The year was 1586. An army of the third Mughal emperor Akbar had recently conquered Kashmir – a land that he and his descendants would cherish for many years as jannat nazir. Yet, Muhammad Qasim Khan, the commander of the victorious army, found himself in a fix. In occupying Kashmir, he had defeated its erstwhile rulers – the Chak dynasty. But the supporters of that previous regime refused to bow down. They put up a stiff resistance against the conquerors. Much to the chagrin of Qasim Khan, the Mughal troops under his command simply refused to venture out of Srinagar to engage the insurgents in battle.

More than half a century later, Akbar’s grandson Shah Jahan sent his son Murad Bakhsh at the head of a huge army to conquer the Uzbeg city of Balkh in modern Afghanistan. Prince Murad accomplished this task without much difficulty. But soon after, he started growing uneasy. Unwilling to stay on in Balkh, he wrote to his father requesting a transfer of post. Shah Jahan denied the request, but Murad refused to obey. He took matters in his own hands and started his journey back to North India. Shah Jahan cancelled his son’s mansab (rank) and jagir (land assignment) in retaliation, but could not reverse the prince’s refusal to serve in Balkh.

A decade and a half later, the last ‘Great Mughal’ Aurangzeb dispatched his trusted general Mir Jumla to seize Assam from the Ahom kingdom.

When the operation was over in early-1663, the emperor sent a farman (royal decree) appointing two officers of the army to the positions of the subadar (governor) of Assam and the faujdar (military commander) of Kamrup. To the shock of the assembly where the royal farman were presented, both the commanders promptly refused to accept their new appointments.

These three cases of refusal of imperial orders halted the advance of military juggernaut of the Mughal Empire and threw the course of territorial expansion into jeopardy. But what triggered them?

Contemporary historical evidence points to one common factor - the natural environment. In Kashmir, the cold weather, the steep mountainous slopes, and the broken terrain intimidated the imperial troops. Born and brought up in mainland North India, they found these environmental conditions too alien and difficult to handle. This made one Mughal chronicler observe: ‘Apparently these delicate men of hot countries were averse to campaigning in a cold country and did not like to traverse defiles’. In Balkh, Prince Murad was similarly wary of enduring the harsh Central Asian winter, with its low temperatures, ample snowfall, and great aridity. He prefered the familiar warmth of North India instead.

Finally, the refusals of the two Mughal commanders were shaped by the campaign in Assam. During the monsoon of 1662, heavy showers caused widespread floods, which in turn threw the invading army into great disarray. The troops became marooned at different stations. Unable to come to each other’s aid because of the floods, they became easy targets for the Ahom troops. The latter took advantage of this situation, mounted on boats, and attacked the invaders freely. To make matters worse, the rain and the flood caused widespread shortage of food grains and various epidemics. The Mughal army sustained huge casualties. Ultimately, it barely managed to strike a settlement with the Ahom kingdom and rush out of Assam. It was the horrors of this traumatic campaign, no doubt, that prompted the two Mughal commanders to refuse their new appointments, because acceptance would have forced them to return to Assam and serve there.

Usually in histories of the Mughal Empire, environment and geography are seen as mere contexts or backdrops, against which the narratives of war-making and empire-building are told. But newer readings of contemporary texts suggest that environment actually had a far more crucial role in shaping the course of imperial expansion. Military campaigns, the natural environment, and the formation of the Mughal Empire were in fact intimately intertwined. This particular tale of the three refusals gives us a tiny peek into these largely unexplored histories.

Pratyay Nath is Assistant Professor and Head, Department of History. His first monograph Climate of Conquest: War, Environment, and Empire in Mughal North India is forthcoming in June 2019.