Muslim Slave System in Medieval India c14.29

c14.29

For northern India, the land route was equally important if not more. There were slave markets in all important Muslim cities in the medieval world. It may be pertinent to recollect that Subuktigin had been purchased by Alptigin at Bukhara and Qutbuddin Aibak had been purchased by Qazi Abdul Aziz Kufi in the slave market of Nishpur. All rulers of Delhi and Agra used to import foreign slaves. Sultan Shamsuddin Iltutmish once sent a Muslim merchant to Samarqand, Bukhara and Tirmiz to bring some slaves from those places. The trader purchased for the Sultan one hundred slaves and Balban was one of them. Chinese traders also once brought forty slaves and presented them to the Sultan. The list of Shamsi slaves given by Minhaj Siraj mostly comprised purchased slaves.[^