Growth of Muslim Population in Medieval India, A.D. 1000–1800 c12.61

c12.61

⁴² *Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri*, trs. by Alexander Rogers and ed. by Henry Beveridge, (photo reprint, Delhi, 1968), pp. 3-4. A less authentic version, in the *Tarikh-i-Salim Shahi*, is more elaborate: "The city of Agrah is one of the greatest in Hindustan...Such is the immensity of the population, that from the hour of evening prayer to the close of the first quarter of the night, the throng is so densely wedged, that it is not without the utmost difficulty the people can pass and repass along the streets. As an attempt to ascertain in some degree the extent of this multitudinous population, I directed Melek Ally, the Kotwaal...one day to make a tour through the city, and count the individuals assembled in the different maarckahs or theatres for athletae, or pugilists: and his report was that in some of these places did he find assembled not less than two and three thousand persons, although it was neither the first of the year, nor any of those days of public rejoicing or on which it was usual for the people to appear abroad for amusement...Add to this, that every day through the year there are conveyed to the place by boats along the Jumnah not less than ten thousand loads of fuel (and excepting the rainy season) not less than six thousand horses for sale daily enter the city from Kabul and countries in that direction (and all are sold out). I do not know in the whole world, in magnitude and the multitude of its inhabitants, there is any city to be compared with the metropolis of Agrah." *Tarikh-i-Salim Shahi*, trs. Major David Price (Calcutta, 1906), pp. 16-17.