Growth of Muslim Population in Medieval India, A.D. 1000–1800 c11.140

c11.140

The Italian traveller Caesar Frederic was an eye witness to a famine in Cambay between 1563 and 1567.¹⁰⁰ Sirhind was a scene of similar calamity in 1572-73, and its inhabitants migrated to neighbouring village and cities. In 1573-74 scarcity, accompanied by an epidemic, stalked for six months the otherwise fertile region of Gujarat.¹⁰¹ A deadly epidemic, probably a kind of malarial fever, ravaged Bengal in 1575, and was quite devastating in its effects.¹⁰² Abul Fazl records a famine in 1583-84, but neither mentions which provinces were affected nor what amount of damage was done, but it appears that the calamity was severe.¹⁰³ The innundation of the Megna delta in Bangla (Desh) in 1584-85 killed "nearly 200,000 living creatures.”[’^104] In 1587 and 1588 locusts destroyed crops in the Bhakkar country resulting in drought and migrations on a large scale. The story repeated itself in the same region a year later in 1589-90.¹⁰⁵ But the relentless drought which began in 1595 in northern India and lasted till 1598 was very devastating in its effects. “There was scarcity of rain throughout the whole of Hindustan, and a fearful famine raged continuously for three or four years…A kind of plague also added to the horrors of this period and depopulated whole houses and cities, to say nothing of hamlets and villages… Men ate their own kind. The streets and roads were blocked up with dead bodies ..”[’^106] The Jesuit missionaries witnessed famine and pestilence also in Lahore and Kashmir,¹⁰⁷ but neither they nor Indian writers give any figures of the dead. But the famine and pestilence of 1595-98, preceded by an almost unbroken chain of calamities from 1584 onwards, must have had a malevolent effect on the demographic scene ; and the population of India at the end of the century would have been far less than the high figure of 160 to 165 million. A realistic estimate would be about 140 million.