Growth of Muslim Population in Medieval India, A.D. 1000–1800 c21.14

c21.14

Stories of forcible conversions in Bengal are narrated by Muhammadan medieval historians themselves with great gusto and we need not dilate upon them.⁹ From early times "each seat of Government, and each military station was more or less a centre of missionary agitation”. We find another agency from across the seas working towards the same end. Arab merchants carried on an extensive and lucrative trade at Chittagong and disseminated their religious ideas among its inhabitants. When Barbosa visited Bengal at the beginning of the sixteenth century, he found the inhabitants of the interior Gentiles, subject to the king of Bengal who was a Moor, while the sea ports were inhabited by both Moors and Gentiles. He also met with many foreigners—Arabs, Persians, Abbysinians and Indians (probably Gujaratis). Caesar Frederick and Vincent Le Blanc, who were in Bengal in 1570, also inform us that the island of Sandip was then inhabited by Moors.¹⁰ In the fifteenth-sixteenth centuries Chittagong surely was one of the centres from which unceasing propagandism was carried on. When it is realised how Muslim merchants from India played a major role in the conversion of Mallaca and then the other parts of South-East Asia to Islam,¹¹ an appreciation of their proselytizing endeavour and achievements in Gujarat, Malabar and Bengal can be easily made.