Growth of Muslim Population in Medieval India, A.D. 1000–1800 c18.21

c18.21

Akbar had prohibited enslavement and sale of women and children of peasants who had defaulted in payment of revenue. He knew, as Abul Fazl says, that many evil hearted and vicious men either because of ill-founded suspicion or sheer greed, used to proceed to villages and mahals and sack them.¹⁶ But under Shahjahan conditions worsened. Now peasants were compelled to sell their women and children to meet the revenue demand.¹⁷ Manrique writes that the peasants "are carried off . ...to various markets and fairs (to be sold), with their poor unhappy wives behind them carrying their small children......all crying and lamenting......"\18 According to Qazvini, Shahjahan's orders in this regard were that captives were not to be sold to Hindus as slaves,¹⁹ and under Muslim customers they could only become Musalman.