Muslim Slave System in Medieval India c16.15

c16.15

It is therefore no wonder that from the day the Muslim invaders marched into India to the time when their political power declined, women were systematically captured and enslaved throughout the length and breadth of the country. Two instances pertaining to two extreme points of time would suffice as examples. When Muhammad bin Qasim mounted his attack on Debal in 712, all males of the age of seventeen and upwards were put to the sword and their women and children were enslaved.²¹ And after the Third Battle of Panipat (1761), the unhappy prisoners were paraded in long lines, given a little parched grain and a drink of water, and beheaded and the women and children who survived were driven off as slaves - twenty-two thousand, many of them of the highest rank in the land, says the *Siyar-ut-Mutakhirin*.²²