Slavery and Urban Labour Organization in Sultanate India: Testimony from Travel Narratives.

The Delhi Sultanate (1206–1526 CE) marked a transformative epoch in the history of the Indian subcontinent, characterized by strong political centralization, expansion of commercial networks, intensification of Indo-Islamic cultural exchange, and rapid urbanization. The growth of cities such as Delhi, Daulatabad, Cambay, Sonargaon, Multan, and Lakhnauti was supported by a complex labour system in which enslaved and wage-based workers played an indispensable role. One of the most crucial yet often neglected dimensions of this urban transformation was the extensive use of slavery as a structural component of the administrative, military, and economic machinery of the Sultanate state. Foreign travellers including Ibn Battuta, Al-Biruni, Marco Polo, Shihabuddin al-Umari, Niccolò de’ Conti, and later Duarte Barbosa provide vivid eyewitness accounts that illuminate multiple facets of urban labour systems. Their narratives demonstrate that slavery in Sultanate India was not confined to domestic service or elite households; rather, it was deeply embedded in state bureaucracy, royal workshops (karkhanas), public works and architectural enterprises, military contingents, and the commercial and artisanal economy. These travellers describe large slave markets, the mobilization of enslaved workers for monumental construction projects, their participation in agricultural production for urban supply, and the presence of highly skilled enslaved artisans engaged in textile weaving, metalwork, and luxury crafts.1 These travel narratives provide valuable insight into the social hierarchy, labour mobility, and economic exploitation that structured urban life in the Delhi Sultanate. Ibn Battuta notes that Muhammad bin Tughlaq maintained thousands of slaves for administrative and palace service, while Niccolò de’ Conti and Barbosa describe enslaved labour in port towns sustaining maritime trade. Shihabuddin al-Umari adds that India participated in an international slave trade through West-Asian networks. When read alongside indigenous sources such as Barani and Afif, as well as archaeological and numismatic evidence, these accounts reveal that slavery formed a crucial foundation of urban growth and state power. The study of labour systems in this period thus exposes both the economic engines of urban development and the deep social inequalities that shaped medieval Indian urban society.