The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India c7.s3.3

c7.s3.3

Muhammad Ghauri was not as valiant and dashing as Mahmud, but his knowledge about India and about Islam was much better. He now possessed Alberunis *India* and Burhanuddins *Hidaya*, works which were not available to his predecessor invaders. Alberunis encyclopaedic work provided to Islamic world in the eleventh century all that was advantageous to know on India.⁷¹ It provided information on Hindu religion, Hindu philosophy, and sources of civil and religious law. Hindu sciences of astronomy, astrology, knowledge of distance of planets, and solar and lunar eclipses, physics and metaphysics are all discussed by him. Ideas on matrimony and human biology are not ignored. Hindu customs and ceremonies, their cities, kingdoms, rivers and oceans are all described. But such a treatise, written with sympathetic understanding, evoked little kindness for the Indian people in the Muslim mind, for to them equally important was the *Hidaya*, the most authentic work on the laws of Islam compiled by Shaikh Burhanud-din Ali in the twelfth century. The Shaikh claims to have studied all earlier commentaries on the Quran and the Hadis belonging to the schools of Malik, Shafi and Hanbal besides that of Hanifa.⁷² These and similar works and the military manuals like the *Siyasat Nama* and the *Adab-ul-Harb* made the Ghauris and their successors better equipped for the conquest and governance of non-Muslim India. There need be no doubt that such works were made available, meticulously studied and constantly referred to by scholars attached to the courts of Muslim conquerors and kings.