Gabru47

I've been reading alot of articles about islamic adventures in India, and theres seems to be a general pattern of murder of older male civilians and enslaving of the women and younger men, when islamic armies enter a non-muslim cities. I did a bit of reading about Islam to discover why this pattern kept repeating and I found that slavery was tolerated by muslims. I was wondering if there is any estimates at how many slaves were created from India. There are estimates at how many slaves were created due to the African slave trade, but I never have found any figures for India. Why is this? Its almost as if this topic is being hushed up. If there are any estimates, please post them.

Also, I hope this thread covers the topic of right hand possessions. They were non-muslim women captured by muslim soldiers forced into sexual slavery. I've read that the sex ratio of slaves taken by muslims from Africa and Europe was heavily biased towards women. This was because these women would serve as concubines to the muslims. I was wondering if theres any proof to show the same in India.

Another topic that can be covered is Ghazw raids. These were raids made by muslims into non-muslim lands to obtain slaves, booty, or just generally the killing of non-believers. How many of these raids were conducted in India? Is there any way to know? Has there been books written on this?

I'm really shocked that it is so difficult to find information on this. Theres thousands of web sites about the Western slavery but almost nothing when dealing with islamic slavery.

So to sum up:
1. How many slaves were produced from India?
2. What factor did sex play in it? i.e. muslims capturing non-muslim women for use as concubines.
3. How were these slaves obtained?

Other people can add to the topic if they see fit.

Heres some links about some of the terms covered that some people might not be familiar with. If you have any links to share, please suggest some.

Right Hand Possessions.
http://www.islam.org.au/articles/19/tafseer.htm (will have to scroll down a bit)
http://www.islam.tc/ask-imam/view.php?q=1928
http://www.muslimwakeup.com/main/arc...itionalist.php
http://www.paklinks.com/gs/showthread.php?t=181033 (You might enjoy reading this! Its really depressing)

Ghazw.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghazw

Is anyone else interested in this topic? I find it fascinating.

Sameer

Ever wondered why Hindu women especially in the more orthodox circles still cover their heads in public or before entering a temple?

\You can guess why.....

But remember most of those invaders were warlords with little or no education, you can#t completely blame Islam. I do not view Islam as the word of God, no religion for that matter, in a historical perspective Islam did try to control slavery and make rules more lenient be it towards slaves or women. In the 6th century such reforms were quite liberal and quite good by those days' standards.

Shek

I don't know anything about your specific topic, but the above was very commonplace in the ancient world. Greek texts are full of examples of the above. In fact, a couple of the ancient texts (Thucydides and Polybius) both start out by talking about how those that came long before them were pirates, and eventually civilization was formed out of these uncouth beginnings.

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"So little pains do the vulgar take in the investigation of truth, accepting readily the first story that comes to hand." Thucydides 1.20.3

akai

My thoughts is that there aren't many muslim history books which clearly
record this problem(and lots of other problems). Muslim's history is not
so clearly written as western history, and there are not as many history
books as western country.

Samudra

The Moslem invasion of India is documented clearly.

Srirangan

Mohammed Bin Qasim & the Sindh Invasion
http://www.history-reference.com/node/19

Very few know that while the Muslims invaded Persia in 634, they invaded Sindh in India in 638, just a gap of four years. Although the Arab Muslims attacked India in 638, they were repeatedly defeated by the Rajas of Makara (Makran) and Sindh. The Arab chroniclers then wrote derisive accounts of the reasons for their defeats at the hands of the Hindus by saying that the Hidus practice Voodoo and Black Magic and so bring Jinns and Shaitan to help them in war.

So the Arabs could not defeat them, the way they could easily defeat the Persians and the Byzantines. We only need to remember how the Greeks under Alexander overcame the Persian Achemanian empire in a few years, after which they attacked India and the Hindus after initially being defeated the Greeks on the river Jhelum (Vitasta – Hydaspes), harassed the Greek army so much, that the Greek troops mutinied and refused to advance further into India.

Arabs blackmailing a guard to open the door of the fort of Debal

The Muslims too had a tough job with the Hindus. After an unsuccessful campaign of more than eighty years, the Muslims captured the Fort of Deval (Debal near modern Karachi) by deceit, by kidnapping the three children of the chief guardsman of the fort of Debal, beheading one and threatening to behead the other two. With this blackmail, they forced him to leave the door open, after they had feigned retreat.

Due to this betrayal, the Muslims could finally sink their claws into India under the leader Mohammed-ibn-Qasim (Mohammed bin Kasim). The Hindus never forgot this treachery. And the two princesses of the King Dahirsen (Raja Dabir) who were captured by Qasim and sent to the Khilafa (Caliph) as a gift with a message that they were royal virgins, meant to be ravished by his holiness (sic) the lecherous Caliph himself. But these princesses outsmarted the Caliph.

They tore apart their hymen with their own hands and told the caliph that their modesty had already been violated by Qasim. The Caliph did not believe them, but when he saw for himself the ruptured hymens, he was convinced that Qasim had violated the modesty of the princesses and then sent them over to him. That though so enraged him that he summoned Qasim to present himself at Baghdad. With Qasim in chains, the Caliph accused him of betrayal.

Although Qasim pleaded his innocence, the Caliph, asked for Qasim to be locked in a barrel with nails stuck on the inside and had him rolled down a hill. Qasim died a cruel death. And the first generation of Hindus whom this beast-like Muslim had tormented and slaughtered, received poetic justice in the death of this accursed Muslim general who vandalized Sindh.

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Sameer, I wouldn't jiump on the Islam not to be blamed conclusion. Read about the 'Prophet' and his 6 year old wife Ayesha? Read about the promise of Jannat and 77 (or is it 79) virgin boys and girls? Now I'm not saying Islam invented this type of behaviour, but it surely sanctified the behaviour.

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I rant, therefore I am.

Sameer

Again you cannot completely blame a religion there, war is war, these warloards cared more about getting women and gold than Islam when it comes down to it, they were warloards, they just so happened to be Muslims. So as Indians, I| dont think we should generalize in such a fashion and say "the Muslims"
The past is the past, surely slavery is mentioned in Islam, slavery is a part of every culture. As a son of Brahmin parents and ancestory, I can only imagine why we dont call the treatment of the "lower castes" as slavery as well. Sadly all over the world, there was some form of treatment by a group towards another. At the end of the day it was pure economics of the times. Slaves provided cheap labor for a labor intensive economy.

Commando

You can blame a religion for war and in this case it was probably the Islamics. But we have to look at all religions during the crusades a Pope ordered war on all muslims. Hence Christianity should be blamed lol. So religions can be blamed for war. The reason in the current day that Islamic nations such as Pakistan, Turkey, Iran can't have close ties to the west is because their religion has not modernised to suit the likes of an evolving society. And until women are allowed in politics in all Islamic nations and the young optimistic voices are allowed to talk, then they will be held back and seen as weird.

Officer of Engineers

What the hell are you talking about? Turkey is a NATO Ally.

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Chimo

Srirangan

I fully agree. I'm not blaming Islam entirely. The behaviour was not "invented" by Islam. But you cannot disagree that the very same behaviour was sanctified by Islam.

And there you go again, whenever a 'perceived' Hindu makes any reasonable argument, the same old "caste system, you started it" cliched counter. It's gotten really old.

Srirangan

Turkey isn't an Islamic nation. It's secular.

sparten

Visit Turkey and find out how secular it really is.

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Gabru47

I suppose that is objective. Just asking if anyone has any info on this topic.


Yeah I know that this was common to other cultures too, but I just thought that some people might know how many slaves were taken by muslims from India. Theres figures for other slave trades but when it comes to India there is hardly nothing.
By the way, were talking about events that happened upto the 1700's. I don't consider that to be ancient.

That doesn't have anything to do with this topic. If you wrote about right hand possessions(what are they?) you might have been ontopic, but writing about muhhameds marriage to a child seems offtopic to me.

Why can't I "completely blame" a religion? If a religion gives its followers the right to own slaves, I will hold the religion responsible.

So does anyone have any facts about this topic? The amount, sex, and method of capturing the slaves in India by muslim ghazi raids? It seems so strange that there is hardly any information on this topic. Has anyone ever tried to compile this information before?

Srirangan

Please ellaborate. Are the secular principles of the constitution not implemented in (parts of) Turkey?

sparten

Principle of the constitution; secular, well sure. Implemented: half heartetly usually. Followed: well no.
I went there last year Jan (someday I'll get upload those pics; Topkapi, walls of Constantinople etc, and we'll waste some serious bandwith!) and my impression was of a country presenting itself as secular and what have you, but not really liking it. Example, in Istanbul, I took a package tour of the city, and at the end of the day we went to a resturant and well.... sure wine was being served and por was very prominently being displayed on the menu. But the only table where drinks were being served was ours, and the only ones not to drink, were myself and the guide. He later told me off when I did not go for prayers. The atmosphere of the place was a very religious one (not so Ankara). Outside the cities, well of couse people stopped prentending.