page_title: History of gunpowder
section_title: India and the Mughal Empire
hierarchical_section_title: History of gunpowder / Gunpowder Empires / India and the Mughal Empire
caption_attribution_description: English: The court of Akbar, an illustration from Akbarnama. The spiral composition, with horses defining the outer edges, skillfully draws the viewer's attention to the young emperor (age 13). He is portrayed in a powerful central position from which he exercises his first imperial act: the arrest of an unruly courtier, who was once a favorite of Akbar's father.
context_page_description: Gunpowder is the first explosive to have been developed. Popularly listed as one of the "Four Great Inventions" of China, it was discovered during the late Tang dynasty but the earliest record of a written formula appeared in the Song dynasty. Knowledge of gunpowder spread rapidly throughout Asia, the Middle East and Europe, possibly as a result of the Mongol conquests during the 13th century, with written formula for it appearing in the 1267
  Opus Majus treatise by Roger Bacon and a 1280 treatise by Hasan al-Rammah. It was employed in warfare to some effect from at least the 10th century in weapons such as fire arrows, bombs, and the fire lance before the appearance of the gun. While the fire lance was eventually supplanted by the gun, other gunpowder weapons such as rockets and fire arrows continued to see use in China, Korea, India, and eventually Europe. Bombs too never ceased to develop and continued to progress into the modern day as grenades, mines, and other explosive implements. Gunpowder has also been used for non-military purposes such as fireworks for entertainment, or in explosives for mining and tunneling.
context_section_description: In India, guns made of bronze were recovered from Calicut (1504) and Diu (1533). By the 17th century, Indians were manufacturing a diverse variety of firearms; large guns in particular, became visible in Tanjore, Dacca, Bijapur and Murshidabad. Gujarāt supplied Europe saltpeter for use in gunpowder warfare during the 17th century. Bengal and Mālwa participated in saltpeter production. The Dutch, French, Portuguese, and English used Chāpra as a center of saltpeter refining.
  Fathullah Shirazi (c. 1582), who worked for Akbar the Great as a mechanical engineer, developed an early multi gun shot. Shirazi's rapid-firing gun had multiple gun barrels that fired hand cannons loaded with gunpowder.
  Mysorean rockets were an Indian military weapon, the first iron-cased rockets successfully deployed for military use. The Mysorean army, under Hyder Ali and his son Tipu Sultan, used the rockets effectively against the British East India Company during the 1780s and 1790s.
  The Indian war rockets were formidable weapons before such rockets were used in Europe. They had bam-boo rods, a rocket-body lashed to the rod, and iron points. They were directed at the target and fired by lighting the fuse, but the trajectory was rather erratic. The use of mines and counter-mines with explosive charges of gunpowder is mentioned for the times of Akbar and Jahāngir.
caption: An illustration from the Akbarnama written by Abu'l-Fazl ibn Mubarak (1551–1602) depicts a gun in Akbar's court (bottom center).
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