Growth of Muslim Population in Medieval India, A.D. 1000–1800 c12.54

c12.54

In northern India, Lahore was very populous. Monserrate and Finch had written about its large population late in the sixteenth century. According to Sujan Rai in the time Shahjahan its population increased daily.³⁷ To Bernier Delhi (in 1663) was as great as Paris in beauty, extent and inhabitants.³⁸ Sujan Rai enumerates people of almost all nationalities as living in Delhi.³⁹ Fatehpur Sikri had been gradually abandoned after 1585 and most of its inhabitants seem to have shifted to Agra, so that Coryat (1612-17) found it larger than Rome. Manrique, who visited Agra in 1640, estimated its population at 660,000 inhabitants, “besides the large number of strangers who continually fill ninety caravansarais and other private houses.”⁴⁰ Thus the population of Agra rose from over two lacs at the close of the sixteenth century to about seven lacs by the middle of the seventeenth century. And this was the position after the plague of 1616-24 had earlier devastated the city. In the seventeenth century the population of Sikri-Agra-Sikandara had probably touched the million mark.⁴¹