Muslim Slave System in Medieval India c14.7

c14.7

The mention of price at one place is hardly sufficient to estimate the money value of Indian slaves sold in foreign lands in the eleventh century. What was the value of two to ten *dirhams* in those days is also not known. Abul Fazl traces the history of *dirham* from the time of Caliph Umar, but his detailed and rather confusing account only shows that the earliest *dirhams* of the Ghaznavid period were struck at Ghazni and Lahore. It was a silver coin of great variations in weight and value as was the case with the *dinar*, a gold coin.¹¹ Yet, the sale of thousands of slaves after every campaign, as the figures of captives carried away by Mahmud shows,¹² brought good profit to the invader. No wonder that besides treasure, captives also used to be regularly carried away from India during the Ghaznavid occupation of Punjab for making extra money through their sale. This lucrative business continued, and a scion of the house, Sultan Ibrahim (1054-1099), once carried away one lakh captives to Ghazni.¹³