Military Slavery in Medieval North India

doi:10.1017/9781139024723.015

Chapter 15 - Military Slavery in Medieval North India

from Part IV - The Islamic World

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 September 2021

Ali Anooshahr

Edited by

Craig Perry ,

David Eltis ,

Stanley L. Engerman and

David Richardson

Show author details

Craig Perry: Affiliation:
Emory University, Atlanta
David Eltis: Affiliation:
Emory University, Atlanta
Stanley L. Engerman: Affiliation:
University of Rochester, New York
David Richardson: Affiliation:
University of Hull

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Summary

This chapter traces the establishment, and evolution of military slavery in north India between ca. 1000-1500. It will moreover investigate the interaction between war and society when it involves enslavement of captured civilians. Lastly, it will argue that the expansion of agriculture and the rise of a large peasant population that served as a potential source of mercenaries that eventually competed with slaves as a source of recruitment.

Keywords

kaniz ghulam mamluk Delhi Sultanate military

Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge World History of Slavery , pp. 362 - 382

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781139024723.015 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2021

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References

A Guide to Further Reading

Bosworth, Clifford E., The Ghaznavids: Their Empire in Afghanistan and Eastern Iran (Edinburgh, 1963).Google Scholar

Chatterjee, Indrani and Eaton, Richard M. (eds.), Slavery and South Asian History (Bloomington, IN, 2006).Google Scholar

De la Vaissière, Étienne. Samarcande et Samarra: élites d’Asie centrale dans l’empire abbasside (Leuven, 2007).Google Scholar

Habib, Irfan, “Slavery in the Delhi Sultanate, Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries: Evidence from Sufi Literature,” Indian Historical Review, 15 (1988–1989): 248–256.Google Scholar

Habib, Irfan and Raychaudhuri, Tapan, The Cambridge Economic History of India, Vol. 1: c. 1200–c. 1750 (Cambridge, 1982).Google Scholar

Jackson, Peter, The Delhi Sultanate (Cambridge, 1999).Google Scholar

Jackson, Peter, “The Mamlūk Institution in Early Muslim India,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 122 (1990): 340–358.Google Scholar

Kumar, Sunil, “Bandagī and Naukarī: Studying Transition in Political Culture and Service under the North Indian Sultanates, Thirteenth to the Sixteenth Centuries,” in Orsini, Francesca and Sheikh, Samira (eds.), After Timur Left: Culture and Circulation in Fifteenth-Century North India (Oxford, 2014).Google Scholar

Kumar, Sunil, The Emergence of Delhi Sultanate (New Delhi, 2007).Google Scholar

Kumar, Sunil, “When Slaves were Nobles: The Shamsi Bandagan in the Early Delhi Sultanate,” Studies in History, 10 (1994): 23–52.Google Scholar

Paul, Jürgen, The State and the Military: The Samanid Case (Bloomington, IN, 1994).Google Scholar

Wink, André, Al-Hind: The Making of the Indo-Islamic World, Vols. 2 and 3 (Leiden, 1997–2004).Google Scholar