Elephants

Although cavalry constituted the backbone of the army, and while infantry, mainly Hindus (see figures 34 and 35), were raised in sometimes enormous numbers, both on a regular basis and for specific campaigns, it was the elephants that were the pride of all Indian armies, and they were used in large numbers. In 1299 Alauddin Khalji is recorded to have had 1,500 war-elephants in his fil-khana (‘elephant stables’), while al-’Umari wrote that Mohammed ibn Tughluq had 3,000 elephants ‘of different kinds and sizes’, of which probably only about a sixth to a quarter, therefore 500-750, would have been war-elephants, which tallies closely with the 470 and 480 elephants which Firuz Shah took on campaign against Bengal and Sind respectively in 1359 and 1362. The number of war-elephants that the sultanate could field declined dramatically along with the rest of the army in the late-14th century, there being only 120-125 in the army that confronted Tamerlane.

Delhi’s various successor states are also recorded to have fielded large numbers of elephants in their armies — Barbosa records how the sultan of Gujarat ‘always keeps 400 or 500 great and fine elephants’, while according to an unreliable 17th century source Sultan Mahmud Sharqi of Jaunpur marched against Delhi with 1,400 war-elephants in 1452. The army which Mohammed Shah Bahmani (1358-73) led against Vijayanagar in 1366 included allegedly 3,000 elephants (as well as 30,000 cavalry and 100,000 infantry), a figure repeated by Ferishta for Mohammed Shah III (1463-82); this figure doubtless would have included both male and female elephants, exactly as did the 3,000 recorded for Mohammed ibn Tughluq.

These large numbers of elephants were obtained by an assortment of means. Some were obtained as booty, forming part of the sultan’s traditional one-fifth share (512 were captured by Alauddin Khalji in Bengal in 1312, for example, and Mohammed Shah Bahmani captured allegedly 2,000 from the raya or king of Vijayanagar in 1366). Others were supplied in the form of annual tribute — 100 per annum from the raya of Arangal after 1318 and 40 from the sultan of Bengal after 1359 to quote but two instances, Orissa and Bengal sending annual tributes of elephants to Delhi right up until 1394; Bengal in fact remained the sultanate’s principal source of elephants throughout this entire era, usually in exchange for horses. Yet others were purchased from Ceylon (Sinhalese elephants, though smaller, being deemed braver and wiser in battle than those of mainland India), or were captured in the wild. However they were obtained, for most of this period they belonged exclusively to the sultan, high-ranking noblemen, especially regional governors, only ever being granted permission to own very small numbers of them (usually at the most about 10) as a mark of special favour; only the Lodi sultans (1451-1526) and the Bahmanis allowed their nobles the freedom to possess as many elephants as they wished.

The sultan’s elephants were commanded on the battlefield by officers called shahnah-i-fils. Usually there were two, one commanding the left wing and one the right, but sometimes both offices were held by the same man.