The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India c10.8

c10.8

For, there has always been a middle class in society in every age, and medieval India was no exception. Among the Muslims the rich people who provided artisans, weavers, embroiderers and jewellers with raw materials to produce goods on order and paid wages, and merchants who dealt in goods, wholesale and retail, surely belonged to the middle class. There is no doubt that besides the two well-known sections of the rich and the poor, there were many who, in terms of wealth and income, could be placed between the two. There is evidence to show that in the contemporary Muslim society of the West Asian countries there were three categories of people - the *al-khassa*, *al-amma* (also called *al-raiyya*) and *al-nas*. There were the people of great skill, specialists in medicine, architecture and accounting and merchants who had at least a more than average fortune were also *al-nas*.⁹ So middle class or common people, a word so often used by Ibn Battuta in the Indian context,¹⁰ were interchangeable terms. Gustav Grunebaum also says: The Muslim shares to a very high degree sensitivity about rank which is so characteristic of the Middle Ages. Not only is he rank conscious, but he is keenly concerned with expressing social distinctions through a delicate system of etiquette. Questions of precedence are of considerable importance. Mankind was divided into four orders by the Barmakid Wazir Al Fazl bin Yahiya (C. 8th century A.D.) - 1. King, 2. Wazir, 3. Aristocracy of Wealth, 4. The middle class was connected with the above class by their culture. The rest of the population counted for nothing.¹¹