Growth of Muslim Population in Medieval India, A.D. 1000–1800 c20.s2.1

c20.s2.1

It was thus mainly conversions that were responsible for the rise and growth of Muslim population in medieval India. This component of growth went on extending with Muslim territorial expansion. Immigration of foreign Muslims too helped in its growth but not to the extent that conversions did. As has been seen at many places earlier, from the inception of Muslim rule right up to the eighteenth century foreign Muslims, especially from Persia and Central Asia, used to arrive in India and settle down here. India was rich and Muslim regime held out prospects of employment to any foreign Muslim. But in the totality of Indian or even Muslim population their numbers could not have been large, for the total population of the whole of the then Muslim world itself was not very large. Colin Clark estimates that in 1340 the population of Egypt was 3 million, of the rest of North Africa 2 million, of Asia Minor, Syria and Cyprus 11 million, and other countries of south-west Asia 11 million—a total population of about 27 millions.⁴⁰ The majority of migrants came to India from the Central Asian, Afghan and Persian regions whose total population could not have been more than 10 million. The numbers of emigrants from these regions may have, therefore, to be possibly counted only in thousands, not even in tens of thousands. For, to the hazards of journey was added the Mongol terror infesting the whole route to India.⁴¹ In the Mughal period journeys might not have been so dangerous, but the repeated references of medieval chronicles to foreign elements in the Indian Muslim population are due not so much to their large numbers as to the important and influential positions they held in government.