A History of Agriculture in India v2.c61.s8: Horse Breeding in Turkistan and Horse Trade with India
A History of Agriculture in India v2.c61.s8
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Horse Breeding in Turkistan and Horse Trade with India
v2.c61.s8.1
While describing the country of Turkistan, Ibn Battuta mentions how the horses were kept in Turkistan and describes horse trade with India. 'The horses in this country are very numerous and the price of them is negligible. A good one costs about a dinar of our money. The livelihood of the people depends on them, and they are as numerous as sheep in our country, or even more so. A single Turk will possess thousands of horses. They are exported to India in droves of six thousand or so, each merchant possessing one or two hundred of them or less or more. For each fifty they hire a keeper, who looks after their pasturage. He rides on one of them, carrying a long stick with a rope attached to it, and when he wishes to catch any horse he gets opposite it on the horse which he is riding, throws the rope over its neck and draws it towards him, mounts it and sets the other free to pasture. On reaching Sind the horses are fed with forage, because the vegetation of Sind will not take the place of barley, and the greater part of them die or are stolen. The owners pay a duty of seven silver dinars on entering Sind and a further duty at Multan. Formerly they were taxed a quarter of the value of their imports, but Sultan Muhammad abolished this tax and ordered that Muslim merchants should pay the legal tithe and infidel merchants a tenth. Nevertheless the merchants make a handsome profit, for the least that a horse fetches is a hundred dinars (that is twenty-five dinars in Moroccan money) and it often sells for twice or three times that amount. A good horse sells for five hundred or more. The Indians do not buy them as racehorses, for in battle they wear coats of mail and cover their horses with armour; what they prize in a horse is its strength and length of pace. Their racehorses are brought from Yemen, Oman and Fars, and they cost from a thousand to four thousand dinars each.'⁵
v2.c61.s8.2
⁵ Gibb, H.A.R. *Rehla of Ibn Battuta, Travels in Asia and Africa*, pp. 267, 145-146