By Shanmukh-Saswati Sarkar-Dikgaj-Aparna-Kirtivardhan

Indic mercantile dominance of slave economy of Islamic states outside India

Indic merchants controlled the economy of Musqat in Uman, a major center of trade of African slaves.  They enjoyed close connection with the Muslim rulers of Masqat and influenced many of the policies of the Islamic state there. S. B. Miles reported the ruins of Hindu temple at Qalhat, the principal Umani port of the fifteenth century. The argument for fifteenth  century settlement of Indic merchants in Musqat is supported is supported further by de Albuquerque’s report that Hindu merchants from Gujarat escaped from Khyr Fakkan, a secondary port on the  Shimiliya coast of Northern Uman, before he sacked that town in 1507.  Calvin H. Allen has written that “Oral traditions of the Indian merchant community in Musqat allege that these Sindis were the first ‘Banians’ to settle in Musqat and add that they were Bhattis (Bhattiya). Sindi Bhattias apparently thrived under the Portuguese rulers of Musqat. The Umani Chroniclers Ibn Ruzyaq  and Al-salimi both report that a Banian ‘worshipper of the cow’ acted as supply agent for the Portuguese garrison at Musqat, and the Portuguese Commander seems to have accepted advice freely from his agent. However, the Banian eventually became dissatisfied with the Portuguese, especially as the commander wished to marry his daughter, and helped the Yaariba ruler of Uman expel the Europeans from Musqat in 1650. Bhattia support for the Yaariba proved to be very beneficial for the Banians. The community was exempted from paying the poll tax (Jizya) and permission was granted for the construction of a temple. ….The Hindu Community was not affected adversely by the civil war which established the Al Bu Said dynasty in the 1740s, and it continued to prosper under Ahmad b. Said (1743 – 82). In January 1765 the Danish explorer Carsten Niebuhr spent two weeks at Musqat and has left the following description of the Banian community:  “In no other Mahometan city are the Banians so numerous as in Mascat; their number in this city amounts to no fewer than 1200. They are permitted to live agreeably to their own laws, to bring their wives hither, to set up idols in their chambers, and to burn their dead.” The Indic mercantile influence on the oppressive Islamic state of Musqat was so significant that they were even allowed to found four Hindu places of worship.

Sindi Bhattias apparently thrived under the Portuguese rulers of Musqat.

 In 1836 the Arabian traveler J. R. Wellsted described the Hindu community of Musqat, Uman, as constituting ‘a body of the principal merchants’ of that port. Kutchi Bhattias dominated the trade and economic affairs of the port of Musqat, expanding their control in two stages, separated by Said b. Sultan’s transfer of his residence to Zanzibar after 1830. A few Kutchi Bhattias rose to prominence in the service of the commercially mind Sayyid Said. Family legend claims that Gopal’s (Mawji Bhimani) great-grandfather was the first Bhimani to trade in Musqat late in the 18th century. In time, the family founded a business in Musqat, and Gopal Bhimani began to play an active role in Masqati politics. Gopal was among the Banians who encouraged Said b. Sultan to conquer Zanzibar. Once settled in Zanzibar, Said b. Sultan started selling slaves and cloves. During his extended absences in East Africa he delegated most of Masqat’s commercial affairs in the hands of resident Bhattias. Both the treasurer and chief customs official were Kutchi Bhattias, and it was likely at this time that the practice of farming the Musqati customs was instituted, and the Kutchis began to pour into this port. By 1840 the Banian population had reached 2000, and, as stated by Wellsted, the community had become the principal economic power in Musqat. The Kutchi Bhattias flourished in Musqat during the reign of Thuwayni b. Said (1865-68). They continued to control the treasury and customs house, and accrued the profits that had earlier filled the coffers of the ruling family. By the 1870s the Indian merchants dominated the commercial life of Musqat and had replaced the Al Bu Said rulers of the town at the paramount economic power in Uman. Most of them lived and worked in Musqat within the walled portion of the city and close to the Sultan’s Palace.  The Hindus celebrated their religious festivals, such as New Year (Divali), with social gatherings and dinner parties. Typically a dish of the best food would be taken to the Sultan. Banians were also invited to the palace on special occasions, although they would not eat the food prepared by the ruler’s non-Hindu cooks.

The Banians were the leading bankers of Musqat and in due course came to own large land holdings there due to mortgage foreclosures. For example, early in the 1880s Shet Ratansi Purshottam Purecha   began to acquire land along the waterfront of Muscat and eventually came to own all the waterfront property with the exception of the palace, customs house and British political agency. This was only one of the many parcels of land that he came to own, and by the end of the 19th century he and his Banian colleagues owned bulk of the best property in Musqat and Matrah.

During the late 19th century, Shet Ratansi became a leading arms merchant. He dealt with the London firm Schwarte and Hammer and the Hamburg arms dealer Moritz Magnus, and was active in exporting dates to the United States through the New York Forum of William hills (now a subsidiary of Nabisco). The leading bankers of a major slave economy would inevitably fund the slave trade. (Concludes) 

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Courtesy: Myind.net

Click here for Part -I , Part-II, Part-III, Part-IV 

The post Institutionalized slavery in the Muslim regimes (Part – V) first appeared on Sindh Courier.

By Shanmukh-Saswati Sarkar-Dikgaj-Aparna-Kirtivardhan

How Indic merchants facilitated slavery of Indics during the Muslim rule

Slaves were utilized both in India and also exported abroad through the trans-national trade. In post Mughal Awadh, slavery took the form of debtor servitude to the great landlords and/or the bankers, who were often partners.  The great bankers were so powerful that all the officials of the Nawabs were beholden to them, and the bankers, who owned land, tended to turn their peasants and landowners under their power, into debtor slaves.  At other times, the bankers (who were not sufficiently powerful to overrule the talukdars) would often go into partnerships with the Nawab’s officials and the talukdars, allowing them to buy up revenue contracts for districts.  With these, they would often proceed to turn their landowners into debtor slaves, who subsequently led a miserable existence.

The Indian merchants who engaged in exporting Indian (primarily Hindu) slaves to Central Asia were both Hindus and Muslims. The trans-national trade from India to Central Asia was conducted by both Hindu and Muslim traders from India. In 1581 a Portuguese Jesuit missionary Father Antonio Monserrate  who had travelled from Lahore to Kabul had reported that “one tribe in the Punjab, identified as the `Gaccares’, (Ghakkars), had made trading Indian slaves for horses such a regular practice that they had even become associated with the proverb, `slaves from India, horses from Parthia’’’. Some Ghakkars, whose conversion from Hinduism to Islam, had begun by the Timur era, were Hindus, some were Muslims then.

The Indian merchants engaged in exporting Indian (primarily Hindu) slaves to Central Asia were both Hindus and Muslims.

Reasonably large Diasporas of Indian merchants existed in different Central Asian towns throughout the medieval times. They comprised of both Hindus and Muslims.  Scott C. Levi has noted: “ The vast majority of the Indian diaspora in Central Asia was comprised of Hindu merchants  who belonged to any of a number of mercantile – oriented castes engaged in trans-regional trade, brokering or money lending, and were collectively referred to as `Banias’  (or `Banians’) ‘’.  In the sixteenth century Hindu merchant communities existed in Bukhara, Samarkand, Tashkent and other cities in Central Asia. In 19th century British secret agent Ghulab Khan estimated that there were 400 Hindus and 200 Indian Muslims in Bukhara. In the early nineteenth century Harlan asserted that Hindus were active in almost every Bazaar in Central Asia, and Vambrey similarly reported that they maintained a dominant commercial present in both urban and rural markets. The Hindu mercantile community in Afghanistan and Central Asia was extremely wealthy. For example, a single Hindu merchant in Durrani-era Kabul owned 10 million rupees in personal wealth. Bailey has noted that in the early twentieth century, when the Bolsheviks tightened their grip in this region, the merchants from Shikarpur in Sindh    feared that their wealth would be confiscated and asked him for assistance in transferring to India some two million rubles.  Small, but very wealthy Indic mercantile communities were the norm in this region.

Many of the inhabitants of the Indian mercantile diaspora in the early medieval times originated from Multan. Multani traders again comprised of both Hindus and Muslims, but owing to the numerical superiority of the Hindus among the Multani traders, the term Multani became the general name for a Hindu in Central Asia and Persia (as per the eighteenth century lexicon, Bahar-i-Ajam). Many of the traders from Multan were Khatris.  Jean de Thevenot, who travelled in India during 1665-1667, has recorded that “at Multan there is another sort of gentiles whom they call Catry. That town is properly their country and from thence they spread all over the Indies. ” Levi has noted  “because of the Khatris’ increasingly important role in India’s trans-regional trade under the Mughal empire, partly as a result of Mughal patronage, it seems reasonable to suggest that many of the Multanis and the Banias referred to in the historical sources can more specifically be characterized as Khatris “.

The Indic mercantile diaspora played a two-fold role in the export of (primarily Hindu) slaves to Afghanistan and Central Asia: 1) direct export and sale 2) financing the operations.

Khatris have been reported to be present, and highly involved in Northwest India’s trans-regional commerce throughout Afghanistan and Central Asia in the late 17th up to the early twentieth century. For example, in the early 20th century the economic historian LC Jain has noted that the Aroras, a sub caste of Khatris, were known to “control the finances of much of the commerce of India with central Asia, Afghanistan and Tibet “. The British ethnographer Ibbetson has also observed that the Aurora-Khatris were centered in Multan and Derajat and were involved in business throughout Afghanistan and Central Asia. In mid-19th century, George Campbell has noted that the Khatris had monopolized the trade of the Punjab and the greater part of Afghanistan. They were present all over Eastern Afghanistan and were the only Hindus known in Central Asia. They were the chief civil administrators of Punjab and had almost all the literate work in their hands. Even under the Muslim rulers in the west they had risen to high administrative post. No village in Punjab and large parts of Afghanistan could get on without the Khatri who kept the account, did the banking business, and bought and sold the grain. Marwaris arrived in Central Asia somewhat later than the Khatris. Farah Abidin has noted that “ the work Sharaf-nama-i-Shahi mentions that a large number of Indian merchants from North India and Bengal were involved in the trading Enterprises of this region’’. She has also documented that “The most important among the Indian merchants groups who traded overland through Kabul in Iran and Turan in the 16th and 17th century, were  the Multani and Gujarati baniyas, Afghans and Marwaris. It is evident from the sources that thousands of merchants from Mughal India resided semi-permanently in Iran and Turan.. .. It is conceivable that nearly all the Hindus (Multanis) trading in Iran, Turan and Russia were Punjabi Khatris… Another merchant group who trade in this region in the 18th century was Jain baniyas, they were not Multanis but were Marwaris, the natives of Marwar areas of Rajasthan.’’

Indeed, Marwaris were active in the Indian mercantile diaspora in Central Asia from the late seventeenth century, they began to appear in Astrakhan and Central Asia in larger numbers from the early 18th century.  Late 18th and 19th century documents show presence of a substantial number of Marwaris in Central Asia, many of them came from Jaisalmer and likely practiced the Jain religion. Dale has located Marwari Jain Oswals in 17th-century astrakhan. In nineteenth century Bhatias, originally from Sindh, were present in Kabul, Bukhara and traveled up to Arabia.

This Indic mercantile diaspora played a two-fold role in the export of (primarily Hindu) slaves to Afghanistan and Central Asia: 1) direct export and sale 2) financing the operations. It is possibly both, but we believe that their prominent role was in financing.

Babur has written that caravans of ten, fifteen or twenty thousand heads of houses used to come from Hindustan bringing in slaves and other commodities to Kabul. During Babur’s time, the mercantile community in India was largely Indic. So many of the houses he is referring to would be those of the Indic merchants.  Thus, in other words, Indic merchants were exporting caravans full of (primarily Indic) slaves to Central Asia.

In 1558 Anthony Jenkinson has noted that Indian (and Iranian) merchants who visited Bukhara commonly exported slaves to the Bukharan slave market. Further, it has been noted that Indian traders often sold silk (raw and manufactured) and horses in the Russian empire in the middle of the 16th century, which they had likely purchased in exchange for slaves in Kabul, Astrakhan or Bukhara.  Indian slaves were sold in numbers in Bukhara and Astrakhan.

Mostly Hindu merchants from Shikarpoor Sindh had financed several of Ahmad Shah Abdali’s military campaigns. In return they had received a percentage of the captured booty.

In his book on Afghan history, Gulzad has written that “Afghanistan’s external trade was dominated by Hindus, Sikhs, Jews and Armenians. However with the decline of overland trade these communities diversified their professions. The Hindus and Sikhs, aside from trade, monopolized banking, goldsmithing and horticulture. Bankers from these communities rose to prominence in the Durrani Empire [18th century]. Originally they were [mostly Hindu] merchants from Shikarpoor [Sindh] who had financed several of Ahmad Shah’s [Ahmad Shah Abdali] military campaigns. In return they had received a percentage of the captured booty. In some instances this booty was left under their management. They, in turn, often sold the booty and put the money for the loot back into circulation.’’. Ahmad Shah’s booty comprised of several enslaved Hindus and Sikhs of Punjab, Delhi, Mathura and Brindaban. Thus, Indic merchants certainly engaged in direct sale of Indic slaves in Central Asia.

As to the financing, Scott C. Levi has written that “For nearly four centuries [sixteenth to early twentieth] lines of credit stretched from the great financial houses of Northwest India, through tens of thousands of Gumashtas, to ruling elites, village industrialists, agriculturalists, trans-regional traders, retail merchants, and other groups [in Central Asia] in need of capital.’’ Export of Indic slaves consisted of an important component of the trans-regional trade.  Farah Abedin has documented, “A great part of the trade conducted with India via the Bolan Pass and Jalalabad was controlled by Hindu merchants and bankers. The center for their financial exchange was Shikarpur on the Indus, a small entrepot at the Eastern entrance of the Bolan Pass location’’. The route between India and Jalalabad through the Bolan Pass lay on the Southern trade route for transnational trade between India and Central Asia, this is the route the caravans carrying slaves and other commodities would take.   We also know that the Afghan Muslim Lohani merchants led caravans from Punjab and Sindh   to Central Asia. The Lohanis were connected to the Pashto tribes whose territories the caravans had to cross on their way between the Punjab and Sindh and Kabul. Their massive presence mostly ensured safe passage for the Caravans, provided the duties were paid to the various tribal chiefs. The Shikarpuri merchants likely funded the Lohanis, the duo shared a symbiotic relationship. Also, note that the upper layer of Shikarpuri Merchants residing in the major towns of Central Asia, such as Bukhara and Khokand, provided credit to the Central Asian traders buying the Indian goods brought by the caravans. Indic slaves comprised an important component of the caravan trade.  Any event, the Indic mercantile diaspora in Afghanistan and Central Asia was heavily involved in financing and usury.  The merchant-money lenders of the Indian diaspora in Central Asia emerged from heavily capitalized financial organizations, or family firms, largely centered in the Multan and Marwar regions of Northern India. In 1676 Tavernier reported that “Multan is the place from whence all the banyans migrate who come to trade in Persia, where they follow the same occupation as the Jews… And they surpass them in their usury.” In the late nineteenth century, Swedish archaeologist Sven Hedin has noted that in a particular caravanserai in Kashghar the “principal inhabitants were half a score Hindus from Shikarpur, their chief business was money-lending… “Even as late as early 20th century, Danish geographer Olfusen noted that the Hindu merchants were dominant elements in the money-lending industry in Bukhara and `their usurious operations were said to extend even to the Bokharan villages’.

In hindsight, it is not surprising that Indic merchants would finance the trade of Indic slaves in Central Asia and Afghanistan, or even export and sell them directly. They, primarily those from Gujarat and Sindh, heavily financed the trade of African slaves, and transferred them to different parts of the world in the ships they owned.  It is also known that as part of debt collection, the Shikarpuri merchants used to seize the women and children of Uighur peasants as sureties.  Would they treat Indic slaves any different from African slaves, owing to common bonds of national origin and religious persuasion? Unlikely, because of their extreme clannishness, they did not view the lowly slaves who invariably emerged from less privileged social groups as their people; unlikely, also because they commoditized and monetized all values, land and people.  To reinforce the same, peruse the following account narrated by Pedro Machado:   “ Portuguese authorities expressed mounting concern over the use (and “conversion’’) of African slaves by Muslims on Mozambique island.  Indeed, “ Arab’’ and Swahili merchants were regarded as owning and trading slaves by the 1720s to a degree that the Portuguese considered alarming.  Islam was perceived as a menacing threat to the European presence on the coast because of the belief that any growth in the number of slaves in Muslim hands would enlarge the general population of Muslims in East Africa.  Official rhetoric stressing the “nefarious’’ influence of Islam on the African population actually disguised a fear of Muslim commercial competition that led to Portuguese attempts over the course of the century to curb this merchants’ ownership of, and trade in, African slaves.  It was in this environment of general and innate distrust of non-Christian that the Portuguese published a proclamation in the early 1740s extending prohibition against Muslim ownership of slaves to “Hindu’’ merchants.  In protest, and reflecting the extent to which the slaves had become integral to their labor requirements  in the territory in the first half of the 18th century, [Gujarati] Vaniyas drafted a petition which demanded that they be allowed to trade and own slaves. “As they have until the present, to make use of them while they [Vaniyas] are on [Mozambique] island’’.  They argued that, as “Hinduism’’ was not a proselytizing religion and their “inviolable laws’’ did not allow them to convert Africans, the prohibition should not apply to them.  They added, moreover, that they allowed their slaves to be baptized and encouraged them to attend Catholic Church services on the island regularly.’’ So, the Muslims converted non-Muslim slaves to Islam, the Christian Europeans and Americans converted the non-Christian slaves to Christianity. But,  Indic merchants owned and traded in non-Hindu slaves alright, just did not convert the Hindu slaves to their religion; they converted them (the African slaves who likely earlier followed their native religion) to Christianity, just so that they would be allowed to own and trade in those slaves.  This was their commitment to humanity (trading slaves) and their religion (not converting the slaves they owned). (Continues)  

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Courtesy: Myind.net

Click here for Part -I , Part-II

The post Institutionalized slavery in the Muslim regimes (Part-III) first appeared on Sindh Courier.

By Shanmukh-Saswati Sarkar-Dikgaj-Aparna-Kirtivardhan

Religious Dimension in Slavery during Muslim Rule

Although Mughals enslaved both Indic and Muslim peasants and other plebian rebels, Hindus were at the receiving end more often.  This is because the bulk of the peasantry was Indic.  As stated before, about the end of the 16th century, only about 1 Muslim for every thousand Hindus was connected with the agriculture. Although the Muslim proportion of peasantry increased in the next century, with the mass conversions of the peasantry of provinces like Bengal and Sindh to Islam, still, peasantry remained Indic majority by far well up to 1947. Next, additional protection was accorded to Mohammedan subjects against slavery. During the Mughal era in Bengal namely the sixteenth and seventeenth century, the slave hunting of the Europeans, in particular the Portugese, ravaged East Bengal. We note that the factory records of the English East India Company testified to an imperial order served to the faujdar of Hugli in 1676, that directed the faujdar to make the English, Dutch and Portuguese sign a paper undertaking not to buy any slaves who are children of Muhammadan parents as the Portuguese did at the time. It was during this period that East Bengal was being Islamized, that is, there was still substantial sections of Hindus living there. Next, persecution was particularly severe for the Indic peasantry.  During different periods of the Mughal regime, Indic peasants had to suffer higher taxes.  Jaziya, a poll tax meant specifically for infidels, was banned by Akbar only late in his regime (after flip flops) and was reinstated by Aurangzeb.  Thus Indic peasants failed to pay their taxes more often and also rebelled against unbearable taxes more regularly.  This becomes apparent when we observe that the rebel territories mentioned above were predominantly Indic in the period under consideration.  Thus the Indics were enslaved much more.

Besides, there was a greater demand for Indic slaves, because Islamic law bars a non-Muslim from buying a Muslim slave, but allows the sale of infidel slaves to anyone.  There were also many Islamic lands that preferred to own infidel slaves.  As Scott Levi remarks, “Because of their identification in Muslim societies as kafirs, `non-believers’, Hindus were especially in demand in the early modern bukharan slave markets.’’ Judicial records show that Indian slaves constituted at least 58% of the total slaves in the Central Asian region.  The traffic of slaves to Central Asia, already known in ancient times, expanded enormously with the advent of Islam and the expansion of the Indian merchant Diasporas in Central Asia in the 16th century.  Further, Indian merchant Diasporas in Astrakhan, which was the entrepot to the slave trade in the Ottoman Empire, vastly supported this traffic of slaves. Skilled Indian slaves were in great demand and many found their way to the Ottoman Empire.  The existence of Indian metal workers in Bursa has been noted.  The Ottoman Empire was a huge consumer of slaves till the 17th century, at least, and was a big buyer of Indian slaves’.

Indic slaves were also subjected to religious persecution, which the Muslim slaves were exempted from.  Slavery was an important vehicle for the spread of Islam; thus, all Hindu slaves were forcibly converted to Islam when they were bought by Muslim owners.  We now give a specific example of how slavery was a vehicle of proselytization.  In 1717, Murshid Quli Khan, a powerful 18th century Nawab of Bengal, was born in a Brahmin family in Deccan.  In his infancy, he was bought by a Muslim, who took him to Persia on return from Persia, he got appointed to several high offices and ultimately became the Subedar of Bengal.  Not only was he converted, he was also indoctrinated to the extent that, as Nawab of Bengal, he forcibly converted Hindus, destroyed temples and, in essence, became a propagator of his faith.  Murshid Quli Khan converted Hugli to a Shia colony.  It became a center of Shia theology and culture.  The stream of migration from Persia to Bengal greatly increased during Murshid Quli’s reign. Naturally, his reputation stands very high among members of his own sect.  Salimullah rose to the level of an Abul Fazal in extolling him.  He wrote, “Since the time of Shaista Khan, there had not appeared in any part of Hindustan an amir who could be compared with Ja’far Khan [Murshid Quli] for his zeal in the propagation of the faith. … From breakfast to noon, he employed himself in copying the Koran.  He maintained about 2000 readers beadsmen, and chanters, who were constantly employed in reading the Koran and other acts of devotion.’’ Jadunath Sarkar commented on his religious bigotry and described him as “a puritan in his private life, …,  gravely decorous and rigidly orthodox as befitted a favorite disciple of Aurangzeb, and a propagator of his faith as ordained in his scriptures’’.

The Ugly Truth of Trans-national trade – Human trafficking

Some of the slaves remained in India in the service of the royalty and the nobility, but many were forcibly deported to Central Asia.  Significant number of Indian slaves lived in Central Asia during the medieval times, extending well up to the early modern times. Some estimates suggest that the percentage of slaves in Bukhara of Indian origin may have exceeded 50%. Hindu slaves were especially in demand there, and comprised of a large religious group.  Even 19th century records indicate the presence of Hindu slaves and other non-Muslim slaves in Central Asia.

For the trade from Multan and Sindh to Bukhara, the southern route (Multan-Shikarpur-Kandahar-Ghazni-Kabul) route was very popular in the Mughal times, with caravans carrying goods `worth millions’ to Kandahar.

Hindu slaves were being exported to Central Asia right from the days of the Ghaznavi capture of the Indian city of Thanesar in the year 1014.  Mughal emperors, from Akbar to Shah Jahan had the tradition of sending Indian slaves as gifts to the rulers of Central Asia. Scott Levi has added about the Mughal period, “By and large, the exportation of Hindu slaves to Turan [Central Asia] continued unhindered throughout the Mughal period. …Whether agriculturists or pastoralists,  following their enslavement such individuals were sent in large numbers to markets beyond India’s Northwest Frontier, far away from their family support system. Even appreciating that the figures presented in the chronicles and other accounts are likely to be exaggerated it seems reasonable to accept the explanation that, over the years, Mughal expansion in India accounts for the enslavement and exportation of hundreds of thousands of individuals, or more, including not only those men who militarily resisted the mughals, but also vast numbers of women and children.’’ In the middle of the eighteenth century, during his military expeditions in North India, Ahmed Shah Abdali enslaved several Hindus and Sikhs of Punjab, Delhi, Mathura and Brindaban, and carried them off with him to Afghanistan. Further, Khushwant Singh mentions that the Afghans took many Indian women as slaves to Afghanistan, especially during Abdali’s fourth and fifth invasions of India.  In the early nineteenth century, Josiah Harlan reported that Murad Beg, the Afghan ruler of Qunduz organized frequent slave raids into Chitral (currently in Pakistan). He was a “great wholesale dealer in this unholy merchandise [slave trade]’’

Slaves comprised of an important component of the transnational trade. Many slaves were exported by caravan merchants, who either purchased them outright or received them in trade for other commodities in demand in India, such as horses.  The Baburnama records many caravans bound towards Kabul carrying Hindustani slaves as an important commodity. Babur has written that caravans of ten, fifteen or twenty thousand heads of houses used to come from Hindustan bringing in slaves and other commodities to Kabul.

To quote Farah Abidin, “One of the most favorite and chief exports from India to this [Kabul] region were Indian slaves, both Hindus and Muslims; then these slaves were sent to the bazaars of Central Asia in a number of ways. Some of them were taken as prisoners of war, some in exchange for Central Asian horses while others were captured during the raids on trading Caravans. The manuscript Rauzat-ur Rizwan va hadikat al gilman, written by Badruddin Kashmiri during the reign of Abdullah Khan Uzbek informs us that the skilled slaves were much sought-after Indian commodity…. Abdul Abbas Muhammad Talib, the author of Matlab at-Talib also speaks of Indian slaves in this region’’. There existed a cattle market in Kabul which sold slaves and a host of other animals, like horses, elephants, camels, horses, buffalos, cows, oxen, donkeys, goats etc. Note that during the Mughal reign the raids by bandits and plunderers on mercantile caravans rarely succeeded as the merchants usually travelled heavily armed and in large groups, organizing themselves in qafilas or caravans.

In 1558 Anthony Jenkinson has noted that Indian (and Iranian) merchants who visited Bukhara commonly exported slaves to the Bukharan slave market. Monserrate and Bernier have mentioned that the Mughal Imperial establishment routinely exported slaves for horses in Central Asia.   Further, in, it has been noted that Indian traders often sold silk (raw and manufactured) and horses in the Russian empire in the middle of the 16th century, which they had likely purchased in exchange for slaves in Kabul, Astrakhan or Bukhara.  Indian slaves were sold in numbers in Bukhara and Astrakhan.  In particular, the Ottoman Empire was a huge consumer of Indian slaves in the 16th century, but this gradually reduced in the 17th and more or less disappeared in the 18th centuries.

The trans-national trade route from the Gangetic valley to Kabul, Balkh and Bukhara could follow two separate paths, shown in the map.  In the ancient Kushana and Gupta times, it appears that the northern route directly connecting Gangetic valley and Central Asia used to pass through northern and central Punjab, cross the Indus River at Attock and then work its way through the Khyber Pass to Kabul and beyond. From at least the fourteenth century, the southern trade from Multan to Delhi and from Delhi to Ahmedabad has been in use for purposes of large scale trade. In the Mughal times, the trade with Punjab was centered around Peshawar, but the trade with other parts was based in Multan, Shikarpur and Bahawalpur.  For the trade from Multan and Sindh to Bukhara, the southern route (Multan-Shikarpur-Kandahar-Ghazni-Kabul) route was very popular in the Mughal times, with caravans carrying goods `worth millions’ to Kandahar. By the middle and late 18th centuries, the southern route had become more popular with the traders, with the Sikhs and Jats, astride the northern trade routes, growing restive in north India (they used to often plunder merchant caravans).  This resulted in the rising importance of Shikarpur and Multan as trade centers, and the southern route from Multan and Shikarpur through the Bolan Pass to Kandahar, Kabul and Bukhara. In the map shown below, we have marked the principal routes taken by the trans-national traders (including slave traders) from Punjab to Central Asia.

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Courtesy: Myind.net

Click here for Part -I 

The post Institutionalized slavery in the Muslim regimes (Part – II) first appeared on Sindh Courier.