Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency, Vol. I, Part I: History of Gujarat c19.s5.35.1

c19.s5.35.1

This was specially marked in the Râshtrakûta towns where besides free use of mosques and Jâma mosques Musalmân magistrates or kâzis were appointed to settle disputes among Musalmâns according to their own laws.¹ Toleration was not peculiar to the Balhâras. Al Bîrûni records² that in the ninth century (A.D. 581) when the Hindûs recovered Sindân (Sanjân in Kachh) they spared the assembly mosque where long after the Faithful congregated on Fridays praying for their Khalifah without hindrance. In the Balhâra country so strongly did the people believe in the power of Islâm or which is perhaps more likely so courteous were they that they said that our king enjoys a long life and long reign is solely due to the favour shown by him to the Musalmâns. So far as the merchant Sulaimân saw in the ninth century the chief religion in Gujarât was Buddhism. He notices that the principles of the religion of China were brought from India and that the Chinese ascribe to the Indians the introduction of Buddhas into their country. Of religious beliefs metempsychoses or re-birth and of religious practices widow-burning or sati and self-torture seem to have struck him most.³ As a rule the dead were buried.⁴ Sulaimân represents the people of Gujarât as steady abstemious and sober abstaining from wine as well as from vinegar, 'not' he adds 'from religious motives but from their disdain of it.'⁵ Among their sovereigns the desire of conquest was seldom the cause of war.⁶ Abu Zaid (A.D.