ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I would like to extend my heartiest thanks with a deep sense of gratitude and respect to all
those who provides me immense help and guidance during my project work.
I would like to thank my friends for their unfailing cooperation and sparing his valuable time
to assist me in my work.
I would like to express my sincere thanks to my professor Dr. S.R. Rao who gave me a great
opportunity to undertake such a great challenging and innovative work. I am grateful for their
guidance, encouragement, understanding and insightful support in the project work
Last but not the least I would like to mention here that I am greatly indebted to each and
everybody who has been associated with my project at any stage but whose name does not
find a place in this acknowledgement.

With sincere regards,

`
IRFAN HABIB
Indian historian who was born in 1931. He done his graduation from Aligarh Muslim
University and Post-Graduation from Oxford University. He is awarded watumull prize in
1982 and Padma Bhushan in 2005. He is Marxist historiographer. He is against the Muslim
and Hindu fundamentalism for which is he is well known. Habib has worked on the
Histographical geography of ancient India, the history of Indian technology, medieval
administrative and economic history, colonialism and its impact on India, and historiography.
Habib is one of the two most prominent Marxist historians of India today and at the same
time, one of the greatest living historians of India between twelfth and eighteenth centuries.1
He was the general secretary, Sectional President, and then the general president of Indian
history congress (1981). He has also written about the Vedas and Vedic age. He considers
Vedas as the good historical source, which describes the oral transmission in a priestly
culture, that valued faithfulness. He has written many book s regarding history. Recently he
wrote an article to ‘The Hindu’ in which he said that the idea of ‘Bharat Mata’ is a European
import. He stated that Bharat is mentioned in ancient India and it was firstly used by king of
Kharvela in Prakrit language. But nowhere description of motherland land or fatherland. The
term fatherland is widely used in European countries so India has imported it from there.

BOOKS BY IRFAN HABIB

1
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irfan_Habib (last visited on 18 September 2017)
1. The Agrarian system of Mughal India
2. Essays in Indian History
3. Akbar and his India
4. Mauryan India
5. Indian Economy, AD1858-1914
6. Economic History of India, AD 1206-1526 (This is the latest book of Habib)

Total 30 books are written by him

 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
The researcher had found the details of Irfan habib with the help of Wikipedia.
About his contribution towards history his drawn from The Valuable Contribution
Towards History. Another source which was used during this project was the book “
The Agrarian system of Mughal India” because he has given his importance in the
history towards the Mughal reign and their agriculture.
 IMPORTANT CONTRIBUTION OF IRFAN HABIB TO HISTORY
Irfan Habib is one of best known historians who are greatly interested in History of Science
and Technology. Unlike many other historians his writings are marked by a remarkable
research, scientific precision and a lot of hard evidence, and of course a Marxist approach.
Though his specialization is in the medieval period, he has also written/edited books on
prehistory and Indus civilization. He always studies the field covered by his books in great
detail and comes up with very significant insights. I was a bit surprised when I saw his book
on Indus civilization as the period was far removed from his specialization, but I could find
not only some rare information in the book, but also some valuable insights. In the book on
Indus civilization, unlike others, Habib gives due importance to all levels of the Indus trade:
local village-town trade; long-distance trade within the territory of the civilisation and
commerce with other regions.
Habib makes some very significant observations on the character of Indian Technology. He
points out that there was over-specialization in India. Quoting Pelshart, Habib informs us
that he found in Agra goldsmiths, calico painters, embroiderers, carpet makers, cotton
weavers, blacksmiths, coppersmiths, tailors, masons, builders, stone cutters, a hundred
crafts for a job. A job which one workman will do in Holland passes (here) through four
men’s hands before it is finished. Of course, there was a competition which compelled an
artisan to sharpen his skills rather than improve his tools, as tools were costly.
The author also explains that such specialization was brought about by a socially set division
of labour which inhibited technological progress because of the hereditary caste. It is also to
be noted that though artisans were employed by kings and aristocracy, the tools had to be
owned by artisans. Since tools cannot be separated from the artisans, and capitalist
relations had not yet developed, craft technology remained outside the scope of externally
induced change. Habib, however, points out that the very formulation of the problem in this
manner makes an opposite question inevitable. Why did not the classes which controlled a
share in the social surplus enter the productive process by providing tools and so be able to
improve technology, as happened partly in Western Europe from the sixteenth century
onwards? This raises the problem of ideological orientation. How far were such classes in
India at all interested in technology and its improvement?
Habib also points out that unlike Europe, in ancient India production technology was
apparently not brought into any recognizable relationship with theoretical science. Habib
contrasts Bhoja’s fanciful devices, often difficult to interpret, which were totally divorced
from any association with practical technology, let alone the productive process. Habib
informs us that Abu’l Fazl insists that there were innovations too in the manufacture of guns
and muskets, and describes a device employed by Akbar, the ship’s ‘camel’, which was
invented in Europe nearly a century later. In chemistry, there was the invention of water-
cooling through the use of saltpeter, which seems to be independent of any discovery made
in Europe. Still, the Mughal Empire did not produce even a single worthwhile text on crafts
and agriculture. Contrasting the slow progress of Indian technology, compared to Europe,
Habib attributes the European progress to the growth of rationalism, the scientific
revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries and the expanding volume of capital available for
technological experimentation. This according to Habib explains why European technology
was able to leave the rest of the world far behind by the end of the 18th century.
Habib discusses technology related to agriculture, crops, irrigation, processing, etc. We are
told that a significant device, the draw-bar, which enabled the draught animal to walk round
in a circle and so carry out threshing and turn rotary mills, appeared only at the dawn of
early medieval times. Animals could be used for milling only when the mortar-and-pestle
hand-mill became completely rotary. Habib dates the use of the draw-bar and the
consequential circular track of the oxen for threshing and milling spread to different parts of
India between the fifth and the tenth centuries. 
Habib points out that no fundamental change in the structure of the ox drawn plough seems
to have occurred; ploughs however varied a great deal even within adjacent regions in India,
largely according to soil. During medieval times, the Indian plough acquired the seed rill,
which might possibly have diffused from China, which knew of it as early as the first century
BCE.
About the crops, Habib informs us that by the end of the sixteenth century, the Indian
peasant was familiar with an exceptionally large number of crops. In Abu’l Fazl’s list the
number of rabi crops ranges from 16 to 21, and of kharif crops, from 17 to 29. In the Agra
province the number is 19 for rabi crops and 28 for kharif. Such a large number of crops
made Indian agriculture especially rich in the variety of its products.
We learn that the first reference to sericulture in India occurs in the report of Ma Huan, the
Chinese navigator who visited Bengal in 1422. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
Bengal became one of the great mulberry silk-producing regions of the world. The worm
here was multivoltine, enabling six crops to be gathered in the year.
We are told that grafting, as a means of extending the cultivation of particular varieties of
fruit or developing new varieties, does not seem to have been employed in India before the
Mughal times. The Mughal kings introduced the grafting of the sweet cherry in Kashmir,
oranges, mulberry, etc. Quite a few New World fruits were introduced by the Portuguese in
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, such as pineapple, papaya, cashew nut and guava.
In India the first definite reference to the noria (a vertical wheel that has water containers
on its rim) occurs in an early version of the Panchatantra (c. 300 CE). The earliest allusion to
this ‘pot-garland’ occurs in the Mandasor inscription of 532 CE. The first express statement
about the use of gears is from Babur when he gives his classic description of the ‘Persian
wheel’. This geared saqiya or ‘Persian wheel’ was crucial for the relatively dry Indus basin
because it could give a constant flow.
In this chapter Habib describes the large irrigation works constructed in the south in the
eleventh century, for example, the Grand Anicut, a dam over 300 metres long, up to 5.5
metres high and up to 18 metres thick, over the Kaveri river. With the coming into use of
lime and gypsum mortar and other techniques, Delhi saw, in the fourteenth century, fairly
sophisticated waterworks. Firoz Tughluq built long and large canals in the north Indian
plains. He created a veritable network of canals taking off from the Satluj and Yamuna,
besides other smaller rivers.
As far as processing of grains is concerned, the appearance in India of both the rotary mill
and the vertical peg-handle goes back to the fifth century. It seems that the rotary oil mill is
also of the same date. Habib thinks that not only the ox-driven oil-mill, but the draw-bar too
must have arrived in Himachal by c. 800 CE.
The archaeological evidence from Taxila and Charsadda shows that alcohol distillation may
have been invented in India in c. 150 BCE. In the twelfth century cooling of the still was
improved to obtain pure alcohol. As we know, in Zawar (Rajasthan) pure zinc distillation was
achieved through the use of clay retorts in the 12th century.
Chapter 2 discusses textile technology. Habib tells us that the earliest depictions in India of
the crank-handle belong to the seventeenth century in relation to the spinning wheel, and
the crank-handle appears on the cotton gin only in a Kangra painting of c. 1750. The scutch-
bow (to loosen cotton fibre) was very probably an ancient Indian invention, alluded to in the
Jatakas and more explicitly mentioned in Sanskrit dictionaries of the eleventh and twelfth
centuries. Habib puts the limits of the diffusion of the spinning wheel within India to the first
half of the fourteenth century. The earliest evidence for the loom in India, however, belongs
to the fifteenth century.
Dyeing was achieved through several techniques. The tie-and-dye method (now called
bandhna, English: ‘bandana’) has been traced back to Bana's Harshacharita, which means
that it was already practiced in the early seventh century. Habib thinks that there can be no
finality here, but the likelihood is that cloth-printing had become an established craft in
India by the fourteenth century.
Regarding metallurgy, Habib seems to be a bit conservative in dating. He places wootz steel
only to the 13th century whereas it could go back to the Mauryan times. Even Alexander
was presented with 100 talents of such steel. From the late fifteenth century, the Indian iron
industry was called upon to make hand-guns and muskets, and, later, iron guns. For those
interested in the story of iron metallurgy, two recent books by Vibha Tripathi (History of
Iron Technology in India 2008) and Balasubramaniam (Marvels of Indian Iron Through the
Ages 2008) are very well documented and up-to-date too.
Habib describes the evidence of other metals like gold, silver, zinc. etc also. Zawar gives the
evidence of pure zinc distillation in the 12th century, earlier than anywhere else, though zinc
smelting can be traced back to 4th century BCE.
In this chapter Habib goes into the details of building technology, use of gypsum, mortars,
etc. He says that the arcuate mode of construction that India received in the thirteenth
century was a fusion not only of two mortars, but also of two distinct styles, the Byzantine
and the Sassanid. The early Byzantine preference for the pointed arch and dome on drum
and pendentives was combined with the Sassanid emphasis on the barrel vault and dome on
squinches. By the thirteenth century, all these had become part of the ‘Saracenic’
architectural system, now imported into India.
About the paper technology, Habib informs us that with the establishment of the Sultanate,
paper manufacture arrived at Delhi. Amir Khusrau, in 1289, mentions paper-making as a
contemporary craft; and in a verse he alludes to the glazing of paper with a rubber or
muhra. In 1452 Ma Huan, in his account of the products of Bengal, spoke of a kind of white
paper which is also made from tree bark, praising it for being ‘glossy and smooth like a deer
skin’.
Though glass was known to the Indians from c. 800 BCE, a new element was brought into
glassware production in Iran and India by the twelfth century, namely, enamelling. As to the
spectacles, they were a European invention. There are references to convex spectacles worn
by a Vijayanagara minister in the first half of the sixteenth century and by Faizi, Akbar’s poet
laureate, in 1593-95.
Habib describes the use of two chief instruments to measure the altitudes and positions of
heavenly bodies by the Medieval Indian astronomers. One was the simple sundial, the
other, the complex astrolabe. It often contained on one of its discs a list of places with their
coordinates. At the raised rim of the mother disc, very fine and accurate graduation was
attempted to mark each of the 360 degrees of the circle, essential for measuring altitude.
The astrolabe maker was also called upon to draw circles and segments of circles, where
again geometrical accuracy had to be secured.
The Mughal period saw the appearance of variolation or inoculation against small pox which
was first reported from Bengal in 1731, when local tradition was quoted as putting its
beginnings at about 150 years earlier. The other craft could similarly claim to be a harbinger
of plastic surgery (rhinoplasty).
The third chapter we learn from him about the military technology, transport and
navigation. In the seventh century CE chariots had finally given way in India to the armoured
horseman. King Devaraya of Vijayanagara collected 10,000 Muslim and 60,000 Hindu
horsemen ‘acquainted with the art of archery’, and successfully invaded the Bahmani
dominions in 1443-44. However, the horse still lacked the three essential items: the saddle,
the stirrup and the horse-shoe. At Khajuraho, a stray sculpture of the tenth century does
show the stirrup, and thereafter it seems to have become common. It is distinctly shown, for
example, in the famous horse at Konarak in Orissa, datable to c. 1200 CE. The Lakshmana
temple at Khajuraho (tenth century) shows bow-shaped stirrups with broad fl at rests. In the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the stirrup is also generally of the shape of a large and
broad ring, ‘apparently made of layers of leather stitched together or of wood cut into a
log’. While the Delhi Sultanate cavalry thus had iron stirrups from the beginning, it is
possible that their use in some parts of India, in fact, preceded the arrival of the Sultanate
armies there. The history of the iron horse-shoe is apparently much shorter than that of the
stirrup. Fakhr-i Mudabbir, in his work on warfare written in Iltutmish’s reign (1210-36 CE),
mentions how a horse was shod with the nal, and Amir Khusrau, in 1283, tells us of the
curious quality of the horse that when nails (mekh) are driven into its hooves, it runs better.
Habib also describes two fearful weapons: the first was naphtha or Greek fire; the other
weapon was the mangonel or trebuchet. Apparently, the latter apparatus consisted of a
wooden beam pivoted on a wooden stand. The short arm of the beam had a counterweight
put on it, while the long arm had a sling suspended at its far end which carried the missile,
usually a round large piece of stone. The long arm pulled down by rope by many men would
raise the weighted short arm. If now the men all together released the rope, the short arm
would fall, making the long arm ascend fast, and the missile would shoot forth out of the
swinging sling.
Habib explains that rockets as a form of pyrotechny or fireworks pre-date the true artillery
(cannon and muskets). Quoting Gode, he says that on the basis of a study of formulae for
fireworks in a Sanskrit work of c. 1500, that these were transmitted from China to India
about 1400 CE. It seems that the true gunpowder cannons were being used in various parts
of India only by the latter half of the fifteenth century.
From Habib’s description it would appear that by the end of the sixteenth century, the
heaviest guns in the world were being cast in India, the climax being reached with the
famous Malik Maidan cast in bronze at Ahmadnagar, with a length of 4.06 metres, diameter
at the muzzle 1.65 metres, and diameter of the bore, 0.72 metre. Habib explains the
difficulties of casting large pieces of iron which prevented the casting of whole barrels in
single moulds. Indian iron cannon thus generally consisted of wrought (not cast) iron bars or
cylinders, held together by rings to form the barrel. It is not easy to separate the history of
the cannon from that of the musket. In India the musket seems to have arrived quite early,
possibly in the fifteenth century, when it appears in two Jain book illustrations. For
smoothening the inside of the barrel, Akbar invented a superb device, whereby animal
power could be used through pindrum-gearing to rotate drills inside the barrels of several
muskets simultaneously.
During Firoz Tughluq’s times (1351-88), a variety of transport could be hired: camel, horse,
cart, palanquin; the cheapest was the ox-cart. From Awadh (Ayodhya) to Delhi a journey on
a camel each way took forty days. Goods or grain were transported on ox backs. The roads
that radiated from Delhi, were marked with pillars displaying the distances traversed.
Tughluq is said to have established a building and a hospice at the end of each day’s journey
(manzil), with provision for eatables, and also planted trees on both sides of the road. As
regards the river transport, quoting Afif (c. 1400 CE), Habib tells us that large and broad
boats ply on the Yamuna river, some able to carry 5000 mans (44 metric tons) of grain, and
some 7,000 mans (62 tons); even the smaller boats could carry 2000 mans (17.6 tons) of
grain. The government maintained its means of communications through managing two
distinct systems, one based on horses, the other on human relay runners. It is certain that
the ekka and tonga are post-seventeenth century innovations as the Mughal India
completely lacked these cheap and quick means of passenger conveyance. Bullockcarts thus
constituted practically the sole form of wheeled traffic over the larger part of India. Bridges
could not be built over the large rivers originating in the Himalayas, but still spanned fairly
respectable rivers, like the Gomati.
We learn that the postal system was not open to the public: the couriers were usually
enjoined not to convey private mail. For ordinary private persons, there were pattamars or
bazaar qasids (‘bazaar couriers’), who announced in each town that they would be going to
such and such a place and invited the public to entrust their letters for that place to them.
Unlike Marco Polo and others, the account of Nicolo Conti, who used these ships during
1419-44 and gave a fairly favourable description of them. Some of them, he says, were
‘much larger than ours, capable of containing two thousand butts [casks] and with five sails
and as many masts’. The lower part of a ship was constructed with three planks for
reinforcement; and ‘some ships are so built in compartments’ as to allow them to remain
afloat even if a part of their structure got wrecked.
Habib thinks that it is most likely that Indian and other Arabian Sea navigators picked up the
magnetic compass from the visiting Chinese ships, and the navigational use of it then spread
to the Mediterranean, where it subsequently underwent much development. 
Though the author appreciates the advance in the Indian ship-building industry he regrets
that it did not do away with the lag between European and Indian shipping. Essentially,
while they succeeded in having the same kinds of ships, the Indian navigators could not
acquire the skill and instruments (both of which are, of course, inseparable) of their
European counterparts. An Indian lexicographer, writing in 1739, recognizes that the
telescope was a pilot’s observational instrument, but no attempt seems to have been made
to manufacture telescopes in India.
Habib seems to be a bit too critical of the state of technology in medieval India; in contrast,
Dharampal (Indian Science & Technology in the Eighteenth Century 2000; Despoliation and
Defaming of India. Vol 1, 1999) emphasises that India was far ahead of Europe in the 17th-
18th centuries both in technology and trade. Dharampal (1999) informs us that by 1810, Dr.
Carpue of London was able to build up the technique of a new plastic surgery derived and
based on the Indian method. Dharampal also records that 73% of world manufactures were
done in the Chinese and the Indian regions around 1750. Even around 1820 these two
regions produced some 60% of world manufactures. One also expected from Habib a
greater emphasis on the proverbial textile technology of India.
The quality of Habib’s important book could be further improved by giving references in the
text itself, instead of under notes. The first few pages are erroneously arranged. The long
extracts (which are often ignored by a reader) do give us a flavour of the original sources but
more quotations and fuller references would have been very useful. A detailed bibliography
is a very essential part of such a book which sadly is missing.
Habib has produced, in his quintessential lucid and cogent style, a very informative, critical,
yet fascinating account of the medieval technology and thus the book is a must for all
interested in the History of Science and Technology in India.2
2
www.ghadar.in/gjh_html/?q=content/valuable-contribution-history-technology-in-india
 CONCLUSION
This historian helped a lot in the area of medival history. He has very high command on
history specially in Medieval period. He is Marxist thinking historian. He highly criticise the
fundamentalism of Hindu and Muslim. He is among few historian living in the present who
have wider knowledge of Medieval history and about their agriculture. This project helped
me a lot to understand about the Irfan habib and the history. The part which were unknown
to me of history have been uncurtail by reading about him.