Ahmudan Pikemen

==History==
Until the fall of the Konbaung state to the forces of the British Raj, the recruitment and organisation of Bamar armies widely followed a system not unlike that of Europe in the Middle Ages, but this system too also had its own local quirks.
Despite its name, the ahmudan system (literally meaning "civil service") was in effect a somewhat feudalistic system, in which demands for arms by the sovereign, filtered down through local administrators - from the palace, through governors and viceroys, and finally down to village headmen, who bore the burden of conscripting and supplying the manpower required by the king. The most elite formations, such as palace guards, were often supplied by those villages which were located closest to the king, both physically and politically.
During the Taungoo dynasty, the ahmudan system was refined further, with the abolition of garrisons and militias controlled by governors and viceroys, along with the introduction of a rota-based selection system in which villages would take turns to supply the troops required by the king during peacetime and for war.
===References===
*Lieberman, Victor B. (2003). Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800–1830, volume 1, Integration on the Mainland. Cambridge University Press.
*Dijk, Wil O. (2006). Seventeenth-century Burma and the Dutch East India Company, 1634–1680 (illustrated ed.). Singapore: NUS Press. ISBN 9789971693046.