UNIT 3 APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF

MEDIEVAL URBANISATION*
Structure
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Idea of Medieval Cities in Europe
3.3 Perceptions on Medieval Indian Cities
3.4 The Idea of Medieval Urbanism
3.4.1 Commercially and Politically Charged Urbanism
3.4.2 Urbanism and Sufi and Bhakti Spaces
3.4.3 Poliscracy
3.4.4 Portuguese Cities: Polisgarchic

3.5 ‘City-States’
3.6 Summary
3.7 Exercises
3.8 References

3.1 INTRODUCTION
Cities, as indicators of economic growth and social change, mean different things in
different historical periods and regional contexts (Schultz, 1979: 15). Though the
nomenclatures of ‘city’ and ‘town’ are used for all historical periods by many without
much time-wise distinction, historians know for certain that the content of ‘city’ and
‘town’ changes over time. In other words urban centres are not static, on the other
hand they keep on changing their meanings over time on the basis of changing larger
socio-economic processes, within which they get shaped and formatted. In that sense
they are microcosms which reflect the larger world. This type of perception made some
to look at town or city to be a social form in which the essential properties of larger
systems of social relations are grossly concentrated and intensified (Abrams, 1978: 9-
10). The perception that cities are reflective of the larger socio-economic processes
inherently prompts many to look at cities of medieval period as something significantly
different from those of ancient period and also of modern period, where entirely different
systems of social relations operated.

3.2 IDEA OF MEDIEVAL CITIES IN EUROPE

While arguing that cities are indicators of economic growth over time, historians and
sociologists have also been trying to look into the nuanced nature of urban processes
corresponding to it. Max Weber perceived the Western medieval cities to be centres of
production in contrast to the ancient Greek or Roman cities, which were largely centres

*
Prof. Pius Malekandathil, Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
This is a modified version of the ‘Introduction’ of the book, edited by Yogesh Sharma and Pius
Malekandathil, (2014) Cities in Medieval India (New Delhi: Primus Books). We acknowledge
with thanks Primus Books for letting us use the ‘Introduction’ from the above mentioned book.
36
of consumption. These medieval cities are said to have become the launching pad for Approaches to the
the development of capitalism in the West, when they combined processes of production Study of Medieval
Urbanisation
with those of exchange and also gave ‘political and cultural’ priority to the interests of
‘producers’ and ‘traders’, over and above those of the ‘consumers’ that had been the
case during the ancient period in the West. Max Weber also refers to the types of social
activities happening in the western medieval towns from the part of these ‘producers’
and ‘traders’ for ‘constituting or evading some form of power’. The urban dwellers of
medieval West, constituted of the ‘producers’ and ‘traders’, broke their dependence
on the legitimate feudal authorities around them and usurped power from them to resort
to ‘non-legitimate domination’ by putting themselves illegitimately on artisans and
peasants, who in turn were required to rely upon them. It was through rational associations
and confraternities of burghers that the latter usurped power and there were cases
when a private club of rich citizens claimed for their right to grant citizenship. The
atmosphere of autonomy of the city that allowed rational economic action, free conduct
of trade as well as pursuit of gain and protected the interests of ‘producers’ both in the
domains of economy and power exercise was instrumental in the development of ‘work
ethic’ in medieval western cities (Weber, 1966; Weber, 1968: 1212-1367; Wood,
2007: 158-173; Abrams, 1978: 28-30). Max Weber argued that what constituted an
ideal full urban community was a settlement displaying relative pre-dominance of trade-
commercial relations and having a fortification, a market, a court of its own and at least
partially autonomous law, a related form of association and required amount of autonomy
and autocephaly that allowed the burghers to participate in the election of authorities
that governed them (Weber, 1966: 80-1; Weber, 1968: 1215-1231). This was an ideal
typical construction, which was also excessively euro-centric.
The role of medieval cities in the process of transition from feudalism to capitalism has
been a theme of vibrant academic debates for a long span of time and so has been the
theme of formation of a working class in the cities as inevitable component of social
evolution. Henry Pirenne argues for the primacy of medieval cities and long-distance
trade as the engines of social change and views that with the commercial revival in
western Europe from the eleventh century on, the country started orienting itself towards
towns (Pirenne, 1956: 81-110). The initial arguments of Maurice Dobb that the rise of
medieval towns and the growth of markets had exercised a disintegrating impact on the
structure of feudalism and ‘prepared for the growth of forces that weakened and
supplanted it’ (Dobb, 2007: 70-1) was modified by him later following a debate with
Paul Sweezy, who questioned the externality of towns in relation to feudalism. In
response, Maurice Dobb argued that the rise of medieval towns was a process internal
to feudal system and highlighted the incapacity of feudal social relations ‘to contain the
process of petty production and exchange that feudalism itself generated’ and showed
this process to be a struggle of different groups within the feudal order to dominate
small-scale production and to appropriate the profits of trade’ (Sweezy, 2006: 40;
Dobb, 2007: 59- 61). He perceived medieval towns as oases in a rather unfree society
that acted as magnets of freedom for the pressurised and exploited rural population
making them migrate to towns (Dobb, 2007: 70).
Historians realised that there were different types of medieval towns that emerged in
the West and that they were not of the same economic and political value in effecting
the transition from feudalism. Straightjacketing the medieval towns into one category
has proved to be erroneous. Henri Pirenne identified two different categories of medieval
towns: a) towns of Liege type and b) those of Flemish type. The Liege type of town
was primarily political or seat of bishop or of his court, where the main people were
ecclesiastical gentry, administrators with a few artisans and servants providing them
with finished goods. The Flemish type of city was principally an economic unit, which 37
Introduction to was ruled by a wealthy oligarchy consisting of rich merchant magnates and financial
Urban History families. These towns took origin along the channels of long-distance trade and were
located outside the old Roman settlements as well ecclesiastical townships and feudal
fortifications. The inhabitants of such cities lived by trade making them evolve as the
base for the new anti-feudal ruling class (Pirenne, 1956: 55-100, 124-44, 160).
Fernand Braudel says that there were three basic types of towns in the course of their
evolution: a) open towns which were not differentiated from their hinterland and were
at times blending into it, as were seen in ancient Greece and Rome. In the open towns,
sizeable amount of power remained with the structures of an agrarian world. b) The
second type consisted of closed towns, which were self-sufficient units and ‘closed in
on themselves in every sense’ and ‘the walls of these towns marked the boundaries of
an individual way of life more than a territory’, as we see in the case of medieval towns.
The moment a peasant fleeing from the seigniorial servitude crossed the ramparts of the
medieval town and entered the walled space of the town, he got relieved of his servitude
and became free and the seigniorial lord could not touch him. In closed towns there
was a relative appropriation of power by those residing within the town. c) The third
type consisted of the subject towns which were held in the gamut of subjection by
prince and state, as in the case of early modern towns like Florence that the Medicis
had subjugated or Paris that the Bourbon rulers kept as their capital. The closed towns
or the mercantile towns were viewed as having caused the Western Europe to advance
economically (Braudel, 1973: 401-6; Abrams, 1978: 24-5).
As one of the important markers by which a town is distinguished from the country side
is the nature of division of labour, historians have been looking at the labour processes
in medieval towns, as well. Though theoretically Fernand Braudel agrees that the
merchants, the functions of political, religious and economic control and the craft activities
would go over to the town side, he views that the complete span of these professions
was seen only in big towns and not in small towns, where the manpower was limited
(Abrams, 1978: 376). In fact the labour process of medieval towns was not so intense
and complex as we find in the modern cities which rose with industrial capitalism.
Moreover, unlike the medieval cities, the type of social trends that appeared with industrial
capitalism necessitated the emergence of planned cities for modern period, with a fixed
pattern of policing, street plans, earmarked spaces for stores, transport lines, labeled
and segregated neighbourhoods, configurations of political power, specific rules related
to hygiene and health care etc. The different forms of control that were exercised over
the urban space after industrial capitalism may not be seen in medieval cities in the way
they are found in modern towns.
Recently there have been attempts to look at medieval cities from the perspective of
cultural formation and introduce urban identities and city-forms as cultural constructions,
which were being recurringly refashioned and modified. The urban communities are
studied vis-à-vis their cultural formation thanks to their participation in community
movements, confrontations with alien cultures, formation of plural societies, dual or
multiple loyalties and multiple affiliations.
Many historical geographers and historians argue that the spatial processes involved in
the construction of the urban units can be analysed and studied to decode the intentions
of the human agents and the extent of their realisations. Spatial studies got significant
attention with the works of Michel Foucault, Henri Lefebvre, Edward Soja on the
‘production of space’ (Foucault, 1986: 22-27; Foucault, Wright and Rabinow, 1982:
14-20; Lefbvre, 1991; Soja, 1989). Historical geographers argue that spatial process
is something that happens not by accident, but with definite purposes and logic. They
38 view that “space”, particularly urban space, is intentionally charged with meaning
and show the ways how meanings of power and domination are inscribed into urban Approaches to the
space (Harvey, 2001; Gregory, 2000: 644-646; Harvey, 1973; Harvey, 1985; Harvey, Study of Medieval
Urbanisation
2007). Spatialisation focuses on ‘space’ as a fundamental variable influencing both
society’s organisation and operation as well as the behaviour of its individual members
(Cox, 1976: 182-207). This type of study emerges from the assumption that man makes
imprints on geography in the material process of existence by repeated modifications in
the landscape and that by a historical study of landscape one can decipher the context
of human activity and can trace the human thought behind it. Michel Foucault, who saw
power as being inscribed in space, was convinced that analysis of power in society
could be achieved through an analysis of control over space (Foucault, 1980: 76-77;
Baker, 2003: 65). Historical geographers and historians now make a distinction between
private and public spaces , sacred and profane spaces, commercial and ceremonial
spaces, shared and divided spaces, male and female spaces and individual and
institutional spaces and they realise that spaces are contested resources which individuals
and groups seek to control as demonstration of their own power (Ploszajska, 1994:
413-429; Malekandathil, 2009: 13-38).
Sociologists and urban historians maintain that a study of the process of urbanisation
has to focus on the variables of population, social organisation, the physical environment
and technology. The process of urban modification begins when the changing social
organisation and technological innovation mediate in the urban space in such a way that
the balance between the population and the environment gets changed. The societal
process emerging out of it causes various types of structures to appear in the urban
space (Schultz, 1979: 15). Stanley K.Schultz says that for understanding the nuances
of urbanisation process, one should analyse such aspects like size of population
concentration, rural-urban-rural migration patterns, fertility-mortality ratios, rate of
literacy etc., under the category of population and the type of geography chosen for
habitation as well as the physical spacing and distance of communities within that
geography should be examined to get a picture of the urban environment with which the
urban dwellers are interacting. In order to understand the nature of mediation done by
technology in urban space one should also analyse the nature of communication lines,
modes of transportation as well as informational network and the nature of social
organisation is better understood only when one examines the nature of the status and
power groups within the urban communities, besides analysing the percentage of work
force involved in non-agricultural enterprises, diversity of occupational structure, methods
of recruitment for employment and nature as well as means of economic exchange etc
(Schultz, 1979: 14-16).

3.3 PERCEPTIONS ON MEDIEVAL INDIAN CITIES

A vibrant academic debate on medieval Indian cities was initiated by Mohammed Habib
with his argument on the sudden spurt of labour process in North India followed by an
‘urban revolution’ triggered off by the conquest of Mohammed Ghori. However he
attributed the commencement of this labour process to an external factor, i.e., political
conquest by Mohammed Ghori. He maintained that the low-caste Indian workers who
till then remained outside the walls of towns and in the peripheries, entered the towns
along with the forces of Mohammed Ghori, offering their services for government in the
form of fighting force and for manufacturing sector to produce finished products. The
new regime removed all kinds of discrimination against the city-workers, who in turn
sustained it for more than 500 years. The religion of Islam acted as magnet attracting
the city-workers like elephant-drivers, butchers, weavers etc., to get converted to it, as
it gave them some sort of upward social mobility. Unlike during the time of Thakurs,
39
Introduction to when military profession was hereditary and linked with land tenure, the new regime
Urban History recruited fighting force out of the working class of the towns. The Turkish co-sharers of
power drew their military force, workers for karkhanas, artisans, personal servants,
musicians, dancing girls etc., from the large bulk of work force available in the towns.
He views the conquest of India by Mohammed Ghori as a revolution of Indian city
labour spearheaded by Ghorian Turks (Habib, 1952: 55-78).
Irfan Habib was critical of the way how the labour process was explained by Mohammed
Habib to study the nature of the emergence of urban centres in Medieval India. Though
Irfan Habib accepts the expansion of urban economy with increase in the number and
size of towns, growth in craft production and commerce during the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries, he says that this happened primarily because of the changes or
innovations made in technology for making paper, textiles and buildings; flow of gold
and silver for minting coins to promote trade and the formation of the new ruling class
that appropriated a large chunk of rural surplus through the new land revenue system
and spent in towns, where they resided. However, he argues that these changes happened
not because of ‘liberation’ of any segment of society. He maintains that slave labour or
unfree labour was vital in almost all the domains of production in the Indian towns of
this period (Habib,1978: 289-98).
Scholars like B.D. Chattopadhyaya and R.Champakalakshmi have traced the origins
of medieval Indian towns back to ninth century onwards. B.D. Chattopadhyaya, focusing
on north-west India, has highlighted the emergence of townships in Indo-Gangetic divide,
the Upper Ganga basin and the Malwa region thanks to the forces emitted by trade. He
examines the nodal economic points of these geographies and shows that before their
emergence as full-fledged urban centres under the Gurjara Pratiharas, they were pivotal
points in local trade. He estimates the appearance of 20 towns in Gujarat, 131 in
Rajasthan, 78 in Karnataka during the eleventh century and 70 in Andhra during the
period between 1000 and 1336 (Chattopadhyaya, 1997: 132-181). Though the origins
of many of these towns were caused by trade, a considerable number of them were loci
of power for the regional rulers.
However, R. Champakalakshmi focuses on south India and examines several towns of
varying size and nature in Chola territory that appeared during the period between ninth
and thirteenth centuries thanks to the stimulus from external trade. By her meticulous
analysis, she shows that all the medieval south Indian towns were not alike; on the
contrary she speaks of marked distinctions visible among the mercantile towns, royal
towns, ceremonial-cum-religious towns of the Cholas and the militarised and fortified
towns of Vijayanagara kingdom. The revival of long-distance trade in the tenth century
and the eventual organisation of commerce by various guilds caused many towns,
particularly along the coast, to evolve in Chola territories that extended to Andhra and
southern Karnataka. Concomitantly, there also evolved several urban centres with the
convergence of surplus from brahmadeyas and temples and with the political and
economic power getting increasingly focused on the temple in the ninth century. The
latter became the central mobilising institution of royal cities like Tanjavur, where the
elites and power groups occupied the spatial ring around the ‘ceremonial centre’ of
temple, while the artisan and service groups lived in the outer ring. The new urban
processes around viradalam and suradalam, which evolved as militarily protected
towns in the thirteenth century, were indicative of the weight of power that the mercantile
bodies appropriated by this time. She also refers to fortified urban centres which the
nayaks of the militarised Vijayangara state set up in the areas of their control from
fourteenth century onwards as distinct from sacred complex (Champakalakshmi, 1996:
25-72).
40
The binary opposite of town and countryside has been a tool of analysis for several Approaches to the
historians who examined the socio-economic processes of medieval India. What Study of Medieval
Urbanisation
constituted a medieval Indian town of north India has been the focus of analysis for
scholars like K.M Ashraf, H.K. Naqvi and W.H. Moreland (Ashraf, 1970; Moreland,
1962; Moreland, 1979; Naqvi, 1968; Naqvi, 1972). Their studies revolved primarily
around the examination of the main features of the major towns of north India and their
linkages with economic progress. The academic efforts of a large number of scholars
working on the city-scape of different parts of medieval India like S.C.Misra, Shireen
Moosvi, R.E. Frykenberg, Stephen Blake, Shama Mitra Chenoy, Satish Chandra,
K.S.Mathew, Aniruddha Ray, Sinnappah Arasaratnam, K.K.Trivedi, I.P.Gupta, J.S.
Grewal and Indu Banga helped the emergence of urban history as a separate branch of
historical study in India (Moosvi, 2008, 1987; Misra, 1985, 1964; Chenoy, 1998;
Frykenberg, 1993; Blake, 1993; Chandra, 1997; Hasan, 2008; Thakur, 1994; Gupta,
1986; Mathew and Ahmad, 1990; Trivedi, 1998; Grewal and Banga, 1985; Banga,
1992, 1991; Arasaratnam and Ray, 1994; Singh, 1985).
Shireen Moosvi focuses more on the major manufacturing towns of north India, which
then experienced intense labour processes. (Moosvi, 1987: 300-320) . In her recent
work she has used details concerning the urban tax-income from different sūbas and
cities for examining the degree of urbanisation in Mughal India. She says that the sūba
of Gujarat, which had participation in long-distance trade and craft production, had the
highest urban taxation (at 18.654% of the jama’)and was the most urbanised region in
the empire, and it was followed by the sūba of Agra, where urban taxation was 15.712
% of the jama’ . On the basis of Āīni Akbarī she has estimated the amount being spent
for the maintenance of the urban population and the amount left in the country side for
subsistence-level existence. She states that in Mughal India about 17.42 % of total
population lived in urban centres while 82.58% resided in country side( Moosvi, 2008:
119-134). Stephen Blake studies Shahjahanabad as a “sovereign city” and says that it
was personal, familial in nature and was guided by the desires of the patrimonial
bureaucratic emperors. To him a sovereign city was an extended patriarchal household
of the emperor himself at the micro-level. But from macro-perspective, it was the
kingdom in miniature. It was the capital of a patrimonial bureaucratic empire, in whose
state formation process the emperor used to extend personal patrimonial control over
the space of kingdom through a bureaucratic arrangement. Here the bureaucracy was
made loyal to the emperor through nuanced military, political and economic mechanisms
and arrangements. ‘Sovereign city’ was the urban expression of the political authority in
space and the palace in the city was the symbol of the cosmic order formulated and
legitimised by the presence of the emperor (Stephen Blake, Shahjahanabad: Sovereign
City in Mughal India, 1639-1739, Delhi, 1993). Satish Chandra links the nobility of
Medieval India intrinsically with urban culture. Though the nobility in India was not a
legal category, unlike in Europe, the nobles being involved in the tasks of government at
higher levels reflected a certain level of culture and urbanity (Satish Chandra, Medieval
India: From Sultanat to the Mughals, Mughal Empire, 1525-1748, Part –II, New
Delhi, 1999, p.379). He also refers to the conflicting conditions of disquiet cities in the
eighteenth century India, where the leading nobles or court parties were driven by
factions formed on the basis of language, culture, patronage and regional origin (Satish
Chandra, Parties and Politics at the Mughal Court, 1707-1740, New Delhi, 2002:
280-300).
The various edited works of Indu Banga brought urban historians together to look into
the nuanced meanings of urbanism in India. Her edited work Ports and their Hinterlands
in India brought before the scholars various conceptual and methodological issues to
be addressed while studying the urbanisation processes of port-towns (Indu Banga 41
Introduction to Ports and their Hinterlands in India, 1700-1950, Delhi, 1992). K.S. Mathew and
Urban History Afzal Ahmad look at the emergence of the Portuguese city of Cochin in 1527 as a
separate urban enclave being distinct from the ‘native Cochin’, being administered with
its own municipal system. Its urban vibrancy rested on the vast wealth from spice trade
with various European markets (Mathew and Ahmad, 1990). Sinnapah Arasaratnam
and Anirudha Ray show the role of indigenous banking, artisanal manufacture and trade
in the development of the urban centres of Masulipatnam and Cambay. Though both
the cities were centres of major trans-continental trading networks, eventually they
suffered terribly because of hinterland political instabilities and European sea-faring
challenges. The various mercantile communities, who became heavily vulnerable to
extraneous pressures , could not eventually find means to conduct their business in a
sustained way against the background of constantly changing conditions and could not
carry forth their mercantile wealth and traditions uninterruptedly from generation to
generation (Arasaratnam and Ray, 1994).
Now there is an increasing desire among the urban historians to move away from the
study of towns as descriptive categories and look into the value attached to medieval
towns. Everybody knows that this is not as simple as it may appear to be. The causative
factors for the emergence and sustenance of the medieval towns varied from time to
time, causing changes to happen in their functional roles. There were cases when towns
like Agra, which emerged mainly because of political reasons, had accumulated lot of
economic meanings in course of time and later grew as one of the most thriving
commercial centres of north India even after the shifting of the power base of the Mughals
to Delhi and elsewhere. Certain towns like Benares, which though emerged mainly
because of religious and pilgrimage reasons, became major centre of banking and
mercantile activities radically transforming the very economic content of the town. Some
towns like Goa that initially appeared because of trade being the motor, eventually lost
its prime mercantile character because of the excessive intervention and control of the
Portuguese state, which made the various merchant groups flee to commercially liberal
spaces in the Indian Ocean, converting Goa eventually as a dry seat of Portuguese
power bereft of any significant trade and actual substance of power. Most of the towns
of medieval India underwent this process of radical transformation, as a result of which
towns that initially emerged with certain definite types of causes got new functions and
roles to play in course of time. This shift was necessitated by the emergence of new
power groups and status groups in the city space, who in their eagerness to articulate
meanings of their role and position into the physicality of the town, saw to it that the old
power groups and their operational-cum- habitational spaces functionally got relegated
to background, which conveniently was developed in eventual course of time as an
essential condition for asserting the power of the former. The overlapping of urban
functions at different time points and the conflicting assertions made by different power
groups used to get reflected in the spatial processes and a decoding of urban geographical
layers would bring home the chronological sequences of various layers of values and
logic inscribed into city space (Malekandathil, 2009: 13-38).

3.4 THE IDEA OF MEDIEVAL URBANISM

Let us look into the nature of urbanism in the medieval period which was greatly guided
by polity, trade and society.

3.4.1 Commercially and Politically Charged Urbanism

There were basically two types of urbanism that appeared in India during the medieval
and early modern period. On the one hand there was the ‘commercially charged
42
urbanism’ that made appearance in major manufacturing-cum-exchange centres of India Approaches to the
thanks to the economic forces emitted by them and on the other hand there was the Study of Medieval
Urbanisation
‘politically charged urbanism’, where the actual power processes emitted the type of
forces required for urbanisation. Delhi formed the principal one among the politically
charged urban centres, while Daulatabad, Gulbarga, Gaur, Agra, Lahore, Bijapur,
Golconda emerged eventually as other significant ‘political towns’ (Ashraf, 1970:100-
210). The commercially charged urban centres evolved along the nodal points of the
major trade routes running through the length and breadth of the country. Jaunpur,
Burhanpur, Multan, Patna, Ahmedabad, Ujjain, Ajmer and Allahabad (Moreland, 1962
:145-172; Naqvi, 1968:12-130) emerged principally as commercially charged towns,
though later with the establishment of provincial capitals in these urban centres, their
town -character got a different twist. As commerce and politics were interwoven during
this period, very often these two different categories of towns did not exist as
compartmentalised insular entities, but as geo-economic units inseparably having the
features of the both. These domains had multiple points of intersection. In fact the
revival of trade in the 10th 11th centuries stimulated the process of urban dissemination
in different parts of India; however the entry of Islam with elements of urban culture
borrowed from the erstwhile Sassanid Persia intensified the process, causing several
towns and quasi towns to emerge in the hubs of economic and cultural exchanges.
Islam as an ideology introduced certain cultural practices that accelerated the production
and consumption of certain particular types of wares for meeting the requirements
stipulated by the tenets of the belief system. Because of the Islamic stipulation that both
the male and female adherents should cover their entire body with clothes, there suddenly
came an enormous demand for various types of cloths and textiles, which in turn
intensified weaving activities in an unprecedented way. It is interesting to note here that
because of the intrinsic linkages that textile manufacturing had then with Islam and Muslim
weavers, many non- Muslim weavers in different parts of India also started observing
several of Muslim festivities including Muharram, which some of the Hindu weavers
celebrated in Andhra Pradesh with an entirely different nomenclature. This process in
the long run attracted like a magnet different groups of people involved in weaving
activities to the evolving Islamic enclaves, which soon became the converging points for
artisans and traders. Most of the newly emerging towns like Multan, Ahmedabad, Baroda,
Surat etc., had a predominant weaver group that was specialised in the manufacturing
of various types of textiles (Moreland, 1962: 160-172). The economic forces emitted
by the iqtadari system, which created a large class of consumers with immense
purchasing-ability, accelerated the process of urban dissemination in a big way. By
pumping agrarian surplus to the centres of their habitat, the iqtadars switched on the
motors of urbanisation in several enclaves.

3.4.2 Urbanism and Sufi and Bhakti Spaces

In many of the smaller towns and qasbas the weavers and the various categories of
artisans used to get themselves linked with the Sufi space and the platforms of Bhakti
tradition in their efforts to get themselves detached from the ‘abominable and
contemptuous position’ that the rural society then thrust on them and to get themselves
socially acceptable and receptive to the evolving middle class of these towns. Both
Sufism and Bhakti movement evolved as cultural motors of urbanism in many parts of
India and through their multiple platforms, ritual practices and ideologies they provided
a certain amount of cohesion, meaning and a new type of identity to the otherwise
scattered categories of artisans, bolstering their self-pride. This is evident in the metaphors
and similes that the saints were then using. Kabir increasingly used metaphors and
similes from weaving in his verses (Singh, 1993: 48). Both Sufism and Bhakti movements 43
Introduction to legitimised the culture of work in the attempts to make their ideologies acceptable to
Urban History the various artisan groups, which in turn helped also to stimulate the process of secondary
sector production and urban formations. The inevitable result was the growing reduction
in the ability of rural magnates and aristocrats to control labour within the confines of
the villages and this was followed by a great flow of workforce to the evolving urban
enclaves that favoured work-culture. Maksud Ahmad Khan gives another perception
about Sufi impact on urbanisation .To him the Sufi saints who went to remote places
and interior geographies propagating the tenets of their masters, were instrumental in
their urbanisation process. These remote places over a period of time acquired fame
and popularity because of their association with Sufi saints, which in turn made many
pilgrims and devotees flock around them , causing them to evolve as urban centres. In
this process places like Sylhet (located near Dacca), whose origin and growth is
associated with the Sufi pir Shah Jalauddin, became urban units (Khan, 2004: 103-5).
By fifteenth and sixteenth centuries Sufism and Bhakti movements including those of
Kabirpanthis and Dadupanthis were increasingly evolving as religious movements of
the towns, catering to the spiritual, social and psychological issues predominantly of the
urban dwellers, which the mainstream conservative strands of these religions failed to
properly address.1 Irfan Habib (1969: 6-13) also discusses the issue of artisan
participation in the Bhakti movements of North India from a different perspective.
(Some aspects of Satish Chandrá’s perceptions are given earlier. So I am skipping this
point here.) The adherents of some of the sects that I mentioned above may appear to
be numerically marginal from the present day perspective; but the type of mobilisation
that Bhakti movements and Sufism made among the artisan groups of north India and
the long-term impact that they exerted on their social and economic formations as
dwellers of the evolving towns cannot be ignored. Unlike the rural communities which
were stable with various organisational devices, the evolving towns represented anarchic
space, with wide gap between the wealthy merchants and poor settlers, with problems
of over-employment and underemployment, consequent to which the destitute artisans
increasingly resorted to these new religious movements to find a meaning against the
background of accumulation of inordinate wealth in the hands of a few. The itinerant
weavers and artisans, who went from town to town carrying the new religious values,
were also carriers of the newly emerging urban culture.2 This is seen in a considerable
degree in Jaunpur, Gwalior, Mandu, Burhanpur, Varanasi, Ludhiana, Panipat,
Ahmedabad etc., which by this time had evolved as significant secondary towns and
were ably networked by people and institutions linked with commodity movements or
by faith-related travels (Grewal, 2006: 325-6; Iraqi, 2009: 56-74; Rizvi, 1978; Lorenzen,
1987: 287-303; Lorenzen, 1981). Kabir whose initial profession was weaving spent a
great amount of time in the weaver’s town of Benares, addressing the spiritual and
societal issues of urban city-dwellers through his poetical pieces. Dadu who was born
of a cotton-carder at Ahmedabad in 1544 kept small towns like Kalyanpur, Kevalpur
etc., as his main centres of activities (Callewaert, 1988: 33-6; 67-72).

1
Here one may find a striking parallel with the religious movements of the Franciscan Friars (the
Mendicants), the Dominican Friars (the Predicants), Alleluiants, Flagellants, Waldensians,
Patarines, Arnoldists, Poor Lombards, Joachimites, Dulcinians, Albigensians and Humiliatis,
which spread as religious movements of the evolving medieval European towns, addressing
the various issues and sensibilities of urban dwellers. For details see Donald F. Logan, A
History of the Church in the Middle Ages, London, 2002; pp. 203-14; C.Violantem, “Eresie
Urbane e Eresie Rurali in Italia dal XI al XIII secolo”, in O. Capitani (ed.), Medioevo Ereticale,
Bologna, 1977.
2
One finds a remarkable amount of parallelism in European history. For details see R.W. Southern,
(1970) Western Society and the Church in Middle Age (Middlesex: Harmondsworth), pp. 273-
44 86; Donald F. Logan, (2002) A History of the Church (London: Routledge), pp. 275-93.
3.4.3 Poliscracy Approaches to the
Study of Medieval
From sixteenth century onwards, the strategy of establishment of a chain of towns both Urbanisation
for mobilising resources from the hinterland and also for integrating the far-flung regions
with the core centre of power exercise was resorted to by the Mughals and the Portuguese
as essential ingredient of their political processes. The imperial foundations of the Mughals
and the Portuguese consisted to a considerable extent in the chain of towns, which the
rulers or their various power-sharers or their representatives erected along the length
and breadth of their empires in the process of extending authority over countryside and
extracting its surplus. In that sense that the rule of the Mughals can be called “poliscracy”,
which as a term stemming from the Greek word ‘polis’(town), is indicative of the ‘rule’
of the superior authority through the medium of towns and town dwellers, which in turn
made the countryside remain economically and politically subordinate to it in a hierarchical
sequence. This view, however, does not deny the fact that countryside also had seeds
for expansion or contraction of urban economies. It is true that the rural –urban continuum
is to be viewed from both the perspectives. In fact the working of ‘poliscratic’ form of
government was facilitated by the creation of several ‘politically charged towns’ and
also by adding political meanings to the mercantile towns already in existence.
Among the Mughals it was Akbar who first started the ‘poliscratic’form of governance
with the construction of a chain of towns in key resource-yielding locations as pillars for
sustaining his evolving empire. Akbar founded and re-founded or conquered or modified
several towns, including the imperial capital cities of Agra (which became the capital of
the Mughals during 1565-1571; 1598-1605) Fatehpur Sikri (1571-1585), Lahore
(1585-1598) (Hasan, 2008: 225-31). The westward shifting of capital from one city
to another corresponded to the geographical conquests that he made westwards, which
in turn is indicative of his desire to consolidate his political position over the newly
conquered terrains and potentially rebellious enclaves, besides mobilising resources,
through the medium of towns, where his co-sharers of power were made to settle
down. Consequently, the shifting of power base from one town to another politically
ensured cementing and consolidation of his position in the frontier regions of the empire
and economically opened the doors of their commodity hinterlands to the circulatory
processes that he had already stimulated through his fiscal and economic initiatives. The
conquest of Muzaffrid Gujarat (1572-3) made Akbar the master of the vibrant port-
towns of Surat, Broach and Cambay, while the occupation of Bengal (1574-6) facilitated
him to have control over the evolving towns of Chittagong, Satgaon and Buttor (Betor-
Howrah) in Bengal. Chittagong and Satgaon had become towns with establishment of
the trading houses of Portuguese private traders and renegades (Campos,1979:66-
99). The Portuguese had established a chain of huts and bamboo structures at Buttor
(Betor-Howrah) along the river as temporary residences and commercial establishments,
which they used to set fire on their departure, as is attested to by Caesar Frederick
(1969: 411; 439) in 1565. In 1583 Akbar constructed the new town of Allahabad (at
the site of old Prayag) with a massive fortress at the converging point of the land-route
and the fluvial routes of Ganges as well as Yamuna, which eventually evolved as an
economic device to mobilise resources from the eastern Gangetic valley (Richards,
1993: 27-30; 62). One of the major features of the ‘poliscratic’ policies of the Mughals
was the frequent shifting of the power base to newer and newer towns along with the
expanding political frontiers and for responding to the new political challenges. Thus
though Jahangir kept Agra as his power base from 1607 to 1612 and occasionally
visited it, he kept on transferring capital to Ajmer, Kashmir and Lahore (Hasan, 2008:
226). Shahjahan shifted his power base to the newly built city of Shajahanabad (1639)
(Blake, 1993) in Delhi after his initial rule at Agra (1628-1639), while Aurangzeb shifted
his capital from Shahjahanabad to Agra (1669-1671) (Hasan, 2008: 226) and finally 45
Introduction to to the city of Aurangabad (1683), (Malekandathil, 2013: 140-159) built in his name in
Urban History Deccan. Though Agra was often regarded as one of the capital cities of the empire, the
court along with major institutions and devices of power was constantly on the move
from place to place, creating different categories of intermediaries and activating
urbanisation processes along the length and breadth of the empire in a degree and form
required for a ‘poliscratic’ form of government.
The ruling class might have been tiny in most of these towns; however the concomitant
creation of different segments of intermediaries to cater to their multiple needs accelerated
complex labour process in these evolving towns emitting massive waves of urbanisation.
In this process of frequent capital-transfers, newer cities were established and the existing
ones were stimulated and expanded to meet the new requirements; however the most
striking development was that several satellite towns and qasbas were formed as
intermediate and secondary urban centres between these mega cities. The wealth from
the countryside was increasingly made to get concentrated in these qasbas, where
production and exchange activities often for meeting the needs of the superior imperial
mega cities used to happen. The qasbas, as feeder towns, formed the economic devices
with the help of which the pillars of the imperial mega cities were inserted into the heart
of the larger types of commodity hinterland scattered over the vast expanse of
countryside. Through these graded hierarchy of towns, which evolved over time on the
basis of the degree of labour-intensive activities happening there and remained interlinked
as beads in a chain, the resource flow from the countryside to the imperial mega cities
took place uninterruptedly in a way that would sustain the costly edifices of the empire,
besides satisfying the consumerist demands of the equally hierarchical power classes,
their multiple intermediaries, associates and subordinates.
Thus, concomitant to the erection and occupation of various towns was the creation of
a long hierarchy of nobility under the mansabdari system as co-sharers of power, who
residing in the evolving towns started pumping wealth into it from their jagirs in the
country side. These co-sharers of power turned out to be strongest consumption class,
with remarkably high abilities of spending, which stimulated the economy both in the
manufacturing of finished products as well as in their exchange processes. Towns turned
out to be the principal habitats for these nobles and the jagirs which they used to
receive under mansabdari system introduced by Akbar, provided immense wealth for
their spending. With a salary of Rs. 25 per month for an ordinary Mughal cavalry man
having three horses and Rs.30,000 per mensem as zat salary of a noble of 5000 of the
first rank, (Chandra, 2006:160-1) there was an enormous body of hierarchy in every
town with spending ability of varying nature who could pump a huge amount of wealth
into the market, augmenting the numerical strength and purchasing power of consumption
class, which in turn increased the demand for various types of luxurious items like
textiles, silken clothes, carpets of silk, tapestry etc. Abul Fazl says that Akbar had
ordered that people of certain rank should wear only certain articles, evidently with a
view to equating consumption habit with social ranks (Ain-i Akbari, 1977, Vol. I, Ain
32: 94). The lavish spending and the ostentatious consumerist behaviour of the nobles
as well as the moneyed groups were increasingly viewed as indexes for their social
standing. Consequently manufacturing activities of different nature that catered to the
variegated needs of the emerging consumer class, got widely disseminated in towns
and in their vicinities, followed by intensification of secondary production and acceleration
of trade oriented towards overseas markets.
The promotion of the ‘poliscratic’ government was realised by increasing urban-oriented
activities, the chief among them being technological innovations that got intensified from
the time of Akbar onwards. Akbar, who was very keen to stimulate the process of craft
46
production and trade, introduced new technologies in the production of textiles. He got Approaches to the
the craftsmen trained in the manufacturing of silken clothes, brocade, tapestry and carpets Study of Medieval
Urbanisation
of silk and brocade in India with a view to making Indian pieces excel the Persian and
European ones (Habib, 2005: 132). Efficient masters and experts brought to India by
Akbar gave instructions in textile production, at times mixing the Iranian, European and
Chinese patterns with Indian. Very often the cities of Agra, Fatehpur Sikri, Lahore and
Ahamedabad became the laboratories where these technological experiments were
frequently done and these cities soon became the major centres for craft-production
(Habib, 2005: 132-133). The intensified production of silk and textiles and their trade
in Mughal terrain is attested to by the Ain-i Akbari, which also gives a long list of
cotton clothes, like khasa (whose price varied between 3 rupees and 15 mohur, per
piece), chautar (three rupees to 9 mohur), malmal (4 rupees), tansukh, gangajal
(four rupee to five mohur) and bhiraun (four rupee to four mohur). A wide variety of
other cotton clothes like salu mihrkul, siri saf, sahan, jhona, atan, asawali, bafta,
mahmudi, panchtoliya, jhola etc., were also taken to the Mughal urban markets for
trade (Ain-i Akbari, 1977, Vol. I, Ain 32: 100-101). With the increase in production
of textiles over and above the local demand, they were increasingly taken for exchange
through the sea ports of Bengal and Gujarat. The Surat-Burhanpur-Agra route (Tavernier,
1925: 40-53; Mundy, 1914: 9-65; Monserrate, 1922: 5-27) and the Surat-Ahmedabad-
Agra route were frequently resorted to for linking the production centres of these towns
with the port-towns and exchange centres along coastal India (Tavernier, 1925: 54-72;
Mundy, 1914: 231-72). From the various north Indian towns finished products were
taken to the ports of Bengal through the fluvial route with the help of barges (Habib,
1999: 70) and also through the Grant Trunk road , built by Sher Shah initially from
Attock to Delhi (Farooque, 1977: 11) and later extended as a route from Agra to
Sonargaon in east Bengal (Qanungo, 1965: 315-6).

3.4.4 Portuguese Cities: Polisgarchic

The Portuguese too resorted to the medium of cities, for sustaining their imperial edifice,
but with a different meaning, entirely different from the way the Mughals used them.
The Portuguese used cities as economic devices for extracting surplus and making
profit from the countryside concentrate on such cities, which they finally took to Europe.
Unlike the Mughals who allowed the wealth to circulate within India and who allowed
the towns to develop on the basis of responses that the various urban players gave to
the requirements of the market and their political exigencies, the Portuguese, who
established a chain of towns like Quilon, Cochin, Cranganore, Cannanore, Mangalore,
Honawar, Barcelor, Goa, Tana, Bassein, Daman and Diu along the west coast of India,
(Silveira, 1991: 80-90; Malekandathil, 2001: 74-5, 148-50, 177-8) had already in
their hands certain set- moulds, which they conveniently used for shaping the character
and format of their urban enclaves in a way that would maximise extraction from the
hinterland (Rossa, 1997). This particular form of Portuguese town-based government
that was introduced along the west coast of India can be called ‘polisgarchic’, which
though is stemming from the same word polis (town) is used to denote the ‘rule’ of
foreign powers through the medium of towns for the purpose of extracting surplus from
the hinterland and for the purpose of exerting controls of various nature over native
resources and skills. Initially Cochin and later Goa were developed as the fixed core
centres of the Portuguese government in India while other Portuguese controlled port-
towns along coastal India had supplementing and complementing functions to play in
the larger project of extraction (Malekandathil, 2010: 301-328). From 1505 onwards,
Cochin was the capital of the Estado da India and it was only in 1530 that the capital
of Estado da India was shifted from Cochin to Goa (Godinho, 1982: 34).
47
Introduction to The amount of wealth that the Portuguese used to accumulate from the trading activities
Urban History of their various urban centres located along the west coast of India was enormous. The
annual value of private trade happening in the Portuguese town of Cochin around 1610
was 22,80,000 pardaos,3 while that of Goa for the same period was 46, 66, 000
pardaos. The annual income from the customs house of the city of Goa was 210000
pardaos (Cunha,1995: 256-7). The annual value of trade of Diu in 1610 was 54, 27,
900 xerafins, that of Bassein was 31, 96, 800 xerafins, while that of Daman was
1225440 xerafins and of Chaul was 6,92,640 xerafins.4 A considerable share of the
wealth thus getting accumulated in these towns was appropriated by the Portuguese in
the form of customs duty (varying between 3.5 % to 6 %) and transferred to Europe in
different forms.
Goa, which happened to be the core centre of power, experienced the highest level of
exclusiveness with cultural homogenisation and standardisation introduced by way of
commonality of religion, food code, dress code and language code for the residents,
while the other towns had varying degrees of inclusiveness and cultural heterogeneity
with multi-cultural residents being given varying functional roles to play on the basis of
the distance of each town from the power centre of Goa. In the city of Goa, every
resident had to adhere to Portuguese religion and Lusitanian cultural practices
(Malekandathil, 2009: 25-7), whereas in other Portuguese towns non-Portuguese
residents increased proportionate to their distance from the power centre. The general
praxis was such that the more distant a town was from the power centre of Goa, the
more accommodative its urban space was , both commercially and culturally, as in the
case of the Portuguese town of Diu, where only a very few Portuguese people lived,
while a considerable chunk of its dwellers happened to be banias (Pearson, 1971: 67-
72).
The ‘polisgarchic’ scheme of Portuguese government consisted initially only of their
towns along the west coast of India; however, the enclaves that the Portuguese private
traders developed along the eastern coast of India like Nagappattinam on the mouth of
Kavery, Mylapore and Pulicat near Madras, Devanampattinam near Pondicherry, Hughli
in Bengal etc., evolved as mercantile towns, resisting the interference of the extracting
and controlling institutions of the Portuguese towns from the west coast (Thomaz, 1994;
Subramanyam, 1990; Subramanyam, 1990; Stephen, 1997; Stephen, 2008: 11-21;
Malekandathil, 2010: 68-71). The Portuguese private traders wanted to keep their
towns function independent of Portuguese Estado da India. However, the Portuguese
officials were not happy with these developments and twice, in 1547 and 1568, military
preparations were made by the Portuguese officials to destroy these private urban
settlements along the Tamil coast and to bring these settlers to the official Portuguese
enclaves on the west coast of India (Thomaz, 2005: 10-11). But the proposed military
expeditions were not carried out and the mercantile urban settlements of the private
Portuguese traders were eventually integrated with the ‘polisgarchic’ system of Portuguese
governance of the west coast of India through a process of taming done with the help of

3
This information is inferred from the customs duty of 80, 000 pardaos (which is levied at 3.5%)
that the king of Cochin used to collect in 1612. BNL, Cod. 11410, fol. 116v, Orçamento de 1612
Cochin. This piece of information can be corroborated with the one per cent duty that the city
of Cochin used to levy on every trader for the maintenance of the city. The annual average of
import for the period from 1587 till 1598 was 7, 34, 900 pardaos. BNL, Fundo Geral, Codice No.
1980 “Livro das Despezas de hum porcento”, Taboada section, fol. 5-16. Pius Malekandathil,
Maritime India, p.192.
4
This is assessed on the basis of customs duty collected for the same period from Diu (2, 44, 500
xerafins), Bassein (1,44,000 xerafins) , Daman (55,200 xerafins) and Chaul (31,200 xerafins).
48 (Cunha,1995: 215).
ecclesiastical institutions like diocese of Mylapore erected in 1606 and the various Approaches to the
religious orders, particularly the Franciscan Capuchins in the towns of Coromandel and Study of Medieval
Urbanisation
the Augustinians in Bengal (Meersman, 1982: 61-70; Malekandathil, 2013: 185-204).

3.5 ‘CITY STATES’

Another set of medieval towns that we see in India can be grouped under the section of
city states, as in the case of Calicut and Cochin that appeared in extreme south during
this period. These were small states or quasi-states that appeared around the port-
cities of Calicut and Cochin respectively drawing energy for their political processes
from maritime trade in the way city-states appeared around cities in Venice and Florence
in Italy (Pölnitz, 1949; Luzzatto, 1961; Lane, 1973); the Hanseatic cities of Bremen,
Lübeck, Hamburg and Danzig in Germany (Danzig is now in Poland.); (Pölnitz, 1953;
Hellenbenz, 1956: 28-49; Malekandathil, 1999: 3-22) and the Swahili city-states of
Mogadishu, Barawa, Pate, Melinde, Mombasa, Pemba, Zanzibar, Kilwa, Sofala and
Inhambane in East Africa (Sinclair and Hakansson, 2000: 63-78; Pearson, 1998).
With the returns from the maritime trade from their port-cities, the rulers of the urban
nuclei of Calicut and Cochin carved out sizeable hinterland in the process of building
states; however these city states of India differ very much from the Hanseatic and
Italian city states in political structure and in the way production and exchanges are
organised for sustaining their power processes (For study on the city-state of Cochin
see Malekandathil, 2001). The port-cities that evolved because of intensified maritime
trade became the core areas of power exercise for the city-states of India, while the
scattered production centres in the interior were attached to the power-edifice and
trading activities of the ports by political conquests. The traces of Calicut emerging as a
city-state could be connected with the transfer of the royal residence of the chief of
Nediyirappu Swarupam from the inland agrarian pocket of Nediyirappu in Ernad
(Malappuram District) to the maritime trade center of Calicut against the background
of stimulated maritime trade in the thirteenth century, after having defeated its original
chieftain, the Polathiri. Later with the wealth from the trade of Calicut and the support
from Muslim mercantile collaborators, the chief of Nediyirappu Swarupam, who
eventually took the title of Samoothiri or Zamorin, annexed neighbouring geographies,
converting them into pepper hinterland for the maritime trade in Calicut (Malekandathil,
1999: 9). Similarly the chief of the Perumpadappu Swarupam, who had his headquarters
in the agrarian belt of Vanneri also started moving down to south, first to Mahodayapuram
(Cranganore), and later to the newly emerging settlement of Cochin, where he established
his royal residence around 1405. It shortly evolved as an urban unit and with the
intensification of maritime trade following the entry of the Portuguese, Cochin became
a major city with immense mercantile wealth on the west coast of India and its ruler
started consolidating his position in the pepper-hinterland for the purpose of linking the
process of production of pepper with the trading activities in Cochin. (Malekandathil,
2001: 30-33). In most of the city-states in Europe like the Hanseatic cities power
resided with the merchants and producers living in the cities, while in the city-states of
Calicut and Cochin actual power remained with political rulers; but a considerable
chunk of power was shared with their major mercantile allies. In this process of power-
sharing, a foreign Muslim merchant was given the charge of administering the overseas
trade of Calicut, while its domestic trade was handed over to a local Mapilla Muslim.
The latter eventually came to be known as the Koya of Calicut, who became one of the
highest administratively powerful positions in Calicut. In Cochin the Jewish traders and
the Portuguese private traders, besides the Konkanis and the Pattars, were the major
mercantile collaborators for the king of Cochin. As councilors and ministers to the king
of Cochin, they enjoyed considerable amount of power and clout (Malekandathil, 2007:
49
Introduction to 260-285). However, there was frequent change in their power relations and equations
Urban History that added nuanced character to the inner dynamics of the city.

3.6 SUMMARY
The foregoing analysis makes it clear that a uni-layered perception of medieval town
has the danger of losing the multiple meanings that it had articulated into the historical
processes of India. There are multiple possibilities and ways of understanding towns of
medieval India. It is obvious that historically these towns played the role of bridging the
big gap of time with two different sets of socio-economic processes, one from the
ancient and the other of the modern times. Besides being a bridge between two time
periods, the medieval town had certain intrinsic features which were the concentrated
and intensified representations and reflections of larger socio-economic and political
processes within which they got evolved.

3.7 EXERCISES
1) What are the approaches to study the medieval towns?
2) How did scholars perceive medieval European cities?
3) Comment on Henry Pierenne’s idea of the primacy of medieval towns?
4) Examine Mohammad Habib’s argument of ‘urban revolution’ in the 13th-14th
centuries.
5) How are medieval cities of the subcontinent viewed by scholars?
6) What is the idea of ‘commercially and politically charged’ urbanism?
7) What is ‘poliscracy’ and how does it differ from ‘polisgarchic’ towns?
8) Discuss the historiography of the medieval towns.

3.8 REFERENCES
Abul Fazl Allami, (1977) The Ain-i Akbari, trs. H. Blochmann, Vol. I (New Delhi:
Oriental Books Reprint Corporation).
Abrams, Philip, (1978) “Towns and Economic Growth: Some Theories and Problems”
in Philip Abrams and E.A. Wrigley(ed.), Towns in Societies: Essays in Economic
History and Historical Sociology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Arasaratnam, Sinnappah and Anirudha Ray, (1994) Masulipatanam and Cambay: A
History of Two Port-Towns, 1500-1800 (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal
Publishers Pvt Ltd).
Ashraf, K.M., (1970) Life and Conditions of the People of Hindustan, 2nd edition
(New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal).
Baker, Alan R. H., (2003) Geography and History: Bridging the Divide (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press).
Banga Indu (ed.), (1991) City in Indian History: Urban demography, Society and
Politics (Delhi: Manohar).
Banga Indu (ed.), (1992) Ports and their Hinterlands in India, 1700-1950 (Delhi:
50 Manohar).
Blake, Stephen, (1993) Shahjahanabad: The Sovereign City in Mughal India, 1639- Approaches to the
1739 (New Delhi: Cambridge University Press). Study of Medieval
Urbanisation
Braudel, Fernand (1973) Capitalism and Material Life, 1400-1800, tran. by Miriam
Kochan (New York: Harper & Row).
Callewaret Winand M., (1988) “Dadu and Dadu-Panth: The Sources” in Karine Schomer
and W.H. McLeod (ed.), The Saints : Studies in a Devotional Tradition of India
(Delh: Motilal Banarasidas).
Campos, J.J.A., (1979) History of the Portuguese in Bengal (Patna: Janaki
Prakashan).
Champakalakshmi, R., (1996) Trade, Ideology and Urbanisation: South India, 300
BC and 1300 AD (Delhi: Oxford University Press).
Chandra, Satish, (2009) Essays on Medieval Indian History (New Delhi: Har-Anand
Publications).
Chandra, Satish, (2006) Medieval India, Part II (New Delhi: Har-Anand Publications).
Chandra, Satish, (1997) Medieval India: Delhi Sultanate (1206-1526), Part I (New
Delhi: Har-Anand Publications).
Chattopadhyaya, B.D., (1997) The Making of Early Medieval India (New Delhi:
Oxford University Press).
Chenoy, Shama Mitra, (1998) Shahjahanabad: A City of Delhi, 1638-1857 (New
Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publisher).
Cox, K.R., (1976) “American Geography : Social Science Emergent”, Social Science
Quarterly, vol. 57, pp.182-207.
Cunha, João Manuel de Almeida Teles e, (1995) Economia de um imperio: Economia
politica do Estado da India em torno do mar Arabico e golfo persico. Elementos
Conjunturais : 1595-1635, Mestrado Dissertation submitted to Faculdade de Ciencias
Sociais e Humanas, Universidade Nova de Lisboa.
David N. Lorenzen, (1981) “The Kabir Panth : Heretics to Hindus” in David N. Lorenzen
(ed.), Religious Change and Cultural Domination (Mexico: Colegio de Mexico).
Dobb, Maurice, (2006) “A Reply”, in Rodney Hilton, (ed.) Transition from Feudalism
to Capitalism (New Delhi: Aakar Books), pp.59-61.
Dobb, Maurice, (2007) Development of Capitalism (New Delhi: Routledge/Aakar
Books).
Farooque, A.K.M., (1977) Roads and Communications in Mughal India (Delhi:
Idarah-i Adabiyat-i Delli).
Foucault, Michel, (1986) “Of Other spaces”, Diacritics, Vol.16, No. 1, Spring, pp.
22-27.
Foucault, Michel, Gwendolyn Wright and Paul Rabinow, (March, 1982) “Spatialization
of Power: A Discussion of the Work of Michele Foucault”, Skyline, pp.14-20.
Foucault, Michel, (1980) Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and other
Writings, 1972-77 (London: Pantheon Books).
51
Introduction to Frederick, Caesar, (1969) in Richard Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations, Voyages,
Urban History Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation made by Sea or Overland to the
Remote and Farthest Distant Quarters of the Earth at anytime within the
Compasse of these 1600 Yeeres, Vol.V (New York).
Frykenberg, R.E., (1986) Delhi Through Ages: Selected Essays in Urban History,
Culture and Society (New Delhi: Oxford University Press).
Fundo Geral, B.N.L., Codice No. 1980 “Livro das Despezas de Hum Porcento”,
Taboada Section.
Godinho, Vitorino Magalhães Os Descobrimentos e a Economia Mundial, vol.III,
Lisboa, 1982.
Gregory, Derek, (2007) “The Production of Space”, in Harvey, David, The Limits to
Capital (London).
Grewal J.S. and Indu Banga, (1985) Studies in Urban History (Amritsar: Guru Nanak
Dev University).
Grewal, J.S., (2006) “Sufism in Medieval India” in J.S.Grewal (ed.), Religious
Movements and Institutions in Medieval India (History of Science, Philosophy and
Culture in Indian Civilization), vol. VII, Part 2 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press).
Habib, Irfan, (2005) “Akbar and Technology”, in Irfan Habib (ed.), Akbar and His
India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press).
Habib, Irfan, (1978) “Economic History of the Delhi Sultanate: An Essay in
Interpretation”, Indian Historical Review, vol. IV, No.2, pp. 289-98.
Habib, Irfan, (1969) “The Historical Background of the Popular Monotheistic
Movements of the 15th -17th Centuries”, in Bisheshwar Prasad (ed.), Ideas in History
(Bombay: Asia Publishing House), pp.6-13.
Habib, Irfan, (1999) Agrarian System of Mughal India, 1556-1707 (New Delhi:
Oxford University Press).
Habib, Mohammed, (1952) “Introduction” in H.M. Elliot and John Dowson (eds.),
History of India as Told by its own Historians (Aligarh), pp.55-78.
Harvey, David, (1973) Social Justice and the City (Baltimore: John Hopkins University
Press).
Harvey, David, (2001) Spaces of Capital: Towards a Critical Geography (New
York: Routledge).
Harvey, David, (1985) The Urbanisation of Capital : Studies in the History and
Theory of Capitalist Urbanization (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press).
Hasan, S. Nurul, (2008) Religion, State and Society in Medieval India, edited by
Satish Chandra (New Delhi: Oxford University Press).
Gupta, I.P., (1986) Urban Glimpses of Mughal India: Agra the Imperial Capital,
16th and 17th Centuries (Agra: Discovery Publishing House).
Iraqi, Shahabuddin, (2009) Bhakti Movement in Medieval India: Social and Political
Perspectives (Delhi: Manohar Publishers and Distributors).
Johnson et al., (ed.) (2000) The Dictionary of Human Geography (Oxford: Blackwell).

52
Kellenbenz, Hermann, (1956) “Der Pfeffermarkt um 1600 und die Hansastädte”, in Approaches to the
Hansische Geschichtsblätter LXXIV, pp.28-49. Study of Medieval
Urbanisation
Khan, Maksud Ahmad, (2004) Sufis and their Contribution in the Process of
Urbanisation”, in Neeru Mishra (ed.), Sufis and Sufism: Some Reflections (New
Delhi: Manohar Publishers and Distributors).
Lane, F.C., (1973) Venice: A Maritime Republic (Baltimore: John Hopkins University
Press).
Lefbvre, Henri, (1991) The Production of Space, tran. by Donald Nicholson-Smith
(London: Blackwell).
Logan, Donald F., (2002) A History of the Church in the Middle Ages (London:
Routledge).
Lorenzen, David N., (1987) “The Kabir Panth And Social Protest “ in Karine Schomer
and W. H. McLeod (ed.), The Sants: Studies in a Devotional Tradition of India
(Delhi: Motilal Banarasidas).
Luzzatto, G., (1961) Storia economica di Venezia dall’ XI als XVI secolo (Venezia).
Malekandathil, Pius, (2009) “A City in Space and Metaphor: A Study on the Port-City
of Goa, 1510-1700”, in Studies in History, vol.25, no.1, pp. 13-38.
Malekandathil, Pius, ((2010) “Spatialization and Social Engineering: Role of the Cities
of Cochin and Goa in Shaping the Estado da India, 1500-1663’ in João Paulo Oliveira
e Costa and Vitor Luis Gaspar Rodrigues (ed.), O Estado da India e os Desafios
Europeus: Actas do XII Seminario Internacional de Historia Indo-Portuguesa,
Lisboa, pp. 301-328.
Malekandathil, Pius (2010) Maritime India; Trade, Religion and Polity in the Indian
Ocean (New Delhi : Primus Books).
Malekandathil, Pius, (2013) The Mughals, the Portuguese and Indian Ocean:
Changing Imageries of Maritime India (New Delhi: Primus Books).
Malekandathil, Pius, (2001) Portuguese Cochin and the Maritime Trade of India,
1500-1663 (A Volume in the South Asian Study Series of Heidelbeg University,
Germany) (New Delhi: Manohar Publishers and Distributors).
Malekandathil, Pius, (1999) The Germans, the Portuguese and India (Münster: LIT
Verlag).
Malekandathil, Pius, (2007) “Winds of Change and Links of Continuity: A Study on the
Merchant Groups of Kerala and the Channels of their Trade, 1000-1800 AD”, in
Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, Vol. 50, Part 2-3, pp.
259-286.
Mathew K.S. and Afzal Ahmad (ed.), (1990) Emergence of Cochin in the Pre-
Industrial Era : A Study of Portuguese Cochin (Pondicherry: Pondicherry University).
Meersman, A., (1962) The Franciscans in Tamilnad (Schöneck-Beckenried).
Misra, S.C., (1985) “Some Aspects of the self-Administering Institutions in Medieval
Indian Towns” in J.S. Grewal and Indu Banga, Studies in Urban History (Amritsar:
Guru Nanak Dev University).

53
Introduction to Misra, S.C., (1964) Muslim Communities in Gujarat (Bombay: Asia Publishing
Urban History House).
Monserrate, Antonio, (2003) The Commentary on his Journey to the Court of Akbar
(New Delhi: Asian Educational Services).
Moosvi, Shireen, (2008) People, Taxation and Trade in Mughal India (New Delhi:
Oxford University Press).
Moosvi, Shireen, (1987) The Economy of Mughal Empire c. 1595: A Statistical
Study (New Delhi: Oxford University Press).
Moreland, W.H., (1979) From Akbar to Aurangzeb: Study in Indian Economic
History (New Delhi: Oriental Books Reprint).
Moreland, W.H., (1962) India at the Death of Akbar: An Economic History (Delhi:
Atma Ram & Sons).
Mundy, Peter, (1914) The Travels of Peter Mundy in Europe and Asia, 1608-67,
edited by R.Temple, vol.II (London).
Naqvi, H. K, (1972) Urbanisation and Urban Centres under the Great Mughal,
1556-1707: An Essay in Interpretation (Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study).
Naqvi, H.K., (1968) Urban Centres and Industries in Upper India, 1556-1803
(Bombay: Asia Publishing House).
Pearson, M.N., (1972) “Indigenous Dominance in Colonial Economy-The Goa Rendas
(1600-1670)”, in Mare Luso Indicum, Vol. 2, pp.67-72.
Pearson, M.N., (1998) Port Cities and Intruders: The Swahili Coast, India and
Portugal in the Early Modern Era (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press).
Pirenne, Henri (1956) Medieval Cities: Their Origins and Revival of Trade , tran.
by Frank D. Halsey (New York).
Ploszajska, Teresa, (1994) “Moral Landscapes and Manipulated Spaces: Gender, Class
and Space in Victorian Reformatory Schools” Journal of Historical Geography, Vol.
20, pp. 413-429.
Pölnitz, Götz Freiherr von, (1953) Fugger und Hanse (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr).
Pölnitz, Götz Freiherr von, (1949) Venedig (Augsburg).
Qanungo, K., (1965) Sher Shah and His Times (Calcutta: Orient Longmans).
Richards, John F., (1993) The Mughal Empire (New Delhi:Cambridge University
Press).
Rizvi, S.A.A., (1978) A History of Sufism in India, Vol.I (Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal
Publishers Private Ltd.).
Rossa, Walter, (1997) Indo-Portuguese Cities: A Contribution to the Study of
Portuguese Urbanism in the Western Hindustan (Lisbon).
Schultz, Stanley K., (1985) “An Approach to a Theory of Urbanisation”, in J.S.Grewal
and Indu Banga (ed.), Studies in Urban History (Amritsar: Guru Nanak Dev University).
Sharma, Yogesh and Malekandathil, Pius (eds.) (2014) Cities in Medieval India,
54
(New Delhi: Primus Books).
Silveira, Luis (ed.), (1991) Livro das Plantas das Fortalezas, Cidades e Povoações Approaches to the
do Estado da India Oriental com as Descrições do Maritimo dos Reinos e Study of Medieval
Urbanisation
Provincias onde estão Situadas e outros Portos Principais daquelas Partes
(Lisboa).
Sinclair, Paul J.J. and Thomas Hakansson, (2000) “The Swahili City State Culture” , in
Mogens Herman Hansen(ed.), A Comparative Study of Thirty City-State Cultures:
An Investigation (Cobenhavn).
Singh, Bhai Jodh (ed.), (1993) Bani Bhagat Kabir Ji Stik (Patiala).
Singh, M.P., (1985) Town, Market, Mint and Port in the Mughal Empire 1556-
1707 (New Delhi: Adam Publishers and Distributers).
Soja, Edward W., (1989) Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in
Critical Social Theory (London:Verso).
Southern, R.W., (1970) Western Society and the Church in Middle Age (Middlesex:
Harmondsworth).
Stephen, S. Jeyseela, (1997) The Coromandel Coast and its Hinterland : Economy,
Society and Political System, 1500-1600 (New Delhi: Manohar Publishers and
Distributors).
Subramanyam, Sanjay, (1990a) Improvising Empire: Portuguese Trade and
Settlements in the Bay of Bengal, 1500-1700 (Delhi: Oxford University Press).
Subramanyam, Sanjay, (1990b) The Political Economy of Commerce : Southern
India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Sweezy, Paul, (2006) “A Critique”, in Rodney Hilton, (ed.), The Transition from
Feudalism to Capitalism (Delhi: Aakar Books).
Tavernier, Jean Baptiste, (1925) Travels in India, translated by V. Ball, Second Revised
Edition by W. Crooke, vol. I (London).
Thakur Vijay Kumar (ed.), (1994) Towns in Pre-Modern India (Patna: Janaki
Prakashan).
Thomaz, Luis Filipe F.R., (1994) De Ceuta a Timor (Lisboa).
Thomaz, Luis Filipe F.R., (2005) “Key Note Address : 25 Years of Research on Indo-
Portuguese History”, in Fatima da Silva Gracias, Celsa Pinto and Charles Borges,
Indo-Portuguese History: Global Trends (Panjim/ Goa).
Trivedi, K.K., (1998) Agra: Economic and Political Profile of a Mughal Suba,
1580-1707 (Pune: Ravish Publishers).
Violantem, C., (1977) “Eresie Urbane e Eresie Rurali in Italia dal XI al XIII secolo”, in
O. Capitani(ed.), Medioevo Ereticale (Bologna).
Weber, Max (1968) Economy and Society, edited by Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich,
trans: Ephraim Fischoff et. al (New York: Bedminister Press).
Weber, Max, (1966) The City, tran. and edited by Don Martindale and Gertrud Neuwirth
(London).
Wicki, Josef, (1969) Documenta Indica, Vol.XI (Lisboa).
Wood, Ellen Meiksins, (2007) Democracy against Capitalism:Renewing Historical
Materialism (New Delhi: Cambridge University Press).

55