The Harem was the largest Department under during the Islamic rule, the Sultanate and the Mughals.
“There was no sphere of court and administration which was not concerned with the harem in one way or another. Therefore, thousands and thousands of eunuchs were needed to serve the harem… The practice of converting men into eunuchs was very common in Bengal. “In Hindustan” , writes Jahangir, “especially in the province of Sylhet , which is a dependency of Bengal, it was the custom for the people of those parts to make eunuchs of their sons and give them to the governor in place of revenue (mal –wajibi)..,This custom by degrees has been adopted in other provinces and every year some children are the ruined and cut off from procreation. This practice has become common, Bengal in the time of Jahangir was a very large province. Large tracts of northern Hills, the Sarkar of Orissa and large parts of Bihar were included in it. If the practice of making eunuchs had become common outside Bengal also, then it seems it had spread almost all over the empire. Jahangir issued farmans abolished the price and hoped for the best. But a system in which revenue was collected in the form of eunuchs, could not be changed through a few orders.” (Lal, 2020).
Said Khan Chagtai, a noble of Jahangir possessed 1,200 eunuchs. Besides, eunuchs formed a profitable commercial commodity and, the price of a eunuch in the market was three times that of an ordinary slave. Therefore, some areas, notably Bengal, were regularly providers of eunuchs for the Muslim upper classes in Delhi, Isfahan and Samarkand.
1668: Aurangzeb prohibited castration of boys throughout the empire. It appears that in forbidding eunuch making Jahangir was apprehensive of decline in Muslim demography while Aurangzeb was prompted by religious motives. Yet in spite of their orders young men continued to be turned into eunuchs and Jahangir and his successors themselves went on accepting eunuchs as gift for duties in the harem. 1659: During Aurangzeb’s time then the city of Golkunda (Hyderabad), in the year 22,000 individuals were emasculated.
References
Afif, Shams Siaj (1890). Tarikh I Firoz Shahi. Calcutta.
Barani, Ziyauddin (1864). Tarikh I Firoz Shahi, Bib. Calcutta.
Farishta, Muhammad Qasim Hidu Shah. 1865 Gulshan-i-Ibrahimi also Tark I Firoz Shahi. Lucknow.
Elst, K (1992). Negationism In India.: Concealing the record of Islam, New Delhi.
Lal, K.S. (2020). Muslim Slave System in Medieval India. Aditya Prakashan , New Delhi.
