The Rashtrakutas and their Times c16.s4.19

c16.s4.19

Abu Ishtak Al Ishtakhri and Ibn Haukal state that the Rāṣṭrakūṭa administration was very partial to the Muslims and that none but Muslims ruled over their coreligionists living in that empire. (58) This statement, if not exaggerated, will only show that the personal law of the Muslims was administered to them through their own Kazis. (59) The administration seems to have given them the same privileges, which were recommended to the guilds, traders, foresters etc., by the Smritis. (60) Muslim administrators nowhere figure in epigraphical records, and if they had really existed, the Muslim chroniclers would not have been content to observe that none but the Muslims ruled over the Muslims in the Rāṣṭrakūṭa empire; they would have claimed that there were Muslim officers in the administration who were ruling over the non-Muslims as well. The statements of these Muslim writers are also sometimes wild and unreliable; some of them like Al Idrisi gravely inform us that in the kingdom of Balhara, *i. e.* Gujrat of the 12th century A.D., concubinage is permitted with all persons except married women, including even daughters, sisters, and aunts if they are unmarried. (61)