A History of Agriculture in India v2.c55.s9.1

v2.c55.s9.1

The rural area was populated by the Hindu peasants, while the Moslem population was confined to small towns (*qasbas*). According to Muhammed Habib, the religion of Islam is fundamentally a city creed. 'The Moslem requires certain social amenities, which are available only in urban areas. These are—the congregational mosque for his five prayers; the common graveyard where his fellow Muslims may bury him neatly and tearlessly and pray for the forgiveness of his sins; a school for the education of his children; a *hafiz*, preferably blind, who may recite the whole of the Quran in the month of Ramazan; and last, but not the least, social intercourse with an academic flavour in it.¹ Even now in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, the most populous states of northern India, which received the fullest impact of Islamic rule, the distribution of population follows this pattern.