Muslim Slave System in Medieval India c10.15

c10.15

The forest-village dwellers, whether escapees or resisters, suffered untold privations. Still they had the satisfaction of being able to preserve their freedom. But all victims of aggression were not so lucky. Many groups and individuals could not escape from the clutches of the Muslim invaders and tyranny of their rulers; they used to be captured and enslaved. So that from the days of Muhammad bin Qasim in the eighth century to those of Ahmad Shah Abdali in the eighteenth, enslavement and distribution and sale of captives was systematically carried on by Muslim conquerors and rulers.¹⁷ A Sufi of the stature of Amir Khusrau wrote in the *Ashiqa*: Had not the law granted exemption from death by the payment of poll-tax, the very name of Hindu, root and branch, would have been extinguished. A few years later he asserted that the Turks, whenever they please, can seize, buy, or sell any Hindu.¹⁸ If this was the mind-set of the ruling elite as expositioned by the famous Sufi, the vulnerability of the Hindu to enslavement was truly great.