Women through travellers' eyes: slaves, sati, labourers

Detail

Who was looking, and how

• All the famous travellers whose accounts we study — Al-Biruni, Ibn Battuta, Bernier — were men. There is no woman traveller's account of medieval India in this set.
• They were very interested in the condition of women, because women's lives looked different from what they knew at home.
• But they usually treated social inequality as "natural" — a normal state of affairs, not something to question. Slavery, for example, is described plainly, like any other market good.
• Key exam idea: the traveller's account is not a neutral mirror. What he notices, and what he ignores, both tell us about him.

Ibn Battuta on slavery — the market

• Ibn Battuta (1304–c. 1377), a scholar from Tangier, Morocco, wrote the Rihla ("journey"); its full title is Tuhfat al-anzar fi gharaaib al-amsar wa ajaaib al-asfar. He dictated it in 1353 to Ibn Juzayy, who dressed up the plain prose with an ornate style and bits of poetry. [2][4]
• He reached Sind in 1333, travelled through Multan and Uch to Delhi, was made qazi (judge) of Delhi by Muhammad bin Tughlaq, later fell out of favour and was jailed, and in 1342 was sent as the Sultan's envoy to China. [2][4]

Note: The Rihla was dictated in 1353, ten years and more after the India years. So details may be remembered, not recorded on the spot.

• Ibn Battuta says slaves were openly sold in markets, like any other goods.
• Slaves were also regularly exchanged as gifts — this is the important point. A slave was a normal thing to hand over in a social or political exchange.
• Examples from his account:
• When he arrived in Sind, he bought "horses, camels and slaves" as gifts to be presented to Muhammad bin Tughlaq.
• At Multan, he gave the governor a slave and a horse, along with raisins and almonds.
• Muhammad bin Tughlaq rewarded the preacher Nasiruddin for a single sermon with 100,000 tankas (the silver coin of the Sultanate) and 200 slaves.

Ibn Battuta on slavery — differences among slaves

Slaves were not one single group. Ibn Battuta shows clear differentiation by skill and by job.

• Skilled female slaves (music and dance):
• Some were experts in music and dance.

• Ibn Battuta himself watched them perform at the marriage of the Sultan's sister.

• Female slaves as spies:

• The Sultan used female slaves to keep watch on his nobles.
• The information was passed on through female scavengers — women who could enter noble houses unannounced, because their work took them inside anyway.

• Point to remember: low status made them invisible, and invisibility made them useful for surveillance.

• Domestic slaves (the large majority):

• Most did domestic labour inside households.
• They were indispensable for carrying palanquins, especially the dola (a covered litter carried on the shoulders).

• Their prices were very low. Almost any family that could afford one kept at least one or two.

• Where did they come from? Most were captured in raids and military expeditions.

• So slave status ranged from a trained court performer to an ordinary household worker bought cheap in a market. The word "slave" hides this range.

Bernier on sati — the child widow at Lahore

• Sati = a widow burning herself on her dead husband's funeral pyre. European travellers made the treatment of women the crucial marker of East–West difference — the proof, in their telling, that the two societies were unlike each other.
• Bernier's famous set-piece is the child widow at Lahore:
• She was about twelve years old.
• She was weeping and clearly did not want to die.

• She was held and pushed towards the pyre by Brahmanas and an old woman.

• But Bernier's own account is not one-sided. He recorded that some women seemed to embrace death cheerfully, while others were forced to die. This mixed observation is the detail most students miss.

• Wider background (external, beyond the scaffold):
• The first reference to the custom in a Sanskrit text is in the Mahabharata, composed roughly 2,000 years ago. [3]
• Brahmins of Bengal practised sati regularly, particularly between 1680 and 1830 — the window that includes and follows Bernier's stay. [3]
• Sati was banned in 1829 by Lord William Bentinck, Governor-General, encouraged by the campaign of Ram Mohun Roy. [3][5]
• Modern law: The Commission of Sati (Prevention) Act, 1987 (Act No. 3 of 1988); Section 5 punishes glorification of sati. [6]

The counterweight: working women the travellers did not describe

The NCERT chapter deliberately places a correction next to the traveller accounts.

• Women's labour was crucial in agricultural production — sowing, weeding, harvesting, processing grain.
• It was equally crucial in non-agricultural production — spinning yarn, sifting and kneading clay for pottery, and similar craft work.
• Women of merchant families took part in commercial activities. They sometimes took mercantile disputes to court.
• Conclusion drawn by the chapter: it is therefore unlikely that women were confined to the private domestic space as a rule.
• The silence is itself evidence. Travellers wrote pages on slaves and on sati — the dramatic and the exotic — but almost nothing on the ordinary working woman in the field or the workshop. That tells us about their gaze, not about her absence.

Prelims Hooks

• Ibn Battuta's book is the Rihla; full title Tuhfat al-anzar fi gharaaib al-amsar wa ajaaib al-asfar; dictated 1353 to Ibn Juzayy. [2][4]
• Ibn Battuta reached Sind in 1333; appointed qazi of Delhi; sent as envoy to China in 1342. [2]
• Muhammad bin Tughlaq rewarded the preacher Nasiruddin with 100,000 tankas and 200 slaves.
• Ibn Battuta gave the governor of Multan a slave and a horse, plus raisins and almonds.
• Female slaves in Muhammad bin Tughlaq's service spied on nobles; reports came via female scavengers.
• Dola = palanquin/litter carried by slaves; female domestic slaves were notably cheap.
• Ibn Battuta saw skilled female slaves sing and dance at the wedding of the Sultan's sister.
• Bernier's sati set-piece: a child widow of about twelve at Lahore, forced to the pyre by Brahmanas and an old woman.
• Earliest Sanskrit reference to sati is in the Mahabharata; Bengal Brahmins practised it especially between 1680 and 1830. [3]
• Sati banned in 1829 under Lord William Bentinck, with Ram Mohun Roy's campaign behind it; present law is the Commission of Sati (Prevention) Act, 1987. [3][5][6]

Mains Points

• Travellers' accounts as gendered sources. All the observers were men and outsiders. Their attention fell on the market in slaves and on sati; ordinary women's labour in fields and workshops went unrecorded. For GS-I, this is a good example of source criticism: the gaps in a source are data about the observer.
• Sati as a marker of "difference". European writers used the treatment of women to argue that the East was essentially unlike the West — an argument later used to justify intervention. Yet Bernier himself noted that some widows went willingly and others were forced, which undercuts a single flat picture. Link this to the 1829 ban under Bentinck and to Ram Mohun Roy's reform campaign. [3][5]
• Slavery was graded, not uniform. Court performers, spies, palanquin-bearers and domestic workers were all "slaves", but with very different skills, values and access to power. Use this against the exam-answer habit of treating medieval slavery as one undifferentiated block; most slaves entered through capture in raids, so warfare fed the household economy.
• Rethinking "public vs private". Evidence of women in agricultural work, craft production, trade, and in court cases over mercantile disputes argues against the idea of a fully secluded medieval woman. Seclusion was more an elite and urban ideal than a lived universal.