Hindu Slaves In Central Asia

Scott C. Levi, Hindus Beyond the Hindu Kush: Indians in the Central Asian Slave Trade* “A survey of available sources reveals that a Bukharan waqfnama (a letter indicating a religious endowment) written in 1326 repeatedly lists Indian slaves together with slaves from various other parts of Asia. A similar document dating to 1489 from the archive of the great Naqshbandi Sheikh Khwaja Ahrar (1404-90) mentions a group of Indian slaves working as agricultural labourers and artisans on an estate near Bukhara. Furthermore, the presence of Hindu slaves even among the Turkic pastoral groups in early modern Central Asia is mentioned in an account of the Uzbek ruler Shibani Khan’s victory over the Qazaq ruler Tanish Sultan. According to this account, in the winter of 1509-10, a fourteen-year-old Indian slave escaped from his cruel master in a Qazaq qishlaq (winter encampment) near the city of Turkestan and, while wandering through the steppe, fortuitously came across the encampment of Shibani Khan and informed the Uzbeks of the location of the enemy Qazaq qishlaq. This enabled the Uzbeks to defeat Tanish Sultan’s forces, for which the slave earned the favour of Shibani Khan, who renamed him “Khush Khabar” (“Good News”). Significant numbers of Indians were taken to the slave markets of Central Asia in a variety of ways. It is a regular, persistent feature in the commercial history of the region that many slaves were exported by caravan merchants, who either purchased them outright or received them in exchange for other commodities in demand in India, especially horses. The Central Asian slave markets swelled with Indians following Shah Jahan’s aborted annexation of Balkh in 1646-47 and the capture and enslavement of many of the retreating Indian soldiers.20 According to the Uzbek chronicler Muhammad Yusuf Munshi, following a four-month siege of the Indian army in Balkh during an unusually severe winter, Shah Jahan recalled his starving army to India and, during their retreat, the Central Asian “wolves” captured the fleeing Indian “slave-sheep” from every direction and took them to Samarqand, Turkestan and Tashkent.21 Although this event was unique in the history of the region, it resulted in the influx of a large number of Indians into Central Asian society. Thus, whereas in 1589 a thirty-three-year-old male Indian slave in good health was sold in Samarqand for 225 tankha. After the Mughal retreat in 1647 the Central Asian slave markets were flooded and the price of an Indian slave dropped as low as 84 tanga.”