Economy in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries: Rise of urban economy and non-agricultural production

• The new Turkish regime released social forces which created an economic organisation which brought changes to the one that had existed before and it led to the expansion of towns, and to important alterations in agrarian relationships. selfstudyhistory.com

Rise of urban economy and non-agricultural production

We see increase in the number of coin-hoards after A.D. 1200, and the emergence of large number of new towns.

The urban economy on the eve of the Ghorid conquest:

• Was on low ebb. The towns were fewer in number and smaller in size in the centuries preceding the establishment of the Delhi Sultanate.
• D. Kosambi shows : even the capital was a camp city on the move.
  • The higher ruling class wandered from place to place along with the army while the lower ruling class was almost completely ruralized.
• S. Sharma:
  • He supported the view of urban decline.
  • He has convincingly reasserted his theory of urban decay with the help of enormous archaeological data painstakingly collected.
• This theory of decay of towns is further corroborated by the evidence of sluggish trade.
  • The near complete disappearance of gold and silver currencies and the almost total absence of foreign coins in the Indian coin-hoards of the period are indicators that the foreign trade was at a very low scale.
  • Moreover, the fact that not even the coins of various regional dynasties are found in the coin-hoards of other regions,suggests that inland commerce was not widespread.
• All this scenario changed almost immediately with the establishment of the Delhi Sultanate.
• The archaeological and numismatic evidence corroborate the literary evidence of growth of towns and increase in commerce.
• Muhammad Habib to postulate a theory of ‘Urban Revolution’.

Growth of towns: 

• There are two simple definitions of a town:
  • • The usual modern definition of a settlement of 5000 or above
    • A settlement where an overwhelming majority of population (say above 70%) is engaged in occupations other than agriculture.
  • The two definitions are not mutually exclusive. (covers town of smaller size also).
• Evidences:
  • Not much archaeology evidences are available (mainly because much less attention paid to medieval archaeology) , the literary evidences testify growth of urban centers.
  • Important town :
    • Some major towns mentioned in the contemporary sources are Delhi (the capital), Multan, Anhilwara (Patan), Cambay, Kara, Lakhnauti and Daulatabad (Deogiri).
    • Lahore was a big town but decayed after the Mongol invasion in the 13th century. However, in the 14th. century it flourished again.
  • While not even a guesstimate of the population of any town is available in our sources there are reliable indications to assume that at least some of these were cities big enough by contemporary standards.
  • Delhi was the Largest:
    • Ibn Battuta, who visited Delhi in 1330. Describes it as of enormous extent and population, the largest city in the Islamic East in spite of the fact that Muhammad Tughluq had shifted much of its population to Daulatabad.
      • He describes the latter too, as large enough to rival Delhi in size.
  • Some new towns were established during the period, such as Jhain (Chhain) in Eastern Rajasthan that was named ‘Shahr Nau’ during Alauddin Khalji’s reign (1296-1316).
• Factors for Urban Expansion:
  • They stayed at one place (at Iqta headquarter) :
    • The strength of the invader lay in combination and not in dispersal in an unfamiliar land.
      • Thus, in initial stages, it was natural for the members of the ruling class to prefer to stay at their iqta headquarters along with their cavalry.
    • Most of the 13th century towns was iqta headquarter:
      • These iqta headquarters having the concentration of cavalry, its hangers – on and the retinue and household of the muqti thus emerged in the early phase as camp cities.
      • For example, Hansi, Kara, Anhilwara, etc.
    • These towns were to be fed and provided for. In the beginning, the troops had to go for realizing kharaj/mal by plundering the surrounding villages.
  • Moreland pointed that Gradually by the 14th century Cash nexus developed. The revenue was realized in cash from the peasants who were thus forced to sell their produce at the side of the field. The merchants catered to the needs of towns giving rise to ‘induced trade‘
  • Immigration from Islamic culture area:
    • The new rulers naturally wanted to get luxuries and comforts of their taste which encouraged immigration.
      • e.g: As described by Isami, these were soldiers, craftsman, artisans, singers, musicians, dancers, poets, physicians, astrologers and servicemen.
    • The immigrant master-craftsman most probably introduced new techniques and articles of technology . In due course, Indian artisans must have learnt the new crafts.

Urban manufactures:

• Two fold impetus to urban craft production :
  • The Sultanate ruling class remained town-centered and spent the enormous resources it appropriated in the form of land revenue mainly in towns, either on buying services or procuring manufacturers.
    • Even the money spent on the service sector partly went to help the urban craft sector through multiplier effect.
    • Demand for high-priced skill-intensive luxury items was created by nobility created and its hanger-on created a mass market for ordinary artisanal product.
  • Introduction of a number of technological devices that reached India with the invaders.
    • In the luxury sector, silk weaving expanded and carpet-weaving came from Persia.
    • Other major industries were: Papermaking, building industry ( major one for employment creation).
      • Barani says that Alauddin Khalji employed 70,000 craftsmen for his buildings.
• Organization of Production:
  • Two possible alternatives:
    • Whether the town artisans carried out production under the ‘domestic system‘ (i.e with their own tools, raw material and the end product and also sold their product themselves i.e self employed) or
    • whether they worked under the ‘putting-out system’ (their own tools and they worked at their homes, raw material was provided to them by the merchants).
  • The contemporary sources shed little light on these aspects.
    • However we can assume that since the  tools of production (even after the introduction of new devices) were still simple (mainly of wood and little of iron) should have remained cheap.
    • The artisan was thus master of his own tools, though varied forms of labour organization seem to be prevalent.
      • Certain artisans hawked or hired out their services such as cotton-carder who with a bow- string on his shoulder, went door to door selling his services as is evident from the account given in Khair-ul Majalis.
      • Spinning was done usually by women staying at their homes.
      • The weavers too usually worked at their own looms at home weaving’cloth for sale, out of the yarn bought or spun by themselves. They also worked on wages to weave yarn supplied to them by customers.
      • Karkhanas:
        • If the raw material was expensive such as silk or gold of silver thread, etc. and the products were luxury items, the craftsmen were to work in karkhanas under supervision.
        • Sultans and high nobles maintaining these karkhanas where the production was to cater to their own needs and contrary to D.D.Kosambi’s assumption was not for market.
        • Shahabuddin al Umari records in his Masalik-ul Absar that in Muhammad Tughluq’s karkhanas at Delhi, four thousand silk workers worked as embroiderers.
        • Afif: Feroz Tughluq’s karkhanas produced cloth and carpets in a big way.
        • While there is no suggestion in our sources, we may only conjecture that perhaps merchants also maintained karkhanas where production was for sale.

Non-Agricultural Production: technology and craft

• We do not have any detailed account of the economic resources of the country during the Sultanat period, and it has to be supplemented by the account provided by Abul Fazl in the Ain-i-Akbari, written towards the end of the 16th century.
• In this period tools, devices and implements were mostly inexpensive because they were made of wood and earth, while iron was employed only when most necessary. Ropes, leather and bamboo, too, were used when the need arose.

• India had already various technologies and craft and there were many introduction of new article of technology and new crafts by immigration of Muslims. The newly introduced articles had either developed or evolved in the Islamic culture.

• The most important manufactures pertained to textiles, metallurgy, building activities, mining and other ancillary activities, such as leather-work, paper-making, toy-making, etc.

Textiles:

• Textile production was the biggest industry of India and goes back to ancient times.
  • It included the manufacture of cotton cloth, woollen cloth and silk.
  • Cotton cloth could be divided into two categories—
    • the coarse (kamin)
      • The coarse cloth, which was also called pat, was worn by the poor and the faqirs.
      • It was often manufactured in households in the villages, but was also produced in some regions, such as Awadh, from which it was imported into Delhi.
      • Cotton cloth of a little superior quality was called calico (kirpas), and was widely used.
    • The fine (mahin).
      • Cloth of fine variety included muslin which was produced at Sylhet and Dacca in Bengal, and Deogir in the Deccan.
      • This was expensive and used only by the nobles and the very rich.
• Gujarat also produced many variety of fine cotton-stuff.
  • Barbossa tells us that Cambay (Khambayat) was the centre for the manufacture of all kinds of finer and coarse cotton cloth, besides other cheap varieties of velvets, satins, tafettas or thick carpets.
• Various varieties of cloth was both painted, and printed by using blocks of wood.
  • The 14th century Sufi Hindi poet, Mulla Daud, talks of printed (khand chaap) cloth.
• Apart from the manufacture of cloth, other miscellaneous goods such as carpets, prayer carpets, coverlets, bedding, bed-strings, etc. were also manufactured in other parts of Gujarat.
• The production of cloth improved during the period because of the introduction of the spinning-wheel (charkha).
  • The spinning wheel is attested to in Iran in the 12th century by some well-known poets.
  • Its earliest reference in India is in the middle of the 14th century.
  • Thus, it apparently came to India with the Turks, and came into general use by the middle of the 14th century.
  • The spinning-wheel in its simplest form increased the spinner’s efficiency some six-fold, in comparison with a spinner working with a hand spindle.
• Another device introduce during the period:
  • bow of the cotton-carder (naddaf, dhunia) which speeded up the process of separating cotton from seeds.
• Silk was imported from Bengal where silk worms were reared.
  • However, a greater supply of silk yarn, including raw silk, was imported from Iran and Afghanistan.
  • There was much use of silk cloth, and of  cotton and silk mixed at Delhi and its neighbourhood.
  • The silk of Cambay (Khambayat) was among the costly items of cloth controlled by Alauddin Khalji.
• The patolas of Gujarat with many fancy designs were highly valued.
  • Gujarat was also famous for its gold and silver embroidery, generally on silk cloth.
• Wool was procured from the mountainous tracts, though sheep were also reared in the plains.
  • The finer qualities of woollen cloth and furs were largely imported from outside, and were almost exclusively worn by the nobles.
  • However, the shawl industry of Kashmir was well established. Muhammad Tughlaq sent Kashmir shawls as a present to the Chinese emperor.
• Carpet weaving also developed under the patronage of the Sultans, with many Iranian and Central Asian designs being incorporated.
• Dyeing industry:
  • Indigo and other vegetables dyes were responsible for the bright colours of which both men and women were fond.
  • The dyeing industry went hand in hand with calico-painting.
  • The tie and dye method was of old standing in Rajasthan, though we do not know when hand-printing using wooden blocks was introduced.
• Organisation of the textile industry:
  • Spinning was considered to be women’s work, and was carried out in the homes.
  • Even slave-girls were used for this purpose.
  • Weaving was also a house-hold industry, carried out in towns or in some of the villages.
  • The weaving material was purchased by the weavers themselves, or supplied to them by merchants.
• The luxury items were generally produced in the royal workshops or karkhanas.
  • In Muhammad Tughlaq’s karkhanas, there were 4000 silk workers who wove and embroidered different types of robes and garments.
  • Firuz Tughlaq had recruited and trained a large number of slaves to work in his karkhanas, and in the parganas.

• Textile technology:

  • Various new techniques were introduced by the turks in the field of textile.

    • Ginning, Carding and Spinning:
      • After picking up cotton balls. there were three basic stages before cotton could be used for weaving:
        • Ginning or seed extraction: Was done in two ways
          • Roller and board method and
          • Worm-press or worm-roller (charkhi)
        • Carding or fibre loosening:
          • Cotton thus separated from seeds was “beaten” with sticks or carded with bow-string in order to separate and loosen the fibers (naddafi in Persian; dhunna in Hindi).
        • Spinning or making yarn.
          • Spinning was traditionally done with the spindle (duk in Persian; takla in Hindi) to which  whorl (phirki in hindi) was attached to stabilize it.
    • The most important technological revolution in the textile sector was the introduction of the spinning-wheel (charkha) through the agency of the Muslims during the 13th-14th centuries.
      • Charkha did not exist in Ancient India. The first literary reference to charkha comes from Isilmi’s Futuh-us Salatin (A.D. 1350).
      • Charkha did not displace the spindle only accelerated the it’s rotation.
      • According to one estimate, a spinning-wheel (charkha) could produce yarn six-fold more than the spindle during the same unit of time. This must have resulted in greater output of yarn and constantly. more cloths.
      • The yarn from spindle was of a very fine quality whereas the charkha produced coarse yarn for coarse cloths.
  • Weaving:
    • Horizontal loom of thron-shuttle type was used for simple or tabby weave. It is difficult to determine whether the pit-loom (treadle loom) was in use in Ancient India. but we get the first evidence of this loom in the Miftah-ul Fuzala (c. A.D. 1469).
    • This loom allowed the weaver to employ his hitherto idle feet.
  • Dyeing and Printing:
    • Colours derived from vegetable and mineral sources.
    • Indigo, madder and lakh, etc. were widely employed.
    • Indigo was used for both bleaching and dyeing.
    • For fast colours(color’s resistance to fading or running), many articles like alum were added.
    • The Indian dyer (rangrez) employed many techniques like immersion, tie-and-dye (bandhana), etc.
    • Block-printing (chhapa) was perhaps unknown in Ancient India. Some scholars credit the Muslims with its diffusion in India.

Metallurgy: