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W.

W. Empire pod UK.com. Hello and me, welcome to Empire with me Anita Arnan.

And me, William. Hello and welcome to Empire with me Anita Arnan and me William Durable.

Look I'm going to I'm going to start with a quote and then you can tell us where this

quote comes from because I find it very very interesting interesting. Okay, so here it goes.

In warfare, in command, in sound judgment, and in administration he had no rival or equal.

He kept down the turbulent spirits of the Deccan and maintained his exalted

position to the end of his life and closed his career in honor. History records no other

instance of an Abbisonian slave arriving at such eminence.

It's an extraordinary quote and it's about the main subject of this episode who is an extraordinary figure called Malik Amba.

Now, Malaamba starts his life in Ethiopia.

He's captured as a slave.

His real name was originally Chappu, and he comes to India as a military slave.

And what we're going to be talking about today is this strange institution that's totally counterintuitive about the slave

kings of which there were very many in Indian history. People who started their lives

as slaves but ended it as rulers of great chunks of India.

In the West we think of these things as polar opposite.

Slaves and kings are not words that have a hyphen in the West, but they do in the Islamic world. not just once or twice but

once or twice but over quite a lot of the Middle East

...