The Sultanate of Delhi, 711–1526 A.D. c5.2

c5.2

It is a text-book and not a research production; but not a text-book of the usual variety found in the market, for it is based on a close study of the original contemporary sources in Persian and other languages with which the author is intimately acquainted. This work discusses for the first time the how and the why of the important problems of the period, such as, (1) the quick and easy over-running of our country by the foreign Arab and Turkish invaders; (2) their failure to exterminate us as a people and a culture-unit, as they had successfully blotted out the other peoples of Asia and Africa that they had invaded; (3) the impact of Islam on us; (4) our inability to absorb the new-comers, though we had successfully assimilated the Greeks, the Sakas and the Huns; and (5) the adjustment of our relations with the Indian Muslims, a problem which baffles our leaders and statesmen even today. Unfortunately, all previous works on the subject are so designed as to give the history of the progress of Islam in India. In the present book an attempt has been made to write the history of the country. Not only the text-books but even specialised monographs have called our Arab and Turko-Afghan rulers by the misleading term ‘Muslim’. This has been responsible for two wrong notions—(i) Indian converts to Islam and their descendants have wrongly imagined that they were the ruling class in Medieval India, and, unhappily, this absolutely wrong notion prevails in certain quarters even today; and (ii) most of our people have, for generations, held the ancestors of Indian Muslims responsible for the wrongs, particularly religious persecution, perpetrated chiefly by our foreign Arab, Turk and Afghan rulers. All such errors have been avoided in this volume. Besides, an attempt has been made to emphasise and give everything relevant and important regarding our administrative, social, cultural and economic achievements, though not at the cost of the political history of the period. The book is illustrated with twelve specially drawn and accurate maps which are a definite improvement upon all existing ones.