The Company Bahadar

Aslam644

``History is my hobby instead of books I tend to watch bbc history channel that’s where most of my information is from. It is a historical fact that pilgrim fathers left England in 1620 and they founded new England in America.

In the latest episode it showed Christopher Columbus had 3 moorish muslims in his crew, one of whom was chief navigation officer.``

I would have been surprised if Columbus had no Moors at all in his crew (or more likely, Moriscos--converted Muslims). What does this have to do with Germans/Austrians fleeing from the Turks and going to America?

Also, what does the voyage of the Mayflower have to do with Germans/Austrians fleeing from the Turks and seeking refuge in America?

These may well be historical facts but they are also irrelevant to the issue. No Austrians or Germans fled to America as a refuge from the Turks.

---

Jang:

The Mongol practise you mention has nothing to do with India or pepper. The meat (usually horse but also sheep if available) would be heavily salted (no pepper or other spices) and placed between the saddle and the horses back to ``cure.`` It wasn`t hung from the saddle horn. They would also, allegedly, nick a vein in their horses neck to get a drink of blood while on the move. They allegedly did not even have to stop to eat or drink! This last is probably just nonsense. What is true is that the Mongol/Turkish/steppe nomad logistics train was extremely light as compared to that of their opponents. Each Mongol/steppe nomad would have three/four other horses that he would lead from his mount. In a pinch, they would change mounts while on the move; thus being able to cover ground very quickly and almost always having a relatively fresh mount on hand.

Changing horses while trotting/cantering along isn`t as hard as it may sound. If you go to any polo match, you will see some player or the other leap from one horse to another in the middle of a match in order to save time. BTW, the Mongols rode steppe ponies (13-14 hands), very small but highly maneuverable animals. On a one-for-one basis, they were often no match for the heavier Persian/Mamluk/Austrian cavalry but these troops did not usually have many remounts available to them and so the Mongols always had the advantage of fresh(er) horses. A classic Mongol tactic would be force the enemy heavy cavalry to charge, themselves disperse and flee for safety; reform on fresh ponies and tempt the enemy out again. Regular cavalry horses are good for no more than three (or maybe two, depending upon how much weight they are carrying and how long is the distance) charges before they are exhausted. At which point the Mongols, on fresh ponies again, would cut them to pieces. BTW, this is the same tactic used by Arabs/Seljuk Turks against the Crusaders. Very rarely was a Muslim warrior a match for a European knight in a stand-up, one-on-one fight but why should the Muslims fight in a way that gives the advantage to the enemy?

To give you an example of the relative uselessness of the Mongols when it comes to riding heavier horses, the Mongolian polo team came to Pakistan in the mid-1980s to play a few exhibition games. I saw these born horsemen trying to ride our 15-16 hand Army horses (mainly Thoroughbred crosses) and trying to control them while galloping and trying to hit the ball. They were really bad and I was amazed at the ease with which our sowars and polo players rode rings aroung them. By the end of the visit, some of the Mongolians had become reasonably good at handling the heavier, faster but less maneuverable Western horses.

The real advantage the steppe nomads had was that they could travel faster than regular cavalry since each steppe nomad had several remounts on his string. Also, the steppe ponies could survive on nothing but grass with the occasional handful of grain/meat to supplement its diet. Regular (larger and heavier) cavalry horses need lots of grain in their diet if they are to carry an armoured man on their backs. This makes logistics much more difficult for civilized troops and was the real secret of the Mongol`s victory. That and the fact that Chingiz Khan and his family produced some pretty decent generals.

TTFN

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137#deadrajput

your query about bahadur shah 11 i don’t have much information on him.

I came to England as a young lad studied history till O, level that was mostly british history, learnt that Britain was invaded by Romans, Saxons, Viking, and Normans excluding the unarmed invasion by immigrants.

The most wonderful thing was no animosity or malice was written about invaders, mostly positive contributions were mentioned the situation in the sub-continent is different I believe.

About your visit to Vienna I’d love to visit it it’s very beautiful city I am told, couple of Pakistani men went to Switzland for visit, they were picked up by police on suspicion of being illegal immigrants, things aren’t what they used to be.

Last year because of the iraq war tour operators were offering very cheap deals to Turkey so went there for a week Marmaris holiday resort I found Turkish people to be polite very friendly, bikini clad girls on beach without any one raising an eye brow, I am sure mullah omar’s fake eye would have popped out in horror on seeing that.

Fuzair & echoboom

History is my hobby instead of books I tend to watch bbc history channel that’s where most of my information is from. It is a historical fact that pilgrim fathers left England in 1620 and they founded new England in America.

In the latest episode it showed Christopher Columbus had 3 moorish muslims in his crew, one of whom was chief navigation officer.

aslam

That mughals came from mongols is aptly represneted in their mentality of staying in tents most of the time. Even in Delhi and Agra, the emperors prefered to stay in large encampments, where as their Rajput Mansabdars lived in permanent havelis. Mughals were also very insecure, and used to travel with all their royal treasury whereever they went. The mughals kept their turkik mansabdars further insecure by denying any hereditary rights to mansabs (though rajput hindus kept theirs), and would confisticate the entire wealth of their mansabdars apon his death. as a result, the turkish mansabdars were unreliable in wars (they would switch sides to the wining side) and rajputs were more loyal since they felt more secure. So, the mughal empire was ruled, to use a sailing term, on the verge of a luff, kind of anarcy by design, the sole aim of which was accumulation of wealth for the emperor, and a minor aim was service to Islam.

Perhaps the turks were considered hip and sofisticatd those days, as some interactor pointed out (i dont see the evidence) but in India, they were certainly considered as unqualified barbarians (mlench), as they were in China.

One big reason for Mongol success was their access to Black Pepper and spices from India. Mongols would kill a farm animal, cut strips of its meat soaked in salt and pepper, and hang it around their riding saddles to cure. This was the original beef-jerky. All they would eat is this jerky, which needed no cooking, and very little bowel movements. This was a huge improvement in then military technology, as their hordes could move very fast. Europeans saw this first hand and became determined to acquire this military technology, specially after the fall of Hagia Sophia, and rest as they say is the new history of colonization. All because of Heeng.

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Folks

I have really enjoyed the discussion here - which has been very illuminative, educative and at a sober understanding pace. Thanks all.

NHK

Echoboom,

Apologies are indeed in order. It was Aslam644 who came up with that gem.

I don`t understand why people have to exaggerate the glories of Islam/Moghuls/Turkey/Whatever when the simple truth is more than impressive enough.

Returning closer to the actual topic under discussion, I think we have to realize that the Mughal and Ottoman Empires were both extractive states. That is, the government existed only to extract revenue from the peasantry and gave back very little in exchange, often not even law and order. While the HEIC was also extractive, it at least did attempt to provide law and order and did not rule by whim as much as the Mughals and their successor`s did. Ask yourself, if you were a poor peasant farmer, who would you rather have as your ruler: the Angrez DC or some Mughal/Sikh/Rajput jagirdar?

The later British rulers even attempted to carry out systematic development work, at least in places like the Punjab and Sindh and spent some money on basic infrastructure development. You can judge for yourself the comparative goodness/badness of British rule by the fact that the Central Asian emirates in the 19th century were desperately trying to get the HEIC and the British Empire to annex them to forestall the Russians.

TTFN

fuzair:142
Not me!
Your post was perhaps addressed to aslam644.
That German emigration part intrigued me as well.

echoboom:
Kaafir se rishta qayam karne ka nateeja janate hain naa aap?:). Luckily for you, I was never a shagird of Prof. Mehroom, just attended a few of his urdu classes...


dionysus#143
I agree and had given ``capitulation`` as one of the reasons in my post.

Echoboom,

What are your references for the widespread use of Persian by the Mongols? Certainly the Ilkhanate in Persia (that part of the Great Horde that stayed in Iran/Persia) went native very quickly but they were only a very small part. In any case, the Ilkhanate lasted for barely a century.

I would have thought that the language used by the Pope in his letter would have been Arabic. Many Christian scholars of the time knew Arabic since the greatest libraries in the world were in Moorish Spain and any true Christian intellectual knew both Latin AND Arabic (e.g., John of Seville). Many priests knew Arabic because many of the Greek works survived only in Arabic translation.

BTW, you really have to get a grip on yourself. You wrote:

``...many germans and Austrians fled to America because they thought Europe would be overrun by Ottomans.``

The last Ottoman threat to Europe was the Battle of Vienna in 1683 when the Ottomans, under the Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa, attempted to take Vienna. The second member of the Mustafa family to hold the post of Grand Vizier, Kara Mustafa`s was the last gasp of the Ottoman Empire. After being routed by Jan III Sobieski of Poland outside the gates of Vienna, the Ottoman Empire went into a long retreat and lost many of its most prosperous provinces to Austria and Russia. Kara Mustafa was executed by the Janissaries and Turkey rapidly became the ``Sick Man of Europe`` and had to be rescued by the British and the French from being gobbled up by Russia in the 1850s.

I don`t think there was much German and Austrian migration to America in the 1680s, period. There wasn`t much British migration to the Americas either. Your chauvinism is getting in the way of your ability to look at facts. The earlier siege of Vienna in 1526 was the one that really scared the Austrians since it seemed as if Suleiman the Magnificent might actually succeed in taking Vienna but the Austrians didn`t flee to the Americas then, just further west.

Turks and Mongols are the same people. They diverged at one time but then reconverged during the middle ages. In the East no sharp distinction was made between Turks and Mongols, they were considered to be two tribes belonging to one nation, Turan.

During Babur`s time Turks were considered to be a culturally sophisticated people and so to increase their prestige the Mughals called themselves `Turks`. Though strictly speaking the Mughals belonged to the Mongol not the Turkish branch of the Turani nation because their forefather Taimur was indisputably a Mongol.


Re some comments by Dost-Mittar. The fact that some Mughals took Rajput wives was by no means a sign of Rajput tolerance. The Rajputs were anything but tolerant. In the East, as you should know, giving wives to a member of another nation or tribe was and is considered humiliating and demeaning. And forcing the Rajasthanis to give their women as wives was the Mughal way of emasculating them and destroying their credibility in the eyes of the general populace.

Re: DR. Even in the highly tolerant time of Akbar Rajasthanis were never more than 10% of the Mughal Army. Their representation was even less in the reigns of the other Emperiors. You`re 50% figure is preposterous. The Turko-Mongol nobility on whom the Mughals relied would quite simply never have accepted that many non-Turks.

aslam644:
The farsi language was used only after halakoo khan had ransacked Baghdad. Farsi was the language recognised and understood by the Pope staff. In fact farsi was quite prevalent in euorope during early years of Christiandom because of manachesim being a significant religion.

Changez is really Jehan-gir , the chinese-ish or mongolish version. Jin/chin is universe in chinese as well. Real name in mongolian language Tamo-jin also means the same. Later on we see it in Taim-oor..a corruption of Mir which is earth in turkic-russian now also [space-station Mir!]

As far as the language of the army or horde of Changaiz khan is concerned it was, what else? You got it! Horde..or really Uhord--the language of the army. The army-headquarter in Turkey is still URDU (in roman letters). Now also used for hindvi--Our Urdu. As fuzair pointed out it was a multi-national army and this was the melting-pot language which emerged. Of course quite different than our hindvi/urdu of today. The word horde entered into english lexicon via Norway where it was originally adopted.

A similar situation developed in Afghanistan during the war with USSR. The multi-national mujahideen of arab, persian. pushto, urdu, hindi, and english background were laying the foundation of another kind of urdu.

Even today if one has a smattering of farsi , arabic, and rudimentary chinese one can hop-step-and jump pretty comfortably through these regions.

But again what to say about our education system.

``Look at us; we disfigured our own model-faces
Then there are those,who excel in painting portraits``

(contd)
to aslam644 post.


And Maulana Rum was from Herat, now Afghanistan; then Khurasan a part of iran. He settled in Rum ( Rome--as the Turkey area was then called, constantinople being capital )
and from thence on: Maulana Rum

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dostmittar:136

Thanks for the double-lovefest.
``suntaa naheeN hooN baat `mukkarar` kahay baghair``.

About: Jaggan Naath Azaad.

I am really deeply saddened to here that.
Inna-Lilah-e v inna-ilahay-raajioun.

Janaab Azaad sey humaraa rishtaa Iqbal kay ta`aluq kay ilavaa , unn kaa maizbaan honay kaa bhee thhaa. So tilok chand mehroom kay shaagird honay kay naatay ubb humaari aap kee bhee rishtaydaari nikal aaee.

I consider myself priviledged that he (Azad) wrote about my family and myself in his memoirs. I am not sure if Iqbal Academy honoured him with Iqbal sumaan award or not. He being the most deserving than a whole lot others who received it. I was cajoling those responsible drawing up the list to give him the next one.

I was told BJP was not too keen because of his genuine ``tilt`` towards his ancestoral home, the VIP reception accorded to him by Zia, and his unpoiliticaly-correct stance on Iqbal. On the other side the progressive/congress types had their party-line.

khudaa-haafiz.

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