Muslims Invade India

This series has five easy 5-minute installments. This first installment: Mahmud’s Youth.

Introduction by Great Events by Famous Historians
While Buddhism was giving place to Hinduism in India a new faith had arisen in Arabia. Mahomet, born A.D. 570, created a conquering religion, and died in 632. Within a hundred years after his death, his followers had invaded the countries of Asia as far as the Hindu Kush. Here their progress was stayed, and Islam had to consolidate itself during three more centuries before it grew strong enough to grasp the rich prize of India. But almost from the first the Arabs had fixed eager eyes upon that wealthy empire, and several premature inroads foretold the coming storm.

About fifteen years after the death of the Prophet, Othman sent a naval expedition to Thana and Broach on the Bombay coast. Other raids toward Sind took place in 662 and 664, with no lasting results.

Hinduism was for a time submerged, but never drowned, by the tide of Muslim conquest, which set steadily toward India about A.D. 1000. At the present day the south of India remains almost entirely Hindu. By far the greater number of the Indian feudatory chiefs are still under Brahman influence. But in the northwest, where the first waves of invasion have always broken, about one-third of the population now profess Islam. The upper valley of the Ganges boasts a succession of Mussulman capitals; and in the swamps of Lower Bengal the bulk of the non-Aryan or aboriginal population have become converts to the Muslim religion. The Mussulmans now make fifty-seven millions of the total of two hundred and eighty-eight million in India.

The armies of Islam had carried the crescent throughout Asia west of the Hindu Kush, and through Africa and Southern Europe, to distant Spain and France, before they obtained a foothold in the Punjab.

The brilliant attempt in 711 to found a lasting Muslim dynasty in Sind failed. Three centuries later, the utmost efforts of a series of Mussulman invaders from the northwest only succeeded in annexing a small portion of the frontier Punjab provinces.

The popular notion that India fell an easy prey to the Mussulmans is opposed to the historical facts. Muslem rule in India consists of a series of invasions and partial conquests, during eleven centuries from Othman’s raid, about A.D. 647, to Ahmad Shah’s tempest of devastation in 1761.

At no time was Islam triumphant throughout all India. Hindu dynasties always ruled over a large area.

The first collision between Hinduism and Islam on the Punjab frontier was the act of the Hindus. In 977 Jaipal, the Hindu chief of Lahore, annoyed by Afghan raids, led his troops through the mountains against the Muslim kingdom of Ghazni, in Afghanistan. Subuktigin, the Ghaznivide prince, after severe fighting, took advantage of a hurricane to cut off the retreat of the Hindus through the pass. He allowed them, however, to return to India, on the surrender of fifty elephants and the promise of one million dirhams (about $125,000).

In 997 Subuktigin died, and was succeeded by his son, Mahmud of Ghazni, aged sixteen. This valiant monarch, surnamed “the Great,” reigned for thirty-three years, and extended his father’s little Afghan kingdom into a great Muslim sovereignty, stretching from Persia on the west to far within the Punjab on the east.

This selection is from History of Hindustan by Alexander Dow published in 1768. For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

Alexander Dow (1735 or 6-1739) was Scottish Orientalist, writer, playwright and army officer in the East India Company.

Time: 1000
Place: Bokhara

Mahmud was born about the year 357 of the Hegira — or 350, according to some authorities — and, as astrologers say, with many happy omens expressed in the horoscope of his life. Subuktigin, being asleep at the time of his birth, dreamed that he beheld a green tree springing forth from his chimney, which threw its shadow over the face of the earth and screened from the storms of heaven the whole animal creation. This indeed was verified by the justice of Mahmud; for, if we can believe the poet, in his reign the wolf and the sheep drank together at the same brook.

When Mahmud had settled his dispute with his brother Ismail, he hastened to Balik, from whence he sent an ambassador to Munsur, Emperor of Bokhara, to whom the family of Ghazni still pretended to owe allegiance, complaining of the indignity which he met with in the appointment of Buktusin to the government of Khorassan, a country so long in possession of his father. It was returned to him for answer that he was already in possession of the territories of Balik, Turmuz, and Herat, which was part of the empire, and that there was a necessity to divide the favors of Bokhara among her friends. Buktusin, it was also insinuated, had been a faithful and good servant; which seemed to throw a reflection upon the family of Ghazni, who had rendered themselves independent in the governments they held of the royal house of Samania. Mahmud, not discouraged by this answer, sent Hasan Jemmavi with rich presents to the court of Bokhara, and a letter in the following terms: “That he hoped the pure spring of friendship, which had flowed in the time of his father, should not now be polluted with the ashes of indignity, nor Mahmud be reduced to the necessity of divesting himself of that obedience which he had hitherto paid to the imperial family of Samania.”

When Hasan delivered his embassy, his capacity and elocution appeared so great to the Emperor that, desirous to gain him over to his interest by any means, he bribed him at last with the honors of the wazirate, but never returned an answer to Mahmud. That prince having received information of this transaction, through necessity turned his face toward Nishapur, and marched to Murgab. Buktusin, in the meantime, treacherously entered into a confederacy with Faek and, forming a conspiracy in the camp of Munsur, seized upon the person of that prince and cruelly put out his eyes. Abdul, the younger brother of Munsur, who was but a boy, was advanced by the traitors to the throne. Being, however, afraid of the resentment of Mahmud, the conspirators hastened to Merv, whither they were pursued by the King with great expedition. Finding themselves, upon their march, hard pressed in the rear by Mahmud, they halted and gave him battle. But the sin of ingratitude had darkened the face of their fortune, so that the breeze of victory blew upon the standards of the King of Ghazni.

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