Muslim Slave System in Medieval India

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Slavery originated during the age of savagery and continued into ancient civilizations. Slavery was there in Babylon and elsewhere in Mesopotamia; it was widely prevalent in ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, centuries before the coming of Christ. Ancient India also had slaves but they were so mildly treated that foreign visitors like Megasthenes, who were acquainted with their fate in other countries, failed to notice the existence of slavery in this country. An altogether new dimension – religious sanction – was added to the institution of slavery with the rise of Christianity to power in the Roman Empire. Hitherto, slavery had been a creation of the crude in human nature – the urge to dominate over others, to make use of others for private comfort and profit. Now it was ordained that the God of the Christians had bestowed the whole earth and all its wealth on the believers, that the infidels had no natural or human rights, and that the believers could do to the infidels whatever they chose – kill them, plunder them, reduce them to the status of slaves or non-citizens. In short, slavery became a divinely ordained institution. With the advent of Islam, slavery became inalienable with religion and culture and was accorded a permanent place in society. It goes to the credit of Islam to create slave trade on a large scale, and run it for profit like any other business. Prophet Muhammad had not only accepted the prevailing Arab practice of making slaves but also set a precedent when he sold some Jewish women and children of Medina in exchange for horses and arms. War was prescribed on religious grounds, and became an integral part of Islam. The Quran expressly permitted the Muslims to acquire slaves through conquest. The concept of Jihad against unbelievers, the share of every Muslim in the loot from war including slaves, and the profit obtained through the sale of slaves added new zest in Islam for practising and profiting from slavery. It was enjoined on the faithful to enslave non-Muslims for no other reason than that of their being non-Muslims. The outcome in due course was a large-scale slave trade and big slave markets all over the Islamic world. Muslim capitals such as Medina, Damascus, Kufa, Baghdad, Cairo, Cordova, Bukhara, Ghazni, Delhi and many other Muslim metropolises in India and abroad became crowded with slaves for sale as well as with slave traders out to maximize profits. From the day India became a target of Muslim invaders its people began to be enslaved in droves to be sold in foreign lands or employed in various capacities on menial and non-so-menial jobs within the country. Indeed, from the days of Muhammad bin Qasim in the eighth century to those of Ahmad Shah Abdali in the eighteenth, enslavement, distribution, and sale of Hindu prisoners was systematically practiced by Muslim invaders and rulers of India. Right from the fifteenth century Muslims would go on furnishing black slaves to European slave traders. At least 80% of all the black slaves that were ever exported from Black Africa, went through Muslim hands. A large part of the slaves transported to America had also been bought from Muslim slave-catchers. The present study by Professor K.S. Lal documents for the first time the Muslim slave system as it obtained in medieval India under Muslim rule.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR K.S. Lal

Professor Kishori Saran Lal (b. 1920) took his doctorate in Medieval Indian History from the University of Allahabad in 1945. Starting as a lecturer in the same University, he served in the Madhya Pradesh Education Service from 1945 to 1963 and taught at Government Colleges in Nagpur, Jabalpur and Bhopal. He was Reader in the University of Delhi for ten years (1963-73) and, for the next ten years, Professor and Head of the Department of History in the University of Jodhpur (1973-79) and the University of Hyderabad (1979-83). He has participated in many seminars and conferences, national and international, in India and abroad. In Madhya Pradesh, he was Secretary of the Madhya Pradesh Itihasa Parishad and Convener of the Regional Records Survey Committee. He presided over the Medieval History Section of the Indian History Congress in 1958, Punjab History Congress in 1975, Rajasthan History Congress in 1978, and Indian History and Culture Society in 1984. In 1977 he chaired a session at the Seventh International Conference of the Association of Historians of Asia, held in Bangkok. He has published a number of articles and monographs on Medieval Indian History. All his books have met a world-wide acclaim; they have been noticed in learned journals in London, Leiden, Chicago, Leipzig, Rome and other centres of learning.

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Bibliographic information

Title
Muslim Slave System in Medieval India
Author
Edition
1st. ed.
Publisher
ISBN
8185689679
Length
x+196p., Bibliography; Index; 23cm.
Subjects