The Foundation of Muslim Rule in India: A History of the Establishment and Progress of the Turkish Sultanate of Delhi, 1206–1290 A.D. c19.58

c19.58

An enquiry into the wealth-producing activities under the Memelukes yields little satisfying result, for these seem to have least interested the contemporary writers. To what extent and in what manner commerce and industry were fostered or the regime affected the country's economy, are questions whose answer must necessarily contain a fair amount of conjecture. We hear of merchants dealing in horses, slaves and in clothes, big importers and exporters, who appear to have nearly always been Iranian and Arabian Muslims². The Turk also dealt in horses imported from southern Turkistan (Khita) and had been a familiar figure in Hindu mercantile world. The Memeluke state had no sea-port and the sea-borne trade, filtering through to the Delhi markets, would touch only indirectly the land-locked kingdom's economic life. The *Tabaqat-i-Akbari* mentions, under Alauddin Khalji, an officer called the *tajerbagi*, but it is perhaps too early to expect the militarist Memelukes to make a conscious effort to increase or even regulate the foreign commerce¹.