Some new crafts production were introduced by the Turks. Comment.

Answer:

The establishment of the Delhi Sultanate brought India into far closer contact with the wider Islamic world, introducing new techniques, crafts and tastes that noticeably enriched Indian production. Older traditions certainly continued, but the diffusion of new technology significantly widened the productive base of the economy.

New techniques and crafts

• The spinning wheel (charkha), and possibly the treadle-loom, greatly raised textile productivity.
• Paper-making spread widely, gradually replacing palm-leaf and birch-bark for records and books.
• New building crafts, using the true arch, the dome and lime mortar, transformed architecture.
• The Persian wheel (saqiya) improved irrigation and hence agricultural output.

Textiles and luxury production

• Fine cotton and silk weaving flourished under strong court and urban demand.
• The new art of carpet-weaving was introduced and patronised at the court.
• Sericulture expanded and new dyeing and weaving patterns enriched the textile trade.
• Metalwork, enamelling and other luxury crafts were organised in the royal karkhanas.

Organisation of production

• Royal karkhanas concentrated skilled artisans to supply the court's needs.
• Urban demand from the nobility and army stimulated specialised craft quarters in the towns.
• Artisans remained largely caste-based, and new techniques were absorbed within old structures.
• Slave labour was employed in some karkhanas, notably under Firoz Shah Tughlaq.

Continuity and synthesis

• Indian artisans absorbed these techniques while fully retaining their own inherited skills.
• The result was a composite craft tradition blending Indian and West Asian elements.
• As Irfan Habib noted, this technological diffusion notably widened the base of the economy.
• Some scholars caution that several of these techniques were known earlier and merely spread wider.

The Turks thus introduced important new crafts and techniques, from the charkha and paper to the arch and the Persian wheel, that stimulated Indian production. Blended with older indigenous skills, these innovations underpinned the vigorous urban and craft economy of the Sultanate age.