Growth of Muslim Population in Medieval India, A.D. 1000–1800 c17.s1.8

c17.s1.8

By the fifteenth century Sind also contained a substantial population of Muslims, but when actually Sindhis converted to Islam in large numbers is not precisely known. However, Muslims had been growing in number there ever since the days of Mahmud of Ghazni. Like in Punjab, Ghaznavid governors had ruled over upper Sind.¹¹ Later on, the rule of Qubaicha, his defeat by Iltutmish, the pressure of Mongols, and the rule of the Sultanate of Delhi had all combined to Islamize northern Sind to a large extent. In Southern Sind the Sumras, a native Rajput tribe, was ousted by another Rajput tribe, the Sammas in the fourteenth century. The Sammas were Muslims and Hindus by turns,¹² but ultimately they seem to have "adopted Islam, and propagated the religion in their dominions,"¹³ so that when Firoz Tughlaq invaded Thatta in 1361, he prohibited the plunder or captivity of the people because they were Muslims.¹⁴ But the Hindus were also there in large numbers. When Sultan Mahmud of Gujarat received "complaints from Southern Sind where Muslims were said to be persecuted by Hindus," he marched to their relief in 1470. He met many leaders of Sumras, Sodas, and Kalhoras who "told him that they were professing Muslims but knew little of their faith or its rules, and were wont to intermarry with and to live as Hindus." Mahmud invited many of them to Gujarat, "where teachers were appointed to instruct them in the faith of Islam."¹⁵ In the first quarter of the sixteenth century, Shah Beg Arghun, driven from Qandhar by Babur, expelled Jam Firoz, the last of the Sammas, and his son Shah Husain took Multan in 1528. When Humayun took refuge in Sind (1541)¹⁶ Muslim population in the cities of Sind had grown considerably. The countryside had a mixed population in which half-converted Muslims and Hindus predominated.