Theory and Practice of Muslim State in India c8.s6.3

c8.s6.3

Slavery in Islam was institutionalised from the very beginning. Ibn Ishaq mentions a transaction of the Prophet which set a precedent for Islamic slave trade later on: "Then the apostle sent Sa'd b. Zayd al-Ansari... with some of the captive women of B. Qurayza to Najd and he sold them for horses and weapons."¹⁸³ The women had been made captive after their menfolk had been slaughtered en masse in the market place at Medina. Thereafter there was no let up in the policy of slave-taking by the Muslims. Minhaj Siraj writes that "Ulugh Khan Balban's taking of captives, and his capture of the dependents of the great Ranas cannot be recounted". Such was the scale of slave-taking by Muslims in Hindustan that information about it travelled abroad, so that Wassaf writes that in the sack of Somnath in 1299 the Muslim army "took captive a great number of handsome and elegant maidens, amounting to 20,000 and children of both sexes". Like Wassaf, Shihabuddin Ahmad Abbas also did not visit India but he was informed about the exploits of Muhammad Tughlaq in this field as Wassaf was for Alauddin Khalji. At home Amir Khusrau, the sufi poet, writes in his Nub Sipehr that "the Turks, whenever they please, can seize them, buy them and sell them at will... The Hindu happens to be a (wretched) slave in all respects."¹⁸⁴