Muslim Slave System in Medieval India c13.23

c13.23

The practice of converting men into eunuchs was very common in Bengal. In Hindustan, writes Jahangir, especially in the province of Sylhet, which is a dependency of Bengal, it was the custom for the people of those parts to make eunuchs of some of their sons and give them to the governor in place of revenue (*mal-wajibi*) This custom by degrees has been adopted in other provinces and every year some children are thus ruined and cut off from procreation. This practice has become common.⁴³ Bengal in the time of Jahangir was a very large province. Large tracts of Northern Hills, the Sarkar of Orissa and large parts of Bihar were in4dluded in it.⁴⁴ If the practice of making eunuchs had become common outside Bengal also, then it seems it had spread almost all over the empire. Jahangir issued *farmans* abolishing the practice and hoped for the best. But a system in which revenue was collected in the form of eunuchs, could not be changed through a few orders. Said Khan Chaghtai, a noble of Jahangir possessed 1,200 eunuchs.⁴⁵ Besides, eunuchs formed a profitable commercial commodity and, as we shall see in the chapter on Slave Trade, the price of a eunuch in the market was three times that of an ordinary slave. Therefore, some areas, notably Bengal, were regular providers of eunuchs for the Muslim upper classes in Delhi, Isfahan and Samarkand.⁴⁶ In 1668 Aurangzeb also prohibited castration of young boys throughout the empire.⁴⁷ It appears that in forbidding eunuch-making, Jahangir was apprehensive of decline in Muslim demography while Aurangzeb was prompted by religious motives. Yet, in spite of their orders, young men continued to be turned into eunuchs and Jahangir and his successors themselves went on accepting eunuchs as gifts for duties in the harem.⁴⁸ In Aurangzebs time in the city of Golkunda (Hyderabad), in the year 1659 alone, 22,000 individuals were emasculated.⁴⁹