Muslim Slave System in Medieval India c9.26

c9.26

In short, the captives swam or sank together so that if they were captured they were taken in large numbers. A manifest example of this phenomenon is that during a rebellion-suppressing expedition of Muhammad bin Tughlaq in the Deccan (1327), all the eleven sons of the Raja of Kampil (situated on the River Tungbhadra, Bellary District), were captured together, and made Muslims.⁶⁷ Generally, able bodied men and soldiers were massacred, and their helpless women and children were made prisoners in large numbers or groups.⁶⁸ Even in peace times people of one or more villages or groups acted in unison. When Firoz Shah Tughlaq proclaimed that those who accepted Islam would be exempted from payment of Jizyah, great number of Hindus presented themselves Thus they came forward day by day from every quarter⁶⁹ Similarly, from the time of entering Hindustan, up to the time of reaching the environs of Delhi, Amir Timur had taken more than 100,000 infidels and Hindus prisoners⁷⁰ Timur massacred them all, but the fact that people could be made slaves in such unbelievably large numbers was due to their keeping together through thick and thin, howsoever desperate the situation. Nobody knew the reality better than Ibn Battuta who travelled in India extensively. During his sojourn he found villages after villages deserted.⁷¹ Natures ravages or mans atrocities might have made them flee, or more probably they would have been enslaved and converted, or just carried away. But the fact of habitations being completely deserted shows that large groups suffered together and did not forsake one another in times of trial and tribulation. This factor swelled the number of slaves.