Battle of panipat

Babur was not satisfied for long with ruling over Kabul and the surrounding districts alone, however. Throughout the early sixteenth century, he made several incursions northward into his ancestral lands but never was able to hold them for long. Discouraged, by 1521, he had set his sights on lands further to the south instead: Hindustan (India), which was under the rule of the Ibrahim Lodi was a weak and tyrannical ruler, disliked by the nobility and commoners alike. In fact, the noble families of the Delhi Sultanate despised him to such a degree that they actually invited Babur to invade! The Lodi ruler would have trouble preventing his troops from defecting to Babur's side during the fighting, as well. The first was tulughma, dividing a smaller force into forward left, rear left, forward right, rear right, and center divisions. The highly mobile right and left divisions peeled out and surrounded the larger enemy force, driving them towards the center. At the center, Babur arrayed his cannons. The second tactical innovation was Babur's use of carts, called araba. His artillery forces were shielded behind a row of carts which were tied together with leather ropes, to prevent the enemy from getting between them and attacking the artillerymen. This tactic was borrowed from the Ottoman Turks. Using his tulughma formation, Babur trapped the Lodi army in a pincer motion. He then used his cannons to great effect; the Delhi war elephants had never heard such a loud and terrible n...

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Third battle of Panipat has for the last 70 years evoked a keen interest amongst the votaries of Maratha Confederacy, to call it an Empire would be a travesty. The Maratha Confederacy was the Ultimate Power in the 18 century goes without saying but never did the executive of the Maratha Confederacy ever dared call themselves an Empire. From Bajirao to Balaji Bajirao to the later ambiguous Peshwas were all more than happy to be Naibs of Mughal Empire and the Emperor, whosoever’s Stooge he maybe, it did not matter. As late as 1772 the Mughal Emperor bestowed upon Mahad Scindia the title of Vakil ul Mutaliq, the Regent of Mughal Empire and also bestowed upon the Peshwa sitting in Poona, the title of Naib of Mughal Empire. It was the utmost endeavour of the Peshwa and his Maratha Captains never to call themselves anything but as in service of Mughal Emperor. ( ref; JN Sarkar, Fall Of Mughal Empire, vol 3, pg 293, 294) Often we are told that Panipat III was a battle between the combined Muslim armies of the sub continent and the Hindu army of the Maratha Empire, an erroneous assertion made on even more erroneous assumption. The historical evidence does not show that the Fifth raid by Ahmed Shah Abdali, also called Durrani, the name he gave to his tribe actually means King Pearl of Pearls, was a Religious War nor was it premised on the destruction of Infidels, the Kaffirs based on the Quranic injunction of Ghazwa i Hind though it becomes a consequence of every Islamic invasion o...

The Third Battle of Panipat was a major battle fought in 1761 between the Maratha Empire, a Hindu empire based in west-central India, and the Durrani Empire, a Muslim empire based in Afghanistan. The battle was part of a series of conflicts between these two states beginning in 1747. That year, the Durrani Empire was established, and its leader launched invasions of India. The battle took place near the city of Panipat in northern India. This battle was a setback for the Maratha Empire, which had gained power in the previous decades. While the Maratha Empire did claw back some power, both Afghanistan and India eventually fell to the British Empire. Battles of Panipat As the name suggests, the Third Battle of Panipat was the third major battle fought besides that city. However, the third battle was not closely related to either the First or Second Battles of Panipat; they were not part of any Panipat war. This map depicts India on the verge of this battle, with yellow marking the Maratha Empire and green Indian parts of the Durrani Empire. The Third Battle of Panipat was fought hundreds of years later by different forces: the Maratha and Durrani Empires. However, their fight mirrored that of the earlier Battles of Panipat. For one, it was fought for control of northern India. Like the Second Battle of Panipat, it was a battle between opposed Muslim and Hindu empires. Maratha Empire In the second half of the 1600s, the Mughal Empire of Babur and Akbar was declining. In 1657,...

Understanding Panipat 1761 through rare paintings Manoj Dani, an independent U.S.-based researcher of art history, has painstakingly assimilated rare paintings pertaining to the battle and its key players in a work titled Battle of Panipat: In Light of Rediscovered Paintings. December 22, 2020 06:03 pm | Updated 06:08 pm IST - Pune Before Waterloo 1815, there was Panipat 1761 – the dreadful battle where the Maratha army led by Sadashivrao Bhau was defeated by the forces of the Afghan invader Ahmad Shah Durrani, and left an indelible scar on the Maratha psyche. The word ‘Panipat’ has since entered the vernacular lexicon to signify a spectacular debacle. While the battle and its complicated run-up has been analysed in such monumental works as James Grant Duff’s History of the Mahrattas (1826), the second volume of Jadunath Sarkar’s opus Fall of the Mughal Empire (1934) and in T. S. Shejwalkar’s classic monograph Panipat 1761 (1946), this critical event in modern Indian history has lacked serious visual appreciation in form of contemporary paintings till date. Now, Manoj Dani, an independent U.S.-based researcher of art history, has painstakingly assimilated rare paintings pertaining to the battle and its key players in a work titled Battle of Panipat: In Light of Rediscovered Paintings . The book, which was recently launched at the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute (BORI), casts a fresh light on the fateful day of battle on January 14, 1761 and the politics of the Decca...