Growth of Muslim Population in Medieval India, A.D. 1000–1800 c5.s2: Writings of Foreigners
Growth of Muslim Population in Medieval India, A.D. 1000–1800 c5.s2
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Writings of Foreigners
c5.s2.1
For the study of medieval Indian demography the itineraries of foreign visitors is of great importance. They came to India as travellers, traders, people in search of employment and some even as embassadors. Some like Wassaf and Shihabuddin Ahmad did not visit India but have given reliable account of affairs here on the basis of information supplied by others; some like Alberuni, Ibn Battuta and Abdur Razzaq, stayed here for years and have left detailed notices about famines, pestilences, wars etc. Still more important are their comments about places or regions sparsely or thickly populated.
c5.s2.2
In this regard European travellers are still more informative. From the time of Marco Polo the chain of European travellers to India remains unbroken. From the sixteenth century their number swells. Barbosa, Bernier, Tavernier, and Manucci, and dozens of other visitors have written about India in some detail. Besides providing usual information about cities and towns, droughts and pestilences, their writings are important in many other respects. Landing on the west coast extending from Gujarat to Malabar, each one of them visited one or more than one region in the interior. Some travelled extensively within the country, so that collectively they present a fairly detailed picture of the whole of India. They could also often distinguish between Hindus and Musalmans and so help in estimating the proportion of the two peoples. Most important of all, they sometimes give definite population statistics of cities and towns or else compare many Indian cities with those of Europe whose population figures or reliable estimates thereof are now available. Factory Records of European commercial establishments in India too provide very valuable information of demographic nature.