The Foundation of Muslim Rule in India: A History of the Establishment and Progress of the Turkish Sultanate of Delhi, 1206–1290 A.D. c21.11

c21.11

This indifference on the face of a Muslim enemy seems to have had other causes also. As a Muslim the Turk was a new comer to Hindusthan but racially he was not. As a pagan kinsman of the Hunas and the Sakas he had many centuries' contact with India. He had come as a trader and as a settler. His language, manners and social distinctions, much of which he retained even after his conversion to Islam, added to the complexity of medieval Hindu society but they also prepared the way for his eventual appearance in the role of a conqueror. To the people of north India the Turk's lightly-borne Islam could not conceal the familier visitor, in whom some of the Rajputs could even see a distant kinsman¹. Hindu India therefore contained elements whose intensity of opposition to the invaders was liable to be qualified by racial sympathies.