Muslim Slave System in Medieval India c16.16

c16.16

These two instances have been chosen from two points of time on either extremity of Muslim rule in India. And now onwards this pattern of mentioning only two examples, one from the earlier period and the other from the later, will be adhered to. There are reasons for adopting this model. Persian chroniclers were not scientific historians. They often give isolated and disjointed bits of information. This characteristic is also found in their references to issues pertaining to our area of study. For example, while most of the chroniclers give detailed information about the enslavement of women in times of war, only a few like Abul Fazl and emperor Jahangir write about how they were captured, lifted or seduced by nobles and officers in times of peace. Of the women captured in war, some were appropriated by the king, many were presented by the king to the nobles, and many others were sold. But all writers do not give satisfactory information on all these points for the whole of the medieval period. Ibn Battuta gives details of presentation ceremonies of slave captives in the time of Muhammad bin Tughlaq, and Bernier and Manucci in the time of Jahangir and Shahjahan. Detailed account of the Slave Markets and prices of slave girls are mainly given by the fourteenth century chronicler Ziyauddin Barani, although some others also refer to them but only casually. Many writers, especially European travellers, describe the treatment meted out to slave girls and girls turned concubines, but the accounts of Pelsaert and Manucci are the most detailed. Many women from Hindu rulers families were forcibly married by Muslim kings throughout the medieval period and yet only Shams Siraj Afif narrates in detail of the marriage of Firoz Shahs mother to Malik Rajjab, a cousin of the king, and emperor Jahangir tells how he demanded daughters of Hindu kings.