallurgy inmedieval India" in The Technology inAncient
andMedieval India, ed. Aniruddha Roy and S.K. Bagchi (Delhi, 1986), p. 74 where, in addition to the primitive
nature of bellows, the inefficiency of "Indian furnaces" is also ascribed to the "refractory nature" of clay as well as
continued reliance on wood charcoal.
20
Geoffrey Parker, The Military Revolution (Cambridge, 1988), p. 128.
21
Travels ofThevenot and Careri, tr. and ed. S.N. Sinha (New Delhi, 1949), p. 62.
22
'Abbas Khan Sarwani mentions Sher Shah's requisitioning of all the copper available in the market as well as
in the households of troopers in the form of utensils for making cannons (deg-ha) during the siege of Raisen in
1543 (Tarikh-i Sher Shah'i MS., India Office, Ethe 219, f. 95a). Again during the siege of Kalinjar in 1545, according
to 'Abdullah, Sher Shah made four thousand cannons (deg-ha-i atishbazi) each one of which weighed four mann,
one Akbari mann being equal to 5.32 lbs. (Tarikh-i Dawudi, ed. by Shaikh cAbdur Rashid, Alilgarh, 1954, p. 158).

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 32 IqtidarAlam Khan

century at Calicut were not very in moulds for

gun-makers proficient designing casting
cannons or mortars in metal i.e. bronze or brass. It reads:
heavy

And during the time Iwas here, they (Portuguese deserters) gave to a Pagan the design and form of a

mortar, which weighed one hundred and five contra, and were made of metal.23

This statement combined with Varthema's to the of some of the

story attesting anxiety
Indian rulers to recruit in their service "skillful makers to
of large mortars" goes suggest
that the of the local to suitable moulds for mortars in
inability gun-makers design casting
bronze was yet another factor inhibiting the making of heavy mortars of any kind in India
till then. To what extent this new of a mould for mortars learnt gun
design casting by
makers at Calicut from deserters became known in other of the sub
Portuguese parts
continent to guess. The earliest description of the casting of a bronze or brass
is difficult
mortar in India is the one recorded by Babur in 1526. From that description it is obvious
that the was a which, as to the one in
gun-maker using technique compared developed
that time, was not very efficient. to Babur, "some miscalculation"
Europe by According
on the part of gun-founder caused of the flow of molten metal into the
premature blocking
mould. This clearly points to some fault in the design of the mould.24 It is also an indication
of the fact that the European of amould for mortars learnt at Calicut
design by gun-makers
from the Portuguese, if it was at all an
improvement upon the local know-how, had not

yet reached Babur's Iranian gun-founder.

Another statement of Varthema a on the history of firearms in
significant having bearing
India is the one where he mentions a four mortars of iron at Calicut.
"Jew" making
Varthema apparendy counted this "Jew" among the deserters from the Portuguese ships
who were the to make firearms of This statement
helping "pagans" European designs.
seems to imply that till this time (1506) the art of making iron mortars was not known at
Calicut.25

The at Calicut have seen Chinese cast-iron guns carried

gun-makers might possibly by

junks that, sailing from the South China coast, visited Indian ports frequently during the
fifteenth century. to the of a local informant recorded one of
According testimony by
Vasco da Gama's contemporaries, for about years the arrival of Portuguese
eighty preceding
at Calicut, Chinese "bombards" visited that port two or three
ships carrying "every
One knows from Needham's researches that the Chinese were cast
years".26 making
bronze aswell as cast-iron guns roughly from the beginning of the fourteenth century. It is

23
The Travels ofLudovico di Varthema, 1503-1508, p. 262.
24
Babur-Nama (Vaqay'f), ed. Eiji Mano, p. 488; A.S. Beveridge, Babur-nama inEnglish, p. 536.
2:>
Compare Ahsan Jan Qaisar, The Indian Response to European Technology and Culture (A.D. 1498?1707) (New
Delhi, 1982), p. 47. While reproducing Varthema's passage containing this statement, Qaisar fails to grasp its real
import.
26
An anonymous account by "a Florentine nobleman" of Vasco da Gama's landing at Calicut was printed by
Giovanni Battista Ramusio (1485-1557). It speaks of an Indian pilot who accompanied Vasco da Gama to Lisbon
in 1499. This Indian pilot is reported to have told the author of the account that "foreign" ships had landed in
Calicut eighty years before (i.e. in 1419). These ships carried "bombards" which were much shorter than "the
modern one". Twenty or twenty-five of these ships returned every two or three years. Cf. Partington, History of
Greek Fire and Gunpowder (Cambridge, i960), pp. 222?5. Compare, Simon Digby in The Cambridge Economic
History of India, i, c. 1200-c. 1750, ed. Tapan Raychaudhuri and Irfan Habib (Cambridge, 1982), p. 150: "In the
decades immediately before the arrival of Vasco da Gama knowledge of firearms was spreading around the Indian
Ocean and in the isles of Indonesia".

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 Gunpowder artillery in India during sixteenth-century 3 3

no doubt true that among 48 Chinese cannons listed in Needham's table for the
surviving

1288-1426, 43 are cast-bronze and 5 cast-iron But this does not rule
period only guns.27
out the possibility that Chinese junks visiting Calicut during the latter part of the fifteenth
carried cast-iron guns as well. One may thus assume that the gun
century occasionally
makers at Calicut as well as other of India around this time would
important ports (1506)
be vaguely aware of the possibility of reducing considerably the cost of the guns by
from brass or bronze to iron. But to deficient furnaces
switching evidently owing resulting
to Irfan Habib, from the ineffectiveness of bellows, the art of iron
mainly, according
could never be in India on any scale before modern times.28
casting practised appreciable
On the other hand, the of guns was not known to the
technique forging wrought-iron
Chinese before the sixteenth century. Needham has not listed any gun
wrought-iron

among the cannons in China from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Neither
surviving
has he any Chinese text the presence of wrought-iron guns and the
reproduced recording

technique of forging them.

As is well known, in Europe from the very iron cannons were in

beginning, produced
both ways, by casting as well as by forging. It is also well documented that for making
heavy mortars, European gun-makers of the early fifteenth century the latter
preferred
method which involved the use of It is, therefore, reasonable to
wrought-iron.29 imagine
that the four mortars of iron made by the Jewish deserters from Portuguese at Calicut
ships
in 1506 essentially the European skill of bars and
represented forging wrought-iron rings
for producing gun barrels. As this method did not involve any tool or process not
concept,

already a part of Indian smithery, copying itwould not have been too difficult for the local
One may thus venture to suggest that Varthema's statement some
gun-makers. provides
clue as to how, when, and from where the skill of guns came to
forging wrought-iron
India.

the central argument of this paper, one may out that the three
Summarizing point

important components of Mughal artillery at the end of sixteenth century, namely, (a) light
cannons cast in bronze, zarbozans of Babur's (b) the latest cannons or
description; heavy
mortars cast in bronze, and cannons as well as mortars made of wrought-iron, were
(c) light
introduced in India from the West for the first time in the early years of the sixteenth
century. the idea of cannons made of cast-bronze and after
Apparently, light designed

European first reached India around 1506 contact with the Portuguese.
field-pieces through
But the fascination for mortars on the of the local rulers seems to have
heavy part
obstructed wider and prompter acceptance of this idea in the whole of the subcontinent.

Light artillery pieces made of bronze, however, became increasingly popular in the whole
of India after these were used so
by Babur 1526-30.
effectively during
of bronze mortars and the of making
European design technique wrought-iron guns
first introduced the Portuguese in the coastal to other of India rather
by regions spread parts
New of bronze mortars, however, appears to have met with
slowly. design early acceptance

27
Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in China, Vol. V, Part 7 (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 290-2.
28
Irfan Habib, "Technology and barrier to technological change inMughal India", (presented at Symposium
on "Problems of Acclimatization of Foreign Technology", Tokyo, 25-8 February 1980), Indian Historical Review,
V, Numbers 1-2, p. 166.
29
Carlo M. Cipolla, Guns and Sails, p. 27: "By the middle of the fifteenth century the core of the European
artillery was represented by huge bombards of wrought-iron".

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 34 IqtidarAlam Khan

in the Deccan and also. of recruited from Ottoman

possibly Gujarat Experts artillery
territories appear to have contributed significantly to this development, of which "Malik
Maidan\ cast at Ahmadnagar in 1548 by Muhammad Ibn Husain Ruml, represented the
water mark.30
high
The manner in which the of cannons to
technique forging wrought-iron spread slowly
different parts of India during the sixteenth century needs to be studied. One may guess
that this process would have been facilitated to some extent the fact that small wrought
by
iron guns were less expensive for local chiefs with limited resources.

It may also be that wrought-iron guns were first in the

speculated adopted imperial

artillery of North India when Islam Shah (1545-53) decided to acquire a large number of
unusually heavy cannons.31 The credit for using this new skill to
equip the imperial artillery
with reliable but less expensive guns on a scale should, however, go to Akbar.
light large

30 see Henry Cousins,

For a detailed notice on Malik Maidan, Bijapur and Its Architectural Remains (Bombay,
1916), pp. 29?31. Compare William Irvine, The Army of the IndianMoghuls, p. 124.
31 ut Tawarikh, i, ed. by Ahmad Ali,
'Abdu'l Qadir Badauni, Muntakhab Kabir al-din Ahmad and W.N. Lees,
Bib. Ind., p. 412. Some of Islam Shah's guns were so large that each one of them was dragged by one to two
thousand men. Cf. Akbar's letter to Mun'im Khan entitled Fath Nama-i Gujarat, MS., Maulana Azad Library,
AMU Aligarh, University Collection, Persian, Akhbar, No. 171, where Akbar mentions fifty large Islam Shahi
cannons {top-i kalan-i Islam Shaht) still present at Agra around 1572. For an English translation of the document see
my book, Political Biography of aMughal Noble: Murtim Khan Khan-i Khanan, 1497-1575 (New Delhi, 1973), pp.
125-30.

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