Muslim Slave System in Medieval India c12.12

c12.12

There was a strain of artistic feeling which ran through the successive generations of the ruling Moghul house in India, observed E. Maclagan in 1932. This artistic feeling found its greatest manifestation in their architecture. And those who built had unbounded command of both money and slaves. Babur writes that 680 men worked daily on my buildings in Agra only; while 1491 stone-cutters worked daily on my buildings in Agra, Sikri, Biana, Dulpur (Dholpur), Gwalior and Kuil (Aligarh). In the same way there are numberless artisans and workmen of every sort in Hindustan.¹⁷ Some workers were wage-earners, for says he at another place, Gifts were made to the stone-cutters, and labourers and the whole body of workmen in the way customary for master-workmen and wage-earners of Agra.¹⁸ But as discussed elsewhere slaves were preferred to servants and wage-earners, and the *Korrah* was the surest leveller of artisan, handicraftsman, servant and slave. From the days of Babur to those of Shahjahan during whose august reign, when lovely things reached the zenith of perfection, money in millions and slaves in thousands were employed on erecting the hundreds of huge Mughal buildings still extant.¹⁹