Indian Muslims: Who Are They c9.s6.4

c9.s6.4

But internal wars and external invasions, had a devastating effect on Muslim population. W. Francklin, who travelled through the major parts of northern India between 1793 and 1796,⁵⁹ and wrote an eye-witness account of Delhi, says that ever since the massacre of Nadir Shah, Delhi was but very thinly populated. About the close of the eighteenth century, when he wrote, the Bazars of Delhi are at present but indifferently furnished, and the population of late years miserably reduced.⁶⁰ The population of the cities of the Punjab was decimated by the invasions of Abdali. No wonder that in the eighteenth century no foreign or Indian writer compares the population of prestigious Muslim cities with those of London, Paris, Rome, Constantinople or Cairo.