Life and Conditions of the People of Hindustan (1200–1550 A.D.) c7.s4.80

c7.s4.80

The Muslim attitude towards sex in general would be better illustrated by a characteristic anecdote which comes from the reign of Sultan ‘Ala-ud-din Khalji. It is related by the *Tarikh-i-Firishta* that a courtier once complained to the Khalji monarch that although he had organized the sale of all popular and important articles of consumption at a uniform and satisfactory rate, he had utterly neglected regulating the use of the most popular commodity in the market. The Sultan was somewhat surprised to realize that the courtesans and public women ‘whose houses had become the most favourite haunts of all soldiers and the ruin of so many youths’ had been entirely left out. With a smile of approval, the monarch fixed the tariff of wages for public women and circulated an order among them whereby they were severely prohibited from raising their charges above the scheduled rates.¹ The works of poetry and mysticism are quite often full of terms of physical and carnal love which reflect the general sexual reactions of the contemporary society. Hardly any evidence is required in such case to prove the fact of prostitution or its prevalance on a wide scale.² Under Sultan ‘Ala-ud-din Khalji, the number of prostitutes in Delhi appears to have given cause for official anxiety; so that some of the public prostitutes were conferred in marriage, relieving the profession of too much congestions.³