Indian Muslims: Who Are They c5.s1: Muslim Immigration
Indian Muslims: Who Are They c5.s1
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Muslim Immigration
c5.s1.1
In the armies of Turkish conquerors Muslims of many tribes like Khitai, Qara-Khitai, Qipchaqi, Garji and Ilbari came to India,¹ and they stayed on here. Fakhre Mudabbir writes that the army of Qutbuddin Aibak was composed of Turks, Ghoris, Khurasanis and Khaljis.² Thus in the early years of Turkish conquest immigrant soldiers comprised an important segment of Muslim population in India.
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Also with the establishment of Muslim rule, batches of other types of Muslim began to arrive in Hindustan from Central Asia, Persia, African Muslim countries, and what is now called Afghanistan. India was rich and fertile as compared with their own lands, and with the extension of Muslim political power, many immigrants - soldiers and traders, saints and scholars, political refugees and adventurers, and even musicians,. jesters and jugglers - attracted by the abundance of wealth in cash and kind - began to flock to India.³ Only a few instances of such immigration may be mentioned. Minhaj Siraj says that people from Persia (and adjoining countries) came to India in various capacities.⁴ A great scholar of Iltutmishs reign was Amir Ruhani; he had come from Bukhara to Delhi during Chingizs upheaval.⁵ Qazi Hamid-ud-din Nagori had also come from abroad.⁶ Fakhr-ul-Mulk Isami, who had been Vazir at Baghdad for thirty years but then had suffered some disappointment, arrived in India and was appointed Vazir by Iltutmish.⁷ Nuruddin Muhammad Ufi, the author of *Jama-ul-Hikayat* had also come to Delhi during Iltutmishs reign.⁸ Their important positions in India as well as the influence of the Abyssinian slave Yaqut at the court of Raziyah shows the presence of all types of foreign Muslims in India.
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During the reign of Iltutmish, the Khwarizmi prince Jalaluddin Mangbarani fleeing before Chingiz escaped into India with 10,000 followers (1221). Even after his return (1224), some of his followers stayed on here.⁹ Because of the Mongol upheaval, again, in the court of Iltutmish there arrived twentyfive princes with their retinues from Iraq, Khurasan and Mawaraun Nahr.¹⁰ During the reign of Sultan Balban fifteen more refugee princes arrived from Turkistan, Mawaraun Nahr, Khurasan, Iraq, Azarbijan, Persia, Rum and Sham.¹¹ It appears that each one came with a large number of followers because Balban allotted for their residence a locality (*mohalla*) each.¹² These followers comprised masters of pen and of sword, scholars and *mashaikh*, reciters and musicians. The fact that Balban had garrisoned the forts of Gopalgir, Kampil, Patiali, Bhojpur and Jalali with thousands of Afghan troops,¹³ and in the royal procession 500 Sistani, Ghori, Samarqandi and Arab soldiers with drawn swords used to march by his side, indicates that a large number of foreigners had come to India during his reign.
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The Mongols, who had sent central and west Asian refugees fleeing into India, themselves occasionally arrived as invaders and stayed on in the country. Some also came, as in 1244, from the eastern passes of Tibet into Bengal.¹⁴ A large number of Mongols who had arrived with large armies and sought service under Balban entered into relationships with Muslim nobles.¹⁵ In 1291, the Mongol invader Alghu with 4,000 Mongols and their families, made India his home.¹⁶ The colony of these neo-Muslims came to be called Mughalpura. Under Alauddin Khalji also many Mongol captives embraced Islam and settled down in India. According to Ziyauddin Barani, many needy persons from Khurasan, Iraq, Mawaraun Nahr, Khwarizm, Sistan, Herat, and Demascus came to Hindustan to receive bounty from Muhammad bin Tughlaq.¹⁷ Ibn Battuta says that no new comer from Khurasan was allowed to enter into Indian territory unless he came with the express intent of staying permanently in Hindustan. Battuta was himself required to write a bond to that effect.¹⁸ Under Muhammad bin Tughlaq especially, foreigners are said to have been preferred to Indian Muslims on important posts and their immigration encouraged.¹⁹ Foreign slaves, male and female, too arrived from countries as far off as China and Abyssinia.
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Then there is the fact of foreign traders and merchants coming to India in large numbers. They came both by land and by sea. Horse traders in particular came from the north-western side to Sind, Gujarat, Punjab and U.P.; some also came through the eastern passes into Bengal leading to the establishment of an Arab traders colony in Chittagong.²⁰ It is said that the ancestors of Lodi rulers in India (1451-1526) were horsedealers.²¹ We hear a little later that the best houses in Delhi belonged to the Khurasani merchants,²² which shows that they had built permanent homes in India. Such was the position in North India. In the South, the coastal towns like Calicut, Cochin, and Quilon, to mention only a few, were hub of international trade. There were Muslim colonies on the West Coast from very early times. Indigenous converts added to the numerical strength of foreign Muslims. How quickly their numbers swelled may be inferred from the fact that when, early in the fourteenth century, Malik Kafur marched into Maabar (Malabar), about 20,000 Musalmans who had settled in South India for long and were fighting on the side of the Hindus, deserted to the imperialists and were spared.²³ During the thirteenth century Muslim territorial expansion was rather restricted. Till the very end of the century Muslim rule could not extend beyond what it had been by 1206. In the fourteenth century, however, Muslim arms penetrated into the south also encouraging Muslim immigration. With the founding of the Bahmani kingdom, in the middle of the fourteenth century, the avenues of Muslim employment increased still further and so also their immigration.
c5.s1.6
What could be the quantum of this immigration? It is true that ever since the inception of Muslim rule in India we come across references to Abyssinians (Habshis), Arabs, Afghans, Mongols, Persians, people from Khurasan, Rum and Sham, and of course the Turks, as constantly arriving or living in Hindustan. It is also true that the whole atmosphere of the courts of the Turkish sultans was Islamic; all high officers were Muslim. Their repeated mention in the chronicles creates the impression that they were flooding the country. But repeated references to foreign Muslim elements may not have been due so much to their large numbers as to the important positions they held. It appears that the number of actual immigrants could not have been large. A somewhat detailed discussion on this point will follow later on.