The Foundation of Muslim Rule in India: A History of the Establishment and Progress of the Turkish Sultanate of Delhi, 1206–1290 A.D. c19.16

c19.16

Judging from Minhaj’s account of the Muizzi and Shamsi maliks, very few of the immigrant Turks were born in Islam; most of them came as slaves sold in childhood to Muslim merchants. Along with those settled in the Islamic countries and driven to India by the Mongols they were converted to Sunni Islam, the religion of the Ghaznavide, the Seljuq, the Khwarizmi and the Shamsabani dynasties. Politically, it was dangerous to countenance the *Shiah* sect whose faith involved allegiance to the enemy of the Abbasides, for the latter’s moral sanction gave the Delhi Sultan his strongest support. Moderate as well as extreme *Shiahs* were all denounced as heretics and contemptuously designated as *mulahidah* and *rawafiz*. The Qaramitah also called *Batini*, came in for special persecution which throughout the eastern Caliphate was intensified after the destruction of the Fatimide dynasty. Their headquarters in Alamut, in Northern Iran, became the object of a series of attacks in which both the Khwarizmis and Shansabani claimed