Akbar, considered by some to be the greatest of the Gurkani emperors, was not an educated man. He could not read or write like his grandfather or father before him. But he did make it a point to surround himself with men of high calibre. Men like Fathullah of Shiraz, who was a hand-picked favourite.
The Iranian inventor was an accomplished genius even by the elevated standards of the city he was born in. Shiraz, present-day Fars province, Iran was fabled for its ingenuity, this side of medieval Persia.
The sprawling urban centre was revered as a nursery of experimental ideas and free-thinking. Poetry, science, mathematics and mechanics ebbed through its elegant veins while theological debates and philosophical discourses echoed within its palatial buildings and hallowed domes.
The multi-talented Fathullah was possibly the city’s greatest export in the 15th century.
It was an age when cannons decided the outcome of a battle.
When cannons first came to Hind, they quickly gained a fearsome reputation. Their use panicked the mighty war elephants, battered the strongest of walls and created gaps in enemy lines with frightening ease.
Babur, the first of the Gurkani emperors, won his empire on the strength of cannons. On the plains of Panipat, modern-day Haryana, India, he stood his ground against Ibrahim Lodi’s more numerous army and routed it in a head-on fight. He then repeated his success with even larger enemy forces. Firearms gave him the edge every time.
His grandson, Akbar the Great, increased the artillery divisions and relied on the iron and bronze tubes to pound his opponents into submission as he embarked on aggressive military campaigns to expand the empire.
But for the gunners who mixed the gunpowder and lit the fuse, things could get risky. Unlike modern artillery, these ancient predecessors were dangerous to handle and often imploded, killing those who manned them. Cleaning the barrels was one of the necessary precautions to minimise occupational hazards as well as to keep the battle winners, primed and battleworthy.
Man Vs Machine.
Fathullah was a scientist and inventor; likewise, his solution was a mechanical contraption that eliminated the need for human effort and made the cleaning of the barrels more thorough. His invention, the Yarghu, was as unique as its inventor, and it is thought to be a beast of wood and iron or completely of iron and steel. It used long iron rods embedded with densely packed iron bristles as cleaning brushes to clean sixteen cannons simultaneously, and did a much better job than the strongest man in the army.
What the contraption looked like.
The Yarghu was a cumbersome and complex machine. An octagonal rim of possibly wood and iron or completely of angle iron, with eight sturdy legs, constituted the frame of the machine. Inside the frame was a huge wooden wheel with an axle in the centre and tooth-like projections on its upper surface. This wheel was located at the head of the machine.
Eight long iron bars that could be attached and detached when needed crisscrossed the top of the wheel. The outer end of these bars was fitted to holes present in the octagonal iron rim, while the inner end was fitted to the axle in the centre. These iron bars comprised of a pinion and two brushrods embedded with densely packed iron bristles. Passing through the centre of the axle was a leg in the centre that could be turned clockwise or counterclockwise.
How the machine worked.
N. Ramdas Iyer, curator and head at the National Science Centre, reveals the Yarghu wasn’t meant to be rooted at one spot. It could be dismantled and assembled again for active duty. During the time of Akbar, teams of men would transport the contraption in pieces to the battlefield in bullock carts and assemble it on-site, in a suitable place for operation, not far from where the cannons stood.
How the cannons were cleaned.
When cannons were required to be cleaned, men assigned to operate the machine would use a rope pulley to bring the wheel down to ground level. Artillerymen would then mount the cannons on top of the wheel by sliding the barrels over the long iron bars. The wheel would be hoisted back up again using the same rope pulley, and the outer ends of the iron rods would be fitted into the empty sockets present on the inside of the iron octagonal rim.
How the cannons were mounted on the machine is a matter of speculation, but it is assumed that the detachable wheel was lowered for the guns to be mounted. Contradicting views, however, suggest the ordnance was hoisted up, which may probably have required an additional ramp or elevated platform.
An ox or two would then be used to turn the leg in the centre that was fixed to the axle for revolving the wheel. Rope or sniews would have been used. The teeth of the wheel interlocked with the pinion, in a gearing arrangement, would rotate the long iron bars, making the iron bristles scrape away the carbon residue, while the cannons remained stationary.
The machine worked by employing both a revolving and rotating motion at the same time, and was an important technological innovation in the 16th century. Its inspiration is believed to be a water wheel created by Babur earlier in the 15th century.
How many men did it take to operate the machine?
No one knows, but N. Ramdas Iyer hypothesises that teams of perhaps 6 to 8 men were entrusted with the artillery. The mid-size cannons were not unusually heavy. Ranging from three to three and a half feet in length and with a diameter of 18 inches, they would have been easy to transport and easy to mount, as compared to larger and heavier cannons. The cannons cleaned by the Yarghu were a more regular feature in the army than their larger versions.
Was the Yarghu actually used, and if it was effective, why was it not evolved further?
The inventor Fathullah Shirazi, as he was affectionately called in the Gurkani court, lived roughly about seven years with Akbar. He served chiefly as the imperial minister of finance till his death in 1589 C.E.
His inventions, including the portable cannon and the multi-barrel cannon (also reconstructed for display at the National Science Centre), are believed to have been widely used during this time alongside the Yarghu.
However, and in spite of firearms having proved their mettle as battle winners, the Gurkani had their reservations. For instance, and from what can be gleaned from sources, the cavalry contingents continued to prefer the use of the bow and arrow even when firearms were deeply entrenched in Medieval warfare.
Though cannons were still in use, as attested by innovations that occurred during the reign of Aurangzeb, it is possible that the use of larger guns complemented by the lighter swivel gun and matchlock made the Yarghu, a machine that cleaned mid-size cannons, a non-required part of the arsenal.
In any case, later Gurkani military engineers probably did not think it important to evolve the Yarghu or failed in their attempts to do so.
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Like the word Khan, the name Yarghu is Mongolian in origin. During the time of Ghenghis Khan, it was the name of a court of officials entrusted to combat corruption with Ghenghis as the head of this gathering. If the machine was indeed given the Mongolian name, it is possible it was because of the Gurkani’s Mongolian roots.
Both Babur and Humayun claimed Genghis as their maternal ancestor, and so would have Akbar as well. In fact, the emperors of this dynasty used ‘Gurkani’ to identify themselves, which meant in-laws of Ghenghis.
