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Slave MarketThe Delhi Sultunate had benefited from the taxes on Hindu Dhimmis and Slavery which would not had possible if the population under their rule from Punjab to Bihar would had converted to Islam.The Islamic rulers were highly benefitted from taxes of Jizya and Kharaj and on Slavery which is not applicable on Muslims.If any one converted to Islam he was free from Jizya and Kharaj and Slavery but had to pay ushr, a religious tithe on land, Zakat and Khums which were very low compared to Jizya and Kharaj.Jizya or Jizyah (Arabic: جِزْيَة‎ jizyah [d͡ʒɪzjæ]) is a per capita yearly taxation historically levied in the form of financial charge on permanent non-Muslim subjects (dhimmi) of a state governed by Islamic law in order to fund public expenditures of the state, in place of the Zakat and Khums that Muslims are obliged to pay.Muslim jurists required adult, free, sane males among the dhimma community to pay the jizya, while exempting women, children, elders, handicapped, the ill, the insane, monks, hermits, slaves, and musta'mins—non-Muslim foreigners who only temporarily reside in Muslim lands.Dhimmis who chose to join military service were also exempted from payment, as were those who could not afford to pay.The Quran and hadiths mention jizya without specifying its rate or amount.However, scholars largely agree that early Muslim rulers adapted existing systems of taxation and tribute that were established under previous rulers of the conquered lands, such as those of the Byzantine and Sasanian empires.The application of jizya varied in the course of Islamic history. Together with kharāj, a term that was sometimes used interchangeably with jizya, taxes levied on non-Muslim subjects were among the main sources of revenues collected by some Islamic polities, such as the Ottoman Empire and Indian Muslim Sultanates.Kharāj (Arabic: خراج‎) is a type of individual Islamic tax on agricultural land and its produce developed under Islamic law.Jizya rate was usually a fixed annual amount depending on the financial capability of the payer.Sources comparing taxes levied on Muslims and jizya differ as to their relative burden depending on time, place, specific taxes under consideration, and other factors.Historically, the jizya tax has been understood in Islam as a fee for protection provided by the Muslim ruler to non-Muslims, for the exemption from military service for non-Muslims, for the permission to practice a non-Muslim faith with some communal autonomy in a Muslim state, and as material proof of the non-Muslims' submission to the Muslim state and its laws.Jizya has also been understood by some as a badge or state of humiliation of the non-Muslims in a Muslim state for not converting to Islam, a substantial source of revenue for at least some times and places (such as the Umayyad era), while others argue that if it were meant to be a punishment for the dhimmis' unbelief then monks and the clergy wouldn't have been exempted.The term appears in the Quran referring to a tax or tribute from People of the Book, specifically Jews and Christians. Followers of other religions like Zoroastrians and Hindus too were later integrated into the category of dhimmis and required to pay jizya. In the Indian Subcontinent the practice was eradicated by the 18th century. It almost vanished during the 20th century with disappearance of Islamic states and spread of religious tolerance.The tax is no longer imposed by nation states in the Islamic world, although there are reported cases of organizations such as the Pakistani Taliban and ISIS attempting to revive the practice.Some modern Islamic scholars have argued that jizya should be paid by non-Muslim subjects of an Islamic state, offering different rationales.For example, Sayyid Qutb saw it as punishment for "polytheism", while Abdul Rahman Doi viewed it as a counterpart of the zakat tax paid by Muslims.According to Khaled Abou El Fadl, moderate Muslims reject the dhimma system, which encompasses jizya, as inappropriate for the age of nation-states and democracies.Does Islam require that people of other faiths pay protection money to support the Muslim order?Muhammad clearly established that people of other religions have to pay a poll tax to Muslims called the jizya, as a reminder of their inferior status. This abrogates an earlier verse stating that there is "no compulsion in religion" and it destroys any pretense that Islam is merely a religion and not a political system.QuranQuran (9:29) - "Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued."Hadith and SiraSahih Muslim (19:4294) - There are many places in the hadith where Muhammad tells his followers to demand the jizya of non-believers. Here he lays down the rule that it is to be extorted by force: "If they refuse to accept Islam, demand from them the Jizya. If they agree to pay, accept it from them and hold off your hands. If they refuse to pay the tax, seek Allah's help and fight them"Sahih Bukhari (53:386) - The command for Muslims to spread Islamic rule by force, subjugating others until they either convert to Islam or pay money, is eternal: Our Prophet, the Messenger of our Lord, has ordered us to fight you till you worship Allah Alone or give Jizya (i.e. tribute); and our Prophet has informed us that our Lord says:-- "Whoever amongst us is killed (i.e. martyred), shall go to Paradise to lead such a luxurious life as he has never seen, and whoever amongst us remain alive, shall become your master." This is being recounted during the reign of Umar, Muhammad's companion and the second caliph, who sent conquering armies into non-Muslim Persian and Christian lands (after Muhammad's death).Sahih Muslim (1:33) - "I have been commanded to fight against people so long as they do not declare that there is no god but Allah, and he who professed it was guaranteed the protection of his property and life on my behalf except for the right affairs rest with Allah.'s The "protection" needed by the unbeliever is from Muhammad himself. In other words, the jizya is paid by the non-Muslim in exchange for not being killed.Sahih Bukhari (41:19) - "When Allah's Messenger had conquered Khaibar, he wanted to expel the Jews from it as its land became the property of Allah, His Apostle, and the Muslims. Allah's Messenger intended to expel the Jews but they requested him to let them stay there on the condition that they would do the labor and get half of the fruits. Allah's Messenger told them, "We will let you stay on thus condition, as long as we wish." So, they (i.e. Jews) kept on living there until `Umar forced them [out]." The Khaybar were a peacful farming community that were attacked by surprise and and conquered. The Jizya in this case was set at half of the non-Muslim's earnings.Abu Dawud 3006 - An authentic verse narrating more of the story of Khaybar. Muhammad took what was theirs, including their wives and children. He even had some of the men killed afterwards, once he had found their wealth.In India, well into the 17th century, Muslim tax collectors would also take the wives and children of impoverished Hindus and sell them into slavery for the jizya requirement. The only way for many to avoid losing their families was to convert to Islam. This tremendous discrimination is how Islam made inroads into populations that wanted nothing to do with itIshaq 956 & 962 -"He who withholds the Jizya is an enemy of Allah and His apostle." The words of Muhammad.NotesAccording to the esteemed historian Ibn Kathir, Muhammad established the jizya as a means of compensating the "converted" Meccans for their loss of revenue following the total ban of other religions from the Kaaba. This had ended the centuries-old tradition of pilgrimages by people of all faiths during the holy months, on which the local economy depended:When Allah decreed that the polytheists sl)ould be prevented from approaching the Sacred Mosque, whether in the pilgrimage or at other times, that Quraysh said they would be deprived ofthe commercial activity that took place during the pilgrimage, and that they would therefore suffer financial loss. And so Allah compensated them for that by ordering them to battle the people ofthe scriptures so that they either accepted Islam or paid thejizya tax ("being in a state ofsubmission") Ibn Kathir Vol 4. p.1This practice enabled Muhammad and his successors to fund Islamic military expansion and the lifestyle of the religious class through extortion from non-believers. The following passage continues from above:I comment that the Messenger ofGod (SAAS) therefore decided to battle the Byzantines. This was because they were the people nearest to him and those most appropriate to invite to the truth because oftheir proximity to Islam and to those who believed in it. God Almighty had stated, "0 you who believe, fight those unbelievers who are near you. Let them see severity in you; and know that God is with those who are pious" Ibn Kathir Vol. 4 p. 1 (the verse at the end is the Quran 9:123)In 630, the prophet of Islam marched an army into Christian lands, in what came to be known as the "Battle of Tabuk." In fact, there was no battle because there was no opposing army. The residents were taken by surprise. Some were killed, and the survivors were forced to pay protection money to Muhammad. (Clearly abrogating the previous rule of "no compulsion in religion" that contemporary apologists are so fond of repeating).Only eleven years after Muhammad's death, his companions swept through North Africa, putting to the sword those who would not submit to Islamic rule. In 643, Tripoli was conquered and the native Christian Berbers were forced to give their wives and children to the Muslims as slaves, to satisfy the jizya.Like the mafia, Muslims told their unwilling donors that they were paying for 'protection' - even though the main threat to their livelihood and safety was, of course, from their Muslims benefactors.This lucrative extortion racket was practiced down through the centuries, and was a part of the brutal Ottoman rule over Christians, Jews and others. The Serbs of Europe were particularly hard hit and often had to hand over their children to satisfy the collector. The children were then converted to Islam and trained as Jihad warriors for use in foreign campaigns (the so-called Janissaries).Finance:The Delhi Sultan mainly collected five categories of taxes besides certain others.Those taxes were:(i) Ushr:It was a land tax which was collected from Muslim peasants. It was 10 per cent of the produce on the land watered by natural resources and 5 per cent on the land which enjoyed men-made irrigation facilities.(ii) Kharaj:It was a land tax charged from non-Muslims and ranged from 1/3 to 1/2 of the produce.(iii) Khams:It was 1/5 of the booty captured in the war and 1/5 of the produce of mines or buried treasure that was found. Four-fifth of it went to the army which fought the war or to the person who found the treasure. But, except Firuz Tughluq, all Sultans collected 4/5 instead of 1/5 while Sikandar Lodi took nothing of the treasure that was found.(iv) Jizya:It was a religious tax on non-Muslims. According to the Islam, a zimmi (non-Muslim) had no right to live in the kingdom of a Muslim Sultan. But this concession was permitted to non-Muslims after payment of the tax called Jizya. The non-Muslims were divided into three grades for the purpose of payment of this tax.The first grade paid at the rate of 48 dirhams, the second at 24 dirhams and the third at 12 dirhams annually. Women, children, beggars, cripples, blind, old men, monks, priests, brahmanas (except during the period of Firuz Tughluq) and all those who had no source of income were exempted from this tax. All Sultans collected this tax on principle but, as a practical measure, nobody collected it with severity.Dr Banarsi Prasad Saxena had expressed another view concerning Jizya He has opined that Jizya was a non-agricultural tax. Barni, Amir Khusrav and Nizamuddin Auliya expressed that the word Jizya was used for all taxes except land revenue.(v) Zakat:This was a religious tax which was imposed only on rich Muslims and consisted of 2 ½ per cent of their income.Besides above taxes, 2 ½ per cent was charged from the Muslims and 5 per cent from the Hindus as trade tax. There was 5 per cent tax on the sale and purchase of horses. Ala-ud-din Khalji imposed house-tax and grazing-tax as well, while Firuz Tughluq charged 10 per cent of the produce as irrigation tax from the land which enjoyed the advantage of the irrigation facilities provided by the state. Another important source of income were presents offered to the Sultan by the people, nobles, provincial governors and feudatory chiefs.The main items of expenditure were expenses on the army, salaries of civil officers and the personal expenditure of the Sultan and his palace.Land Revenue:The land was of four kinds, namely:(1) The land which was given to the people in gift or charity particularly to Muslim scholars and saints such as inam or waqf. This type of land was free of tax;(2) The land which was in the hands of provincial governors, that is, walis or muqtis. The provincial governors collected land revenue from this land and after defraying the cost of their administration deposited the surplus in the Central treasury;(3) The land was of the feudatory Hindu chiefs who paid fixed annual tribute to the Sultan; and(4) The land which was directly administered by the Central government. It was called the Khalisah-land. Primarily, this fourth kind of land came under the revenue administration of the Sultan.The Central government appointed amil or revenue-collector in each sub-division called the shiq. He collected the revenue with the help of hereditary officers of the village like chaudharis, muqaddams, patwaris, etc. The Sultan appointed one officer called Khwaja in every Iqta to look after the working of wali or muqti.The walis or muqtis submitted the statements of their annual income and expenditure to the Sultan. Besides, the news-reporters and spies of the Central government informed the Sultan about the administration of provinces.Normally, the peasants were asked to pay 1/3 of the produce to the state as land revenue. Ala-ud-din, however, collected ½ of the produce from certain territories. But, after him the revenue was again fixed at 1/3 of the produce while the attempt of Muhammad Tughluq to collect ½ of the produce from the Doab failed.Mostly, the revenue was collected in cash but Ala-ud-din collected it in kind from Doab and the nearby territories of Delhi. Except Ala-ud-din and Muhammad Tughluq, no Sultan of Delhi collected revenue based on the measurement of land. Most of the Sultans collected it on the basis of rough assessment of the produce.Ala-ud-din consfiscated all land given as gifts or as charity by previous rulers and redistributed it among his loyal subjects. He also abolished all privileges of hereditary officers of villages like chaudharis, khuts, Muqaddams, etc. and forced them to pay all taxes to the state like other peasants.Ghiyas-ud-din Tughluq decided in the interest of the peasants that in no case the land-revenue be enhanced more than 1/11 to 1/10 in any Iqta in any one year. Muhammad Tughluq prepared an estimate of the annual income and expenditure of the state. He desired that there should be uniformity in land- revenue in his entire empire.He also established a separate agricultural department, appointed an officer diwan-i-kohi to look after it and carry on state- farming on a fixed piece of land for three years on experimental basis. But, his measures failed and were soon abandoned.Firuz Tughluq made a rough assessment of the entire land-revenue of the state and on that basis fixed the land-revenue for the entire period of his reign. He made free the peasants from the payment of taqavi loans, enhanced the salaries of revenue officers, abolished nearly twenty-four taxes, planted fruit gardens, dug many canals, imposed irrigation tax, stopped the practice of imposing benevolences on the governors at the time of their appointments and also that of torturing officers to extract more money from them, the burden of which really used to fall upon the shoulders of the people.The measures of Firuz, though defective in certain respects, certainly brought prosperity to the state and its people. The Lodi Sultans gave extensive lands as Jagirs to their nobles which reduced the area of Khalisa-land. The efforts of Sikandar Lodi to fix the revenue on the basis of measurement of land also failed. This reduced the income of the state.The revenue-system during the period of the Delhi Sultanate suffered from certain defects. The assessment of revenue without the measurement of land could not be just to the peasants. This system gave the officials opportunities to make arbitrary decisions. The land was normally given to contractors to collect the revenue.These contractors used to extract as much revenue from the peasants as could be possible so that they could have good surplus after depositing the required amount of revenue in the state-treasury. Besides, there were other taxes which the peasants had to pay besides the land-revenue and that certainly meant extra burden on them.The Army:The power of the Sultan depended on the army. During the entire period of the Delhi Sultanate, there remained conflict of power between the Muslims and the Hindus. While every Sultan desired to establish and extend his power, the Hindu kings resisted them and the Hindu subjects engaged themselves in revolts. Besides, the Muslims were also not united.The provincial Muslim governors also attempted to establish independent kingdoms and different Muslim rulers also fought against the Sultan. Most of the Sultans faced the challenge of invasions of the Mongols as well from the north-west.Therefore, every Sultan was forced to keep a large army at the centre. Different Sultans improved the organisation of their army and methods of warfare though failed to come up to the mark with pace of time as compared to other rulers in foreign lands.The army consisted of four types of soldiers:(1) The soldiers were recruited by the Centre as soldiers of the army of the Sultan. The army which was constituted by these soldiers was called Khasah- khail. Ala-ud-din Khalji kept a large standing army at the Centre which included 4,75,000 horsemen besides the infantry. Ghiyas-ud-din and Muhammad Tughluq also kept large standing armies at the Centre. But, the rest of Sultans, prior or after them, failed to keep such standing armies at the Centre.This army was looked after by the Diwan-i-ariz who was responsible for its recruitment, organisation, maintenance, salary, etc. There was no regular course of training for these soldiers. Every soldier was responsible to improve his talents as he desired. However, Sultans like Balban trained them in hardship by carrying them on their hunting parties or like occasions.(2) Those soldiers who were employed on permanent basis by nobles and provincial governors and who themselves were responsible for their recruitment, maintenance, training, etc. The nobles were assigned jagirs by the Sultan to maintain them while provincial governors met their expenses out of income of their Iqtas.Arizs were appointed in provinces to look after this part of the army but the primary responsibility was that of nobles and governors themselves. It was expected that nobles and governors would place their armies before the Sultan for inspection every year but the rule was normally not observed. The nobles and governors brought their armies to the service of the Sultan only when ordered.(3) Those soldiers which were recruited only in times of war on temporary basis and were paid only for that period, and(4) Those Muslim soldiers who joined the army as volunteers at times of war against the infidels (Hindus). They regarded such war as a holy war, that is jihad. They received no pay but were given share out of the booty captured in the war.The army consisted primarily of cavalry, infantry and elephants. The cavalry formed the backbone of the army. The cavalry-men were of two types, one, the Sawar who kept only one horse and the other, the do-aspa who kept two horses.The Revenue System in the Sultanate and Mughal PeriodSultanate Period:The Sultans took several measures to increase their revenue.Following were the chief sources of their revenue:The khiraj or Land Revenue:Land revenue was the major source of the income. It was generally realized at 1/5 of the total produce thought the Sultans like Ala-ud-Din Khilji and Muhammed Tughlak raised it to 1/2 of the produce.The Jazia Tax:It was imposed only on the Non-Muslims. It is believed that children, women and friars were exempted from its payment. It was realized at the rate of 10 to 40 takas depending on the payer’s income.The Octroi Duty:It was realized on the exchange and transportation of commercial goods. Import tax was levied on goods imported from other countries. It was between 2½% to 10%.The Zakat Tax:It was a negligible tax supposed to be paid by all the Muslims.Other Source of Income:Other sources of income included state’s share in booty which was calculated at 1/5 of the plunder plus gifts, tributes etc. from the subordinate rulers.Mughal Period:Till the 10th year of Akbar’s reign (1566), no change was made in Sher Shah’s crop rate (ray) which was converted into a cash rate, called dastur-ul-amal or dastur, by using a single price-list. Akbar reverted afterward to a system of annual assessment. In the nineteenth year (1574) officials called amil, but popularly known as karoris were placed in charge of lands which could yield a crore of tankas.The karori assisted by a treasurer, a surveyor and others was to measure the land of a village and to assess the area under cultivation. In the same year, a new jarib or measuring rod consisting of bamboos joined by iron rings was introduced for the measurement of land. This karori experiment was introduced in the settled provinces, from Lahore to Allahabad.In 1580, Akbar instituted a new system called the Dahsala or the Bandobast Arazi or the Zabti system. Under this, the average produce of different crops as well as the average prices prevailing over the last ten years was calculated. One-third of the average produce was the state share, which was however stated in cash.The credit for developing this system i.e. Ain-i-Dahsala, goes to Raja Todarmal. This system did not mean a ten-year settlement but was based on average of the produce and prices during the last ten years. For the measurement of land, bigha was adopted as standard unit of area which was 60 x 60 yards. A new gaz or yard, gaz-i-llahi was introduced 41 digits (anguls) or 33 inches in length (Sher Shah’s I gaz 32 digit was discarded).For purpose of fixing the land revenue, both continuity and productivity of cultivation were taken into account. Land which were continually under cultivation were called polaj. Lands which were fallow (parauti) for a year, paid full (polaj) rates when they were brought under cultivation.Chachar was land which had been fallow for 3-4 years. It paid a progressive rate, the full-rate being charged in the third year. Banjar was cultivable waste land. To encourage its cultivation, it paid full rates only in the 5thyear. The lands were further divided into good, bad and middling. One third of the average produce was the state share.After the assessment of land revenue in kind, it was converted into cash with the help of price schedules (dastur-ul-amal) prepared at regional level or dastur level in respect of various food crops. For this purpose, the empire was divided into a large number of regions called dastur at pargana level having the same type of productivity. The government supplied dastur-ul-amal at tehsil level which explained the mode of land revenue payment. Each cultivator received a patta or title deed (land holding deed) and qubuliyat (deed of agreement according to which he had to pay state demand).A number of other systems of assessment were also followed under Akbar. The most common was called batai or ghallabakshi (crop-sharing). This, again, was of three types: First was bhaoli where the crops were reaped and stacked, and divided in the presence of the parties.Second type was khet batai where the fields were divided after sowing. Third type was lang batai where the grain heaps were divided. In Kashmir, the produce was computed on the basis of ass loads (Kharwar), and then divided. Under batai, the peasants were given the choice of paying in cash or kind, but in the case of cash crops the state demand was invariably in cash.Kankut—In Kankut or appraisement, the whole land was measured, either by using the jarib or pacing it, and the standing crops estimated by inspection.Nasaq—This system of assessment was widely used in Akbar’s time. It meant a rough calculation of the amount payable by the peasant on the basis of past experience.The peasant was given remission in the land revenue if crops failed on account of drought, floods, etc. The amil was to advance money by way of loans (taccavi) to the peasants for seeds, implements, animals, etc. in times of need.Slavery in medieval IndiaSlavery escalated during the medieval era in India with the arrival of Islam.André Wink summarizes the period as follows,Slavery and empire-formation tied in particularly well with iqta and it is within this context of Islamic expansion that elite slavery was later commonly found. It became the predominant system in North India in the thirteenth century and retained considerable importance in the fourteenth century. Slavery was still vigorous in fifteenth-century Bengal, while after that date it shifted to the Deccan where it persisted until the seventeenth century. It remained present to a minor extent in the Mughal provinces throughout the seventeenth century and had a notable revival under the Afghans in North India again in the eighteenth century.—Al Hind, André WinkSlavery as a predominant social institution emerged from the 8th century onwards in India, particularly after the 11th century, as part of systematic plunder and enslavement of infidels, along with the use of slaves in armies for conquest.But unlike other parts of the medieval Muslim world, slavery was not widespread in Kashmir. Except for the Sultans, there is no evidence the elite kept slaves. The Kashmiris despised slavery. Concubinage was also not practised.Islamic invasions (8th to 12th century AD)Andre Wink summarizes the slavery in 8th and 9th century India as follows,(During the invasion of Muhammad al-Qasim), invariably numerous women and children were enslaved. The sources insist that now, in dutiful conformity to religious law, 'the one-fifth of the slaves and spoils' were set apart for the caliph's treasury and despatched to Iraq and Syria. The remainder was scattered among the army of Islam. At Rūr, a random 60,000 captives reduced to slavery. At Brahamanabad 30,000 slaves were allegedly taken. At Multan 6,000. Slave raids continued to be made throughout the late Umayyad period in Sindh, but also much further into Hind, as far as Ujjain and Malwa. The Abbasid governors raided Punjab, where many prisoners and slaves were taken.—Al Hind, André WinkLevi notes that these figures cannot be entirely dismissed as exaggerations since they appear to be supported by the reports of contemporary observers. In the early 11th century Tarikh al-Yamini, the Arab historian Al-Utbi recorded that in 1001 the armies of Mahmud of Ghazni conquered Peshawar and Waihand (capital of Gandhara) after Battle of Peshawar (1001), "in the midst of the land of Hindustan", and enslaved thousands.Later, following his twelfth expedition into India in 1018–19, Mahmud is reported to have returned to with such a large number of slaves that their value was reduced to only two to ten dirhams each. This unusually low price made, according to Al-Utbi, "merchants came from distant cities to purchase them, so that the countries of Central Asia, Iraq and Khurasan were swelled with them, and the fair and the dark, the rich and the poor, mingled in one common slavery".The Islamic historians and scholars have recorded with utmost glee and pride of the slaughters of Hindus, forced conversions, abduction of Hindu women and children to slave-markets, and the destruction of temples carried out by the warriors of Islam during 800AD to 1700 AD. Millions of Hindus were converted to Islam by the sword in this period” (historian Durant cited in Khan p 201)And Rizwan Salim (1997) writes what the Arab invaders really did:‘ savages at a very low level of civilisation and no culture worth the name, from Arabia and West Asia, began entering India from the early century onwards. Islamic invaders demolished countless Hindu temples, shattered uncountable sculpture and idols, plundered innumerable forts and palaces of Hindu kings, killed vast numbers of Hindu men and carried off Hindu women. ………but many Indians do not seem to recognize that the alien Muslim marauders destroyed the historical evolution of the earth’s most mentally advanced civilisation, the most richly imaginative culture, and the most vigorously creative society.” (cited in Khan p 179)Of course Indians pre-Islam, fought, but it was NOT the practice to enslave or ravage, or massacre, or destroy religious sites, or damage crops and farmers. Battles were usually conducted on open soil between military personnel. (Khan p 205-207) There was no concept of ‘booty’ so Indians were unprepared for Islam’s onslaught. Indigenous Indians were forced to flee to jungles and mountains, or face gruelling exploitation and taxes, slaughter or enslavement while their society was demeaned and destroyed. Muslims constantly attacked the indigenous, idolatrous population and also fought against each other in ceaseless revolts by generals, chiefs and princes during the entire time of Islamic rule (Khan p 205).SlaveryInitially ‘India’ included part of today’s Pakistan (Sindh), Bangladesh/Bengal and Kashmir. Hinduism and Buddhism flourished in Afghanistan pre the Islamic takeover (7th century). In the 16th century Afghanistan was divided between the Muslim Mogul (Mughal) Empire of India and the Safavids of Persia.The damaged armless image of the bodyguard of Shiva-Maheshwara as depicted at the Hoysaleshwara Temple complex at Halebid. Hindu temples and works of art built in the ancient were desecrated and destroyed by Muslims invaders.Initially the godless Umayyads, allowed Hindus dhimmi status – possibly because of their large numbers, resistance to Islam and their value as a source of tax income. This violates Islamic text and law which demands death or conversion for idolaters and polytheists. When Sultan Iltutmish (d 1236) was asked why Hindus weren’t given the choice between death and Islam, he replied:“but at the moment in India…the Muslims are so few that they are like salt (in a large dish) …however after a few years when in the capital and the regions and all the small towns, when the Muslims are well established and the troops are http://larger….it would be possible to give Hindus the choice of death or Islam” (cited in Lal [c] p 538) (Can we learn anything from this???)Despite their supposed ‘dhimmi’ status, mass slaughter, mass forced conversion and mass enslavement with the resulting forced conversion to Islam were practised throughout Islamic rule and into the 20th century as many demanded the idolaters/polytheists convert or die. Hindu fighters and males were slaughtered with women and children enslaved. Eunuch slavery was practised on young boys.Often actual numbers aren’t given, just comments like ‘countless captives/slaves,’ or ‘all the women and children were taken.’ Where numbers are recorded, they are terrifying. Along with people, the Muslims took everything they could—coins, jewels, cloths, clothes, furniture, idols, animals, grain etc or destroyed it.Muslim rulers were foreigners. Until the 13th century, most slaves were sent out of India but following the Sultanate of Delhi (1206) they were retained to work for the sultanate, sold in India or sent elsewhere. Slaves from elsewhere were imported and Muslim armies were composed of a wide array of foreign slave groups ‘converted’ to Islam and ‘Hindus’ and Indian ‘converts.’Slaves were the promised booty from allah and obtaining them was a strong motivation for jihad.“slaves were so plentiful that they became very cheap; men…were degraded….but this is the goodness of god, who bestows honours on his own religion and degrades infidelity”. (Muslim chronicler Utbi on Sultan Subuktigin of Ghazni’s slave raid [942-997] in Sookdheo p166)In Sindh (first area attacked successfully) the early ‘Muslim’ community was composed mainly of slaves forced into Islam and a small number of Arab masters (Khan p 299). Initially slaves were forced out of India eg Qasim (Arab), the conquerer of Sindh sent by Hajjaj bin Yusuf Sakifi in the caliphate of Walid I, took 300,000 from a 3 year campaign in 712-715 (Khan p 299, Trifkovic p 109). Muslim fighters came from everywhere to partake in this ‘jihad.’ Qasim was suddenly recalled and executed (possibly by being sown in an animal’s hide) for supposedly violating 2 Sindhi princesses destined for the caliph’s harem!! (Lal [c] p 439)Many raids taking slaves were carried out under various caliphs in the 8th and 9th century.The Ghaznivids-Turks from Ghazni, Afghanistan (997-1206) who subdued the Punjab.From 17 raids (997-1030) Sultan Muhmud Ghazni (Turk from Afghanistan, 997-1030) sent hundreds of thousands of slaves to Ghanzi (Afghanistan) resulting in a loss of about 2 million people via slaughter or enslavement and sale outside India (Khan p 315). Chroniclers (eg Utbi, the sultan’s secretary) provide some numbers eg -from Thanesar, the Muslim army brought 200,000 captives back to Ghazni (Afghanistan). In 1019, 53,000 were taken. At one time the caliph’s 1/5th share was 150,000 suggesting 750,000 captives. 500,000 were taken in one campaign (at Waihind)(Lal [c] p 551) Mahmud’s secretary al-Utbi records:Mahmud of Ghazni Mahmud of Ghazni (971-1030) was the first sultan of the Ghaznavid dynasty in Afghanistan.“Swords flashed like lightening amid the blackness of clouds, and fountains of blood flowed like the fall of setting star. The friends of god defeated their opponents….the Musalmans wreaked their vengeance on the infidel enemies of god killing 15,000 of them…making them food of the beasts and birds of prey….god also bestowed on his friends such an amount of booty as was beyond all bounds and calculations, including 500,000 slaves beautiful men and women” (Khan p 191)The Ghaznivid’s ruled in the ‘Islamic sultanate of the Punjab’ till 1186. Attacks in Kashmir, Hansi, and districts of the Punjab resulted in mass slaughter and enslavement eg 100,000 in a 1079 attack in the Punjab (Tarik –i-Alfi in Khan p 276-7, Lal [d] p 553).Delhi Sultanate (12th to 16th century AD)During the Delhi Sultanate period (1206–1555), references to the abundant availability of low-priced Indian slaves abound.The Islamic historians and scholars have recorded with utmost glee and pride of the slaughters of Hindus, forced conversions, abduction of Hindu women and children to slave-markets, and the destruction of temples carried out by the warriors of Islam during 800AD to 1700 AD. Millions of Hindus were converted to Islam by the sword in this period” (historian Durant cited in Khan p 201)And Rizwan Salim (1997) writes what the Arab invaders really did:‘ savages at a very low level of civilisation and no culture worth the name, from Arabia and West Asia, began entering India from the early century onwards. Islamic invaders demolished countless Hindu temples, shattered uncountable sculpture and idols, plundered innumerable forts and palaces of Hindu kings, killed vast numbers of Hindu men and carried off Hindu women. ………but many Indians do not seem to recognize that the alien Muslim marauders destroyed the historical evolution of the earth’s most mentally advanced civilisation, the most richly imaginative culture, and the most vigorously creative society.” (cited in Khan p 179)Of course Indians pre-Islam, fought, but it was NOT the practice to enslave or ravage, or massacre, or destroy religious sites, or damage crops and farmers. Battles were usually conducted on open soil between military personnel. (Khan p 205-207) There was no concept of ‘booty’ so Indians were unprepared for Islam’s onslaught. Indigenous Indians were forced to flee to jungles and mountains, or face gruelling exploitation and taxes, slaughter or enslavement while their society was demeaned and destroyed. Muslims constantly attacked the indigenous, idolatrous population and also fought against each other in ceaseless revolts by generals, chiefs and princes during the entire time of Islamic rule (Khan p 205).SlaveryInitially ‘India’ included part of today’s Pakistan (Sindh), Bangladesh/Bengal and Kashmir. Hinduism and Buddhism flourished in Afghanistan pre the Islamic takeover (7th century). In the 16th century Afghanistan was divided between the Muslim Mogul (Mughal) Empire of India and the Safavids of Persia.The damaged armless image of the bodyguard of Shiva-Maheshwara as depicted at the Hoysaleshwara Temple complex at Halebid. Hindu temples and works of art built in the ancient were desecrated and destroyed by Muslims invaders.Initially the godless Umayyads, allowed Hindus dhimmi status – possibly because of their large numbers, resistance to Islam and their value as a source of tax income. This violates Islamic text and law which demands death or conversion for idolaters and polytheists. When Sultan Iltutmish (d 1236) was asked why Hindus weren’t given the choice between death and Islam, he replied:“but at the moment in India…the Muslims are so few that they are like salt (in a large dish) …however after a few years when in the capital and the regions and all the small towns, when the Muslims are well established and the troops are http://larger….it would be possible to give Hindus the choice of death or Islam” (cited in Lal [c] p 538) (Can we learn anything from this???)Despite their supposed ‘dhimmi’ status, mass slaughter, mass forced conversion and mass enslavement with the resulting forced conversion to Islam were practised throughout Islamic rule and into the 20th century as many demanded the idolaters/polytheists convert or die. Hindu fighters and males were slaughtered with women and children enslaved. Eunuch slavery was practised on young boys.Often actual numbers aren’t given, just comments like ‘countless captives/slaves,’ or ‘all the women and children were taken.’ Where numbers are recorded, they are terrifying. Along with people, the Muslims took everything they could—coins, jewels, cloths, clothes, furniture, idols, animals, grain etc or destroyed it.Muslim rulers were foreigners. Until the 13th century, most slaves were sent out of India but following the Sultanate of Delhi (1206) they were retained to work for the sultanate, sold in India or sent elsewhere. Slaves from elsewhere were imported and Muslim armies were composed of a wide array of foreign slave groups ‘converted’ to Islam and ‘Hindus’ and Indian ‘converts.’Slaves were the promised booty from allah and obtaining them was a strong motivation for jihad.“slaves were so plentiful that they became very cheap; men…were degraded….but this is the goodness of god, who bestows honours on his own religion and degrades infidelity”. (Muslim chronicler Utbi on Sultan Subuktigin of Ghazni’s slave raid [942-997] in Sookdheo p166)In Sindh (first area attacked successfully) the early ‘Muslim’ community was composed mainly of slaves forced into Islam and a small number of Arab masters (Khan p 299). Initially slaves were forced out of India eg Qasim (Arab), the conquerer of Sindh sent by Hajjaj bin Yusuf Sakifi in the caliphate of Walid I, took 300,000 from a 3 year campaign in 712-715 (Khan p 299, Trifkovic p 109). Muslim fighters came from everywhere to partake in this ‘jihad.’ Qasim was suddenly recalled and executed (possibly by being sown in an animal’s hide) for supposedly violating 2 Sindhi princesses destined for the caliph’s harem!! (Lal [c] p 439)Many raids taking slaves were carried out under various caliphs in the 8th and 9th century.The Ghaznivids-Turks from Ghazni, Afghanistan (997-1206) who subdued the Punjab.From 17 raids (997-1030) Sultan Muhmud Ghazni (Turk from Afghanistan, 997-1030) sent hundreds of thousands of slaves to Ghanzi (Afghanistan) resulting in a loss of about 2 million people via slaughter or enslavement and sale outside India (Khan p 315). Chroniclers (eg Utbi, the sultan’s secretary) provide some numbers eg -from Thanesar, the Muslim army brought 200,000 captives back to Ghazni (Afghanistan). In 1019, 53,000 were taken. At one time the caliph’s 1/5th share was 150,000 suggesting 750,000 captives. 500,000 were taken in one campaign (at Waihind)(Lal [c] p 551) Mahmud’s secretary al-Utbi records:Mahmud of Ghazni Mahmud of Ghazni (971-1030) was the first sultan of the Ghaznavid dynasty in Afghanistan.“Swords flashed like lightening amid the blackness of clouds, and fountains of blood flowed like the fall of setting star. The friends of god defeated their opponents….the Musalmans wreaked their vengeance on the infidel enemies of god killing 15,000 of them…making them food of the beasts and birds of prey….god also bestowed on his friends such an amount of booty as was beyond all bounds and calculations, including 500,000 slaves beautiful men and women” (Khan p 191)The Ghaznivid’s ruled in the ‘Islamic sultanate of the Punjab’ till 1186. Attacks in Kashmir, Hansi, and districts of the Punjab resulted in mass slaughter and enslavement eg 100,000 in a 1079 attack in the Punjab (Tarik –i-Alfi in Khan p 276-7, Lal [d] p 553).Many of these Indian slaves were used by Muslim nobility in the subcontinent, but others were exported to satisfy the demand in international markets. Some slaves converted to Islam to receive protection. Children fathered by Muslim masters on non-Muslim slaves would be raised Muslim. Non-Muslim women, who Muslim soldiers and elites had slept with, would convert to Islam to avoid rejection by their own communities.The revenue system of the Delhi Sultanate produced a considerable proportion of the Indian slave population as these rulers, and their subordinate shiqadars, ordered their armies to abduct large numbers of locals as a means of extracting revenue.While those communities that were loyal to the Sultan and regularly paid their taxes were often excused from this practice, taxes were commonly extracted from other, less loyal groups in the form of slaves. Thus, according to Barani, the Shamsi "slave-king" Balban (r. 1266–87) ordered his shiqadars in Awadh to enslave those peoples resistant to his authority, implying those who refused to supply him with tax revenue.Sultan Alauddin Khalji (r. 1296–1316) is similarly reported to have legalised the enslavement of those who defaulted on their revenue payments.]This policy continued during the Mughal era.An even greater number of people were enslaved as a part of the efforts of the Delhi Sultans to finance their expansion into new territories.For example, while he himself was still a military slave of the Ghurid Sultan Muizz u-Din, Qutb-ud-din Aybak (r. 1206–10 as the first of the Shamsi slave-kings) invaded Gujarat in 1197 and placed some 20,000 people in bondage. Roughly six years later, he enslaved an additional 50,000 people during his conquest of Kalinjar. Later in the 13th century, Balban's campaign in Ranthambore, reportedly defeated the Indian army and yielded "captives beyond computation".Levi states that the forcible enslavement of non-Muslims during Delhi Sultanate was motivated by the desire for war booty and military expansion. This gained momentum under the Khalji and Tughluq dynasties, as being supported by available figures.Zia uddin Barani suggested that Sultan Alauddin Khalji owned 50,000 slave-boys, in addition to 70,000 construction slaves. Sultan Firuz Shah Tughluq is said to have owned 180,000 slaves, roughly 12,000 of whom were skilled artisans.A significant proportion of slaves owned by the Sultans were likely to have been military slaves and not labourers or domestics. However earlier traditions of maintaining a mixed army comprising both Indian soldiers and Turkic slave-soldiers (ghilman, mamluks) from Central Asia, were disrupted by the rise of the Mongol Empire reducing the inflow of mamluks. This intensified demands by the Delhi Sultans on local Indian populations to satisfy their need for both military and domestic slaves. The Khaljis even sold thousands of captured Mongol soldiers within India.China, Turkistan, Persia, and Khurusan were sources of male and female slaves sold to Tughluq India.The Yuan Dynasty Emperor in China sent 100 slaves of both sexes to the Tughluq Sultan, and he replied by also sending the same number of slaves of both sexes.Mughal Empire (16th to 19th century)The slave trade continued to exist in the Mughal Empire, however it was greatly reduced in scope, primarily limited to domestic servitude and debt bondage, and deemed "mild" and incomparable to the Arab slave trade or transatlantic slave trade.One Dutch merchant in the 17th century writes about Abd Allah Khan Firuz Jang, an Uzbek noble at the Mughal court during the 1620s and 1630s, who was appointed to the position of governor of the regions of Kalpi and Kher and, in the process of subjugating the local rebels, beheaded the leaders and enslaved their women, daughters and children, who were more than 200,000 in number.When Shah Shuja was appointed as governor of Kabul, he carried out a war in Indian territory beyond the Indus. Most of the women burnt themselves to death to save their honour. Those captured were "distributed" among Muslim mansabdars.The Augustinian missionary Fray Sebastian Manrique, who was in Bengal in 1629–30 and again in 1640, remarked on the ability of the shiqdār—a Mughal officer responsible for executive matters in the pargana, the smallest territorial unit of imperial administration to collect the revenue demand, by force if necessary, and even to enslave peasants should they default in their payments.A survey of a relatively small, restricted sample of seventy-seven letters regarding the manumission or sale of slaves in the Majmua-i-wathaiq reveals that slaves of Indian origin (Hindi al-asal) accounted for over fifty-eight percent of those slaves whose region of origin is mentioned. The Khutut-i-mamhura bemahr-i qadat-i Bukhara, a smaller collection of judicial documents from early-eighteenth-century Bukhara, includes several letters of manumission, with over half of these letters referring to slaves "of Indian origin". Even in the model of a legal letter of manumission written by the chief qazi for his assistant to follow, the example used is of a slave "of Indian origin".The export of slaves from India was limited to debt defaulters and rebels against the Mughal Empire. The Ghakkars of Punjab acted as intermediaries for such slave for trade to Central Asian buyers.Fatawa-i AlamgiriThe Fatawa-e-Alamgiri (also known as the Fatawa-i-Hindiya and Fatawa-i Hindiyya) was sponsored by Aurangzeb in the late 17th century.It compiled the law for the Mughal Empire, and involved years of effort by 500 Muslim scholars from South Asia, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. The thirty volumes on Hanafi-based sharia law for the Empire was influential during and after Auruangzeb's rule, and it included many chapters and laws on slavery and slaves in India.Some of the slavery-related law included in Fatawa-i Alamgiri were,the right of Muslims to purchase and own slaves,[73]a Muslim man's right to have sex with a captive slave girl he owns or a slave girl owned by another Muslim (with master's consent) without marrying her,[75]no inheritance rights for slaves,[76]the testimony of all slaves was inadmissible in a court of law[77]slaves require permission of the master before they can marry,[78]an unmarried Muslim may marry a slave girl he owns but a Muslim married to a Muslim woman may not marry a slave girl,[79]conditions under which the slaves may be emancipated partially or fully.Export of Indian slaves to international marketsAlongside Buddhist Oirats, Christian Russians, Afghans, and the predominantly Shia Iranians, Indian slaves were an important component of the highly active slave markets of medieval and early modern Central Asia. The all pervasive nature of slavery in this period in Central Asia is shown by the 17th century records of one Juybari Sheikh, a Naqshbandi Sufi leader, owning over 500 slaves, forty of whom were specialists in pottery production while the others were engaged in agricultural work.High demand for skilled slaves, and India's larger and more advanced textile industry, agricultural production and tradition of architecture demonstrated to its neighbours that skilled-labour was abundant in the subcontinent leading to enslavement and export of large numbers of skilled labour as slaves, following their successful invasions.After sacking Delhi, Timur enslaved several thousand skilled artisans, presenting many of these slaves to his subordinate elite, although reserving the masons for use in the construction of the Bibi-Khanym Mosque in Samarkand.Young female slaves fetched higher market price than skilled construction slaves, sometimes by 150%.The Delhi Sultanate’s Treatment of HindusThe Middle Path: Analyzing Why the Delhi Sultanate’s Treatment of Hindus Was One of ModerationThe Republic of India stands as one of the most pluralistic nations in the modern world, with many people of varying faiths co-existing under one national identity. Part of the origin of this pluralism can be traced back to when Muhammad bin Qasim established a Muslim presence in the subcontinent of India by conquering the Sindh province in modern Pakistan in 713.About three centuries later, Muslim rule would be established in Northern India under Qutb-ud-din Aibak, who founded the Delhi Sultanate in 1206 under the Mamluk dynasty. The Delhi Sultanate, which would last until 1526, is known as a period of cultural intermixing. A Muslim minority ruled a variety of subjects, the majority of which were of Hindu faith. The nature of the subjugation of Hindus under the Delhi Sultanate is difficult to judge, as one must look at a variety of aspects of the Sultanate’s rule to assess their attitude towards the Hindus. Differing political environments along with religious attitudes, artistic exchanges and the fact that Hindus were an integral part of the Sultanate’s economies all influenced how the Sultanate treated their Hindu subjects; which ultimately best characterizes the Sultanate’s subjugation of the Hindus as neither liberal nor oppressive, but moderately tolerant.Though there was a general angst towards the Hindus over the period of the Sultanate, it seems that differing political environments of each dynasty allowed for an intermediate level of religious tolerance from Muslim officials towards the Hindu populace. This moderation is well reflected in the fact that the Islamic rulers of India, even before the Sultanate began, gave their Hindu subjects the status of dhimmis. This title protected the rights of non-Muslim citizens in an Islamic state, albeit with certain restrictions, such as the jizya tax.The Hindus maintained this status throughout the whole period of the Sultanate, which reflects how the Muslim Sultans did not actually oppress their Hindu subjects but at the same time were never overly liberal towards them. The first two dynasties of the Sultanate, the Mamluk and the Khalji, are generally known to have been intolerant towards their Hindu subjects, destroying many Hindu temples during their reign. However, the third ruler of the Sultanate, Shams-ud-din Iltuttmish of the Mamluk dynasty was generally able to keep religion free from his politics, unlike the rulers that would succeed him.This reflects how politics affected the Sultanate’s tolerance of Hindus. Iltutltmish began his rule in 1210, only four years after the Sultanate was established. As such, he would have probably had to establish some form of stability in his Hindu subjects in order to avoid internal and even external conflict from surrounding Hindu kingdoms. Obviously this stability could not have been achieved if Iltutmish took a hardline stance against Hinduism. Thus, he had to be relatively moderate and keep religion free from his politics due to the political environment at the time. Once Iltutmish did establish stability, however, the political environment changed and allowed succeeding rulers from the Mamluk and Khalji dysnasties to engage in less tolerant behaviour towards the Hindus, evidenced by the destruction of temples and heavier taxation.The reign of the third dynasty of the Sultanate, the Tughlaqs, also reflect how the political environment characterized the Sultanate’s religious tolerance as moderate.Sultan Muhammad bin Tughluq is best known for being the most tolerant Sultan during the period of the Delhi Sultanate, which affected the political environment in which he and his successor ruled, which created an environment of moderate tolerance. Muhammad Tughluq expanded and even encouraged Hindu religious freedoms, even going as far to participate in the Hindu festival of Holi.Sources from the time confirm this, as historian Ziauddin Barani, much to his disapproval, reveals that Hindus were indeed able to practice their religion freely and openly under Muhammad Tughluq: “In the cities of the Musalmans [Muslims] the customs of infidelity are openly practiced, idols are publically worshipped and the traditions of infidelity are adhered to with greater insistence than before.”Ibn Battuta also reveals that Hindus had many religious freedoms at the time, as he writes on how Hindus were able to freely make holy pilgrimages to the Ganges.Unfortunately, Muhammad Tughuq’s policies of openness would create a political environment that alienated his Muslim allies, such as Ziauddin Barani judging from the tone of the Fatawa-i Jahandari. This in turn probably created an environment where some Muslim rulers embraced Hindus whilst others only further denounced them, creating a moderate mode of religious tolerance. The political environment Muhammad Tughluq left behind also spawned a relatively moderate attitude towards Hindus under his successor, Firuz Shah Tughluq.The political environment of tolerance created by Muhammad Tughluq influenced the incredibly intolerant policies of Firuz Shah, as he had to appease the Muslims that his predecessor alienated, which in turn created yet another rule of moderate tolerance. Firuz Shah essentially reversed the policies of his predecessor, as he was incredibly intolerant towards the Hindus. He forced many conversions on the threat of death and often looked to the Muslim body the Ulema for guidance in matters of the state.Though the Hindus were treated poorly under Firuz Shah, the environment Muhammad Tughluq created had a lasting positive impact among many Hindus that helped to balance out the oppressive rule of Firuz Shah. The subsequent dynasties, the Sayyid and the Lodi, would soften Firuz Shah’s policies back to a more generally moderate level of toleration.Again, however, politics played a part in this as the Sultanate by those times lost most of its holding in Southern India, and probably could not afford to alienate Hindus for fear of revolt against an already weak state. One can evidently see how politics played a part in establishing varying policies of toleration towards Hindus throughout the period of the Delhi Sultanate. Generally the Hindus enjoyed a moderate level of toleration throughout the period of the Sultanate, as they could practice their religion freely but had certain restrictions placed on them that varied from ruler to ruler depending on the differing political climates. Just looking at politics and prominent figures will not paint a full picture of the nature of the position of Hindus in the Sultanate. Interactions among the commoners of the Sultanate must also be taken into account.The Hindu and Muslim commoners of the Delhi Sultanate seemed to have tolerated each other fairly well, which again reflects the intermediate level of acceptance of Hindus in the Sultanate. Ziauddin Barani obviously had a bigoted attitude towards the Hindus, even calling for all-out war against the “disgracing infidels, polytheists, and men of bad dogmas and bad religions.” Barani, however, also reveals that the Muslim attitude towards Hindus may have been different among the common people, as he observes: “infidels [Hindus]…build houses like palaces, wear clothes of brocade…they take Musalmans into their service and make them run before their horses.”Barani reveals that Hindus even employed some Muslims under their direction, which paints a rather positive picture of Hindus under the Sultanate. Unfortunately, the Hindus who were able to do this were few in numbers and it was generally the Muslims who employed the Hindus. Nonetheless, the fact that Hindu citizens, albeit few, had the opportunity to employ Muslims does indeed reflect the balanced attitude of the Sultanate towards some Hindu citizens. Many Hindu commoners superficially embraced Islam only to get out of the rigid caste system that Indian society laid out.In this way, many people who remained spiritually Hindu found acceptance among the common people of Delhi. However, many foreign Muslims who came to India were appalled by Indian Muslims because many of them came from such low castes.Once again, a moderate level of tolerance from the Sultanate is seen here, as many Muslims living in the city of Delhi learned to accept Hindus but many Muslims who were not originally from India detested them. Artistic reciprocity between the Hindus and Muslims also seems to have influenced the Delhi Sultanate’s policy of moderate acceptance of Hindu culture.Indo-Muslim culture was refined during the period of the Delhi-Sultanate, and such cultural and artistic exchanges affected the Sultanate’s treatment of the Hindus. As Muslims were the minority in the Delhi Sultanate, they often had Hindu labourers build mosques among other things. However, the Hindus were not familiar with the architectural style of Muslim culture, such as rounded domes and archways.It is probable that many Muslims took issue with this at first, but as time went on many Muslims eventually had to become content with Hindu architecture as Hindus were the driving force behind the building labour. In fact, during the 14thcentury and onward, many Muslims began embracing Hindu symbolism in their architecture. Sidi Sayyid’s mosque, which was built around 1500, conveys the geometric patterns characteristic of Muslim art, but a tree design is also prominent, which is a common Hindu motif.It seems that the artistic influences of the Hindus on the Muslims created a kind of respect or even admiration between the two groups, which was no doubt beneficial to many Hindu subjects under the Sultanate. At the same time, however, the sultans would often engage in the destruction of many Hindu temples, which obviously burdened the relationship between the Hindus and Muslims. All in all, one can see how the Sultanate’s treatment of Hindus can be deemed as moderate, given their embracement of Hindu architecture that paradoxically came along with the constant destruction of Hindu temples. Like architecture, music exhibited a similar effect on the Sultanate’s treatment of Hindus.The Sultanate’s varying attitude towards Hindu music would again seem to influence their moderate toleration of their Hindu subjects. Though Islam rigidly discouraged music, several sultans embraced Hindu music in their courts and encouraged it among the populace.In this way, not only was Hindu music able to flourish under the Sultanate but the position of the Hindus improved. Music especially helped relations between Hindus and the Muslim Sufis of the Sultanate, as many Hindu women began to sing Sufi hymns during their workdays due to their rhythmic quality, which likely pleased many Muslims. However, it is also likely that the position of Hindus deteriorated in some way under sultans who adamantly opposed music, as the disapproval to Hindu music would probably translate a feeling of animosity towards the Hindus themselves. Evidently artistic exchange played a significant role in influencing how the Sultanate treated their Hindu subjects, as differing aspects of Hindu culture seemed to able to either help or harm their position under Muslim rule, which again shows the moderately tolerant attitude of the Sultanate. The final component in understanding why the Sultanate took such a moderate stance toward the Hindus lies within their economic system.The large Hindu presence within the Sultanate’s economic system is another factor that helps in characterizing the Sultanate’s tolerance toward Hindus as moderate. The sheer population of Hindus made them very employable within the economic system of the Sultanate.This alone constituted the moderate character of the Sultanate’s rule, as they could not do too much to aggravate the Hindu population due to the fact that economic life, in Satish’s Chandra’s words, “continued to remain in the hands of the Hindus.”Sources from the time also show that Hindus were indeed integral to the economics of the Sultanate. The act of regrating is buying a commodity from outside, or purchasing it in the market when prices are low and selling it when prices are high. Ziauddin Barani comments on how regrating “is the profession of the Hindus” and that “A man who calls himself a Musalman and yet adopts regrating as his profession…is ignorant of the Muslim Faith.”The fact that theologians opposed regrating to such an extent left many commodities solely in Hindu hands, such as grain. Also, Hindu Sindhis effectively monopolised many parts of trade related to carpentry, blacksmithing and more.In this way, the Sultanate would have been foolish to severely oppress the Hindus due the power they had via economic control. At the same, the Sultanate did not wish for the Hindus to become too wealthy, as Ibn Battua comments on how some Hindus that had monopolised jeweling in Dawlat Abad were incredibly wealthy.In this case, one can see how and why the Sultanate chose a policy of moderation towards the Hindus. The Hindus were the cornerstone to much of the Sultanate’s economy, so rulers could not oppress the Hindus for fear of economic consequence. However, the Sultanate had to keep the growing Hindu wealth in check by levying certain taxes on them that were not too harsh, but able to keep the Hindus content within the economic system. It does indeed seem that there are many dimensions that have to be taken into account in assessing the Sultanate’s rule of the Hindus. In the end all these aspects seem to effectively contribute to the notion that the Sultanate’s rule of the Hindus was one of moderate tolerance.The period of the Delhi Sultanate will forever be known as a time of cultural and religious intermixing, where a Muslim minority ruled a Hindu majority for over 300 years. This period helped lay the foundations for a pluralistic India, as the Muslim conquerors entered a relationship with their Hindu subjects in whom they could not afford to be too harsh or too lenient. Hindus ended up being an integral part to the Sultanate’s Muslim society, as evidenced by political, artistic, and economic aspects. These factors essentially forced the rulers of the Sultanate to find a balance in administering their rule over the Hindus, as they had to keep the majority of the population in check whilst giving them just enough contentment to ensure that the Sultanate ran smoothly. This policy of moderation reflects the true character of the period of the Delhi Sultanate, as it gave the world its first taste of rich Indo-Muslim culture, and it set the stage for the vast cultural pluralism that defines the modern-day Indian sub-continent.SLAVE-TAKING DURING MUSLIM RULESlavery forms an integral part of the history of Islam. The Turks practised it on a large scale before they entered India as invaders. Slaves were abducted or captured by marauders (Subuktigin, Balban), they were sold by jealous or needy relatives (Iltutmish), and they were purchased by slave-traders to be sold for profit (Aibak). These methods were known to Muslim rulers in India. All these and many other methods were employed by them and their nobles in making slaves in India. The phenomenon and its application was shocking to the Hindu mind; the Muslims, however, thought otherwise. According to Ibn Khaldun, the captives were �brought from the House of War to the House of Islam under the rule of slavery, which hides in itself a divine providence; cured by slavery, they enter the Muslim religion with the firm resolve of true believers��Muslims took pride in enslaving people; the feelings of Hindu victims were just the opposite.Qutbuddin Aibak entered upon a series of conquests. He dispatched Ikhtiyaruddin Bakhtiyar Khalji to the East and himself concentrated in Hindustan proper. He captured Kol (modern Aligarh) in 1194. There �those of the garrison who were wise and cute were converted to Islam, but those who stood by their ancient faith were slain with the sword.�Surely, those who embraced Islam during or immediately after the battle were �cute� and wise, because by this initiative on their part they were counted as free-born Muslims as against those who fought, were captured in battle, and then enslaved. T.P. Hughes gives the legal position: �If a captive embraced Islam on the field of battle he was a free man; but if he were made captive, and afterwards embraced Islam, the change of creed did not emancipate him.� Women captives were invariably taken prisoner. �Atiyat-ul-Qurazi relates that, after the battle with the Banu Quraizah, the Prophet ordered all those who were able to fight to be killed, and the women and children to be enslaved.�Both these traditions were followed in India. In 1195 when Raja Bhim was attacked by Aibak 20,000 slaves were captured, and 50,000 at Kalinjar in 1202. �The temples were converted into mosques,� writes Hasan Nizami, �and the voices of the summoners to prayer ascended to the highest heavens, and the very name of idolatry was annihilated.�Call to prayer five times a day with a loud voice carried an invitation and a message - join us, or else. People �could refuse this invitation or call at their own peril, spiritual and physical. As His followers became more powerful, the peril became increasingly more physical.�This process helped in the conversion of captives. Murry Titus pertinently remarks that �we may be sure that all those who were made slaves were compelled to embrace the religion of the masters to whom they were allotted.�Farishtah specifically mentions that during the capture of Kalinjar fifty thousand kaniz va ghulam, having suffered slavery, were rewarded with the honour of Islam. Thus enslavement resulted in conversion and conversion in accelerated growth of Muslim population.Minhaj Siraj assigns twenty (lunar) years to Qutbuddin’s career in Hindustan from the first taking of Delhi up to his death, both as a commander of Sultan Muizzuddin and as an independent ruler.During this period Aibak captured Hansi, Meerut, Delhi, Ranthambhor and Kol.When Sultan Muizzuddin personally mounted another campaign against Hindustan, Aibak proceeded as far as Peshawar to meet him, and the two together attacked the Khokhar stronghold in the Koh-i-Jud or the Salt Range. The Hindus (Khokhars) fled to the highest in the mountains. They were pursued. Those that escaped the sword fled to the dense depth of the jungle; others were massacred or taken captive. Great plunder was obtained and many slaves.According to Farishtah three to four hundred thousand Khokhars were converted to Islam by Muizzuddin;but this figure is inflated. More than a hundred years later, Amir Khusrau refers to Khokhars as a non-Muslim tribe, and the way they were constantly attacked and killed by Sultans Iltutmish and Balban confirms Khusrau�s contention.Minhaj also says that �the Khokhars were not annihilated in this affair (Muizzuddin-Aibak attack) by any means, and gave great trouble in after years.�Under Aibak most of Hindustan from Delhi to Gujarat, and Lakhnauti to Lahore, was brought under the sway of the Turks. In his time a large number of places were attacked and many more prisoners were captured than for which actual figures are available. Figures of slaves made during campaigns of Kanauj, Banaras (where the Muslims occupied �a thousand� temples),Ajmer (attacked thrice), Gujarat, Bayana and Gwalior are not available. Similar is the case with regard to Bihar and Bengal. About the end of the twelfth or the beginning of the thirteenth century, Ikhtiyaruddin Bakhtiyar Khalji marched into Bihar and attacked the University centres at Nalanda, Vikramshila and Uddandpur.The Buddhist monks and Brahmans mistaken for monks were massacred and the common people, deprived of their priests and teachers, became an easy prey to capture and enslavement. But no figures of such captives are known. Ibn Asir only says that Qutbuddin Aibak made �war against the provinces of Hind� He killed many, and returned with prisoners and booty.�In Banaras, according to the same author, �the slaughter of the Hindus was immense, none was spared except women and children,� who would have been enslaved as per practice. Habibullah writes that Muslim sway extended from Banaras through the strip of Shahabad, Patna, Monghyr and Bhagalpur districts,and repeated references to the presence of Muslims in this tract from the early times indicates that taking of slaves and conversion was common in the region. Fakhr-i-Mudabbir informs us that as a result of the Turkish achievements under Muizzuddin and Aibak, Eleven poor (Muslim) householder became owner of numerous slaves.�The narratives of contemporary and later chroniclers should not lead us to the conclusion that taking of Hindus as slaves was a child�s play. There was stiff resistance to Muslim conquest and Muslim rule. Besides, the Sultans of Delhi had always to deal with a number of problems simultaneously. Most of the time of Sultan Iltutmish (1210-1236) was spent in suppressing his Turkish opponents, Qutbi and Muizzi Amirs in Delhi and rivals Yaldoz and Qubacha in Punjab and Sindh. He also faced the threat of invasion from the Mongol conqueror Chingiz Khan and the Khwarizmi Prince Jalaluddin Mangbarni fleeing before Chingiz. Therefore it was only sixteen years after his accession that he could march against Ranthambhor in 1226. During this period many Hindu kingdoms subdued by Aibak were becoming independent. Mandor near Jodhpur was attacked a little later. Here �much booty fell into the hands� of the victors, which obviously included slaves also.The year 1231 witnessed his invasion of Gwalior where he �captured a large number of slaves�. In 1234-35 he attacked Ujjain, broke its temple of Mahakal, and as usual made captives �women and children of the recalcitrants.�But most of his compatriot Muslims were not satisfied with the Sultan�s achievements in the sphere of slave-taking and converting the land into Dar-ul-Islam all at once.It is true that foreign Muslims - freemen and slaves were flocking into Hindustan and this development was of great significance for the Sultanate. Adventurers and job seekers were flocking into Hindustan, the new heaven of Islam. More importantly, because of the Mongol upheaval, as many as twenty-five Muslim refugee princes with their retinues arrived at the court of Iltutmish from Khurasan and Mawaraun Nahr.During the reign of Balban fifteen more refugee rulers and their nobles and slaves arrived from Turkistan, Khurasan, Iraq, Azarbaijan, Persia, Rum (Turkey) and Sham (Syria).Their followers comprised masters of pen and of sword, scholars and Mashaikh, historians and poets. The pressure of these groups on the Sultan for Islamization of Hindustan would have been great. In 1228 C.E. Iltutmish received a patent of investiture from Al-Mustansir Billah, the Khalifa of Baghdad, in recognition of his enormously augmenting the prestige of the Muhammadan government in India. This was a booster as well as a further pressure. No wonder, the capital city of Delhi looked like Dar-ul-Islam and its ruler the leader of the eastern world of Islam.But since the whole country was not conquered and converted, it did not amuse the Ulama and the Mashaikh.Slave-taking a matter of policySome Ulama therefore approached the �pious� Sultan Iltutmish to rule according to the Shariat and confront the Hindus with choice between Islam and death. Muslims had set up their rule and so the country had become Dar-ul-Islam. Any opposition to it was an act of rebellion. The Hindus who naturally resisted Muslim occupation were considered to be rebels. Besides they were idolaters (mushrik) and could not be accorded the status of Kafirs, of the People of the Book - Christians and Jews. For them the law provided only Islam or death. Islamic jurisprudence had crystallized over the last five centuries. Besides the evolvement of the four schools of Islamic jurisprudence, Shaikh Burhauddin Ali�s Hidayah (530-596 H./1135-1199 C.E.), the Compendium of Sunni Law, based on the Quran and the Hadis, was also readily available in the time of Iltutmish. Muslim scriptures and treatises advocated jihad against idolaters for whom the law advocated only Islam or death.In such a situation the answer of the Sultan to the Ulama was: �But at the moment in India� the Muslims are so few that they are like salt (in a large dish)� However, after a few years when in the capital and the regions and all the small towns, when the Muslims are well established and the troops are larger� it would be possible to give Hindus, the choice of death or Islam.�Such an apologetic plea was not necessary to put forward. The fact was that the Muslim regime was giving a choice between Islam and death only. Those who were killed in battle were dead and gone; but their dependents were made slaves. They ceased to be Hindus; they were made Musalmans in course of time if not immediately after captivity.There was thus no let up in the policy of slave-taking. Minhaj Siraj writes that Ulugh Khan Balban�s �taking of captives, and his capture of the dependents of the great Ranas cannot be recounted�. Talking of his war in Avadh against Trailokyavarman of the Chandela dynasty (Dalaki va Malaki of Minhaj), the chronicler says that �All the infidels� wives, sons and dependents� and children� fell into the hands of the victors.� In 1253, in his campaign against Ranthambhor also, Balban enslaved many people. In 1259, in an attack on Haryana, many women and children were enslaved.Twice Balban led expeditions against Kampil, Patiali, and Bhojpur, and in the process enslaved a large number of women and children. In Katehar he ordered a general massacre of the male population of over eight years of age and carried away women and children.In 658 H. (1260 C.E.) Ulugh Khan Balban marched with a large force on a campaign in the region of Ranthambhor, Mewat and Siwalik. He made a proclamation that a soldier who brought a live captive would be rewarded with two silver tankahs and one who brought the head of a dead one would get one silver tankah. Soon three to four hundred living and dead were brought to his presence.Like Balban other slave commanders of Iltutmish, or the �Shamsia Maliks of Hind� were marching up and down the Hindustan, raiding towns and villages and enslaving people. This was the situation prevailing from Lakhnauti to Lahore and from Ajmer to Ujjain. The Hindus used to reclaim their lands after the Muslim invaders had passed through them with fire and sword, and Turkish armies used to repeat their attacks to regain control of the cities so lost. But the captives once taken became slaves and then Musalmans for ever. The exact figures of such slaves have not been mentioned and therefore cannot be computed. All that is known is that they were captured in droves. Only one instance should suffice to convey an idea of their numbers. Even in the reign of a weak Sultan like Nasiruddin, son of Iltutmish, the ingress of captives was so large that once he presented forty beads of staves to our chronicler Minhaj Siraj to send to his �dear sister� in Khurasan.Enslavement under the KhaljisThe process of enslavement during war gained momentum under the Khaljis and the Tughlaqs. In two or three generations after Iltutmish the Muslims were digging their heels firmly into the country. Their territories were expanding and their armies were becoming larger. All the time, the desire to convert or liquidate the idolaters remained ever restless. Achievements in this regard of course depended on the strength, resources and determination of individual Muslim rulers. For example, although Jalaluddin Khalji was an old and vacillating king, even he did not just remain content with expressing rage at the fact of not being able to deal with the Hindus according to the law.During six years of his reign (June 1290 -July 1296), he mounted expeditions and captured prisoners. While suppressing the revolt of Malik Chhajju, a scion of the dynasty he had ousted, he marched towards Bhojpur in Farrukhabad district and ruthlessly attacked Hindus in the region of Katehar (later Rohilkhand). During his campaign in Ranthambhor he broke temples, sacked the neighbouring Jhain and took booty and captives, making a hell of paradise .Later on Malwa was attacked and large quantity of loot, naturally including slaves, was brought to Delhi.His last expedition was directed against Gwalior.Jalaluddin’s nephew and successor Alauddin Khalji (1296-1316) turned out to be a very strong king. He marched against Devagiri in 1296. On his way through Gondwana and Khandesh he took prisoners a large number of Mahajans and cultivators, and ransomed them for wealth.At Devagiri he enslaved a number of the Raja’s relatives, and Brahmans and Mahajans. He put them in shackles and chains and paraded them in front of the fort to pressure the besieged king. After victory, he released many of the captives because of compulsions of the situation. He was only a prince who had marched to the Deccan without the Sultan’s permission. But his taking of slaves in large numbers was in consonance with the policy of Muslim sultans and gave a foretaste of what was to follow during the course of his reign.After ascending the throne, Alauddin Khalji embarked upon a series of conquests. He turned out to be the greatest king of the Sultanate period (cir. 1200-1500), and his success as regards capture of slaves was stupendous. He started by seizing the families and slaves of his brothers and brother-in-law.In 1299 he despatched a large army for the invasion of Gujarat. There all the major towns and cities like Naharwala, Asaval, Vanmanthali, Surat, Cambay, Somnath etc. were sacked. There the temples were broken, wealth looted and large numbers of captives of both sexes captured, including the famous Malik Kafur and the Vaghela king’s consort Kamala Devi.In the words of Wassaf, the Muslim army in the sack of Somnath �took captive a great number of handsome and elegant maidens, amounting to 20,000, and children of both sexes� the Muhammadan army brought the country to utter ruin, and destroyed the lives of inhabitants, and plundered the cities and captured their offspring��In 1301 Ranthambhor was attacked and in 1303 Chittor. In the invasion of Chittor, 30,000 people were massacred in cold blood and obviously females and minors of their families were captured.Slaves were also taken in large numbers in the expeditions to Malwa, Sevana and Jalor (1305-1311); these will be referred to again in the course of this study. Maybe the number of captives obtained from Rajasthan was not that large knowing the bravery and chivalry of the Rajputs and their prevailing customs of Jauhar and Sati. But the highly successful Deccan campaigns of Malik Kafur must have supplied a large corps of captives. Besides, Alauddin did not confine to obtaining Hindu slaves. During the invasion of the Mongol Saldi (1299), the commanders of the Sultan captured 1,700 of his officers, men and women and sent them as slaves to Delhi.During the raid of Ali Beg, Tartaq and Targhi (1305), 8,000 Mongol prisoners were executed and their heads displayed in the towers of the Siri Fort which were then under constructions.The women and children accompanying the Mongol raiders Kubak and Iqbalmand were sold in Delhi and the rest of Hindustan. �The Mongol invaders were certainly infidels,� says Mahdi Husain. This enslavement was as beneficial to Islam as that of the Hindus. Muslims were not enslaved because they were already Muslim.Sultan Alauddin�s collection of slaves was a matter of successful routine. Under him the Sultanate had grown so strong that, according to Shams Siraj Afif, in his days �no one dared to make an outcry.�Similar is the testimony of the Alim and Sufi Amir Khusrau. In Nuh Sipehr he writes that �the Turks, whenever they please, can seize, buy or sell any Hindu.�No wonder, under him the process of enslavement went on with great vigour. As an example, he had 50,000 slave boys in his personal service and 70,000 slaves worked continuously on his buildings.We must feel obliged to Muslim chroniclers for providing such bits of information on the basis of which we can safely generalize. For instance, it is Barani alone who writes about the number of slaves working on buildings and Afif alone who speaks about the personal �boys� of Sultan Alauddin who looked after his pigeons. Ziyauddin Barani�s detailed description of the Slave Markets in Delhi and elsewhere during the reign of Alauddin Khalji, shows that fresh batches of captives were constantly arriving there.Enslavement under the TughlaqsAll sultans were keen on making slaves, but Muhammad Tughlaq became notorious for enslaving people. He appears to have outstripped even Alauddin Khalji and his reputation in this regard spread far and wide. Shihabuddin Ahmad Abbas writes about him thus: �The Sultan never ceases to show the greatest zeal in making war upon infidels� Everyday thousands of slaves are sold at a very low price, so great is the number of prisoners�.Muhammad Tughlaq did not only enslave people during campaigns, he was also very fond of purchasing and collecting foreign and Indian slaves. According to Ibn Battuta one of the reasons of estrangement between Muhammad Tughlaq and his father Ghiyasuddin Tughlaq, when Muhammad was still a prince, was his extravagance in purchasing slaves.Even as Sultan, he made extensive conquests. He subjugated the country as far as Dwarsamudra, Malabar, Kampil, Warangal, Lakhnauti, Satgaon, Sonargaon, Nagarkot and Sambhal to give only few prominent place-names.There were sixteen major rebellions in his reign which were ruthlessly suppressed.In all these conquests and rebellions, slaves were taken with great gusto. For example, in the year 1342 Halajun rose in rebellion in Lahore. He was aided by the Khokhar chief Kulchand. They were defeated. �About three hundred women of the rebels were taken captive, and sent to the fort of Gwalior where they were seen by Ibn Battutah.�Such was their influx that Ibn Battutah writes: �At (one) time there arrived in Delhi some female infidel captives, ten of whom the Vazir sent to me. I gave one of them to the man who had brought them to me, but he was not satisfied. My companion took three young girls, and I do not know what happened to the rest.�Iltutmish, Muhammad Tughlaq and Firoz Tughlaq sent gifts of slaves to Khalifas outside India. To the Chinese emperor Muhammad Tughlaq sent, besides other presents, �100 Hindu slaves, 100 slave girls, accomplished in song and dance� and another 15 young slaves.�Ibn Battutah�s eye-witness account of the Sultan�s gifting captured slave girls to nobles or arranging their marriages with Muslims on a large scale on the occasion of the two Ids, corroborates the statement of Abbas. Ibn Battutah writes that during the celebrations in connection with the two Ids in the court of Muhammad bin Tughlaq, daughters of Hindu Rajas and those of commoners, captured during the course of the year were distributed among nobles, officers and important foreign slaves. �On the fourth day men slaves are married and on the fifth slave-girls. On the sixth day men and women slaves are married off.�This was all in accordance with the Islamic law. According to it, slaves cannot many on their own without the consent of their proprietors.The marriage of an infidel couple is not dissolved by their jointly embracing the faith.In the present case the slaves were probably already converted and their marriages performed with the initiative and permission the Sultan himself were valid. Thousands of non-Muslim women were captured by the Muslims in the yearly campaigns of Firoz Tughlaq, and under him the id celebrations were held on lines similar to those of his predecessor.In short, under the Tughlaqs the inflow of women captives never ceased.Similar was the case with males, especially of tender and young age. Firoz Tughlaq acquired them by all kinds of methods and means, so that he collected 180,000 of them.Shams Siraj Afif, the contemporary historian, writes that under Firoz, �slaves became too numerous� and adds that �the institution took root in every centre of the land�. So that even after the Sultanate broke up into a number of kingdoms, slave-hunting continued in every �(Muslim) centre of the land.�Sufferings of the enslavedThis is the version of the slave-capturing victors. The humiliation and suffering of the victims finds no mention in Muslim chronicles. Sustained experience of grief and pain and loss of dignity and self-respect used to turn them into dumb driven animals. The practice and pattern of breaking the spirit of the captives under Aibak, Iltutmish and Balban, indeed throughout the medieval period, was the same as during the days of the Khaljis and the Tughlaqs. Only one case may be cited as an instance. Balban, when he was Ulugh Khan Khan-i-Azam, once brought to Delhi (in about 1260) two hundred fifty 'Hindu leading men and men of position� from Mewar and Siwalik, bound and shackled and chained. During the expedition he had proclaimed that a royal soldier would be rewarded with two silver tankahs if he captured a person alive and one tankah if he brought the head of a dead one. They brought to his presence 300 to 400 living and dead everyday. The reigning Sultan Nasiruddin ordered the death of the leading men. The others accompanying them were shaken to the bones and completely tamed. Depiction of their suffering is found in an Indian work - Kanhadade Prabandha. Written in �old Rajasthani or old Gujarati�, it was composed in mid-fifteenth century and records the exploits of King Kanhardeva of Jalor against Alauddin�sGeneral Ulugh Khan who had attacked Gujarat in 1299 and taken a number of prisoners. In the Sorath (Saurashtra) region �they made people captive - Brahmanas and children, and women, in fact, people of all (description)� huddled them and tied them by straps of raw hide. The number of prisoners made by them was beyond counting. The prisoners� quarters (bandikhana) were entrusted to the care of the Turks.� The prisoners suffered greatly and wept aloud. �During the day they bore the heat of the scorching sun, without shade or shelter as they were [in the sandy desert region of Rajasthan], and the shivering cold during the night under the open sky. Children, tom away from their mother�s breasts and homes, were crying. Each one of the captives seemed as miserable as the other. Already writhing in agony due to thirst, the pangs of hunger� added to their distress. Some of the captives were sick, some unable to sit up. Some had no shoes to put on and no clothes to wear. �Some had iron shackles on their feet. Separated from each other, they were huddled together and tied with straps of hide. Children were separated from their parents, the wives from their husbands, thrown apart by this cruel raid. Young and old were seen writhing in agony, as loud wailings arose from that part of the camp where they were all huddled up� Weeping and wailing, they were hoping that some miracle might save them even now.�The miracle did happen and Kanhardeva was successful in rescuing them after a tough fight.But the description provides the scenario in which the brave and the strong, the elite and the plebeian, were made captives and their spirit broken. That is how Timur was enabled to massacre in one day about 100,000 of captives he had taken prisoner on his march to Delhi. They had been distributed among his officers and kept tied and shackled. That is how Maulana Nasiruddin Umar, a man of learning in Timur�s camp, �slew with his own sword fifteen idolatrous Hindus, who were his captives�. If the prisoners could �break their bonds�, such a carnage could not have been possible. Prisoners were often brought to Timur�s presence with hands bound to their necks.Jahangir (1605-27) also writes that �prisoners were conducted to my presence yoked together.�Most of them were kept yoked together even when they were sent out to be sold in foreign lands or markets in India.The captives, on their part, clung together and did not separate from one another even in their darkest hour. Nor were they permitted an opportunity to do so under Islamic law which the victors always observed with typical Muslim zeal. The Hidayah lays down that �if the Mussulmans subdue an infidel territory before any capitation tax be established, the inhabitants, together with their wives and children, are all plunder, and the property of the state, as it is lawful to reduce to slavery all infidels, whether they be Kitabees, Majoosees or idotters.�The Hidayah also lays down that �whoever slays an infidel is entitled to his private property,� which invariably included his women and children. That is how a large number of people were involved, whether it was a matter of taking captives, making converts, or ordering massacres. About women and children of a single family of a slain infidel, or of droves of slaves captured in an attack on a region or territory Fakhre Mudabbir furnishes information on, both counts during the campaigns of Muhammad Ghauri and Qutbuddin Aibak. He informs us that during their expeditions ghulams of all descriptions (har jins) were captured in groups and droves (jauq jauq) so that even a poor householder (or soldier) who did not possess a single slave (earlier) became the owner of numerous slaves��In short, the captives swam or sank together so that if they were captured they were taken in large numbers. A manifest example of this phenomenon is that during a rebellion-suppressing expedition of Muhammad bin Tughlaq in the Deccan (1327), all the eleven sons of the Raja of Kampil (situated on the River Tungbhadra, Bellary District), were captured together, and made Muslims.Generally, able bodied men and soldiers were massacred, and their helpless women and children were made prisoners in large numbers or groups.Even in peace times people of one or more villages or groups acted in unison. When Firoz Shah Tughlaq proclaimed that those who accepted Islam would be exempted from payment of Jizyah, �great number of Hindus presented themselves� Thus they came forward day by day from every quarter��Similarly, from the time of entering Hindustan, up to the time of reaching the environs of Delhi, Amir Timur had �taken more than 100,000 infidels and Hindus prisoners��Timur massacred them all, but the fact that people could be made slaves in such unbelievably large numbers was due to their keeping together through thick and thin, howsoever desperate the situation. Nobody knew the reality better than Ibn Battuta who travelled in India extensively. During his sojourn he found villages after villages deserted.Nature�s ravages or man�s atrocities might have made them flee, or more probably they would have been enslaved and converted, or just carried away. But the fact of habitations being completely deserted shows that large groups suffered together and did not forsake one another in times of trial and tribulation. This factor swelled the number of slaves.Special Slaves of Firoz Shah TughlaqBy the time of Firoz Shah Tughlaq, the institution of slavery had taken root in every region of Muslim domination. The Sultanate of Delhi was now two hundred years old and well entrenched. The need of slaves for all kinds of errands was great. So that slaves were ever needed in hundreds, and slave-taking did not remain confined to their capture during wars. Firoz Tughlaq resorted to some other methods of acquiring slaves. One of these was akin to the famous Dewshrime widely practised in the Ottoman Empire.The practice of Dewshrime (Greek for �collecting boys�), �is the name applied to the forcible pressing of Christian children to recruit the janissary regiments� of the Turkish Empire� mainly in the European parts with a Christian population (Greece, Macedonia, Albania, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Bulgaria).�These Christians, Jews and Gypsies turned Muslims were trained to fight against their own erstwhile brethren. �Instituted by Urkhan in 1330, it formed for centuries the mainstay of the despotic power of the Turkish sultans, and was kept alive by a regular contribution exacted every four years (or so), when the officers of the Sultan visited the districts over and made a selection from among the children about the age of seven. The Muhammadan legists attempted to apologise for this inhuman tribute by representing these children as the fifth of the spoil which the Quran assigns to the sovereign.�Sultan Firoz commanded his great fief-holders and officers to capture slaves whenever they were at war, and to pick out and send the best for the service of the court. The fifth part of slaves captured in war in India were always despatched to the ruler (or Caliph) ever since the days of Muhammad bin Qasim. Firoz Tughlaq desired slaves to be collected in the Dewshrime fashion. Great numbers of slaves were thus collected, and when they were found to be in excess, the Sultan sent them to Multan, Dipalpur, Hissar Firozah, Samana, Gujarat, and all the other feudal dependencies.�The policy of Delhi Sultanate of leaving the bare minimum to the peasant helped in Firoz�s �Dewshrime�. Under Muslim rule, a substantial portion of the agricultural produce was taken away by the government as taxes and the people were left with the bare minimum for subsistence in order to impoverish them because it was thought that �wealth� was the source of "rebellion and disaffection.�This policy was in practice throughout the medieval period, both under the Sultans and the Mughals. Conditions became intolerable by the time of Shahjahan as attested to by Manucci and Manrique. Peasants were compelled to sell their women and children to meet the revenue demand. Manrique writes that �the peasants were carried off� to various markets and fairs (to be sold), with their poor unhappy wives behind them carrying their small children all crying and lamenting, to meet the revenue demand.� Bernier too affirms that �the unfortunate peasants who were incapable of discharging the demand of their rapacious lords, were bereft of their children Who were carried away as slaves.�As in the Ottoman Empire, Christians and Jews turned Muslim were trained to fight their erstwhile brethren, so also in India in the medieval period Hindus captured and converted were made to fight their erstwhile brethren in Muslim wars of conquest. Trained or accustomed to fighting their own people, these converts to Islam are posing various kinds of problems in the present-day India and Eastern Europe.Timur/Tamerlane 1398/99. Destroyed the Delhi sultanate:A raid by pious Timurlane (Amir Timur –a Turkic/Mogul from Central Asia) in 1398/99 saw 100,000 slaves slaughtered in cold-blood before he attacked Delhi and possibly 200,000-250,000 (or more) plus craftsmen enslaved and taken out of India (to Samarkand, Central Asia).(Khan p 282, Lal [c] p 544). In his memoirs on the attack on Delhi, Timur claims his 15,000 Turks EACH “secured from 50 to 100 prisoners……there was no man with less than 20” and that was on just one day, the 17th! “The other booty was immense”…”women were obtained in such quantities as to exceed all count.” The areas of Delhi occupied by Muslims weren’t sacked. The slaughter, mass enslavement and plunder continued as he headed towards his home Samarkand, Central Asia. (Timur’s memoirs, Bostom p 648).The Sayyid and Lodi dynasties (1400-1525)- returning the Delhi sultanateFollowing Timur’s destruction of Turkish Muslim rule in Delhi, he installed others that paid tribute to him till 1506.Sayyid sultans attacked, enslaved, killed and plundered in Katehar (1422), Malwa (1423) and Alwar (1425)(Khan p 282)Then the Lodi Sultans (1451-1526) restored the sultanate. Nothing changed for the Hindus. Enslavement and slaughter by Sultan Bahlul depopulated Nimsar. Sikandar Lodi repeated this in Rewa and Gwaloir (Khan p 282).Mughal rule 1526-1707.1) Jahiruddin Shah Babur (1483-1530) defeated Lodi. Babur, known for his quotes from the Koran, jihad and piles of heads also enslaved women and children (Khan p 282-3, Lal[b] p 438-459). Leadership contests ensued.2) Akbar the great (1556-1605) –Babur’s grandsonRaiding a village without reason and enslaving the inhabitants became common and, although Akbar (1556-1605) tried to stop this practice, it continued unabated. Most parts of India came under Akbar’s control. Illiterate Akbar is considered tolerant and many of his acts are contrary to Islam eg he rejected Islam, allowed others into his court and attempted to synthesize a new composite religion called Din-i-Ilahi –religion of god(Khan p 152). He adopted Hindu and Zoroastrian festivals and practices (Trifkovic p 112). He stopped the jizya though other taxes remained. Yet in many ways he remained ‘Islamic.’ While declaring independence from foreign Islamic overlordship he still sent ‘gifts’ to Mecca, Medina and elsewhere (Khan p 163). He owned slaves including thousands of women. He hated ‘paganism.’ (Note in his memoirs –‘Barburnama- Sultan Babur [1483-1530] noted that most of Hindustan’s inhabitants were pagans; “they call a pagan a Hindu”!! Bostom p 80). Thousands of peasants (30,000)(lower caste Hindus) in Chittor who took up arms alongside their Rajput rulers (8,000 Rajputs) were put to the sword or enslaved and their property taken. (Khan p 88, 113, Trifkovic p 112)“the order was given for a general massacre of the infidels as punishment …by mid-day nearly 2000 had been slain….those of the fortress who escapes the sword, men and women were made prisoners, and their property came into the hands of the Musulmans. The place being cleared of the infidels, his majesty remained there three days” (cited in Sookdheo p 265).Akbar’s sex slavery: Akbar had 5,000 females in his harem (Khan p 102)While Akbar supposedly attempted to halt mass slavery in battle, it vigorously continued under his commanders. Chroniclers and reports record that raiding villages without justification and enslaving people was fashionable. (Khan p 283). Children were stolen, kidnapped and purchased then males were castrated (Islam’s famous eunuch slavery), particularly in Bengal. Abdullah Khan Uzbeg, one of Akbar’s generals boasted,“I made prisoners of 5 lacs (500,000) of men and women and sold them. They all became Muhammadans. From their progeny, there will be crores (one crore=10 million) by the day of judgement.”(cited in Khan p 103)Slave markets popped up all over India. Slaves became very cheap—everyone (Muslim) had several! (Khan p 316).A witness noted:“in his reign, servants and slaves were so numerous and cheap that everybody, even of mean fortune, keeps a great family and is splendidly attended’ (cited in Khan p 283)Akbar’s son and grandson retuned to orthodox Islam.3) Jahangir (1605-27CE Akbar’s son) wrote that 500,000-600,000 people were slaughtered during the combined rule of his father –Akbar- and his own!!! (Lal [b] p 459, Khan p 200). In 1619-20 alone he sent 200,000 Indian slaves to Iran for sale. Children were castrated and given as slaves to pay tax collectors (Khan 285)4) Shah Jahan (1628-58, Akbar’s grandson) The condition of Hindu peasants became unbearable—adults and children were enslaved to pay taxes (Khan p 283-4). Yet you will read of this as the Mughal period’s greatest prosperity—while non-Muslim Indians were reduced to destitution. Shah Jahan’s religious violence; destruction of Hindu and Christian sites; offer of death or Islam to 4,000 at Agra while young females were sent to harems; slaughter of 10,000 at Hugh and INCEST with his daughters is reported in part K and Trifkovic p 112. Shah Jahan built the Taj Mahal to his 3rd wife who died bearing her 14th child in 19 years! (What a romantic!!)Slaves from foreign nations also flowed into India –eg Sultan Aurangzeb purchased Tatar and Uzbek women as harem guards (war-like) and European women as sex–slaves .(Khan 317)5) Aurangzeb (Akbar’s great grandson, r 1658-1707) aimed to conquer, enslave or convert all of India (Khan p 104). He revived Islam. Temples and schools were destroyed and infidels slaughtered. Islam’s dhimmitude laws were applied with a vengence. (Khan p 98). Hindus revolted against paying the jizyah. In a campaign against the Rajputs, his generals“employed themselves in laying waste to the country, destroying temples and buildings, cutting down fruit trees, and making prisoners of the women and children of the infidels ..” (Sookdheo p 265 –complies with jihad laws eg Reliance of the Traveller; Laws o9.13 – enslave women and children and o9.15 p 604 –OK to cut down trees and destroy buildings ).A French Physician living in India noted that children “were carried away as slaves” to pay taxes (Khan p 284)Slavery continued from within India and outside even though the British, who halted slavery, had begun to enter India in the 18th century:In 1713-1719: Mughal Furrukhsiyar, attacked the Sikh fortress of Gurdaspur in Punjab, killing thousands and sending others in collars and chains to the emperor (Sookdheo p 265)In 1738, Nadir Shah of Iran invaded India, slaughtered 200,000, plundered and enslaved, returning home with thousands of slaves, including a few thousand beautiful girls and immense treasure (Khan p 104, p 199).Reign of Terror – After his accession to the throne of Delhi, Farrukh-Siyar launched the sternest proceedings against the Sikhs, who had under Banda Singh Bahadur freed much of the Punjab from mughal rule.The British captured Bengal in 1757 yet Muslim rulers continued their slave taking around India.Afghani, Ahmad Shah Abdali attacked 3 times (1757, 1760, 1761) around Mattra, Delhi, Luni, winning the Third Battle of the Panipat against the resistant Marathas in 1761. He slaughtered hundreds of thousands, beheaded and burnt people alive and looted, all in accordance with Islam. Massacres occurred in cold blood after the battle. Severed heads were piled up and people enslaved -22,000 in one case. Victims were humiliated, abused and suffered atrocities. His prisoners were deprived of food and drink and paraded in long lines before being beheaded . (Khan p 104, Bostom p 657).Sultan TipuIslamic violence and enslavement of others continued to the end. The last independent Muslim ruler Tipu Sultan (1750-1799), a nationalist hero for standing up to the British, killed 10,000 Hindus and Christians and enslaved 7000 in his wars against Travancore. The enslaved were forced into Islam. A Muslim chronicler notes 70,000 Coorgis were forced into Islam. (Khan p 200)The East India company passed the Indian slavery Act V banning slavery in 1843—at the time slavery existed in Bengal, Madras, Bombay (Khan p 335)Hunting those that fled the Islamic conquest: Islam’s sadism:Those resisting Islamic control, enslavement, rape and those whose entire property and family had been taken (rich or poor) or were unable to meet crushing taxes , had fled to the jungles. Islam never had complete control and millions resisted –they were not subjects (Khan p 98-99). People left the land resulting in famines killing thousands. Some became robbers.Several Muslim rulers hunted people referred to as bandits and rebels (Muwattis), slaughtering the males and enslaving their women and children or slaughtering them too as Islamic law allows if they ‘resist’ (Reliance of the Traveller, Law o9.10 p 603).Eg under Ghiyasuddin Balban (r 1265-85) as he cleared the jungles and areas around Delhi:“the blood of the rioters ran in streams, heaps of slain were to be seen near every village and jungle and the stench of the dead reached as far as the Ganges” (Khan p 250)Muslim traveller Ibn Buttuta(about 1345) witnessed SADISM towards Hindu prisoners and their wives and children under Sultan Ghayasuddin (Ghiyath al-Din)“All the infidels found in the jungle were taken prisoners; they had stakes sharpened at both ends and made the prisoners’ carry them on their shoulders. Each was accompanied by his wife and children and they were thus led into the camp……. In the morning, the Hindus who were made prisoners the day before, were divided into four groups, and each of these was led to one of the four gates of the main enclosure. There they were impaled on the posts they had themselves carried. Afterwards their wives were butchered and tied to the stakes by their hair. The children were massacred on the bosoms of their mothers, and their corpses left there. Then they struck camp and started cutting down trees in another forest, and all the Hindus who were made captive were treated in the same manner” (translation of Buttuta’s notes quoted in Bostom p644, also Sookdheo p 263, )An 80 year old leader was apparently treated well until they had taken everything from him , then they killed him and stuffed his skin with straw and hung it on a wall!! (Sookdheo p 263) (note this is during the ‘Turkish’ rule of India, a century BEFORE Vlad 111Dracula [1431-1476] spent his youth as a Turkish/Ottoman hostage see part G)Sultan Muhammad Tughlaq (1325-51) hunted the jungle hideouts:“the whole of that country was plundered and laid waste and the heads of the Hindus were brought in and hung upon the ramparts of the fort of Baran” (cited in Khan p 251)Babur (1483-1540) noted the rebelliousness of the people who hid in the jungles. He wrote of his arrival in Agra:“neither grain for ourselves or corn for our horses was to be had. The villagers out of hostility and hatred to us, had taken to thieving and highway robbery; there was no moving on the roads….All the inhabitants had run away to jungles in terror.”(Khan p 95).But he slaughtered making piles of bodies and heads (Babur’s memoirs in Bostom p 651-3)Emperor Jahangir hunted such rebels, enslaving and sending 200,000 (1619-20) to slave markets in Iran on one occasion (Khan p 251). A traveller in India (1612-14) noted Jahangir’s wealth and the extreme poverty of ordinary people.Creating the Roma or Roma chave people:Roma can mean man and Roma chave means sons of the Indian god Rama. Many people fled India to avoid enslavement or conversion –they are the Romanies or gypsies of today found throughout Europe (Hitler killed them too) and the US. Gypsy legends give their origin as India. ‘Researches based on their language, customs, rituals, and physiogonomy affirm that it is Hindus from India who form the bulk of these people in Europe.’ (Lal [a] p451).Their 1st exodus seems to have occurred around the 7th century, coinciding with the Arab invasion of Sind. Mahmud Ghazni took them away in every campaign (997-1030) . The biggest group exited across Afghanistan to Europe in the 12th and 13th centuries following the defeat of Prithviraj Chauhan by Muhammad Ghauri. THEY ARE FREEDOM LOVING PEOPLE, and skilled craftspeople with a remarkable talent for music. (Lal [a] p 451-2)Slave uses: forced to serve Islam while Indian culture was trashed. What true Indian can tolerate this?The slave armies of the Sultanate had Turks, Persians, Seljuks, Oghus (Iraqi Turkmen), Afghans and Khiljis and black slaves . When the Khilji’s came to power (1290-1320), the first non-slave rulers of India, enslaved and forcibly converted Indians appeared in the army, despite objections, because they feared an attack from outside India. They had just ousted the previous ‘Turkish’ rule and couldn’t trust the loyalty of any in the army! Sultan Firoz Tughlaq (r 1351-88) fearing attack by Islamized Mongols, allowed some Hindus into the army.Indian soldiers, generally converted slaves with the lowest rank, cared for animals (elephants, horses) and performed personal service to higher ranks. They cleared jungles, made roads, set up camp and were in the front line of attacks to absorb the initial blows. Escape was impossible. Very few converted slaves rose to prominent position through valour and loyalty to the Muslim ruler (Khan p 304). .Particularly following the formation of the Delhi sultanate (1206) many slaves were retained in India, employed in every possible occupation –from cleaning up filth, labouring, cutting jungles to playing music and singing (Lal [d] p 553) They were forced to build mosques, minarets and palaces using the materials from destroyed religious sites, libraries or monasteries etc of their own. The ‘might of Islam’ mosque (Qwat-ul-islam) in Delhi is built over an idol temple and uses materials from 27 destroyed Hindu and Jain temples. Likewise for Deli’s Qutb Minar minaret where the wonderful sculptured Hindu figures on the stones are defaced or upside down or concealed (Khan p 299-300)Slaves worked in royal karkhana (factories or workhouses) particularly in the Sultanate and Mogul periods. They made everything from gifts, saddles, textiles, weapons…thousands were involved (Khan p 305)Slaves served at court minded wives and concubines (Akbar, Jahangir and Shah Jahan had 5,000-6,000 women each in 1556-1658). Slaves were guards and administrators. Slaves danced, sang, played musical instruments, cared for hunting and food animals and were physicians. Sultan Muhammad Shah Tughlaq had 1,200 physicians and 10,000 falconers plus 1,000 slave musicians who taught music (Khan p 306).As usual, females and young boys provided sexual services. A Dutchman visiting India in the 17th century noted the sexual indulgence of Muslim rulers and noblemen who were pampered and entertained by concubines and wives and freely ‘enjoyed’ the concubines in the presence of the wife (Khan p310)In the Sindh (Bahawalpur), before it was incorporated into Pakistan (1954), the last Nawab had over 390 women and needed a wide range of tools to satisfy them eg 600 dildos (Khan p 311)Huge numbers of slaves were involved in building—eg 70,000 for Sultan Alauddin Khilji (1296-1316). Building great monuments to themselves never stopped as when one ruler died or was removed, the successor built his own new monuments and palaces eg abandoning Iltutmish’s old city, Sultan Ghiysuddin Balban (r1265-85) built the Qasr-i-Lal (Red Fort) in Delhi. Delhi was a series of cities built by different Muslim rulers.Sultan Firoz Tughlaq (r1351-1388) had 180,000slaves. Of these a contingent of masons and builders with 12,000 slaves may have been involved in stone cutting alone! (Khan p 301). The buildings constructed during Islamic rule were designed and built by skilled Indian slave craftsmen, artisans and labourers at all levels, watched over by Muslim masters with whips (Korrah) (Khan p 301).Suffering slaves:Humiliation and cruelty: When Sultan Mahmud (997-1030) brought Hindu King Jaipal of Kabul to Ghanzi and subjected him to extreme humiliation, Jaipal jumped into a fire. (Khan p 291). Balban (about 1260) brought Hindu leading men and men of position, bound, shackled and chained to Delhi where Sultan Nasiruddin had the leading men executed –rendering others ‘tamed.’ (Lal [c] p 542) As we have seen many times in this series, Islam does everything to strip others of their dignity, equality, honor and self-respect. The excessive Jizya tax is paid in a public humiliation procedure.People were caught via lassos or ropes dragged around groups. They were tied, sometimes with iron shackles on the feet, sometimes around the neck and chained –until their spirit was broken and they were forcibly converted but they remained slaves. People capable of bearing arms were beheaded (Lal [d] p 552) . They were hit around the neck (no doubt reminding them they could be beheaded as they do when kafirs pay the jizya), forced on brutally long marches, exposed to the burning sun during the day and freezing cold at night, starved and given little water. Children were separated from parents. People writhed in agony and wailed (15th century report in Lal [c] p 543, Khan p 292)Eunuchs: All over the Islamic world, the conquered were castrated, including in India. This was done so men could guard harems, provide carnal indulgence for rulers, give devotion to the ruler as they had no hope of a family of their own and of course, this quickly reduced the breeding stock of the conquered. Castration was a common practice throughout Muslim rule possibly contributing to the DECLINE in India’s population from 200 million in 1000 CE to 170 million in 1500 CE (Khan p 314)Once Sultan Bakhtiyar Khilji conquered Bengal in 1205, it became a leading supplier of castrated slaves. This remained the case into the Mogul period (1526-1857).Akbar the Great (1556-1605) owned eunuchs. Said Khan Chaghtai owned 1,200 eunuchs (an official of Akbar’s son Jahangir)! In Aurangzeb’s reign, in 1659 at Golkunda (Hyderabad), 22, 000 boys were emasculated and given to Muslim rulers and governors or sold. (Khan 313).Sultan Alauddin Khilji (r 1296-1316) had 50,000 boys in his personal service; Sultan Muhammad Tughlaq (r1325-51) had 20,000 and Sultan Firoz Tughlaq (r 1351-1388) had 40,000 (Firoz Tulghlaq liked to collect boys in any way and had 180,000 slaves in total (Lal [c] p 542). Several commanders under various sultans were eunuchs. Muslim historians record the ‘infatuation’ of sultans Mahmud Ghazni, Qutbuddin Aibak, and Sikandar Lodi –for handsome young boys! Sultan Mahmud was infatuated by his Hindu commander Tilak (Khan p 314)Islam’s impact:1) Worsening of social ills:In an effort to avoid enslavement and rape certain social ills increased and new ones developed.a) Sati: where a wife throws herself on the funeral pyre was commendable but not compulsory in Indian society. This possibly increased during Muslim invasions when many men were killed and women left vulnerable.b) Child marriage: Girls were betrothed to young Hindu boys to protect the girls from Muslim predators…The British also attempted to stop this practice (Khan p 253)c) Caste system: Egalitarian Islam is a lie—the low caste who converted were still despised by upper ranks of Muslims and couldn’t enter mosques etc and this continues today eg ‘Bengal’ (Khan p 249-250). Many lower caste Indians were the strongest fighters against Islam which is a very white Arab supremacist, apartheid system.Nehru notes Islam: “made its caste system, which still had an element of flexibility in it, more rigid and fixed’ (Khan p 250)Under Islam the lower castes increased as people were stripped of their wealth and position right down to farmers whose property was taken while people were subjected to crushing taxes –hence many were pushed to the lowest level.These began under Islam, but stopped under British rule.d) Jauhar:–unknown in pre-Islamic India. The earliest record occurs in the Chachnama by Muslim chronicler al-Kufi (Bostom p 81). Hindu women committed suicide by jumping into the fire (or other acts) to avoid enslavement and sexual violation by Muslims. When Qasim conquered Sindh, palace women set themselves on fire (Fort at Raor) (Lal [a] p 438). In Chittor jauhar occurred 3 times at least eg 1303 under attack by Alauddin Khilji, again in 1535 under attack by Bahadur Shah of Gujarat and in 1568 under attack by Akbar (possibly 8,000 women) Even in the time of partition into India and Pakistan (1947), it occurred again as non-Muslims eg Hindus were attacked (Khan p 252).e) Thuggee cult (Thags): these were a religio-cultural cult of the goddess Kali who engaged in night-time robbery and murder. The British eradicated them through selective assassination, infiltration, police work and offering clemency for those who surrendered and cooperated.In the reign of Feroz Shah Khilji (1290-96) reports record him capturing 1000 Thags —the cult seems to have developed following the Islamic invasion and devastation.Reports from others pre-Islam eg visitors from China, suggest that such crime was not the case pre-Islam. (Khan p 255)While the British removed or attempted to remove these social ills and stopped enslavement, Muslims not only failed to stop social ills but worsened them. Indeed slavery and rape; child marriage; violence to women and to children who don’t pray, violence to non-Muslims; taking the property of non-Muslims; and an apartheid system of Muslim/non-Muslim, Male/female, white Arab/black Indian and many other ‘delights’ are part of Islam’s text, laws and ‘culture.’2) Cultural, artistic and religious destruction; Backwardness and destruction of learning.Even Nehru who gives a rosy picture of Islam noted:“The Moslems who came to India from outside brought no new technique or political or economic structure. In spite of a religious belief in the brotherhood of Islam, they were class bound and feudal in outlook. In technique and in the methods of production and industrial organisation, they were inferior to what prevailed in India..” (cited in Khan p 185)Nehru noted the Muslims didn’t build one good college in 8 centuries! (Khan p 248)Despite being a creative and learned population initially, India made no notable contribution to science, philosophy and literature during Islamic rule (Khan p 249). Pre-Islamic control, India had significant achievements in science, mathematics (zero, algebra, geometry, decimal system), literature, philosophy, medicine, astronomy, architecture and music. Pre-Islam’s arrival eg in 630-650s a Chinese pilgrim describes Indian boys and girls from age 7 studying grammar, science of arts and crafts, medicine, logic, and philosophy and that primary education was relatively widespread. Muslim Caliphs hired Indian mathematicians and physicians who set up hospitals and medical schools in Baghdad. (Khan p 201-204). Muslims from Baghdad came to Taxila (Takshashila) University to study medicine. Muslim students and others came to India to learn science, mathematics, medicine, pharmacology, toxicology and more. The large number of reputed universities were eventually all destroyed by Muslims. At times Hindus rebuilt temples and returned to teaching only to have them repeatedly destroyed. Muslims set up madrassas for Muslims.In 770, an Indian scholar brought two highly important mathematical works to Baghdad eg Brahmasiddhanta (Sindhind to Arabs) by the great 7th century Indian mathematician Brahmagupta –a mathematician and astronomer –which contained early ideas of algebra. The second manuscript contained a revolutionary system of denoting number and the concept of zero. In the 9th century, Muslim Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi took this work, combined it with Greek geometry (The Greek contribution in science, medicine, philosophy is huge), to become what we call today as algebra. Indian numerals were used by al-Khwarizmi in algorithms (a Latinized version of his name) to solve certain mathematical problems. Hence Muslims may have contributed but they certainly did not discover either zero or algebra and our so-called ‘Arabic Numerals’ are actually Indian (Hindu) Numerals.(Khan p 202) In Brahmagupta’s Khandakhadyaka (Arkanda), Arabs first became acquainted with a scientific system of astronomy in the 8th century. Books of medicine, toxicology, philosophy, chemistry and more were also taken into the Islamic world and translated. Indian mathematics became wide spread. Even a Spanish Muslim (11th century) praised the Indians for their superior knowledge in astronomy, mathematics, medicine, pharmacology, chemistry… .(Khan p 203-4). (Note Mayans also developed zero long before Islam entered the world!)India’s greatest mathematical system, the decimal system used today was the work of 3 great mathematicians—Bhashkaracharya and his daughter, Lilavati, and Brahmagupta.Marco polo noted the praiseworthy female Rudramani Devi who ruled Telugu for 40 years (Khan p 255).Islam drove women into their homes and under the veil (Nehru in Khan p 255).As Islam spread Indian culture was debased and degraded. Centres of learning and libraries were destroyed. To Islam, everything else is jahiliyya (ignorance). Brahmans were accused of teaching ‘wicked sciences’ so schools and temples were constantly destroyed (Khan p 199)Alberuni (973-1050), a Persian scholar captured by Sultan Mahmud Ghazni (r 997-1030) was brought to India and travelled for 20 years studying Indian mathematics, philosophy, civil and religious law, geography, religion, astronomy (knowledge of the distance to planets, solar and lunar eclipses), physics and metaphysics and also India’s geography (cities etc) and customs. He wrote detailed books about these which informed invaders and facilitated their attacks and subjugation of India (Lal [a] p 448). He recorded the Muslim conquests of India, noting:“Mahmud utterly ruined the prosperity of the country …..Hindu sciences have retired far away from those parts of the country conquered by us, and have fled to places which our hands cannot yet reach (recorded in his book 1030-cited in Khan p 89, p 191, Bostom p 83, Trifkovic p 110, full quote part J)As for art, architecture, and religion – Muslim historians record with great delight the massive destruction of the religious sites of Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, Sikhs etc on a scale with few parallels. The destruction of the temple that took 200 years to build in Mathura is utterly distressing (Trifkovic p 110). Ever heard of Angkor Wat and Angkor Tom and the whole complex built in Cambodia? Angkor Wat was built around the 12century to honour the Hindu god Vishnu—while in India, equally magnificent temple areas with their magnificent ‘human’ decoration (so offensive to Islam) were being destroyed! Despite being a UNESCO area, I fear for these and similar areas in Asia as Islam penetrates and takes control!Tragically Indian builders and artists were forced into the service of Islam with its endless restrictions on representations of human s and other animals—but some evidence of India’s fabulous art with its wonderful representations of people (vigorous and sensual, Trifkovic p 110) etc still exists and hopefully will fully revive. It’s too distressing to think of what was destroyed!What Islam has, it stole from others as the Arabian Peninsula tribes lagged well behind the social, political and civilisational development of India, Persia, Egypt and Syria (Khan p 175)(and look what happened when Islam arrived!!) Bringing in a watermelon doesn’t require or excuse the utter destruction and abuse carried out under the text and laws of Islam.3) Dhimmitude, destitution and decline of native, non-Muslim Indians: Indians became dhimmis subjected to extreme degradation, exploitation and humiliation in their own country. (see articles this site on dhimmitude in general and its economic, social, political and religious aspects –see Bat Ye’Or’s work.). Islamic text, the Pact of Umar and Islamic laws defining dhimmitude remain till the day of Judgement. The humiliating payment of the substantial jizya with its accompanying threat of death is only one of a mass of taxes, threats and abuses non-Muslims were subjected to. When scholar Qazi Mughisuddin advised Sultan Alauddin Khilji (r 1296-1316) on collection of the Kharaj (land tax causing extreme economic deprivation) he also suggested a humiliating procedure including:“should the collector choose to spit into his mouth, he opens it. The purpose of this extreme humility on his part and the collector’s spitting into his mouth, is to show the extreme subservience incumbent on his class, the glory of Islam and the orthodox faith, and the degradation of the false religion (Hinduism).” (cited in Khan p 107-108).Exploitative taxes were used to enrich the treasury and force people into Islam outside mass conversion by the sword.Hindus became ‘serfs’ in their own land, forced to pay taxes and customs which considerably exceeded those required under Hindu law (Khan p 160). Conquests were for exploitation.From Qasim on, extracting jizya was a political and religious duty exacted:“with vigour and punctuality, and frequently with insult..” “The native population had to feed every Muslim traveller for 3 days and nights and had to submit to many other humiliations which are mentioned by Muslim historians” (Lal [a] p 439)Sultan Alauddin Khilji (reigned1296-1316) took 50-75% of the peasants produce in taxes (mainly the Kharaj) reducing peasants to bonded government slaves subjected to humiliation and destitution. Many sold their family to pay taxes or fled to the jungle (Khan p 108, 172). “The Hindu women and children went out begging at the doors of the Musalmans” (Sufi saint Shamsuddin Turk commenting on Alauddin in Khan p 191)During Aurangzeb reign (Akbar’s great grandson, r1658-1707), a European courtier, Niccolao Manucci, living in India noted Hindus converted to avoid taxes (Khan p 109-110).Eyewitnesses report in the 17th and 18th century that destitute peasants, their wives and children (males were castrated) were taken and sold by tax collectors to pay taxes. The people had become beggars in their own country (Khan p 88, 94, 283-4).Also removal of livelihood, position and false charges were used to force others into Islam. The council of Surat noted in 1668:“The Muhammadan would lodge a complaint to the Kazi (judge) that he had called the Prophet names or spoken contumaciously of their religion, produce a false witness or two and the poor man was forced to circumcision and made to embrace Islam.” (cited in Khan p 110)Mass slaughter, enslavement, forced conversion, castration of young boys and the use of females as sex/reproductive slaves producing Muslims, plus the entry of Muslims from elsewhere caused a fast increase in Muslims plus a decline in others. Violence and exploitation forced people to ‘convert.’ Villages were deserted. The loss of people, property, farm animals and grain (all booty) caused poverty and famine, killing thousands of ordinary Hindus.4) Plunder of India’s wealth.India’s wealth in its people or its resources and products were taken by Muslims and sent to markets or Islamic centres of power eg Ghazni (Afghanistan) or Samarkand (Central Asia). Wealth was also sent as tribute, gifts and slaves for caliphs in Damascus, Baghdad, Cairo or Tashkent until Akbar (Mughal) and also to Islam’s holy cities of Mecca and Medina, Rum (Constantinople), Persia and others even in the Mughal period. India’s wealth was transferred to the wider Islamic world while India was depleted and reduced to misery. From Mohammad, Islamic conquests were to plunder and loot the wealth of the conquered and to enslave and ‘convert’ and to impose heavy taxes on the remaining non-Muslims to keep the treasuries going. Because Islam also aims to spread Islam over all, it destroys the culture, religions, sacred and precious objects, and history of others.Muslim rulers:“founded its luxury on India’s general poverty’ and India, under Muslim rule, experienced a series of famines, a fabulous death rate, …(Khan p 262)A nearly contemporary account of Mahmud Ghazni’s attacks in India reveals the incredible wealth taken. At one stage Mahmud had a throne of gold and silver built (see the historians account Bostom p 632-639) and he rebuilt Ghazni costing 7 million gold coins (Lal [a] p 447)Endless accounts from the beginning to the end describe the slaves, gold and silver idols and other objects, coins, precious stones, jewellery, furniture, clothes, cloths, indigo, Indian steel, equipment, grain, livestock (for food or used in battle, farming or transport), indeed everything was taken and usually what was left was burnt. Dead bodies were stripped of decent clothes, and pockets searched for coins, jewels etc (see Lal, Bostom, Khan).The loss of bullion (gold, silver) destabilised and devalued Indian currency so Indian merchants lost credit with foreign merchants. India’s balance of trade was also adversely affected. India was nolonger a seller of raw and finished goods. Indian merchants couldn’t continue their trade. Some had to do deals with externally based Muslim rulers eg Mahmud of Ghazni (around 1012) to facilitate trade and allow caravans to travel unmolested! (Lal [a] p 444)Why would people be creative, innovative or work hard when a Muslim could take it all?5) White Arab supremacy:Indians are dark skinned and hence subjected to Islam’s hatred of black/dark skinned people (see Mohammad’s and Islam’s antiBlack racism. Part D in Islam’s genocidal slavery:.). Also, non-Arab converts to Islam are always second class. Islam is a white Arab supremacist ideology where converts must turn on their own history and culture and obliterate them, then they must revere Arab culture, the Arab language etc. For legitimacy, rulers tried to claim a relationship to the Arabs particularly to Mohammad’s tribe (Quraysh). ‘Well into the 20th century, the dark-skinned Nawab of Bahawalpur (Sindh) who had an obsession for white women for producing brighter children, fanatically claimed his ancestry to the Abbasid family of the Quraysh clan’ (Khan p 181) This same absurdity is found amongst non-Arab Muslim leaders in many areas over time (eg Africa).Hatred of black people is revealed in comments by Muslim conquerors of India in parts J, K which examine the jihad against India from comments made by the conquerors themselves or their chroniclers.Conclusion: The inhuman behaviour applied to the whole population by Muslims was the same whether the Muslims were Sufis, Arabs, Afghanis, Turks, or Mogul as all followed Islam’s laws, text and the fine example of Mohammad. It should also be noted that the violence and enslavement continued even after they had virtual control over India because the aim was not merely to conquer but to force all into Islam. Muslims did not come to join Indian society, they came to wipe it out and replace it with Islam—which tells them that they own everything because it’s the booty promised by allah. The pagans/idolaters, polytheists had to convert or die and only then could there be (Islamic) peace! Slaves were the just reward for Islam’s fighters–part of the booty promised by allah.linksSlavery in IslamSLAVE-TAKING DURING MUSLIM RULESlavery in India - WikipediaTHE ACQUISITION AND TRADE OF ELITE SLAVES IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURYSLAVE MARKETS IN MEDIEVAL INDIAhttps://www.historydiscussion.net/history-of-india/delhi-sultanate/administration-of-india-under-the-delhi-sultanate-history/6585Aurangzeb's Fatwa on Jizya - MANASJizya - WikipediaKharaj - WikipediaCategory:Taxation in Islam - WikipediaIslam and the JizyaThe Delhi Sultanate’s Treatment of HindusIslam’s Indian slave trade (Part i) in Islam’s genocidal slavery: part I. – Terror News NetworkHindu civilisation and slavery | IndiaFactsMedieval India: Enslavement of Hindus by Arab & Turkish Invaders – Sanskriti - Hinduism and Indian Culture WebsiteIslam’s Indian slave trade (Part i) in Islam’s genocidal slavery: part I. – Terror News NetworkMedieval India: Enslavement of Hindus by Arab & Turkish Invaders – Sanskriti - Hinduism and Indian Culture WebsiteReferences:1) Bostom, A. G. ‘The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic holy war and the fate of the non-Muslims.’ Prometheus Books. New York. 2005.2) Khan, M. A. ‘Islamic Jihad: A legacy of forced conversion, imperialism and slavery.’ iUniverse, Bloomington, IN. 2009. (An Indian ex-Muslim)3) Lal [a], K.S. Muslims invade India p 433-455 in Bostom (1) above.4) Lal [b], K.S. Jihad under the Turks and jihad under the Mughals p 456-461 in Bostom (1) above.5) Lal [c], K.S. Slave-taking during Muslim rule p535-548 in Bostom (1) above.6) Lal [d], K.S. Enslavement of Hindus by Arab and Turkish invaders p 549-554 in bostom (1) above.7) Lal [e], K.S. The Origins of Muslim slave system p 529-534 in bostom (1) above.8) Reliance of the Traveller: A classic manual of Islamic sacred law. In Arabic with facing English Text, commentary and appendices edited and translated by Nuh Ha Mim Keller Al-Misri, Ahmad ibn Naqib; Amana publications Maryland USA 1994.9) Sookhdeo, P. ‘Global Jihad: The future in the face of Militant Islam.’ Isaac Publishing. 2007.10) Trifkovic, S. ‘The sword of the prophet.’ Regina Orthodox Press, Inc. 2002.11) Ye’or, Bat. ‘Islam and Dhimmitude: Where civilisations collide’ translated from the French by Miriam Kochan and David Littman. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press 2002, reprint 2005.