The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India c10.10

c10.10

There were, consequently, big manufacturers and merchants, foreign and Indian, living in the country. According to Yahiya Sarhindi a large number of Khurasani merchants who lived in Delhi possessed some of the best mansions in that prosperous city.¹⁵ Barbosa says that Muslims, settled in Calicut, had large houses and many servants and they lived very luxuriously. About the Muslims at Rander he says, they were well-dressed, had good houses, well-kept and furnished.¹⁶ Della Valle has similar comments to make on the freedom of life in Surat, where there was open exhibition of riches and splendour.¹⁷ Monopolists like Mir Jumla, Virji Vohra and, at a later date, Jagat Seth were renowned for their wealth. And they lived in the elitist fashion. The exceptional position on the coast is probably to be explained by the privileged status of the Moslem merchants being free to live well while the merchants of the interior (or Hindu merchants?) were very far from being free and led the quiet and unostentatious life required by the circumstances of their position.¹⁸ Muslim merchants were to be found at practically every seaport in India. Jews and Armenians and Parsis were few in numbers, but important in commercial life.¹⁹ The horizons of Muslim freedom expanded in a country where every man had a slight tincture of soldiership.