How the Rockets of Tipu Sultan Inspired the American National Anthem
By Dr Nazeer Ahmed
Concord, CA
Note: As part of a series on the magnificent Islamic culture of South Asia, the American Institute of Islamic History and Culture in California has arranged a podcast on July 4 on the life and times of Tipu Sultan of Mysore (1750-99). World renowned scholars from the US, Canada, Afghanistan and India will speak. The link for the flyer is: https://youtu.be/yzM5Ue-mxE4. The YouTube link which goes live on July 4 at 9 am California Time is: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWT2VSGCOOmlwz5mpvKH37A
“And the rockets' red glare,
the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof thro' the night
that our flag was still there”
From our National Anthem
It comes as a surprise to many people that the American National Anthem, The Star-Spangled Banner, was inspired by the rockets invented by a Muslim king, Tipu Sultan of Mysore, India.
South Asia includes the vast region bounded by the Indian ocean to the South, the Himalayas to the North, the Iranian desert to the west and the jungles of Myanmar to the east. Today, it embraces the nation stations of Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka.
Islam entered this region in the seventh century through trading routes in Kerala. It spread through the dedicated efforts of Awliya from Mazar e Shareef, Multan, Lahore, Delhi, Ajmer, Sylhet and the Deccan. In its wake, it has left its imprint on every aspect of life, language, art, architecture, handicrafts, philosophy, religion, clothes and cuisine. Indeed, the richness of this culture is second to none in the world. Which other culture can boast of the Taj Mahal of Agra, the Red Fort of Delhi, the Badshahi Mosque of Lahore, the Ghorid Minaret of Jam in Afghanistan, the Chini Masjid of Saidpur in Bangladesh, the Red Mosque of Sri Lanka, the Gol Gumbaz of the Deccan, the eloquence of Allama Iqbal or the universal appeal of Mirza Ghalib, the master poet of the Urdu language?
There are clouds hovering over the legacy of this rich Islamic culture. Extreme political movements look at the exquisite mosaic of south Asian culture through a binary lens of Hindu versus Muslim. Monuments are destroyed, languages are obliterated and history is corrupted and rewritten to suit a Hindutva political agenda. It would be a sad day indeed if the extreme right forces succeed in hiding or destroying the legacy of the rich South Asian Islamic culture. Humankind will be the poorer for it.
This brief piece is about Tipu Sultan of Mysore. It was the year 1814. The Anglo-American war which started in 1812 was in full swing. The British forces, after burning down Washington and conducting a raid on Alexandria, proceeded up the Chesapeake Bay to capture Fort McHenry in Baltimore. Caught in the cross fire were two American lawyers, Francis Scott Key and John Stuart Skinner who had gone over to negotiate a truce and prisoner exchange with the British. Key and Skinner were allowed to board the British flagship HMS Tonant and present their proposals to Major General Robert Ross and Vice Admiral Alexander Cochrane while the two were discussing their plans for an attack on Baltimore.
Since they had overheard the detailed war plans, Key and Skinner were held back by the British and were witness to the bombardment of Baltimore on September 13, 1814. Orange and red flashes of rocket fire illuminated the skies over Fort McHenry. The stillness over Chesapeake Bay was shattered by the deafening sounds of explosives. The bombardment went on all night and it was not clear as to which side would prevail in this clash of arms. At day break, as the first rays of the sun hit the fort and the fog lifted over the Bay, the American flag was still aloft Fort McHenry, fluttering in the morning breeze. This was the moving sight that inspired Francis Scott Key to compose the Star Spangled Banner.
The rockets used in the war of 1812 were a takeoff on the rockets captured by the British from Tipu Sultan of Mysore after the fourth Anglo-Mysore war of 1799. The Mysore rockets used a casing of iron unlike the plaster casings that were in common use in European rockets. The metal casing enabled the sustenance of higher pressures in the bore and increased the propulsive power of the rocket. The solid propellant was compacted gunpowder. The Mysore rockets had a range of 2 kilometers (about 1.2 miles) which was more than twice the range of the most advanced rockets used by European armies. Attached to the end of the iron barrel was a long bamboo pole with affixed doubled edged swords as the payload. When launched in clusters, the sword-equipped rockets played havoc with concentrations of enemy troops.
The late Dr Abdul Kalam, the architect of India’s rocket programs, called Tipu Sultan the father of modern rocketry. Tipu was a technology enthusiast and paid special attention to innovation in armament design. There were thousands of rockets in his armory. Platoons of rocket men were attached to each of his regiments. With the military edge provided by the rockets, the Sultan won a decisive victory over British forces in the Battle of Pollylur in 1780. It was the only major battle that the British lost on Indian soil during their long drawn out conquest of the Indian subcontinent, starting with the Battle of Plassey in Bengal (1757) and ending with the second Anglo-Sikh war in the Punjab (1848-49).
When Tipu Sultan was martyred during the fourth Anglo-Mysore war of 1799, the British sent some of the captured Mysore rockets to the Royal Laboratory at Woolwich Arsenal in England. A development team led by Colonel Congreve made a systematic study of the rockets using Newton’s laws of motion. Congreve back-engineered Tipu Sultan’s rockets, made design improvements to make them more stable in flight. The modified Mysore rockets, renamed the Congreve rockets, were field tested in 1805 and used by the British against Napoleon at the Battle of Boulogne in France in 1806. And it was the Congreve rockets that were used by the British to bombard Fort McHenry in Baltimore during the Anglo-American war of 1812.
Thus, it was that the technology invented by a sultan inspired the national anthem of a great nation, the United States of America, on the other side of the globe. The advances made by the rocket engineers of Tipu Sultan show that as late as the eighteenth century, technological developments in Asia were not far behind those in Europe. Indeed, in some categories they were noticeably ahead. It was only in the nineteenth century that Europe acquired a decisive technological edge over Asia.
(The author is Director, World Organization for Resource Development and Education, Washington, DC; Director, American Institute of Islamic History and Culture, CA; Member, State Knowledge Commission, Bangalore; and Chairman, Delixus Group)
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