Episode 17 Islam Comes to India
A History of India
Michael Fisher (2016)
Film Review
Long before the advent of Islam, Arab traders developed settlements along India’s west coast using the “trade winds” from seasonal monsoons to travel to and from the Arabian peninsula. Between 998 and 1030, Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni (modern day Afganistan) repeatedly conducted 17 military raids on resource-rich India (for booty rather than religious conversion). Islam subsequently spread inland via local kings who converted to Islam and spread their religion through military conquest.
In 711 Muhammad ibn Al-Qasim conquered Sindh at the mouth of the Indus river. At present this is the second most populous region in Pakistan.
Starting in the 11th century, Sufi missionaries from the Arabian peninsula also played a major role in converting India to Islam. Muslims who settled in the arid western Punjab (now part of Pakistan) introduced Persian irrigation technology enabling the region to shift from herding to agriculture. The area is still dominated by shrines to deceased Sufi saints.
The Bengal was still forested when Muslims arrived, bringing steel axes and other tools to root up the large trees and introduce lucrative wet rice farming. The society in east Bengal (modern Bangladesh) has tended towards egalitarianism. In west Bengal, descendants of Sufi missionaries would form a hereditary elite.
Starting in 1206 a series of Muslim rulers (collectively known as the Delhi Sultans) made Delhi their capitol. Originating from Afghanistan and Central Asia, their regimes were fragile, with vassal kingdoms tending to break away and form independent states.
For centuries, the vast majority of India was non-Muslim, with most Muslim rulers declaring their Hindu subjects Dhimmi (protected subjects) purchased through a special tax.
At present, South Asia (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh) is home to one-third of the world’s Muslims (503,990,000).
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