KILLER HINDU KUSH

Taking people from India to other countries for work and other purposes was known during the ancient and medieval period too.  The Hindu Kush Mountain passes connected the markets of Central Asia. Arlund 8th century BC, there was evidence suggesting transport of “hundreds of thousands” of slaves from India in different periods of Islamic rule.

According to John Coatsworth and others, the slave trading operations during the pre-Akbar Mughal and Delhi Sultanate era every year north to Central Asia to pay for horses and other goods”. However, the interaction between Central Asia and South Asia through the Hindu Kush was not limited to slavery, it included trading in food, goods, horses and weapons.

The practice of raiding tribes, hunting and kidnapping people for slave trading continued through the 19th century, at an extensive scale, around the Hindu Kush. The  Hindu  Kush is an 800-kilometre- long mountain range in Central and South Asia to the west of  the  Himalayas. It stretches from central and eastern Afghanistan into northwestern Pakistan and far southeastern Tajikistan.

The term was earliest used by famous traveller Ibn Battuta who said Hindu Kush means Hindu Killer as slaves from the Indian subcontinent. Many slaves also died in the harsh climatic conditions of the mountains while being taken from India to Turkestan.