The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India c10.11

c10.11

Urbanization helped in development of trade and commerce and the growth of middle class. There was rapid growth of towns and cities in medieval period. In the sixteenth-seventeenth centuries, India had hundreds of cities with a population of more than 100,000 and cities like Agra, Lahore and Cambay could boast of more than half a million people each.²⁰ Their middle class sections comprised traders, goldsmiths, jewellers, bankers (*sarrafs*), architects, scholars, merchants and many others. Small manufacturers and merchants too possessed gold and silver and its concomitant power. So also was the case with the other sections of middle class Muslims like the learned, such as physicians, mathematicians, architects, historians or chroniclers, and the Ulama. There were the *Saheb-i-Qalam va Saheb-i-Saif* (masters of the pen and the sword) and people belonging to or descended from distinguished families. Soldiers and warriors - neither the Khans or Maliks nor the common troops - that is, officers of the intermediate grade who, in the words of Abul Fazl, consumed the straw and rubbish of strife and kindled the lamp of rest in this world of disturbances, too belonged to this class. Other government officials like Qazis and Imams of *qasbas* (*as-hab-i-manasib*) as well as some sections of lesser note of Saiyyads and Sufis also comprised the middle class.