Theory and Practice of Muslim State in India c7.s2.19

c7.s2.19

One thing not mentioned in Islamic scriptures is imprisonment of people. The Quran and Hadis do not speak of jails. The Hadis in particular speak only of beheading or mutilation. In India there were jails under Muslim rule. But these were few. The number of prisoners was not large, for the usual punishments were mutilation and death. In the fourteenth century "for (a default in collection of) five hundred or one thousand *tankahs*" revenue officials were clamped in jail for many years under Alauddin Khalji. Besides government officials, bootleggers and other criminals were fettered and thrown into underground jails, built specially for them. In these monstrous holes many offenders died, or survived with completely shattered health."⁸⁷ Amir Khurd, the author of *Siyar-ul-Awliya*, describes the horrible conditions prevailing in such prisons. He says that once his father Saiyyad Kamal was imprisoned by Sultan Muhammad Tughlaq in Bhaksi jail near Devagiri. It was reported about that place, says he, that no prisoner used to come out alive from it as it was full of rats and snakes.⁸⁸ The state hardly made any arrangements for "reformation" of the prisons, and the prisoners suffered of oppressions of local authorities."⁸⁹ By the sixteenth-seventeenth century there were jails in many Mughal forts. The jail in the Gwalior Fort was meant, besides others, for royal prisoners ever since the Sultanate period. The other prisons of note were Ranthambhor, Rohtas, Bhakkar, Junnair, Biana and Lahore. Gwalior was the most prominent fort and next to it in importance was Ranthambhor. Jahangir released "not less than seven thousand individuals, some of whom had been in confinement for forty years," in the fort of Gwalior.⁹⁰ Similarly, he set free many prisoners, except murderers and rebels, from the fort of Ranthambhor on two occasions.⁹¹