Slavery forms an integral part of the history of Islam. The Turks practiced it on a large scale before they entered India as invaders. Slaves were abducted or captured by marauders (Subuktigin, Balban), they were sold by jealous or needy relatives (Iltutmish), and they were purchased by slave traders to be sold for profit (Aibak). These methods were known to Muslim rulers in India. All these and many other methods were employed by them and their nobles in making slaves in India. The phenomenon and its application were shocking to the Hindu mind; the Muslims, however, thought otherwise. According to Ibn Khaldun, the captives were “brought from the House of War to the House of Islam under the rule of slavery, which hides in itself a divine providence; cured by slavery, they enter the Muslim religion with the firm resolve of true believers…”1 Muslims took pride in enslaving people; the feelings of Hindu victims were just the opposite. Qutbuddin Aibak entered a series of conquests. He dispatched Ikhtiyaruddin Bakhtiyar Khalji to the East and himself concentrated in Hindustan proper. He captured Kol (modern Aligarh) in 1194. There “those of the garrison who were wise and cute were converted to Islam, but those who stood by their ancient faith were slain with the sword.”2 Surely, those who embraced Islam during or immediately after the battle were ‘cute’ and wise, because by this initiative on their part they were counted as free-born Muslims as against those who fought, were captured in battle, and then enslaved. T.P. Hughes gives the legal position: “If a captive embraced Islam on the field of battle he was a free man; but if he were made captive, and afterwards embraced Islam, the change of creed did not emancipate him.” Women captives were invariably taken prisoner. “Atiyat-ul-Qurazi relates that, after the battle with the Banu Quraizah, the Prophet ordered all those who were able to fight to be killed, and the women and children to be enslaved.”3 Both these traditions were followed in India. In 1195 when Raja Bhim was attacked by Aibak, 20000 slaves were captured, and 50,000 at Kalinjar in 1202. “The temples were converted into mosques,” writes Hasan Nizami, “and the voices of the summoners to prayer ascended to the highest heavens, and the very name of idolatry was annihilated.”4 Call to prayer five times a day with a loud voice carried an invitation and a message – join us, or else. People “could refuse this invitation or call at their own peril, spiritual and physical. As His followers became more powerful, the peril became increasingly more physical.”5 This process helped in the conversion of captives. Murry Titus pertinently remarks that “we may be sure that all those who were made slaves were compelled to embrace the religion of the masters to whom they were allotted.”6 Farishtah specifically mentions that during the capture of Kalinjar “fifty thousand kaniz va ghulam, having suffered slavery, were rewarded with the honour of Islam.” Thus enslavement resulted in conversion and conversion in accelerated growth of Muslim population. Minhaj Siraj assigns twenty (lunar) years to Qutbuddin’s career in Hindustan from ‘the first taking of Delhi’ up to his death, both as a commander of Sultan Muizzuddin and as an independent ruler.7 During this period Aibak captured Hansi, Meerut, Delhi, Ranthambhor and Kol.8 When Sultan Muizzuddin personally mounted another campaign against Hindustan, Aibak proceeded as far as Peshawar to meet him, and the two together attacked the Khokhar stronghold in the Koh-i-Jud or the Salt Range. The Hindus (Khokhars) fled to the highest in the mountains. They were pursued. Those that escaped the sword fled to the dense depth of the jungle; others were massacred or taken captive. Great plunder was obtained and many slaves.9 According to Farishtah three to four hundred thousand Khokhars were converted to Islam by Muizzuddin;10 but this figure is inflated. More than a hundred years later, Amir Khusrau refers to Khokhars as a nonMuslim tribe, and the way they were constantly attacked and killed by Sultans Iltutmish and Balban confirms Khusrau’s contention.11 Minhaj also says that “the Khokhars were not annihilated in this affair (Muizzuddin-Aibak attack) by any means, and gave great trouble in after years.”12 Under Aibak most of Hindustan from Delhi to Gujarat, and Lakhnauti to Lahore, was brought under the sway of the Turks. In his time a large number of places were attacked and many more prisoners were captured than for which actual figures are available. Figures of slaves made during campaigns of Kanauj, Banaras (where the Muslims occupied “a thousand” temples),13 Ajmer (attacked thrice), Gujarat, Bayana and Gwalior are not available. Similar is the case with regard to Bihar and Bengal. About the end of the twelfth or the beginning of the thirteenth century, Ikhtiyaruddin Bakhtiyar Khalji marched into Bihar and attacked the University centres at Nalanda, Vikramshila and Uddandpur.14 The Buddhist monks and Brahmans mistaken for monks were massacred and the common people, deprived of their priests and teachers, became an easy prey to capture and enslavement. But no figures of such captives are known. Ibn Asir only says that Qutbuddin Aibak made ‘war against the provinces of Hind… He killed many, and returned with prisoners and booty.”15 In Banaras, according to the same author, “the slaughter of the Hindus was immense, none was spared except women and children,”16 who would have been enslaved as per practice. Habibullah writes that Muslim sway extended from Banaras through the strip of Shahabad, Patna, Monghyr and Bhagalpur districts,17 and repeated references to the presence of Muslims in this tract from the early times indicates that taking of slaves and conversion was common in the region. Fakhr-i-Mudabbir informs us that as a result of the Turkish achievements under Muizzuddin and Aibak, Eleven poor (Muslim) house-holder became owner of numerous slaves.”
Slave-taking a matter of policy Some Ulama therefore approached the ‘pious’ Sultan Iltutmish to rule according to the Shariat and confront the Hindus with choice between Islam and death. Muslims had set up their rule and so the country had become Dar-ul-Islam. Any opposition to it was an act of rebellion. The Hindus who naturally resisted Muslim occupation were considered to be rebels. Besides they were idolaters (mushrik) and could not be accorded the status of Kafirs, of the People of the Book – Christians and Jews. For them the law provided only Islam or death. Islamic jurisprudence had crystallized over the last five centuries. Besides the evolvement of the four schools of Islamic jurisprudence, Shaikh Burhauddin Ali’s Hidayah (530- 596 H./1135-1199 C.E.), the Compendium of Sunni Law, based on the Quran and the Hadis, was also readily available in the time of Iltutmish. Muslim scriptures and treatises advocated jihad against idolaters for whom the law advocated only Islam or death. In such a situation the answer of the In such a situation the answer of the Sultan to the Ulama was: “But at the moment in India… the Muslims are so few that they are like salt (in a large dish)… However, after a few years when in the capital and the regions and all the small towns, when the Muslims are well established and the troops are larger… it would be possible to give Hindus, the choice of death or Islam.” Such an apologetic plea was not necessary to put forward. The fact was that the Muslim regime was giving a choice between Islam and death only. Those who were killed in battle were dead and gone; but their dependents were made slaves. They ceased to be Hindus; they were made Musalmans in course of time if not immediately after captivity.
References
Ibn Khaldun. Islam In History. https://archive.org/details/islaminhistoryid00lewi.
Lal, K. L. Muslim Slave System In Medieval India. chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://dn720002.ca.archive.org/…/Muslim%20Slave….
History of the Rise of the Mahomedan Power in India (Tarikh e Firishta), Complete Volumeshttps://archive.org/details/history-of-the-rise-of-the-mahomedan-power-in-india-vol.-1/History%20Of%20The%20Rise%20Of%20The%20Mahomedan%20Power%20In%20India%2C%20Vol.%201/.
Elliot & Dawson. History of India told by its own Historians vol 2. https://archive.org/details/dli.pahar.0662.
