Theory and Practice of Muslim State in India c5.s3: 1.3. The Advent of Muslims in India
Theory and Practice of Muslim State in India c5.s3
- Language
- English
1.3. The Advent of Muslims in India
c5.s3.1
*Arab invasion of Sindh:* The Arab and later Turk Muslims spread into India through three major waves of invasions, but it took them five hundred years to do so. After the conquest of Iran by 643 CE, the boundaries of the Caliphate touched the frontiers of India. India, known to early Arabs as Hind wa Sind, too could not escape Muslim expansionist designs, and they sent their armies into India both by land and sea. They proceeded along the then known (trade) routes - 1. from Kufa and Baghdad, via Basra and Hormuz to Chaul on India's west coast; 2. from West Persian towns, via Hormuz to Debal in Sindh; and 3. through the land route of northern Khurasan to Kabul via Bamian. But progress of Muslim arms and religion in India was slow, very slow. For, the declarations of the objectives of Muslim invaders had not taken into account the potentialities of Indians' stiff and latent resistance. Caliph Umar (634-44 CE) had sent an expedition in 636-37 to pillage Thana. It was followed by some attempts on the part of Caliphs Usman and Ali. But in vain. The four 'pious' Caliphs of Islam died without hearing of the conquest of Sind and Hind.
c5.s3.2
The first full-fledged Arab invasion of Sindh was launched by Muhammad bin Qasim in 712 on the command of Hajjaj bin Yusuf on behalf of the Caliph. By the irony of circumstance, the majority of the Sindhi population at that time was Buddhist. They were averse to fighting. But there was no difference between them and Brahmans with regard to resistance to the invader.³¹ Debal, the fort-temple town, was attacked first. When the siege of Debal had continued for some time a defector informed Muhammad about how the temple could be captured. Thereupon, the Arabs, planting their ladders, stormed the citadel-temple and swarmed over the Walls. As per Islamic injunctions, the inhabitants were invited to accept Islam, and on their refusal to do so, all adult males were put to the sword and their wives and children were enslaved. The carnage lasted for three days. The temple was razed and a mosque built on its site and with its debris. Muhammad laid out a Muslim quarter, and placed a garrison of 4,000 in the town.
c5.s3.3
The result of the destruction of Debal, the venerated shrine of Sindh, was that the Jats, who perhaps had earlier shown indifference if not jubilation on the arrival of the new corners, turned enemies of Muslims for all time to come.³² Most of the major cities of Sindh were captured, their temples broken, their men massacred and their women and children enslaved. Muhammad bin Qasim was permitted to remain in Sindh only for a little over three years but Muslims and Islam came to stay in Sindh permanently. A dent had been made in India's social fabric, and its wealth looted. Foreign and newly converted Muslims remained confined mostly to cities, particularly Multan. Multan, according to al-Masudi (writing about CE 942), remained one of the strongest frontier places of the Musalmans. Ibn Hauqal who finished his work in CE 976 says, "The Muslims and infidels of this tract wear the same dresses, and let their beards grow in the same fashion. They use fine muslin garments on account of the extreme heat. The men of Multan dress in the same way. The language of Mansura, Multan and those parts is Arabic and Sindian..." This, in brief, was the social change brought about in Sindh after the introduction of Islam there.
c5.s3.4
Two points in the destruction of Debal need be taken note of. First, the carnage there lasted for three days. The conquering Muslim army is generally allowed three days of pillage. This three day pattern is repeated in many Muslim massacres, e.g., Timur's massacre in Delhi (1399) or Sultan Muhammad's in Constantinople (1453). The lust for slaughter used to assuage in this period and it sufficed the soldiers to gather captives and precious objects. The second is the destruction of the temple of Debal. Iconoclasm represented Quwwat-ul-Islam. Muslims destroyed Hindu temples because of 'dominance urge'. But they did more harm to themselves than they visualized. Besides earning permanent Hindu hostility, they harmed their own maritime trade and commerce. For example, Hindu temples on the seaboard like Debal on the west coast and Jagannath Puri on the east, served as light houses for the sailing ships.³³ Muslims destroyed all. They themselves suffered in the long run. They became weak on the sea so that even the might of Akbar's empire could not prove equal to the small number of Portuguese who dominated the Indian seas.
c5.s3.5
*Mahmud of Ghazni's Campaigns in Punjab*
c5.s3.6
Amore terrifying wave of Islamic invasion came with Mahmud of Ghazni, three hundred years after the Arab invasion of Sindh. During this period Islam was spreading in various regions outside India with varying degrees of success. Furthermore, the newly converted Turks, the slave protectors of the pious Caliphs, had carved out their own kingdoms at the expense of the Caliph's "empire". Alaptigin and Subuktigin belonged to this class of slaves. They made frequent inroads into Hindu Shahiya territories of Afghanistan and Punjab. But when Subuktigin's son Mahmud delivered his first attack in the year 1000 CE, he let loose hell in the region.
c5.s3.7
Mahmud could launch forth seventeen expeditions during the course of the next thirty years. He fulfilled his promise to the Caliph of carrying out yearly campaigns against the non-Muslims of Hindustan both in letter and spirit of Islamic theology. For this he has been eulogized sky-high by Muslim poets and Muslim historians. He was always careful to include the Caliph's name on his coins, depict himself in his *Fateh-namas* as a warrior for the faith, and to send to Baghdad presents from the plunder of his Indian campaigns. The Caliph al-Qadir Billah in turn praised the talents and exploits of Mahmud, conferred upon him the titles of *Amin-ul-millah* and *Yamin-ud-daula* (the right hand) after which his house is known as Yamini Dynasty.
c5.s3.8
Mahmud Ghaznavi was very successful in the usual fields of Islamic expansionism - conversions of Hindus to Islam, destruction of temples and acquisition of wealth. The sack of Somnath in particular came to be considered a specially pious exploit because of its analogy with the destruction of the idol of al-Manat in Arabia by the Prophet. This "explains the idolization of Mahmud by Nizam-ul-Mulk Tusi,³⁴ and the ideal treatment he has received from early sufi poets like Sanai and Attar, not to mention such collectors of anecdotes as Awfi."³⁵ It is indeed noticeable that after the Somnath expedition (417H/1026 CE), "a deed which had fired the imagination of the Islamic world", Caliph al-Qadir Billah himself celebrated the victory with great éclat. It is also significant that Mahmud now issued his coins for the first time from Lahore.
c5.s3.9
Alberuni writes that "Mahmud utterly ruined the prosperity of the country... by which the Hindus became like atoms of dust scattered in all directions... Their scattered remains cherish.. the most inveterate aversion towards all Muslims... Hindu sciences have retired far away from those parts of the country conquered by us, and have fled to places which our hand *cannot yet reach* (italics ours), to Kashmir, Benaras and other places."³⁶ Later chroniclers write with a tinge of pride that fourteen Ghaznavids ruled at Lahore and its environs for nearly two hundred years. But there was progressive deterioration in their administration. However, the importance of occupation of most part of the Punjab lies in the fact that Muslims had come to stay in India. And these Muslims helped in the third wave of Muslim onrush which swept northern India under Muhammad Ghauri.
c5.s3.10
*Muhammad Ghauri's Invasion of India* Muhammad Ghauri was not as valiant and dashing as Mahmud, but his knowledge about India and about Islam was much better. He now possessed Alberuni's India and Burhanuddin's *Hidayah*, works which were not available to his predecessor invader. Alberuni's encyclopaedic work provided to the Islamic world in the eleventh century all that was militarily advantageous to know about India. Equally important was the *Hidayah*, the most authentic work on the laws of Islam compiled by Shaikh Burhanuddin Ali in the twelfth century. 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.
c5.s3.11
Muhammad Ghauri led his first expedition to Multan and Gujarat in 1175 and 1178. In 1191 he attacked Prithviraj Chauhan ruling at Ajmer and Delhi but was defeated and forced to beat a hasty retreat. Next year he again started from Ghazni towards Hindustan with full preparations and with a force of one hundred and twenty thousand Turks, Persians and Afghans. On reaching Lahore, he sent an ambassador to Ajmer and invited Prithviraj to make his submission and accept Islam. The arrogant message met with a befitting retort, and the armies of the two once more encamped opposite each other on the banks of Saraswati at Tarain, 588 H/1192 CE. The Rajput army was far superior in numbers. Prithviraj had succeeded in enlisting the support of about one hundred Rajput princes who rallied round his banner with their elephants, cavalry and infantry. To counter such a vast number Muhammad Ghauri "adopted a tactic which bewildered the Rajputs" and they were defeated.
c5.s3.12
With the defeat and death of Prithviraj Chauhan, the task of the invader became easy. Sirsuti, Samana, Kuhram and Hansi were captured in quick succession with ruthless slaughter and a general destruction of temples and their replacement by mosques. The Sultan then proceeded to Ajmer which too Witnessed similar scenes. In Delhi an army of occupation was stationed at Indraprastha under the command of Qutbuddin Aibak who was to act as Ghauri's lieutenant in Hindustan. Later on Aibak became the first Sultan of Delhi. That is how the Muslim state was established in northern India.
c5.s3.13
Muslim conquest of Sindh and Punjab is an old story. It has been graphically described by early medieval Muslim chroniclers like al-Kufi, Utbi, al-Biladuri, Ibn-ul-Asir, Hasan Nizami, Minhaj Siraj, etc. Mahmud of Ghazni's extraordinary exploits fired the imagination of Muslim historians and they praised him sky-high for his achievements. He was their model, their hero. In all spheres of Islamic piety he excelled over all other Muslim conquerors. His iconoclastic zeal, in particular his sack of Somnath, won him unlimited praise from poets and historians, contemporary and later. Mahmud was hailed throughout the Islamic world as a second Muhammad and his destruction of Somnath was lauded by the sufi poets Attar, Sanai and Umar Khayyam. These poets equated Somnath with the temples of the Goddess al-Manat smashed by Muhammad in Arabia. As the *Dictionary of Islam* says, Muslim writers are "unanimous in asserting that in the time of the Prophet... the only choice given to the idolaters of Arabia was death or reception of Islam". Breaking of temples and forcible conversions at the point of sword were achievements of all Muslim invaders and most Muslim rulers. Their Jihad spread Islam in the infidel land of Hindustan and filled the coffers of Muslim conquerors with immense wealth. However, some modern Muslim apologists express a view contrary to what has been said by contemporary chroniclers of the medieval period. Probably they are shocked at the barbarous conduct of their medieval brethren and want to salvage the reputation of Islam, although whatever was done was done in accordance with the canons of their creed. Muslim historians of the medieval period honestly state that non-Muslims were converted to Islam through force; modern Muslim apologists claim that conversions were effected through peaceful means. Medieval chroniclers take pride in the iconoclastic zeal and achievements of their heroes; modern apologists plead otherwise. Medieval historians credit Muslim invaders with fighting jihad for spreading Islam; modern Muslim writers say that their motive was economic - that the invaders were interested in loot and plunder and had little to do with religion. It needs to be emphasized that the truth here does not lie midway. It lies on the side of the medieval chroniclers. Still, the apologists complicate matters by contradicting the versions of their own co-religionists who were closer to and more intimately associated with events about which they wrote than our modern apologists. The idea of a secular Muslim state is an innovation of a few modem "progressive" writers who wish to bracket Muslim civilization with tolerant civilizations. They should remember that there is a difference between the spread of Islam and, say, spread of Buddhism and no amount of jugglery of words and "interpretations" can prove that the spread of Islam was peaceful. All Hadis, and all chroniclers discriminate between Muslims and non-Muslims, and Islam spread in India through the exertions of Muslim heroes like Mahmud of Ghazni and through jihad as recommended by Islamic scriptures.
c5.s3.14
As Dr. Ali Issa Othman, for some years adviser to UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) on education said: "The spread of Islam was military. There is a tendency to apologize for this and we should not. It is one of the injunctions of the Koran that you must fight for the spreading of Islam."37 The successes achieved in this fight for spreading of Islam is also the main story of the medieval Muslim chronicles. The importance of 'force' in Islam should be acknowledged rather than minimized. The denial of force as a means of spreading Islam by a few modem apologists, like Aziz Ahmad and Muhammad Mujeeb38 cannot alter the basic truth about the history and philosophy of Islam, nor the spirit behind words like Kafir, Jihad, Jiziyah, etc.
c5.s3.15
Footnotes:
c5.s3.16
¹ The Indian Press, Allahabad, 1936.
c5.s3.17
² K.M. Munshi, 'End of Ancient India' in Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan's *Journal*, vol. IV, no. II, December 29, 1959, pp. 8, 14.
c5.s3.18
³ Cited in Ram Swarup, *Hindu View of Christianity and Islam*, Voice of India, New Delhi, 1992, pp. 48-49.
c5.s3.19
⁴ P.K. Hitti, *The Arabs*, London, 1948, p. 31.
c5.s3.20
⁵ Ram Swarup, *Understanding Islam through Hadis*, New Delhi reprint, 1983, pp. vii, xi.
c5.s3.21
⁶ Trs. by A. Guillaume under the title *The Life of Muhammad*, Oxford University Press, 1958.
c5.s3.22
⁷ Hitti, *op. cit.*, p. 29.
c5.s3.23
9 Trs. by Charles Hamilton, 4 vols. London, 1791.
c5.s3.24
10 Hughes, T.P., *Dictionary of Islam*, p. 174; D.S. Margoliouth, *Mohammed and the Rise of Islam*, pp. xix-xx..
c5.s3.25
11 It was translated into English by Charles Hamilton of the East India Company and published in England in 1791. It is easily available in a recent reprint.
c5.s3.26
12 A. Khuda Bakhsh, *Essays, Indian and Islamic*, London, 1927, p. 51.
c5.s3.27
13 In the *Legacy of Islam*, Ed. Sir Thomas Arnold and Alfred Guillaume, Oxford University Press, London, 1931, p. 42.
c5.s3.28
14 T.W. Arnold, *The Preaching of Islam*, London, 1913, pp. 45-101.
c5.s3.29
15 P.K. Hitti, *The Arabs*, p. 44.
c5.s3.30
16 Anwar Shaikh, *Islam, The Arab National Movement*, 1995. It may be pertinent to mention here that Anwar Shaikh (born 1928) is living in Britain since 1956 under a *fatwa* of death (April 1994) because he has candidly written much that is unpalatable to Muslims. He is safe because he is settled in England and also because the assassins feel that killing him would draw attention to his ideas and writings more pointedly. However, a campaign against him is on, For example, Arshad Ali Khan in *Daily Jang*, London, April 30, 1995, calls on Muslim scholars of *all sects of Islam* to rebut Anwar Shaikh's views to *save Islam*.
c5.s3.31
¹⁷ *Ibid.*, Preface; also Hagarism; *The Making of Islamic World* by Patricia Crone and Michael Cook, Cambridge, 1977, p. 78.
c5.s3.32
¹⁸ Quran Majid, Rampur, Preface by Muhammad Farukh Khan, p. 11.
c5.s3.33
¹⁹ Islam, *The Arab National Movement*, pp. 24, 25, 28, 32, 38.
c5.s3.34
²⁰ *Sunan ibn Majah*, vol. II, p. 259, ahadis 893-94; pp. 261-62, hadis 902.
c5.s3.35
²¹ *Ibid.*, p. 197, ahadis 663-64.
c5.s3.36
²² *Ibid.*, p. 199, hadis 673, p. 201, *ahadis* 681-682, p. 203, *hadis* 687-88, p. 224, *hadis* 771.
c5.s3.37
²³ The income to Saudi Arabia from Hajj every year is considerable See also Hajj pilgrimage in Part II - Politics.
c5.s3.38
²⁴ Ruben Levy, *The Social Structure of Islam*, p. 161.
c5.s3.39
²⁵ Anwar Shaikh, *Islam*, p. 54.
c5.s3.40
²⁶ Ibn Warraq, *Why I Am Not A Muslim*, Amhest, N.Y., U.S.A., 1995, p. 202.
c5.s3.41
²⁷ K.A. Nizami, *Religion and Politics*, p. 1.
c5.s3.42
²⁸ Ibn Warraq, p. 115.
c5.s3.43
²⁹ S.K. Malik, *The Quranic Concept of War*, p. 74.
c5.s3.44
³⁰ Colin Clarke, *Population Growth and Land Use*, p. 64.
c5.s3.45
³¹ Andre Wink, *Al-Hind*, vol. I, p. 151.
c5.s3.46
³² For a detailed discussion on this phenomenon, see K.S. Lal, *Growth of Scheduled Tribes and Castes in Medieval India*, pp. 25-27, 88-94.
c5.s3.47
³³ Manucci, vol. III, pp. 112, 141, 151 and footnotes, 244-45.
c5.s3.48
³⁴ *Siyasat Nama* (ed. Shefer), pp. 77-80, 138-156.
c5.s3.49
35 Aziz Ahmad, *Studies in Islamic Culture in the Indian Environment*, Oxford, 1964, p. 79.
c5.s3.50
36 *Alberuni's India*, vol. I, p. 22.
c5.s3.51
37 Quoted by Charis Waddy in *The Muslim Mind*, Longmans, 1976 and reproduced in Devendra Swarup (ed.), *Politics of Conversion*, Deendayal Research Institute, New Delhi, 1986. p. 179 note.
c5.s3.52
38 Aziz Ahmad, *Studies in Islamic Culture*, pp. 81-84; M. Mujeeb, Indian Muslims, p. 22.