Theory and Practice of Muslim State in India c8.s1.20

c8.s1.20

An important item of Khams was women. "An idea of the number of slaves flooding the Muslim empire as a result of conquest may be gained from such exaggerated figures as the following: Musa took 300,000 captives from North Africa, one-fifth of whom he forwarded to the Caliph, and from the Gothic nobility in Spain he captured 30,000 virgins; the captives of one Muslim general in Turkestan alone numbered 100,000."²⁷ In India from the days of Muhammad bin Qasim in the eighth century to those of Ahmad Shah Abdali in the eighteenth, enslavement, distribution and sale of Hindu women and children was systematically practised by Muslim invaders and rulers of India. A few lakh women were enslaved in the course of Arab invasion of Sindh. In the final stages of its conquest, "When the plunder and the prisoners of war were brought before Qasim... one-fifth of all the prisoners were chosen and set aside (to be sent to Caliph through his agent Hajjaj); they were counted as amounting to twenty thousand in number... (they belonged to high families) and veils were put on their faces, and the rest were given to the soldiers."²⁸ In Muhammad Ghauri's invasion of Gujarat 20,000 prisoners were captured and in 1202 at Kalinjar 50,000 *kaniz wa ghulam*.²⁹ Under the Khaljis and Tughlaqs thousands of non-Muslim women were captured in never-ceasing campaigns.