Abraham Eraly - The Age of Wrath - A History of the Delhi Sultanate

There is a good amount of information about the lifestyle of the upper classes in medieval India in the chronicles of the age, but there is hardly any information about the life of the common people. Circumstantial evidence shows that even when the common people had the means to live in comfort, they usually dared not to do so, for fear of attracting the attention of vulturous government officers and other predators. Besides, they were anxious to save for the contingency of any future adversity, which they feared was always around the corner. So they generally lived frugally, often well below their means. And what wealth they could save, they buried, usually in pits dug inside their houses. The buried treasure might not grow, but it would be at least safe, they felt, and it gave their owners a sense of security. According to Shahab-ud-din, ‘the inhabitants of India like to make money, and hoard it.’ This was their insurance against the uncertainties of life.

Nearly all the rulers of the early medieval India, rajas as well as sultans, were predators, concerned primarily with the preservation and expansion of their wealth and power, scarcely ever with the welfare of the people. They were all warlords. And if kings had no vital interest in the welfare of their people, the people had no vital interest in the welfare of their kings either. Whether their king was a Hindu or a Muslim, the common people had no sense of identity with him, and were indifferent to what happened to him, whether he rose or fell, or was killed.

This attitude of fatalism, which was pervasive in medieval India, was the reason why people’s rebellions were very rare in India, despite their inhuman oppression by the rulers. By and large people acquiesced with the conditions of their life, however harsh they might be. As Dubois, an early nineteenth century French missionary in India, would comment in another context, ‘The people of India have always been accustomed to bow their heads beneath the yoke of a cruel and oppressive despotism, and moreover, strange to say, have always displayed mere indifference towards those who have forced them to it. Little cared they whether the princes under whom they groaned were of their own country or from foreign lands. The frequent vicissitudes that befell those in power were hardly noticed by their subjects. Never did the fall of one of these despots cause the least regret; never did the elevation of another cause the least joy. Hard experience had taught Hindus to disregard not only the hope of better times but the fear of worse.’

A COMMON FEATURE OF premodern societies nearly everywhere in the world was slavery, and it was widespread in India too in medieval times. Slaves were an indispensable part of the household of affluent Indians in most parts of the subcontinent. Even some mystics kept slaves. As for nobles, most of them kept a large number of slaves, including many concubines. That was an essential part of their ostentatious lifestyle. Khan Jahan Maqbul, Firuz Tughluq’s vizier, for instance, is said to have maintained, according to Afif, as many as 2000 concubines! The largest number of slaves in medieval India was, predictably, in the service of the Delhi sultans, who employed them in various government departments and in the royal army, as well as in their personal service. The sultan’s personal attendants were all invariably slaves.

The number of slaves maintained by the Delhi sultans varied considerably from reign to reign, depending on the requirements of each sultan. The sultan who had the largest number of slaves was Firuz Tughluq, who is reported to have had as many as 180,000 slaves, and is said to have issued an order to his officers that the best of the captives they enslaved during military campaigns should be reserved for him. It was not however to pander to his personal vanity that Firuz kept so many slaves, but to give them training in crafts and to employ them in productive work, so that they became economic assets and contributed to the revenue of the state and the prosperity of the land.

Capturing people to enslave them was part of the spoils that sultans, officers and soldiers sought during military campaigns. For instance, Qutb-ud-din Aibak during his Gujarat campaign captured 20,000 people to be enslaved, and in his Kalinjar campaign he herded as many as 50,000 people into slavery. This was the usual practice of the sultans during their campaigns of conquest. They also enslaved captives during their punitive campaigns within the empire. Captured professionals too were enslaved, as Timur did during his Indian campaign, when he, according to the early fifteenth century Persian chronicler Yazdi, captured as slaves ‘several thousand artisans and professional people.’ Like invaders, marauders too often seized men, women and children, to sell them as slaves. Sometimes children were sold into slavery by their needy parents or by hostile relatives.

Slavery was prevalent in most ancient, medieval and early modern societies all over the world. It was common in India too from ancient times, but it had never been as widespread as it was during the early medieval period, when slave trade became an important part of the Indian economy. There was even a regular export of slaves from India during this period, but Firuz Tughluq forbade it, presumably because he himself wanted to accumulate a large number of slaves. All major cities in medieval India had slave markets, where slaves were sold like cattle; in Delhi, adequate availability of slaves in the market was maintained by regular fresh supplies, as Barani indicates.

The price of slaves, as of any other commodity, depended on the prevailing demand and supply equation in the market, as well on the quality of individual slaves. According to Battuta, rustic women captured during raids fetched only very low prices, because of their large numbers and crude ways. During the reign of Ala-ud-din Khalji the prices of various categories of slaves were fixed by the sultan himself, as part of his market regulations. On the whole slaves were quite cheap in Delhi; they were even cheaper in other Indian cities. According to Shahab-ud-din, ‘the value … of a young slave girl for domestic service does not exceed eight tankas’ in Delhi. More charming girls, those fit for concubinage, fetched fifteen tankas. However, some Indian slave-girls cost as much as ‘20,000 tankas, and even more … [for they] are remarkable for their beauty, and the grace of their manners.’

THE POSITION OF slaves in Islamic society was quite different from what it was in most other societies. Muslims generally treated their slaves in the same manner as they treated their other servitors, and the position that a slave occupied, as well as the privileges he enjoyed, depended, as in the case of other servitors, on his aptitude and merit. On the whole, the life and career of a slave in Islamic society was not much different from what he could have had as a free man.

Slaves were of course bonded to their owners, so they had very little personal freedom. But talented and loyal slaves were usually rewarded by their masters by manumitting them. In some cases it was an advantage to be a slave, particularly to be the favourite slave of a sultan or a high official, for that opened up for the slave an avenue for rapid career advancement. A royal slave could even succeed his master on the throne, as indeed three slaves did in the Delhi Sultanate. The first dynasty of the Delhi Sultanate — which ruled the empire for 84 years, from 1206 to 1290—is usually described as the Slave Dynasty, for all the ten rulers of the dynasty were either manumitted slaves or descendants of slaves.

Slaves served in a wide variety of occupations in early medieval India, in administration, army and economy, as well as in households. Royal bodyguards were invariably slaves, Ethiopians slaves being particularly favoured for that service. But very few of the royal slaves were for personal attendance on the sultan; rather, they were mostly treated like any other government staff and assigned to various official duties. This was particularly so in the case of the slaves of Firuz Tughluq, who took special care to treat them well and to employ them in various productive occupations, and thus turn them into economic assets of the state. ‘In all cases, provision was made for their support in a liberal manner,’ states Afif about Firuz’s treatment of his slaves. Sultans generally assigned responsible work to most of their slaves, though some slaves were also employed as entertainers or as menial workers in the royal household. During the reign of Kaiqubad, the last slave sultan, who was a heedless voluptuary, slave boys and girls were, according to Barani, given special training in music, dance, coquetry, and the erotic arts, for those were the primary interests of the sultan.