Indian Muslims: Who Are They c8.s3.2

c8.s3.2

Practice excelled the precept. Muslim kings and commoners, nobles and soldiers, merchants and Ulema, Sufis and Qazis were all known for maintaining large or small harems according to finances and circumstances. There used to be four regular wives, and numberless concubines.⁴⁴ The result was prodigious progeny. And so the scriptures desired. Muhammad said: Marry women who will love their husbands and be very prolific, *for I wish you to be more numerous than any other people*.⁴⁵ (italics ours). It is not surprising therefore that all Muslims ever desire to be more numerous than any other people. Polygamy, multi-marriages, etc. sometimes reached ridiculous limits so that often the mothers of the sultans sons could not be identified⁴⁶, nor perhaps even the children as shown by the frantic enquiries made after the death of Alauddin, Mubarak Khalji and Muhammad bin Tughlaq whether any of their sons were alive so that the throne could be offered to them. And what is true of the sultans is also true of the elite. Among Muhammadans the widows, even widows of sultans, remarried.⁴⁷ But a Hindu widow, even if she did not immolate herself, did not remarry. Sati and jauhar had a noble motivation and yet had a demographic aspect; these decimated Hindu numbers. Above all in India, as elsewhere, the growth of population is regulated to a large extent by the material condition of the people. In the medieval period the Muslims - but for the very poor sections - had better lands, more nutritious diet, and, as ruling classes everywhere, were in happier circumstances.