Introduction

In sheer numerical terms, the Islamic presence in the Indian sub-continent is far more significant than is generally appreciated. Put together, the Muslim population of Bangladesh, India and Pakistan is greater than that of the Middle East.

An obvious indicator of the Islamic presence in any region is the existence of Muslim political institutions at any given time. This is no doubt true of the sub-continent as well, but historically, in this region, Islam and Muslim political authority have not necessarily been contermin­ous: the grand edifices of the medieval empires drew their inspiration and often indeed their legitimation from Iranian notions of kingship rather than the Shari'a (religious law) and in that sense they were not Islamic, although they are ascribed that meaning in a symbolic, political sense; and in indepen­dent India, alongside a predominant Hindu majority, exists a substantial Muslim minority larger in size than the entire population of Pakistan.

Islam reached the sub-continent before the Muslim armies. The earliest contact between India and the Islamic world was essen­tially commercial and cultural. Over time this had resulted, prior to the actual conquest, in the growth of Muslim settlements on the coastal regions and the northern boundaries of the country.

Merchants and navigators were the nexus between Islamic Arabia and pre-Muslim India. Trade documents, known as Geniza records, have revealed the existence of brisk commercial activity between the two regions and also the existence of corporate institutions, such as Karim, to oversee international trade. On the western coast of India, small Arab settlements had grown up, along with a new ethnic element, Baysar, the offspring of Indian mothers and Arab fathers. Arab settlers enjoyed freedom to practise their own juridical system and indeed introduced many Islamic practices albeit on a rather restricted scale. There are refer­ences to the appointment of Muslim judges by Hindu rajas which again points to the existence of pockets of Muslim population in different parts of the country. A corollary to Arab settlements in India was the existence of small Indian communities near Arab seaports which came to be known as Arz al-Hind (Land of India).

Commercial contact inevitably promoted cultural interaction and indeed exchange of knowledge. As early as the time of the Prophet, Indian pickles were available in Arabia. In later years, an Indian physician was summoned for the treatment of the Prophet’s wife, Ayesha. Languages borrowed words from each other: Arab navigational terms became prevalent in India; names of Indian commodities found their way into Arab vocabulary. With linguistic interaction, intellectual exchange was inevitable.

The different social roles performed by enterprising Arab traders, Muslim learned and holy men, and indeed adventurous milit­ary commanders and soldiers, created the channels through which Islam reached the sub-continent. Equally important in the processes of Islam’s development were the impact of Islamic egalitarian and monotheistic ideas on the Indian social structure; the increase in the Muslim population by large-scale migrations from Islamic lands; and the strength that indigenous Muslim communities derived from the growth of an Indo-Islamic social and cultural order as reflected in lifestyles, language and literature, towns and urban institutions, and above all, dispensation of justice.

When the Umayyads (661-750 ce) embarked on an era of imperial expansion, their forces, led by Muhammad bin Qasim, son-in-law of Hajjaj, captured Sind in 711 ce.

Under the Abbasids (750-1258 ce), particularly the Barmakids, a phase of closer cultural contact between India and Baghdad ensued. A large number of Indian scholars—especially physicians and mathematicians—were invited to the Abbasid court. At Baghdad a bureau was entrusted with the task of translating Indian works into Arabic and a hospital was established which specialised in Indian medicine. Inevitably this led to the growth of a class of bilingual scholars who became the transmitters ofideas between the Islamic world and the sub-continent.

With the rise of the post-Abbasid dynasties of Afghanistan a new phase started which was marked by the effective establ­ishment of Muslim political authority in north India. The Ghaznavids under Sultan Mahmud (998-1030) consolidated and expanded their territories. During the early decades of the eleventh century, Sultan Mahmud led seven­teen military campaigns into India but did not annex any territory until 1026-7 when Multan and Lahore were incorporated into the Ghaznavid sultnate. These invasions to a certain extent introduced the elements of power and force into the relationship between the sub-continent and the Islamic world and thereby altered the nature of cultural interaction that had taken place since the time of the Abbasids.

Mahmud’s motives may not have been religious but he and large numbers of his soldiers were Muslim. They carried with them­selves Islam into the heartland of north India and when they withdrew left behind the occasional convert such as Rai Hardat, ruler of Baran; or the fallen soldier, whose tomb, as in Bahraich, became a shrine; or indeed the itinerant scholar-saint who devoted himself to explaining the faith to the common

man both by precept and practice. When, in the twelfth century, Ghurids replaced the Ghaznavids in Afghanistan, parts of north India were incorpo­rated not only into a Muslim political system but increasingly within the ambit of Islamic cultural and ideological influences radiating from Central Asia. Towards the close of the twelfth century, the ruler of Ghur (a small principality in Afghanistan), Shihabuddin Muhammad, started attacking India and gradually the region from Multan to Delhi was occupied. In 1206, Qutbuddin Aibek, a slave general of Shihabuddin Muhammad, broke away from Ghur and laid the foundations of an independent sultanate with its capital at Delhi.