NCERT Solutions for Class 7 Social Science History Chapter 6: Towns, Traders and Craftsperson

What a traveller should expect to find in a medieval place depends upon the town. Be it a temple town, an administrative centre, a commercial town or a port town. During the old days' Surat, Nagapattinam and Broach were prominent ports, also known as trading towns during the period. Therefore it will make for an interesting exercise in knowing about the history of various such towns through the chapter titled "Towns, Traders and Craftsperson".

It will also be ideal to understand what a person who came to a medieval city would look for? And how they would differentiate between the different kinds of cities. During those days many cities used to combine many functions in one town by places such as–body centres and temple cities functioning as centres of business and craft production occupations. Through this chapter, the students will learn about cities, Traders, and Craftsperson that began from the eighth century onwards when the subcontinent was filled with several small towns. These cities are most likely told to have emerged from large villages and used to have a 'mandapika' (or mandi of later times) where the nearby villagers brought their produce to sell and where they used to conduct their business activities.

They also had market streets called the 'hatta' (also known as 'haat' of later times) which used to be lined with shops. There used to be streets for different kinds of artisans such as potters, oil pressers, toddy makers, smiths, stonemasons, etc. These streets attracted people from far and near to these towns to buy the local articles of the market and for the businessmen to sell their local articles as well as imported products or products that were from other places such as local horses, salt, camphor, saffron, betel nut and spices like pepper.