Hindu Slaves In Central Asia

“The seventeenth-century Matlab al-talibin records, for example, that one Juybari Sheikh (a Naqshbandi Sufi leader) owned over 500 slaves, forty of whom were specialists in pottery production while the others were engaged in agricultural work, tending livestock, and carpentry. Demand was especially high for skilled slaves, and India’s comparatively larger and more advanced textile industry and agricultural production, and its magnificent imperial architecture, demonstrated to its neighbours that skilled labour was abundant in the subcontinent. his accounted for the common practice of rival political powers enslaving and relocating large numbers of artisans following successful invasions.9 For example, during Timur’s late fourteenth century sack of Delhi, several thousand skilled artisans were enslaved and taken to Central Asia. Timur presented many of these slaves to his subordinate elite, although he reserved the masons for use in the construction of the Bibi Khanum mosque, located in his flourishing capital of Samarqand.10 It is perhaps not surprising that attractive, young female slaves commonly demanded an even higher market price than those skilled at construction engineering. Because of their identification in Muslim societies as kafirs, “non-believers”, Hindus were especially in demand in the early modern Central Asian slave markets. They were by no means, however, the only ethnic or religious group present in large numbers…” Scott, C. Levi, Indus Beyond the Hindu Kush: Indians in the Central Asian Slave Trade*).