Society, religion and economy under the Sultanate

Detail

Iconoclasm — attacks on sacred images

• Iconoclasm means rejecting or destroying religious images because they are seen as idolatrous (wrongly worshipped objects).
• During and after the Turkic invasions there were many attacks on sacred images in Buddhist, Jain and Hindu temples.
• Motive was not just plunder. Two things ran together:
• Loot — temples held gold, silver and gems, so they were rich targets.

• Iconoclasm — breaking the image was itself the aim, a statement against image-worship.

• Word care (exam-useful):

• 'Image' is the neutral English word.
• 'Idol' and 'icon' carry an insult in strict Abrahamic use.

• Indian texts use their own words — murti, vigraha, pratima, *rupa*.

• Why this matters: a broken image is not only a religious loss. A big temple was also a bank, a market and an employer, so an attack hit the local economy too.

Jizya — the tax on non-Muslims

• Jizya: a tax paid by non-Muslim subjects. In return they got protection and exemption from military service [6].
• In practice, its weight depended on the ruler. It worked in three ways at once:
• Economic burden — one more payment on top of land tax.
• Public humiliation — the way it was collected could shame the payer.

• Push towards conversion — converting to Islam ended the tax, so there was a money-and-status reason to convert.

• Firuz Shah Tughluq (ruled 1351–88) enforced jizya firmly [3].

• He refused to exempt Brahmins from it, saying the sharia (Islamic law) gave no such exemption [2].
• Under him jizya was collected along with the land tax [2].

• This was part of a wider push to line the state up with Sunni orthodoxy [2].

• So jizya was not one fixed thing across 1206–1526. Read it ruler by ruler.

State taxation and market control

• Under Alauddin Khalji (Khalji dynasty, 1290–1320) the state squeezed the countryside hard [4][7].
• Centralisation and heavy agrarian taxation were the main features of his rule [5].
• He applied the iqta (a revenue district assigned to an officer) and the kharaj (land tax) in their strict, classic sense [5].

• His new tax rules cut the power of old ruling chiefs, who earlier paid only tribute and only when the army pressed them [5].

• Market control: he took full state control over goods and prices to favour buyers, and kept a network of spies to watch for price rises and hoarding (holding back goods to push prices up) [4].

• Link to remember: heavy land tax + fixed market prices = cash to pay a large standing army.

Why the economy still stayed strong

• Despite raids, temple attacks and heavy taxes, the subcontinent remained one of the wealthiest regions in the world.
• Reason: wealth did not sit only with the ruler. It rested on agriculture, artisan industry, and decentralised systems that kept working whoever sat on the throne.

Decentralised systems — shrenis, jatis, credit

• Shrenis — guilds, that is, organised bodies of craftsmen or traders in the same line of work. They set standards, settled disputes and pooled money.
• Jatis — communities defined by profession. Skill passed down inside the group, so training never stopped even in bad years.
• Credit systems — local lending networks let a weaver or trader borrow without any royal permission.

The hundi — a banking precursor

• Hundi: a written payment instruction. Merchant pays money in at one place; a partner pays it out at another place.
• Why it mattered:
• The trader did not carry cash on the road, so robbery risk fell.
• It worked across political borders — the paper was honoured in one kingdom even if issued in another.

• It ran without the ruling classes taking part. This is a banking precursor (an early form of banking) built by traders, not by the state.

• Marwari traders ran parallel credit-and-trust networks that stretched across different regimes. Trust inside the community was the security, not a royal seal.

Temples as economic ecosystems

• A big temple was far more than a place of worship. Around it sat a whole economy:
• Markets attached to the temple.
• Dana (donations) held in trust — the temple managed the fund, it did not just spend it.
• Irrigation tanks built and maintained from temple funds, which raised crop output.
• Dharmashalas and chhatrams — rest houses and free feeding halls for travellers and pilgrims.
• Credit to merchants — the temple lent out money.

• Funding of internal and maritime trade — trade inside the land and across the sea.

• So destroying a temple broke an irrigation system, a rest house and a bank at the same time.

Infrastructure, coins and trade

• Infrastructure gains in this period:
• Roads across north India.
• Bridges.
• A few canals.

• New cities founded.

• Coinage: coins struck in several metals and several denominations (different values), which made both small daily buying and large trade easier.

• Trade balance: exports far exceeded imports.
• Main ports — Calicut, Mangalore, Surat, Masulipatnam, Hooghly.
• Imports were mostly silk, horses, metals and luxuries — horses especially, since Indian breeding could not meet cavalry demand.

Prelims Hooks

• Jizya = tax on non-Muslim subjects in return for protection and exemption from military service [6].
• Firuz Shah Tughluq (r. 1351–88) refused to exempt Brahmins from jizya, citing the sharia; he collected it with the land tax [2][3].
• Alauddin Khalji kept a spy network to check price rise and hoarding under his market control system [4].
• Khalji dynasty dates: 1290–1320 [7].
• Iqta = revenue district; kharaj = land tax — both applied strictly by Alauddin Khalji [5].
• Hundi = written payment instruction, usable across political borders, run without the ruling classes.
• Shreni = guild; jati = professionally defined community.
• Indian terms for a sacred image: murti, vigraha, pratima, *rupa*.
• Export ports of the era: Calicut, Mangalore, Surat, Masulipatnam, Hooghly.
• Chief imports: silk, horses, metals, luxuries — exports were far larger.

Mains Points

• Plunder versus iconoclasm is not an either/or debate. Temple attacks served both loot and doctrine, and because temples were markets, banks and irrigation centres, the damage was religious and economic. Use this to avoid a one-cause answer.
• State policy and economic health can move in opposite directions. Heavy kharaj, market control and jizya squeezed subjects, yet the subcontinent stayed among the world's wealthiest — because wealth rested on shrenis, jatis, temple trusts and hundi credit, which lay outside royal control.
• Jizya must be argued ruler by ruler. Its weight varied from a mild levy to a humiliation and a conversion incentive; Firuz Shah's refusal to exempt Brahmins [2] marks the strict end of that range, not the whole Sultanate's norm.
• Continuity beats rupture as the framing. Roads, bridges, canals, new cities and multi-metal coinage were added on top of an older agrarian-artisan base; the Sultanate changed who taxed and who ruled far more than it changed how India produced and traded.