7 ms·

Panipat: The rise of the Mughals

60 points by Thevet 5mo ago

hagbard_c 5mo ago
A flowery description of conquest by the Islamic Mughals. Where is the indignation about the destruction of Hindu temples and idols, as documented in his memoirs, the Baburnama. About his disdain for indigenous religions which laid the foundation for Mughal atrocities continued under his successors? Imagine a similar description of conquest by, say, the Christian Spaniards in the Americas. The noble conquests of the brave Hernan Cortés, in similarly flowery language. Imagine the shouts of protest against... well, there is no nedd to imagine since those protests are commonplace. The Islamic conquest and colonisation of the middle- and far-east is one of the more bloody episodes in history rife with all the vices for which western colonisers are constantly blamed. Slavery was and in some places still is commonplace but the same voices which proclaim the vices of the west are silent or point at the virtues of others who were and sometimes still are guilty of the same. Why is that?
- raks619 5mo ago
  [dead]
- HexDecOctBin 5mo ago
  Abrahamic societies will naturally be sympathetic to the acts of other Abrahamic peoples and antagonistic to pagan and polytheistic cultures, especially if the non-Abrahamic culture rejects the Abrahamic proselytising that purports to "civilise the heathens" as many Indic societies did. To expect anything else under some expectation of fairness or empathy is nothing but childish naïveté.
  - catlover76 5mo ago
    The ignorance of Western people to think "Abrahamic bad", "Eastern good" is very aggravating. Modern times have given us plenty of violent Bhuddist and Hindu extremism right before our eyes, for example. And it isn't the first time in history for either of those either. No religion ends up being special, because, unfortunately, humans are fundamentally misbegotten. Not to mention the ignorance in this thread of the basic fact that Muslim empires kept attacking and supplanting each other in South Asia, culminating in the Mughal defeat of another Muslim empire, which is exactly what this article describes. But instead of actually reading it, you'd rather bring naked biases and caricatures to the table.
    - graemep 5mo ago
      I very much agree with you: its not what westerners want to hear. The fact that you comment got downvoted to dead for no real reason rather proves that.
    - HexDecOctBin 5mo ago
      > "Abrahamic bad", "Eastern good" Is that what you read in my comment? Because that is not what I wrote. People sympathise with those who are similar to them. Europeans sympathise with Ukrainians, Muslims with Palestinians, Abrahamics with other Abrahamics. How you got from that to your "Abrahamic bad", I can't even fathom.
      - fmajid 5mo ago
        Jews probably have a very different view from yours as to how Christians expressed their Abrahamic solidarity during nearly two millennia of persecution in Europe.
      - catlover76 5mo ago
        [dead]
  - hagbard_c 5mo ago
    Western Christian public culture is anything but sympathetic towards the acts of Western Christian colonisers. There is sympathy towards other cultures, Abrahamic or otherwise but towards its own there is mostly atonement of sins and self-chastisement, at least outwardly.
  - ultratalk 5mo ago
    Islam and Christianity are Abrahamic religions. But some societies are both very Christian and very anti-Islam, or vice-versa.
- alephnerd 5mo ago
  Tbf, Babur was equally disdainful about Islam and would wax eloquently about getting drunk on wine and high off opium. He was just a Chagatai raider who somehow ended up the ruler of a principality. The actual empire was built by Akbar and Shah Jahan. Political Islam, Hinduism, and Sikhism only arose in South Asia in 19th century with the collapse of the Mughal, Maratha, and Sikh Empires and early British attempts at mass Christian conversion which led to political religious movements arise in the late 19th century.
- metalman 5mo ago
  in those times religion was a scant sixth in order of reasons and rationalisations for conquest and empire, then as now it was a technological advantage, guns, and the rajputs didn't have them, mobility, the rajputs were agrarian, the mughals were mostly pastoralists and always on the move. but just so that you know, I have traveled through north west punjub, to muree, and lundi khotal, and there are ruins of stupas and things much much older that litter the landscapes, so to pick one particular starting point is disingenious, or worse.
  - hagbard_c 5mo ago
    The Mughal empire was founded in 1526 and dissolved in 1857. Hernan Cortés was born in 1485, reached the Americas in 1504 and conquered the Aztec empire between 1519 and 1521, very close to the Mughal conquests. There are whole academic disciplines based around criticising Western colonisation and conquests but I am not aware of anything similar targeting non-Western history. My reaction is not so much targeted at this specific example - religious (Islamic) conquest - but towards the lack of criticism of non-Western conquest and colonisation.
- anon291 5mo ago
  I am of Indian Christian stock (which is only relevant because I have no religious or creedal stake in any of these sites) but I have noticed this bias as well. The destruction of classical North Indian temples or religious sites by invading islamists forces is met with indifference in most of the world while similar invasions by Christian forces in the Americas or Africa are properly criticized. We have endless critical scholarship on Columbus and the Spaniards (which there should be), but the moment anyone says anything about the somewhat contemporaneous Islamic conquests in Asia, suddenly you are accused of islamophobia. For example, I have seen people lamenting the destruction of the universities at Nalanda and Taksashila being accused of islamophobia because they point out that Islamic radicalism was the intellectual basis for the burning of these institution. People should be free to criticize all of these events as they see fit.
  - hagbard_c 5mo ago
    Yes, that is part of what I was getting at. What is good for the goose is good for the gander, if we're to criticise Christian conquest there is no reason whatsoever to refrain from criticising conquest under any other flag or religion, especially one like Islam which - not having undergone something like the Enlightenment - still has conquest of the world under Islamic rule as one of its basic tenets. There can be endless debates about whether the duty of all muslims towards jihad is to be interpreted as some form of spiritual conquest or in the way it is interpreted by groups like Boko Haram and Daesh but it is clear that Islamic scripture has been and still is used as a call to arms and conquest and with that it is just intellectual dishonesty to use terms like 'Islamophobia' towards those who point this out.
    - anon291 5mo ago
      Yes I agree. I don't think anyone should be accused of islamophobia or christophobia or hinduphobia for that matter for pointing out problematic episodes in the history of Islam, Christianity, or Hinduism. The constant accusations of islamophobia have created the current backlash that we are seeing in India. I will criticize my own group of Christians as well with many calling for criminal penalties now against a man who insulted St Francis Xavier. Of course my view is heavily drawn from the fact that I'm American which means we are free to insult anyone and are taught to grow thick skin. But the simple truth is that criticizing Islam in the Indian subcontinent often ends in death or threats of violence, unlike most other religions, which seem better able to handle criticism. Look at Salman Rushdie. Scary
raks619 5mo ago
[dead]
FlyingSnake 5mo ago
The unwavering focus on the Mughal empire by the West, is a curious phenomenon. Is it because they built highly visible monuments like the Taj? Mughals didn’t even reach their zenith until 1680s and were vastly reduced by 1730s. The Deccan Sultanates and Vijayanagara were more relevant to world history in the 16th Century India. The wonders of Bijapur, Golconda and Hampi would put 16th CE Delhi to shame.
- throwup238 5mo ago
  I think it traces back to Henry Avery and his capture of the Mughal treasure fleet [1]. It inspired an entire oral/print tradition and social zeitgeist in England (and the rest of Europe) which IMO directly led to an entire generation of privateers like Woodes Rogers and tied into the whole golden age of piracy, an endless source of drama for fiction authors. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capture_of_the_Grand_Mughal_Fleet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capture_of_the_Grand_Mughal_Fl...
- alephnerd 5mo ago
  Even the Mughal focus is superficial in nature. There just aren't many serious historians about Indian history in the West in the same manner that Sinology developed. South Asia Studies in the West needs its John K Fairbanks, but that will not happen. Most India scholars who are decent end up returning to India where policymaking roles abound. It was the same with how China Studies was treated in the West until the last 5 years - barely 15 years ago all China was in the western zeitgeist was Mao, the Great Wall, pollution, poverty, and ill-paid migrant workers. > The Deccan Sultanates and Vijayanagara were more relevant to world history in the 16th Century India It's not an either/or situation. There were a whole gamut of states all equally important.
  - FlyingSnake 5mo ago
    True that. There is no interest in objectively studying history in India. It is just a tool to further the agendas of various parties involved.
    - 5mo ago
sghaz 5mo ago
[dead]
SilverElfin 5mo ago
Wait so these people invaded and took over India? For what reason - Land? Religion? Feuds? And it seems like they were displacing another Islamic colonial power that was already there? Weird to have this article discuss battles but skim over the context.
- keiferski 5mo ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turco-Mongol_tradition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turco-Mongol_tradition Read that and you’ll get the context.
  - dartharva 5mo ago
    The Mughals were of Turkic descent but were not Turco-Mongol nomads. Steppe nomad culture had died out for a long time before Babur's rise.
- dartharva 5mo ago
  Is there ever a singular reason behind why conquerors conquer? Babur conquered and established an empire because there was an empire to be conquered and established. That reason in itself is enough.
hrtk 5mo ago
Why is this on HN?
- ultratalk 5mo ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
teleforce 5mo ago
>Digging a ditch strengthened the forest cover for his flanks >The Mughal position was again fortified with a ditch and wagons linked by chains and the matchlockmen, placed in the front of the force, ‘broke the ranks of the pagan army with matchlocks and guns like their hearts’; they were black and covered with smoke. The Mughals had only about 12,000 troops at Kanua, whereas the Rajputs, allegedly, had 80,000 cavalry and 500 elephants Digging the ditch during the battle is a typical and signature Persian war technique. Not trying to be pedantic but the more correct word to use here is probably trench. The trench is called Khandaq in Persian and Arabic, the latter most probably a borrowed word from the former. The main idea is to pre-emptively dig a trench beforeva battle just enough to prevent the enemies cavalry horses from jumping across. It's succesfully used by early Islamic force against the much larger Meccan Quraish army including their allies during the famous Khandaq war in defending Yathrib (now Madinah) [1]. The idea was suggested by Salman al-Farisi, a Persian companian of Muhammad [2]. Fun facts, Mughals palace households were mainly speaking Persian language, and the Hindi/Urdu language is heavily influenced by the Persian moreso than Arab. [1] Battle of the Trench: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Trench https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Trench [2] Salman the Persian https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salman_the_Persian https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salman_the_Persian
- threecheese 5mo ago
  Thanks for the wonderful Wikipedia excursion I just enjoyed, I learned a lot.
- FlyingSnake 5mo ago
  > Mughals palace households were mainly speaking Persian language They actually spoke Chagatai Turkish in the households and Persian was the court language. Urdu developed independently, mostly outside the royal patronage, and much later.

60 points by Thevet 5mo ago

A flowery description of conquest by the Islamic Mughals. Where is the indignation about the destruction of Hindu temples and idols, as documented in his memoirs, the Baburnama. About his disdain for indigenous religions which laid the foundation for Mughal atrocities continued under his successors? Imagine a similar description of conquest by, say, the Christian Spaniards in the Americas. The noble conquests of the brave Hernan Cortés, in similarly flowery language. Imagine the shouts of protest against... well, there is no nedd to imagine since those protests are commonplace. The Islamic conquest and colonisation of the middle- and far-east is one of the more bloody episodes in history rife with all the vices for which western colonisers are constantly blamed. Slavery was and in some places still is commonplace but the same voices which proclaim the vices of the west are silent or point at the virtues of others who were and sometimes still are guilty of the same. Why is that?

raks619 5mo ago
[dead]
HexDecOctBin 5mo ago
Abrahamic societies will naturally be sympathetic to the acts of other Abrahamic peoples and antagonistic to pagan and polytheistic cultures, especially if the non-Abrahamic culture rejects the Abrahamic proselytising that purports to "civilise the heathens" as many Indic societies did. To expect anything else under some expectation of fairness or empathy is nothing but childish naïveté.
- catlover76 5mo ago
  The ignorance of Western people to think "Abrahamic bad", "Eastern good" is very aggravating. Modern times have given us plenty of violent Bhuddist and Hindu extremism right before our eyes, for example. And it isn't the first time in history for either of those either. No religion ends up being special, because, unfortunately, humans are fundamentally misbegotten. Not to mention the ignorance in this thread of the basic fact that Muslim empires kept attacking and supplanting each other in South Asia, culminating in the Mughal defeat of another Muslim empire, which is exactly what this article describes. But instead of actually reading it, you'd rather bring naked biases and caricatures to the table.
  - graemep 5mo ago
    I very much agree with you: its not what westerners want to hear. The fact that you comment got downvoted to dead for no real reason rather proves that.
  - HexDecOctBin 5mo ago
    > "Abrahamic bad", "Eastern good" Is that what you read in my comment? Because that is not what I wrote. People sympathise with those who are similar to them. Europeans sympathise with Ukrainians, Muslims with Palestinians, Abrahamics with other Abrahamics. How you got from that to your "Abrahamic bad", I can't even fathom.
    - fmajid 5mo ago
      Jews probably have a very different view from yours as to how Christians expressed their Abrahamic solidarity during nearly two millennia of persecution in Europe.
    - catlover76 5mo ago
      [dead]
- hagbard_c 5mo ago
  Western Christian public culture is anything but sympathetic towards the acts of Western Christian colonisers. There is sympathy towards other cultures, Abrahamic or otherwise but towards its own there is mostly atonement of sins and self-chastisement, at least outwardly.
- ultratalk 5mo ago
  Islam and Christianity are Abrahamic religions. But some societies are both very Christian and very anti-Islam, or vice-versa.
alephnerd 5mo ago
Tbf, Babur was equally disdainful about Islam and would wax eloquently about getting drunk on wine and high off opium. He was just a Chagatai raider who somehow ended up the ruler of a principality. The actual empire was built by Akbar and Shah Jahan. Political Islam, Hinduism, and Sikhism only arose in South Asia in 19th century with the collapse of the Mughal, Maratha, and Sikh Empires and early British attempts at mass Christian conversion which led to political religious movements arise in the late 19th century.
metalman 5mo ago
in those times religion was a scant sixth in order of reasons and rationalisations for conquest and empire, then as now it was a technological advantage, guns, and the rajputs didn't have them, mobility, the rajputs were agrarian, the mughals were mostly pastoralists and always on the move. but just so that you know, I have traveled through north west punjub, to muree, and lundi khotal, and there are ruins of stupas and things much much older that litter the landscapes, so to pick one particular starting point is disingenious, or worse.
- hagbard_c 5mo ago
  The Mughal empire was founded in 1526 and dissolved in 1857. Hernan Cortés was born in 1485, reached the Americas in 1504 and conquered the Aztec empire between 1519 and 1521, very close to the Mughal conquests. There are whole academic disciplines based around criticising Western colonisation and conquests but I am not aware of anything similar targeting non-Western history. My reaction is not so much targeted at this specific example - religious (Islamic) conquest - but towards the lack of criticism of non-Western conquest and colonisation.
anon291 5mo ago
I am of Indian Christian stock (which is only relevant because I have no religious or creedal stake in any of these sites) but I have noticed this bias as well. The destruction of classical North Indian temples or religious sites by invading islamists forces is met with indifference in most of the world while similar invasions by Christian forces in the Americas or Africa are properly criticized. We have endless critical scholarship on Columbus and the Spaniards (which there should be), but the moment anyone says anything about the somewhat contemporaneous Islamic conquests in Asia, suddenly you are accused of islamophobia. For example, I have seen people lamenting the destruction of the universities at Nalanda and Taksashila being accused of islamophobia because they point out that Islamic radicalism was the intellectual basis for the burning of these institution. People should be free to criticize all of these events as they see fit.
- hagbard_c 5mo ago
  Yes, that is part of what I was getting at. What is good for the goose is good for the gander, if we're to criticise Christian conquest there is no reason whatsoever to refrain from criticising conquest under any other flag or religion, especially one like Islam which - not having undergone something like the Enlightenment - still has conquest of the world under Islamic rule as one of its basic tenets. There can be endless debates about whether the duty of all muslims towards jihad is to be interpreted as some form of spiritual conquest or in the way it is interpreted by groups like Boko Haram and Daesh but it is clear that Islamic scripture has been and still is used as a call to arms and conquest and with that it is just intellectual dishonesty to use terms like 'Islamophobia' towards those who point this out.
  - anon291 5mo ago
    Yes I agree. I don't think anyone should be accused of islamophobia or christophobia or hinduphobia for that matter for pointing out problematic episodes in the history of Islam, Christianity, or Hinduism. The constant accusations of islamophobia have created the current backlash that we are seeing in India. I will criticize my own group of Christians as well with many calling for criminal penalties now against a man who insulted St Francis Xavier. Of course my view is heavily drawn from the fact that I'm American which means we are free to insult anyone and are taught to grow thick skin. But the simple truth is that criticizing Islam in the Indian subcontinent often ends in death or threats of violence, unlike most other religions, which seem better able to handle criticism. Look at Salman Rushdie. Scary

raks619 5mo ago

[dead]

FlyingSnake 5mo ago

The unwavering focus on the Mughal empire by the West, is a curious phenomenon. Is it because they built highly visible monuments like the Taj? Mughals didn’t even reach their zenith until 1680s and were vastly reduced by 1730s. The Deccan Sultanates and Vijayanagara were more relevant to world history in the 16th Century India. The wonders of Bijapur, Golconda and Hampi would put 16th CE Delhi to shame.

throwup238 5mo ago
I think it traces back to Henry Avery and his capture of the Mughal treasure fleet [1]. It inspired an entire oral/print tradition and social zeitgeist in England (and the rest of Europe) which IMO directly led to an entire generation of privateers like Woodes Rogers and tied into the whole golden age of piracy, an endless source of drama for fiction authors. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capture_of_the_Grand_Mughal_Fleet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capture_of_the_Grand_Mughal_Fl...
alephnerd 5mo ago
Even the Mughal focus is superficial in nature. There just aren't many serious historians about Indian history in the West in the same manner that Sinology developed. South Asia Studies in the West needs its John K Fairbanks, but that will not happen. Most India scholars who are decent end up returning to India where policymaking roles abound. It was the same with how China Studies was treated in the West until the last 5 years - barely 15 years ago all China was in the western zeitgeist was Mao, the Great Wall, pollution, poverty, and ill-paid migrant workers. > The Deccan Sultanates and Vijayanagara were more relevant to world history in the 16th Century India It's not an either/or situation. There were a whole gamut of states all equally important.
- FlyingSnake 5mo ago
  True that. There is no interest in objectively studying history in India. It is just a tool to further the agendas of various parties involved.
  - 5mo ago

sghaz 5mo ago

[dead]

SilverElfin 5mo ago

Wait so these people invaded and took over India? For what reason - Land? Religion? Feuds? And it seems like they were displacing another Islamic colonial power that was already there? Weird to have this article discuss battles but skim over the context.

keiferski 5mo ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turco-Mongol_tradition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turco-Mongol_tradition Read that and you’ll get the context.
- dartharva 5mo ago
  The Mughals were of Turkic descent but were not Turco-Mongol nomads. Steppe nomad culture had died out for a long time before Babur's rise.
dartharva 5mo ago
Is there ever a singular reason behind why conquerors conquer? Babur conquered and established an empire because there was an empire to be conquered and established. That reason in itself is enough.

hrtk 5mo ago

Why is this on HN?

ultratalk 5mo ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

teleforce 5mo ago

>Digging a ditch strengthened the forest cover for his flanks >The Mughal position was again fortified with a ditch and wagons linked by chains and the matchlockmen, placed in the front of the force, ‘broke the ranks of the pagan army with matchlocks and guns like their hearts’; they were black and covered with smoke. The Mughals had only about 12,000 troops at Kanua, whereas the Rajputs, allegedly, had 80,000 cavalry and 500 elephants Digging the ditch during the battle is a typical and signature Persian war technique. Not trying to be pedantic but the more correct word to use here is probably trench. The trench is called Khandaq in Persian and Arabic, the latter most probably a borrowed word from the former. The main idea is to pre-emptively dig a trench beforeva battle just enough to prevent the enemies cavalry horses from jumping across. It's succesfully used by early Islamic force against the much larger Meccan Quraish army including their allies during the famous Khandaq war in defending Yathrib (now Madinah) [1]. The idea was suggested by Salman al-Farisi, a Persian companian of Muhammad [2]. Fun facts, Mughals palace households were mainly speaking Persian language, and the Hindi/Urdu language is heavily influenced by the Persian moreso than Arab. [1] Battle of the Trench: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Trench https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Trench [2] Salman the Persian https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salman_the_Persian https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salman_the_Persian

threecheese 5mo ago
Thanks for the wonderful Wikipedia excursion I just enjoyed, I learned a lot.
FlyingSnake 5mo ago
> Mughals palace households were mainly speaking Persian language They actually spoke Chagatai Turkish in the households and Persian was the court language. Urdu developed independently, mostly outside the royal patronage, and much later.