@cooldud_21:
In the huge subcontinent, it is not. Especially, when the seventy kilometres is plain ground to the Indus.
That's where the Indus is still in highlands, this is separated from the row of tributaries to begin with. And NOT in Punjab.
Panipat is 90 km north of Delhi and all the victors of the battles fought in Panipat had an easy day's ride to Delhi.
The North-West Frontier Provinces are a very recent British construct. Peshawar was always contested between the Afghans and the Punjabis and changed hands frequently.
Find me a source stating that Peshawar is in Punjab, because I know the difference between the two political unit Punjabs, and the historic region. And I'm talking about the latter. Peshawar is up in some highlands with the Indus, before the latter joins the plains with it's tributaries. Y'know, making the "land of five rivers".
The artificial border being made problematic here is the Pashtun majority regions being split by the British. Tell me who is the majority in Peshawar and that should pretty easily tell us if it's a Punjab city or not.
And I brought the city up because of it's proximity to the Indus, and the fact that it formed the basis of countless invasions in India, not because of it's historic membership in the Punjab.
Of course it formed the basis, it was a way station out of the passes hovering on a sort of jumping off point into the river lands. Or vice versa, a way to guard the passes from invaders coming in. Bottleneck point. Lots of cities form on those sorts of points. Vienna does the same thing for the Danube's travel past Bohemia and the Alps.
I don't think you get it. The Mongols, the point where the discussion started, knew how to ford rivers.
Fording rivers isn't some super technology like stirrups, you don't seriously think either the Romans or the Germans and other tribes didn't know how to ford rivers? They crossed the Danube all the time. The Germans invaded both Romes, the Huns did the same etc.
But that doesn't change it's problem for moving ground forces both to invade, and also to try and hold the other bank. Fording massive amounts of something takes time and trouble. Even worse while being in a foreign land where the locals know the rivers and their seasonal behavior better, and can prepare for you better and take full advantage of your troubles.
I mean really, let's take this to the logical conclusion. The argument your making could also be made to try and deny that mountains and highlands slow down armies because armies can cross them. It's not that they can't, it's the process.
They invaded Indo-China and also crossed the Tigris and the Euphrates.
Indo-China has a system of rivers quite like that one? No, it doesn't.
And Baghdad is mainly on the east bank of the Tigris, not the west. The Mongols didn't have to attack it from the west obviously so conquering the Abbasids didn't even really involve more than one river, if that. Both Southeast Asia and especially the Middle East were horribly fractured politically the whole time the Mongols were around.
Southeast Asia now and then is basically three open areas surrounded by mountains. Meaning three fairly self contained zones the Mongols got to invade from their historical weak points, from the mountains from behind. Into Pagan Burma, into Khmer (Thailand), and the eastern lowland strip that had Vietnam and Champa.
Ever since the Turks came through the mid-east was a patchwork of personal feifdoms sprinkled around the last remaining legs of the Abbasids. Only Egypt was well situated enough as a centralized power and lo and behold.
The Delhi Sultunate not only had the geographical advantage but the political one.
Song China was mighty, but the Mongols were right next door with the classic height advantage on them so it was only a matter of time before the Song were destroyed.
If the Mongols had lived in Afghanistan Delhi would not have lasted. And that's kind what the Mughals were in a sense after all.
And I pointed out nine armies (Kushans, Hephthalites, Mohammad Ghori, Mongols, Timur, Babur, Humayun, Nadir Shar, Ahmad Shah Durrani) that succesfully invaded India on the Afghan route. Getting to Delhi was an arbitrary marker to constitute successfully not getting bogged down in Punjab.
You're still not seeing it. Getting through Punjab to Delhi and….then what. The Romans got across the Danube too obviously. But how strong was their ability to project power and control beyond those holdings on the other side? They outright abandoned Dacia (Romania) eventually literally for logistics reasons. Pulling back where? Other side of the Danube.
That's been my point. You can strain your arm to reach something, but holding on to it amidst the strain is challenging to say the least.
Further to the point, getting Delhi and somewhat beyond for a lucky few seems to be exactly the limit for most of them. How many took the Ghenghetic plain? How many the Deccan? Bengal? Dravidia?
Only one, the Mughals (though yeah South India always seemed to resist full sub-continental conquest to some extent or another until the Brits).
Nope. I meant the rivers that the Mongols would have faced in an invasion of India would not be any more difficult than the rivers they crossed in getting anywhere else. And all the armies I pointed out in my last post did something significant! The Kushans and Mohammad Ghori also established empires in India;
Look up how long the control of that strain lasted for the Ghurids. VERY short.
The Kushans are the very best you have and even that didn't last so long.
–- Update From New Post Merge ---
@kevo_koma:
So we'll be having our elections next week and everyone's on edge on whether a repeat of 4 years ago will happen with the senseless violence doesn't help that the same guy who was a the centre of the previous post election violence is already saying that the elections are going to be rigged.
You're from…Kenya? Really wow.