Growth of Muslim Population in Medieval India, A.D. 1000–1800 c5.s1.1

c5.s1.1

Arabic and Persian works have been evaluated time and again by scholars of medieval Indian history, but primarily with a view to assessing their importance, authenticity and reliability as sources of political and social history. Here we have to see how far they are helpful in the study of medieval population. Medieval Indian historians, like all others in the medieval world, were not interested in the study of population as such. But on going through their works a little minutely, one does come across a good deal of information, and sometimes even data and statistics, which help in demographic study. It is from them that we learn that many rulers, for varied reasons, were keen on knowing about the number of their subject people. For instance, we are told by Ibn Battuta that once during the reign of Muhammad bin Tughlaq, when relief measures were undertaken at the time of a famine ‘all over Hind and Sind’, ‘jurists and judges set out registering the names of inhabitants in different streets, sending for the people and giving them provisions¹’. Akbar indeed ordered a regular census in the twentyfifth year of his reign.² Right up to the time of Aurangzeb do we hear of *sar shumārī*³ (counting of heads, census ?), which goes to show that some sort of estimate of the number of people used to be kept. Even though we have no access to such records now, stray references in the chronicles about population trends are not altogether lacking.