Domestic Slavery in Allahabad Documents: Late Timurid India

Slavery in Indian subcontinent¡ a function of different variables from religion to social and legal system¡ led to a dynamic system relevant to Indian socio- political environment.
The main objective of this article is to redefine Slavery in terms of Domestic Slavery which has been paid less attention in the social history of slavery in Islamic studies.
Based on Allahabad documents¡ the study reveals that dispersed forms of slavery system in India in late Timurid time eventually got shaped within the frame of domestic slavery followed by “Constant Kinship Slavery”. In this system slavery is considered as the reflection of “property” and “possession” process. In addition¡ an extra attempt has been taken to conceptually unfold some sophisticated terms and metaphors within the documents to introduce new prospects as well as fresh fields in research. Some illustrations of such terms would be mentioned as: slave- in- contract¡ slave- in- sell¡ slave- in- gift¡ slave- in- debt¡ slave- in- marriage and so on. The findings also made us to face with some categories so- called Slavery Intention and Commercial and Noncommercial Domestic Slavery.
In this research the matter of date¡ from late Timurid India in late 18th century to the first half of 19th century¡ under the British ruling¡ is carefully observed. It has to be emphasized that in this research the jurisprudential and legal aspects of Islamic slavery is out of concern.