Editing Multan (section)

====Medieval trade====
[[File:Multanı karvansarayı.jpg|thumb|The 15th century [[Multani Caravanserai]] in [[Baku]], [[Azerbaijan]], was built to house visiting Multani merchants in the city.<ref name="Amity"/>]]
Multan served as medieval Islamic India's trans-regional mercantile centre for trade with the Islamic world.<ref name="Levi"/> It rose as an important trading and mercantile centre in the setting of political stability offered by the Delhi Sultanate, the Lodis, and Mughals.<ref name="Levi"/> The renowned Arab explorer [[Ibn Battuta]] visited Multan in the 1300s during the reign of Muhammad Tughluq, and noted that Multan was a trading centre for horses imported from as far away as the [[Eurasian Steppe|Russian Steppe]].<ref name="Habib"/> Multan had also been noted to be a centre for slave-trade, though slavery was banned in the late 1300s by Muhammad Tughluq's son, [[Firuz Shah Tughlaq]].<ref name="Habib"/>

The extent of Multan's influence is also reflected in the construction of the [[Multani Caravanserai]] in [[Baku]], [[Azerbaijan]] — which was built in the 15th to house Multani merchants visiting the city.<ref name="Amity">{{cite book|title=Amity, Volumes 1–3|date=1963|publisher=Indo-Soviet Cultural Society|page=135|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=40EtAQAAMAAJ&q=multani+caravanserai|access-date=12 April 2017}}</ref> Legal records from the Uzbek city of [[Bukhara]] note that Multani merchants settled and owned land in the city in the late 1550s.<ref name="Levi"/>

Multan would remain an important trading centre until the city was ravaged by repeated invasions in the 18th and 19th centuries in the post-Mughal era.<ref name="Levi">{{cite news|last1=Levi|first1=Scott|title=Caravans: Punjabi Khatri Merchants on the Silk Road|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-uviBQAAQBAJ&q=multan&pg=PT7|access-date=12 April 2017|agency=Penguin UK|date=2016|publisher=Penguin UK |isbn=9789351189169}}</ref> Many of Multan's merchants then migrated to [[Shikarpur, Sindh|Shikarpur]] in [[Sindh]],<ref name="Levi"/> and were found throughout Central Asia up until the 19th century.<ref name="Levi"/>