Jeremy Black, A Military Revolution? Printed from Oxford Research Encyclopedias, Asian History. He also compiled an anthology of contemporary poetry. Europes new monarchies developed extensive military bureaucracies charged with supervising the recruitment and maintenance of these armies.24 Meanwhile, military commanders worked with heads of state and other governing bodies to devise new logistical systems, to produce increasingly advanced (and more expensive) military supplies, and to maintain critical supply lines that brought artillery, along with food, water, and other necessities, to their increasingly large armies. In Asia as well, it would be several centuries more before technological developments in the use of gunpowder weapons would fully erode the military advantage enjoyed by fast-moving nomadic cavalry troops employing traditional weaponry. It is a . See especially Jeremy Black, Beyond the Military Revolution: War in the Seventeenth-Century World (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). Gommans and Kolff, Warfare and Weaponry, 35; and Rudi Matthee, Firearms i. History, in Encyclopaedia Iranica (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982 ), vol. By the middle of the 16th century, a substantial number of cities in Italy and Spain had already found constructing trace italienne fortifications to be a worthwhile investment. By the time of the establishment of the Safavid empire, the members of the family were Turkicized and Turkish-speaking,[24][25] and some of the Shahs composed poems in their then-native Turkish language. by Annette Beveridge, (London: Luzac & Co., 1922), 468470. For the Mamluks, gunpowder weapons debased notions of military chivalry that they held dear, and on which they based their claim to elevated social standing. John Guilmartin, a specialist in early modern European military history, found 16th-century Ottoman weapons production to be every bit as advanced as that of Spain.49, Technological innovations were important and they could be decisive in specific instances. As goston argues, In the long run, the adequate and steady supply of weaponry and military hardware proved to be more important than (usually temporary) technological or tactical advantages.50 Cutting-edge technologies were no substitute for a well-trained and well-supplied army. For example, during Shah Jahans aborted annexation of Balkh in 16461647, Uzbek cavalry were able to use speed and agility to wear down the much larger Mughal infantry forces armed with bulky field artillery. It is often considered the beginning of modern Iranian history, as well as one of the gunpowder empires. On that day Ustad Ali-quli shot at and brought down five men with his matchlock.53 But contrary to Baburs suggestions otherwise, gunpowder weaponry had been employed in India since long before Baburs victory at Panipat, and indeed long before Babur was born. Ottomans 2. His soldiers returned with seven hundred, which he ordered to be joined together in Ottoman fashion so that they would provide cover for his matchlockmen.51. B. Tauris, 1996), 392396. 2. The Safavids were not as tolerant b/c they imposed Shia Islam supremacy Explain ONE reason the Gunpowder Empires rose during the period 1450-1750. Readers interested in pursuing the subject further are encouraged to investigate the bibliographies of the relevant secondary literature cited throughout the article and the more general surveys listed in the Further Reading section. Jeremy Black, John Lynn, and others have challenged certain aspects of Parkers thesis, refined others, and added their own observations. They included gunpowder weaponry into their military system and conquered, prospered, and developed as a whole from it. It is one thing to have a large army equipped with technologically current weaponry. The authority of the Safavids was religiously based, and their claim to legitimacy was founded on being direct male descendants of Ali,[30] the cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad, and regarded by the Shia as the first Imam. This required a far greater degree of centralized authority and more financial resources than had been the case during the medieval era. Eaton and Wagoner, Power, Memory, Architecture, 271279. Analyses of the Safavid and Bukharan cases highlight both cultural and environmental factors in understanding why both states chose to severely limit the extent to which they would incorporate gunpowder weaponry into their militaries. Nicola di Cosmo, Did Guns Matter? 50. Michael Adas (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993), 103139. Moving beyond antiquated notions of European innovations being disseminated eastward, recent scholarship has demonstrated that the Military Revolution was a collaborative process involving many powers across the globe. 63. The art of the Safavids is simply magnificent. One can point to multiple studies that identify a number of distinctive reasons that gunpowder weaponry was incorporated in one region and not in another. Gommans and Kolff emphasize what has been noted here, which is that the same could be said for European armies to the end of the 17th century. 25. 9, 619628. Turning attention to the Deccan, Richard Eaton and Philip Wagoner demonstrate much the same for South Asian militaries, where rulers in the Deccan retrofitted their fortresses with swivel cannons and innovative gun ports, and the Portuguese found the Goan gunsmiths to be in many ways superior to their most advanced European counterparts. The Chinese had experimented with incendiary devices for military purposes since long before the discovery of gunpowder. In my opinion (and that's only that, my personal opinion), the Safavids achieved more with far less resources than either of the other two empires, and that's a truly remarkable achievement. In the second half of the 15th century, the Ottomans further expanded their industrial capacity in mining for ore, weapons production, ammunition production, and the development and maintenance of supply lines. 27. Because it was more expensive than traditional weapons technologies, gunpowder artillery became a monopoly of the state, and, Hodgson theorized, this enabled these rulers to increase their levels of political centralization and eventually to rule as absolute monarchs. But while conflict in Europe increased in subsequent years, innovation in China diminished significantly during the Great Qing Peace that stretched from 1760 to 1839. 17. Considering population demographics, doing so would have left them at a permanent disadvantage vis--vis their larger neighbors who were capable of raising much larger infantry forces. [32] Sam Mirza, the son of Shah Ismail as well as some later authors assert that Ismail composed poems both in Turkish and Persian but only a few specimens of his Persian verse have survived. 70. What monumental architecture was created in the Ottoman Empire? R Savory, "Ebn Bazzaz" in. Cf. Individual technological advancements were rapidly disseminated among competing powers, who modified them to suit local needs and advanced them further. Rogers, 169189. In another dismissal of the validity of the Gunpowder Empire model, Andr Wink observes, artillery was not often the main and certainly never the only impetus toward centralization. Explanation: See also Wayne E. Lee, Waging War: Conflict, Culture, and Innovation in World History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 215253. Liber ignium ad comburendos hostes, authored by Marcus Graecus, loosely translates as The Book of Fires for Burning the Enemy. 1. [5] The Safavid dynasty had its origin in the Safavid order of Sufism, which was established in the city of Ardabil in the Iranian Azerbaijan region. One of the unifying themes of the Islamic gunpowder empires is that they share some connection with the Mongol and Turkic empires of Central Asia. At the Battle of Panipat, Baburs much smaller force of some 15,000 troops was dwarfed by the Lodi forces, which included some 100,000 men and 1,000 elephants. . There he will work for you. But at no time in Mughal India did gunpowder weaponry become the sole, or even the most important component of the empires military might. From that same position Ustad Ali-quli made good discharge of firingi [i.e., European-style, or swivel] shots; Mustafa the commissary for his part made excellent discharge of zarb-zan [field cannon] shots from the left of the centre. At the same time, the exceptional difficulties associated with laying siege to a trace italienne fortress required opposing forces to raise significantly larger armies and develop more elaborate methods to maintain supply lines. This is recognized by Gommans and Kolff, who overstate the case with their assertion that, apart from the earlier introduction of Central Asian cavalry warfare during the Ghaznavid and Delhi Sultanate eras, the real Military Revolution reached India only in the 18th century with the introduction of the much faster and more efficient flintlock muskets equipped with socket bayonets, combined with new modes of training introduced by European officers.71 As in Europe, the flexible and effective integration of artillery was an important factor that facilitated Mughal military and administrative successes. Subsequent work has exposed a multitude of flaws in this concept, and researchers have directed attention to the many different ways that gunpowder weapons have been incorporated into Asian militaries. Gommans and Kolff, Warfare and Weaponry, 29. [3][5], The Safavid Kings themselves claimed to be sayyids,[16] family descendants of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, although many scholars have cast doubt on this claim. All other towns are open like Scutary.79 Conflict with Bukharans, Afghans, Kurds, and the Safavids other nomadic neighbors did little to change this position since they exhibited a similar animosity toward gunpowder weapons and a cultural preference for cavalry warfare and archery.80, Cultural factors played a role in the Safavid decision to rely more heavily on traditional cavalry, but one must not overlook or understate the importance of environmental factors. goston, Guns for the Sultan, 43, 2. 45. It seems more reasonable to suggest, as do both Thomas Allsen and Timothy May, that the secret knowledge passed westward with any of the large numbers of merchants, scientists, soldiers, ambassadors, and other foreigners who traveled in and out of Mongol territory.12 Thus, the earliest European reference to gunpowder appears to be in a 1267 text authored by the English philosopher and Franciscan friar Roger Bacon (c. 12141294).13 Although it may be coincidental, it is possible that Bacon drew his information from another Franciscan Friar, William of Rubruck, who from 1253 to 1255 undertook a mission to the court of Chinggis Khans grandson, the Mongol ruler Mngke Khan (r. 12511259). Average annual imports for the 1670s are placed at 632 tons, rising to 733 tons for the following decade, and upward from there.33 The figures continued to grow over the course of the 18th century, the total of all European annual saltpeter exports from Bengal reaching an estimated 4,500 tons in the 1770s.34. 85. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 644. In an article that in some ways represents a break from Parkers earlier Military Revolution thesis, Parker and Subrahmanyam suggest that some Asian societies, such as Japan, eagerly embraced gunpowder weaponry and independently devised innovations ahead of Europeans, whereas other Asian societies integrated gunpowder weaponry into their militaries in hybrid fashion or completely rejected it in favor of traditional technologies and strategies.63. The results were striking: during the 16th and 17th centuries, their astounding achievements ushered in a new age of Islamic cultural efflorescence, a brilliant renewal of political and cultural life.38, Hodgsons argument has been critiqued on multiple grounds and it now stands largely discredited. A Study of the Migration of Shii Works from Arab Regions to Iran at the Early Safavid Era. As a result, they are called the "Gunpowder Empires." [13] From their base in Ardabil, the Safavids established control over parts of Greater Iran and reasserted the Iranian identity of the region,[14] thus becoming the first native dynasty since the Sasanian Empire to establish a national state officially known as Iran.[15]. Why did the gunpowder empires craft artist and architectural legacies? This session will explore the origins of the Safavids, their relationship with other empires, especially the Ottomans and the Mughals, and their unique approach to state legitimacy and authority. 71. Streusand, Islamic Gunpowder Empires, 83. Nicola Di Cosmo (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2001), 272273 and notes. By 1517, he is said to have had one hundred cannons. For this citation, Eaton and Wagoner reference Rainer Daehnhardt, The Bewitched Gun: The Introduction of the Firearm in the Far East by the Portuguese (Lisbon: Texto Editora, 1994), 39. This left Europeans almost entirely dependent on expensive imports, which both limited gunpowder production and slowed weapons development. Complex, ornate palaces. Eaton and Wagoner, Warfare on the Deccan Plateau, 17. 49. An abundance of published military handbooks, imperial chronicles, travel literature, and other sources offer information and insights into many aspects of early modern Asian military history. Peter Perdue, China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), 304306; and James A. Millward, Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 90. By about 1280, during the late Sung (9601279) or early Yuan (12711368) period, Chinese engineers had constructed the first true gun. Geoffrey Parker and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Arms and the Asian: Revisiting European Firearms and Their Place in Early Modern Asia, Revista de Cultura (Macau) 26 (2008): 1242. Richard M. Eaton and Philip B. Wagoner, Warfare on the Deccan Plateau, 14501600: A Military Revolution in Early Modern India?, Journal of World History 25, no. [2] Their rule is often considered the beginning of modern Iranian history,[3] as well as one of the gunpowder empires. Eaton and Wagoner reference a telling quotation from none other than the Portuguese viceroy of the Estado da India, Alfonso de Albuquerque. Figure 6: Mughal Soldier with Musket, 16th Century. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a single article for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). 34. Black argues that Parker largely overlooks the second and significantly more important revolutionary period, which unfolded c. 1660c. Within just a few years, four recipes for gunpowder sufficiently strong to be used for military applications made their way into a section of another medieval European manuscript, the Liber ignium ad comburendos hostes.14 By the 1320s, European engineers had joined their colleagues in China and the Middle East in making their own gunpowder weapons for use in the field. Early in his reign, Sultan Murad I (r. 13621389) established the Janissaries (yenieri, New Troop), a special force of Ottomanized Christian soldiers from the Balkans who were loyal directly to the Sultan. Surveying the Mamluk, Ottoman, and Safavid cases, goston finds that the decision of one state or another to integrate gunpowder weapons technology was a complicated matter and that the modes of timing, success or failure of it depended upon historical, social, economic, and cultural factors, as they also did in Europe. Illustrating how impressed he was with the abilities of the Goan gunsmiths, Albuquerque further reports that they had become our masters in artillery and the making of cannons and guns, which they make of iron here in Goa and are better than the German ones.59, By the time Vasco da Gama reached Calicut in 1498, Indians had many decades of gunsmithing experience. 56. One encounters technical terms in 14th- and 15th-century sources that are later used in reference to gunpowder weapons, but these terms are known to have had quite different meanings in their earlier usages, leaving one uncertain as to whether they are being used to refer to firearms or something else. [33] A collection of his poems in Azeri were published as a Divan. The Safavid Shh Ism'l I established the Twelver denomination of Sha Islam as the official religion of the Persian Empire, marking one of the most important turning points in the history of Islam. Additionally, Europe lacked substantial natural saltpeter reserves. Most of the extant poetry of Shah Ismail I is in Azerbaijani pen-name of Khatai. All these empires were rather pragmatic in their decisions.82. The major Asian agrarian states of the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals (the so-called Gunpowder Empires) and the Ming and Qing dynasties in China implemented gunpowder weapons differently. . (Annapolis, MD: Conway Maritime Press, 2003), 149, 276. Scholars now recognize that their use at that time was quite limited, and that military forces across both Europe and Asia employed hybrid tactics that incorporated gunpowder weaponry as an auxiliary force and would continue to do so for centuries to come.39. In the 14th and 15th centuries, gunpowder weapons became more widely used, but they remained supplementary to traditional modes of combat. Needham, Science and Civilisation, 67. Hall, Weapons and Warfare, 4243. Collaborating with Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Parker himself has advanced a substantially revised understanding of the Military Revolution, one in which some innovative Asian powers occupied a position of parity with Europeans while others remained resistant and fell behind. Black, however, fails to recognize another element critical to the success of early modern militaries: the concomitant expansion of the English East India Companys saltpeter imports from India. Still, within the Deccan there was a general trend toward innovation. Parker argues that wherever such fortifications were found the importance of cavalry and other traditional methods of warfare diminished. Furthermore, the dynasty was from the very start thoroughly intermarried with both Pontic Greek as well as Georgian lines. Roger M. Savory. Did the Safavid Empire use guns? Persia Where did the Mughals conquer? Some rulers (the non-Chinggisid Jungars, for example) eagerly sought out and incorporated new military technologies, adapting them to their own local circumstances and even developing their own centers of weapon production.86, In Bukhara as well, the last two Chinggisid Bukharan khans aimed to use military reform as a way to assert a more centralized control over their Uzbek amirs.87 But late efforts to develop a network of defensive fortresses manned with slave troops equipped with firearms proved both ineffective and expensive. For additional discussion on early weapons technologies external to China, see Alfred W. Crosby, Throwing Fire: Projectile Technology through History (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002); and Kenneth Chase, Firearms: A Global History to 1700 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003). Parker argues that, earlier in the 15th century, it became obvious that the improvements in gun founding and artillery had rendered the high, thin walls of the Middle Ages quite indefensible. "The Safavid Period" in Jackson, Peter; Lockhart, Laurence. Copy this link, or click below to email it to a friend. - Quora Answer (1 of 2): Gunpowder know how was open to any kingdom which was ready to pay for it and adjust new technology in their armies. The Safavids, who did not have artillery at their disposal at Chaldiran, used cavalry to engage the Ottoman forces. But given the awkwardness, expense, and unreliability of these weapons, it is not difficult to imagine why military leaders would be cautious in implementing them, and some elected not to rush headlong into a new technology when their established strength and skills rested elsewhere. Yet as the Portuguese were establishing themselves in the Indian Ocean in the early 16th century, they found Goan gunsmiths whose technical skills and knowledge exceeded those of even the best of the Europeans. Farther to the east, the Manchu used the superior mobility and flexibility of their cavalry to achieve a decisive advantage over the exceptionally strong Ming artillery forces in the conflicts leading up to the establishment of the Qing dynasty in 1644.81, This contrasts sharply with those early modern military forces that suffered a chronic inability to maintain sufficient supplies of horses for their armies. The Gunpowder empires were similar politically through three reason. 241322. But this changed as, one after another, medieval fortresses fell victim to heavy artillery. and trans. Writing at nearly the same time, military historian Douglas Streusand takes a slightly different position in his book Islamic Gunpowder Empires: Ottomans, Safavids and Mughals. As long as the level of potassium nitrate in the gunpowder compound remained low, as low as 30 percent, the explosions destructive capacity was principally a product of its highly incendiary reaction. In fact, in Safavid territories the trend was reversed, as many Persian cities that were walled in the 15th-century Timurid era had actually cast off those defenses by the end of the 17th century.77 As the European states invested in constructing elaborate fortresses and their armies engaged in lengthy sieges, the Safavids de-emphasized siege warfare, preferring instead to engage their opponents far away from urban centers. 46. 87. 65. Jos J. L. Gommans, Mughal Warfare: Indian Frontiers and Highroads to Empire, 15001700, (London: Routledge, 2002), 146147. 22. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History, Department of History, The Ohio State University, Citizenship and National Identity/Nationalism, Historiography/Historical Theory and Method, https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277727.013.186. This is consistent with another recent argument that Geoffrey Parker and Sanjay Subrahmanyam advanced in a collaborative study of the various ways that certain early modern Asian societies received gunpowder weaponry. Defending his decision to use the term, he explains that the phrase gunpowder empires in the title means empires of the gunpowder era not empires created by gunpowder weapons.42 Streusand recognizes that these states widespread implementation of gunpowder weapons is only one of a number of similarities they shared. As Parker and Subrahmanyam note, Matters came to a head in the 18th century . Persian There is very little peculiar to Islam in this process. Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, vol. A 16601792 Perspective, in Military Revolution Debate, ed. See the reprinted edition, Michael Roberts, The Military Revolution, 15601660, in The Military Revolution Debate: Readings on the Military Transformation of Early Modern Europe, ed. Similar arguments made in reference to the Gunpowder Empires of the Ottomans, Safavids and Mughals are discussed in the section Islamic Gunpowder Empires.. As people experimented with increasing the nitrate levels, they found a corresponding increase in the compounds detonation velocity and destructive capacity. I am sending you some samples of their work with Pero Masquarenhas.58, Thus, thirteen years before Panipat and one year before Chaldiran, the Portuguese viceroy found Goan master gunsmiths to be every bit as skilled as the most advanced Europeans. They sustained one of the longest running empires of Iranian history, lasting from 1501 to 1736. See Belal Ahmed Ghazal and Ahmad F. Ismail, The Contribution of Hassan al-Rammah to Gunpowder and Rocket Technology, in Contributions of Early Muslim Scientists to Engineering Studies and Related Sciences, eds. Before long, however, further technological advancements, including especially the flintlock musket, would provide a decisive advantage to infantry troops armed with gunpowder weaponry, and even the strongest cavalry forces, those that resisted gunpowder weapons as long as possible, would find themselves unable to resist any longer. Khan, Early Use of Cannon and Musket in India, 321322. Esfahan Shh 'Abbs moved the capital city of the Safavids from Tabrz to which city? Instead of one long revolution lasting more than three centuries, Black identifies three distinct revolutionary periods, with more modest, but continued, innovations interspersed between them. Eaton and Wagoner, Warfare on the Deccan Plateau, 17. The narrative of the eastward movement of this technology from the Ottomans to the Safavids and then on to the Mughals is outdated, but its brief rehearsal here highlights the achievements of more recent scholarship on Asian military history, discussed in the section New Perspectives and Their Implications..