How did international trade support urbanisation in North India during the 13-14th century CE.

Answer:

Under the Delhi Sultanate the revival of long-distance commerce injected fresh wealth and demand into northern India, and this in turn strongly stimulated the growth and prosperity of towns across the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

Trade as a stimulus

• India's integration into the wider Islamic trading world linked it to Central Asia, West Asia and beyond.
• Overland caravan routes brought in horses, textiles, precious metals and luxuries.
• Delhi grew into a great emporium and one of the largest cities of the contemporary world.

Urban and economic consequences

• Commerce expanded the money economy and coinage, easing exchange and revenue collection.
• A wealthy class of merchants and financiers, the sahas and multanis, and of brokers (dallals) arose.
• Urban crafts multiplied to serve trade and the court, and new towns and qasbas grew along the routes.
• The concentration of the surplus in cities sustained the army, nobility and controlled markets.

The mechanism and its limits

• Imported horses were vital to Sultanate cavalry, making that trade politically important.
• Indian textiles and indigo were exported westward, drawing in silver and gold.
• The hundi system of bills of exchange facilitated long-distance commerce.
• Ibn Battuta's account testifies to the wealth and cosmopolitan character of Delhi.
• Urban growth still rested ultimately on the agrarian surplus the state extracted.

International trade therefore acted as a powerful engine of urbanisation in Sultanate north India, channelling wealth, people and demand into the towns. As Irfan Habib noted, the expansion of commerce and the money economy underpinned the remarkable urban growth that so clearly characterised this period.