MINUTES OE PROCEEDINGS Of 
220 
The former of these enlightened and munificent patrons paid £2000, the 
latter £1000 towards bringing out these works, the cost of which absorbed 
all those sums. 
The gun was cast at Ahmednugger in the reign of Boorhan Nizan 
Shah I. a.h. 956 or a.d. 1548, and we trace the influence of the school of 
Muhammad no less in the name of the maker than in its form and 
proportions. It was cast by or under the superintendence of the General 
of the Artillery, Muhammad bin Hassan Boumi, that is, of Constantinople. 
The Malik-i-Mydan. 
The following particulars are principally extracted from a memorandum 
which accompanied a bronze model of the gun made by Captain now 
General Julius Griffiths, Bombay Artillery, in 1825, and presented by 
Sir Charles Colville to the Duke of Wellington, by whom it was deposited 
in the Botunda. Mr Bird supposed that the Bumi Khan who cast the gun 
at Ahmednugger, and whose tomb is still to be seen there, was the individual 
mentioned in the history of Gujerat, who founded the Castle of Surat, 
a.h. 947, or a.d. 1540. In the disastrous retreat from Kulliani, a.d. 1562, 
Hosain Nizan Shah abandoned no fewer than 701 pieces of ordnance, at 
which time the great gun fell into the hands of Ali Adel Shah of Beejapore. 
When Beejapore was taken by Shah Aiumgeer Ghazu* (Aurungzeb) in the 
reign of Iskander Adel Shah, a new inscription in Persian was added to 
commemorate the event. The inscriptions in relief occupy a considerable 
portion of the upper surface of the gun, and are very beautifully executed, 
particularly the original Arabic, the letters of which are upwards of a foot 
in length. There are a number of peculiar abbreviations in it, a kind of 
stenography, where a single letter is made to form part of several distinct 
letters. 
* Ghazu means conqueror, a title of the Mogul Emperors as warring against and subduing 
infidels, other versions spell the name of the sovereign Alem Ghir. 
