Use of tantric rituals, war magic was quite common in medieval warfare.
During the siege of Kandahar, the Mughals and Safavids engaged in a black magic contest; employing sorcerers and performing magical rites.
In the course of jotting down his diary, Rashid Khan mentions that various sorcerers frequented the Mughal army camp. As with astrology, the occult arts were cultivated as an accepted body of practice and knowledge throughout the period, both in Hindustan and among the neighboring Muslim dynasties. The author of the Lataif does not make too much of these episodes―he casually weaves them into a larger mass of detail on the day’s happenings.
One Indian sorcerer, named Indarkar, traveled with the army from Lahore, and managed, through well-placed contacts, to secure an audience with the prince. In Qandahar, he brazenly approached the besieged fort and asked to be let in so that he could smoke a tobacco chillum from the top. The Safavids played host to him there for some days. However, when Indarkar asked for permission to return, they tor- tured and killed him.50
A yogi and his disciples also lived off Dara Shukoh’s largesse, without apparently doing much to earn their keep. But it was Jafar (fl. 1671), Dara’s head of artillery, who fell for the claims of a certain Hajji, a sorcerer and illusionist.
The Hajji wandered into the camp, claiming he had the power to command jinn.51 He performed various rites for Jafar involving dancers and sacrifice of a dog, but the demons he controlled failed to quell the fort’s cannons and guns. The Safavids heard about this Hajji’s necromancy and retaliated with a magic rite of their own, stuffing a dog’s carcass with boiled rice and flinging it into Jafar’s trench. This, explains Rashid Khan, was a means of canceling out the Hajji’s incantation with their own spell.52