title: Restraining order

text: Threat management experts are often suspicious of restraining orders, believing they may escalate or enrage stalkers. In his 1997 book "The Gift of Fear", American security specialist Gavin de Becker characterized restraining orders as "homework assignments police give to women to prove they're really committed to getting away from their pursuers," and said they "clearly serve police and prosecutors," but "they do not always serve victims". The Independent Women’s Forum decries them as "lulling women into a false sense of security," and in its Family Legal Guide, the American Bar Association warns “a court order might even add to the alleged offender's rage".


title: Restraining order

text: "Castle Rock v. Gonzales", , is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court ruled, 7–2, that a town and its police department could not be sued under for failing to enforce a restraining order, which had led to the murder of a woman's three children by her estranged husband.


title: Restraining order

text: Both parties must be informed of the restraining order for it to go into effect. Law enforcement may have trouble serving the order, making the petition unproductive. A study found that some counties had 91 percent of restraining orders non-served. A temporary order of restraint (""ex parte"" order) is in effect for two weeks before a court settles the terms of the order, but it is still not in effect until the alleged abuser is served.


title: Restraining order

text: Restraining orders most commonly protect a woman against a male alleged abuser. A California study found that 72% of restraining orders active in the state at the time protected a woman against a male abuser. The Wisconsin Coalition Against Domestic Violence uses female pronouns to refer to petitioners and male pronouns to refer to abusers due to the fact that most petitioners are women and most abusers are men.


title: Restraining order

text: In English law, a non-molestation order may be granted under Section 42 of the Family Law Act 1996. Non-molestation orders are a type of injunction used to protect an individual from intimidation or harassment. Breaching a non-molestation order is a criminal offence. Under the Domestic Violence Crime and Victims Act 2004, cohabiting same-sex couples are able to seek a non-molestation order. Non-molestation orders sought for protection from domestic violence qualify for legal aid regardless of the applicant's income.


title: Restraining order

text: Federal law requires that all states give "full faith and credit" to every portion of a restraining order issued by any state provided that certain minimum due process requirements are met. Thus a state with very lax standards for issuing a restraining order may enter such a protective order, and every state and federal territory would be required to adhere to every provision. Federal law prohibits any person who is subject to a state protective order from possessing a firearm, provided that the protected party is an intimate partner, meaning a spouse or former spouse, or a person with whom the protected party has had a child. Violating a restraining order is a deportable offense.


title: Restraining order

text: Some states (e.g. Mississippi) may also call a restraining order a peace bond and are similar to ASBO laws in the UK. Minnesota law provides for an order for protection (OFP) and a harassment restraining order (HRO).


title: Restraining order

text: Many jurisdictions offer a simplified process for filing a civil complaint for unrepresented litigants. For example, in North Carolina, "pro se" litigants can file a 50B (also called a DVPO, for domestic violence protective order) complaint with the clerk of court.


title: Restraining order

text: In the United States, every state has some form of domestic violence restraining order law, and many states also have specific restraining order laws for stalking and sexual assault. In the US, each state has its own restraining order laws, but they tend to be divided into five main types. Not every state will have every type of restraining order on the books.


title: Restraining order

text: A domestic violence restraining order generally protects only parties deemed to be in some form of "domestic" relationship which may, depending on the statute, include a family, household, intimate, or sexual relationship.


title: Restraining order

text: A sexual assault restraining order specifically protects a victim of sexual assault regardless of what relationship may or may not exist between petitioner and respondent. If the state has no sexual assault restraining order statute, the victim may still qualify for a domestic violence restraining order if the sexual assault occurred in the context of a domestic relationship or if the statute is written sufficiently broad. In such cases, sexual assault survivors can sometimes qualify for domestic violence restraining orders because any act of sexual intercourse between petitioner and respondent, even during rape, legally establishes the required sexually intimate relationship.


title: Restraining order

text: Harassment and stalking restraining orders also generally do not require any specific relationship to exist or not exist between the parties, but also may not be available in all states. These types of restraining orders also generally require at least two instances of, respectively, harassment or stalking to qualify.


title: Restraining order

text: In many cases, one statute may cover more than one type of restraining order. For example, what is called a harassment restraining order in Wisconsin also specifically includes cases of sexual assault and stalking.


title: Restraining order

text: In California, domestic violence restraining orders are issued under Family Code Section 6200, et. seq. The California courts have designed domestic violence restraining orders to be accessible to the public so as to not require a lawyer to obtain or defend against one.


title: Restraining order

text: Finally, an extreme risk restraining order is a form of US restraining order, currently used in 13 states. Other forms of restraining order will sometimes order firearms restrictions as a part of a larger injunction intended to protect a specific individual. But with an extreme risk restraining order, the sole focus is on the firearms restrictions. It is sought when household members or police believe a particular individual is at risk to use firearms to harm themselves or others. If a court agrees, the person can have their firearms taken away. This type of restraining order is not intended to protect a specific individual but rather the community at large from someone believed to be a danger for gun violence. It has been cited as a possible tool to help prevent mass shootings such as the Orlando nightclub shooting.


title: Restraining order

text: A domestic violence restraining order in the Czech Republic may be issued by a police officer or by a court.


title: Restraining order

text: Any police officer has authority under the Police Act to issue restraining order prohibiting a person from entering common dwelling and nearby areas and from contacting the threatened person. Such restraining order is valid for a period of ten days. In case that the threatened person files for court restraining order, the police restraining order remains valid until court renders decision.


title: Restraining order

text: A court may issue a domestic violence or stalking restraining order based on application of threatened person for a period of up to one month. This may later be extended if the threatened person files for extension. Extension is possible for necessary period of time, but no more than six months in total.


title: The 400 Blows

text: The 400 Blows () is a 1959 French coming-of-age drama film, and the directorial debut of François Truffaut. The film, shot in DyaliScope, stars Jean-Pierre Léaud, Albert Rémy, and Claire Maurier. One of the defining films of the French New Wave, it displays many of the characteristic traits of the movement. Written by Truffaut and Marcel Moussy, the film is about Antoine Doinel, a misunderstood adolescent in Paris who struggles with his parents and teachers due to his rebellious behavior. Filmed on location in Paris and Honfleur, it is the first in a series of five films in which Léaud plays the semi-autobiographical character.


title: The 400 Blows

text: "The 400 Blows" received numerous awards and nominations, including the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Director, the OCIC Award, and a Palme d'Or nomination in 1959, and was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 1960. The film had 4.1 million admissions in France, making it Truffaut's most successful film in his home country.


title: The 400 Blows

text: "The 400 Blows" is widely considered one of the best French films in the history of cinema; in the 2012 "Sight & Sound" critics' poll of the greatest films ever made, it was ranked 39th. It ranked 13th in the directors' poll on the same list.


title: The 400 Blows

text: Antoine Doinel is a young boy growing up in Paris. Misunderstood by his parents for playing truant from school and stealing and tormented in school for discipline problems by his teacher (such as writing on the classroom wall, and later falsely explaining his absence as having been due to his mother's death), Antoine frequently runs away from both places. He finally quits school after his teacher accuses him of plagiarizing Balzac. (Antoine loves Balzac and in a school essay he describes "the death of my grandfather", in a close paraphrase of Balzac from memory.) He steals a Royal typewriter from his stepfather's workplace to finance his plans to leave home, but, having been unable to sell it, is apprehended while trying to return it.


title: The 400 Blows

text: The stepfather turns Antoine over to the police and Antoine spends the night in jail, sharing a cell with prostitutes and thieves. During an interview with the judge, Antoine's mother confesses that her husband is not Antoine's biological father. Antoine is placed in an observation center for troubled youths near the seashore (as his mother wished). A psychologist at the center probes reasons for Antoine's unhappiness, which the youth reveals in a fragmented series of monologues.


title: The 400 Blows

text: While playing football with the other boys one day, Antoine escapes under a fence and runs away to the ocean, which he has always wanted to see. He reaches the shoreline of the sea and runs into it. The film concludes with a freeze-frame of Antoine, which, via an optical effect, zooms in on his face as he looks into the camera.


title: The 400 Blows

text: Truffaut also included a number of friends (fellow directors) in bit or background parts, including himself and Philippe De Broca in the funfair scene; Jacques Demy as a policeman; Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Paul Belmondo as overheard voices (Belmondo's in the print works scene).


title: The 400 Blows

text: The English title is a literal translation of the French that fails to capture its meaning, as the French title refers to the idiom ""faire les quatre cents coups"", meaning "to raise hell". On the first prints in the United States, subtitler and dubber Noelle Gillmor translated the title as "Wild Oats", but the distributor Zenith did not like that and reverted it to "The 400 Blows."


title: The 400 Blows

text: The semi-autobiographical film reflects events of Truffaut's life. In style, it references other French works—most notably a scene borrowed wholesale from Jean Vigo's "Zéro de conduite". Truffaut dedicated the film to the man who became his spiritual father, André Bazin, who died just as the film was about to be shot.


title: The 400 Blows

text: Besides being a character study, the film is an exposé of the injustices of the treatment of juvenile offenders in France at the time.


title: The 400 Blows

text: According to Annette Insdorf writing for the Criterion Collection, the film is "rooted in Truffaut’s childhood." This includes how both Antoine and Truffaut "found a substitute home in the movie theater" and both did not know their biological fathers.


title: The 400 Blows

text: The exception was the closing reform school part, filmed in Honfleur, a small coastal town in the northern French province of Normandy.


title: The 400 Blows

text: The film opened the 1959 Cannes Film Festival and was widely acclaimed, winning numerous awards, including the Best Director Award at Cannes, the Critics Award of the 1959 New York Film Critics' Circle and the Best European Film Award at 1960's Bodil Awards. It was nominated for Best Original Screenplay at the 32nd Academy Awards. The film holds a 99% "Certified Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 65 reviews, with a weighted average of 9.3/10. The website's critical consensus states, "A seminal French New Wave film that offers an honest, sympathetic, and wholly heartbreaking observation of adolescence without trite nostalgia."


title: The 400 Blows

text: The film is among the top 10 of the British Film Institute's list of 50 films that should be seen by age 15.


title: The 400 Blows

text: Truffaut made four other films with Léaud depicting Antoine at later stages of his life: "Antoine and Colette" (which was Truffaut's contribution to the 1962 anthology "Love at Twenty"), "Stolen Kisses", "Bed and Board", and "Love on the Run".


title: The 400 Blows

text: Filmmakers Akira Kurosawa, Luis Buñuel, Satyajit Ray, Steven Spielberg, Jean Cocteau, Carl Theodor Dreyer, Richard Linklater, Tsai Ming Liang, Woody Allen, Richard Lester, P C Sreeram, Norman Jewison, Wes Anderson and Nicolas Cage have cited "The 400 Blows" as one of their favorite movies. Kurosawa called it "one of the most beautiful films that I have ever seen".


title: The 400 Blows

text: The film was ranked #29 in "Empire" magazine's list of "The 100 Best Films of World Cinema" in 2010. In 2018, the film was voted the eighth greatest foreign-language film of all time in BBC's poll of 209 critics in 43 countries.


title: The 400 Blows

text: The festival poster for the 71st Venice International Film Festival paid tribute to the film as it featured the character of Antoine Doinel portrayed by Jean-Pierre Léaud.


title: Sensor

text: A sensor is a device that produces an output signal for the purpose of sensing a physical phenomenon.


title: Sensor

text: In the broadest definition, a sensor is a device, module, machine, or subsystem that detects events or changes in its environment and sends the information to other electronics, frequently a computer processor. Sensors are always used with other electronics.


title: Sensor

text: Sensors are used in everyday objects such as touch-sensitive elevator buttons (tactile sensor) and lamps which dim or brighten by touching the base, and in innumerable applications of which most people are never aware. With advances in micromachinery and easy-to-use microcontroller platforms, the uses of sensors have expanded beyond the traditional fields of temperature, pressure and flow measurement, for example into MARG sensors.


title: Sensor

text: Analog sensors such as potentiometers and force-sensing resistors are still widely used. Their applications include manufacturing and machinery, airplanes and aerospace, cars, medicine, robotics and many other aspects of our day-to-day life. There is a wide range of other sensors that measure chemical and physical properties of materials, including optical sensors for refractive index measurement, vibrational sensors for fluid viscosity measurement, and electro-chemical sensors for monitoring pH of fluids.


title: Sensor

text: A sensor's sensitivity indicates how much its output changes when the input quantity it measures changes. For instance, if the mercury in a thermometer moves 1  cm when the temperature changes by 1 °C, its sensitivity is 1 cm/°C (it is basically the slope assuming a linear characteristic). Some sensors can also affect what they measure; for instance, a room temperature thermometer inserted into a hot cup of liquid cools the liquid while the liquid heats the thermometer. Sensors are usually designed to have a small effect on what is measured; making the sensor smaller often improves this and may introduce other advantages.


title: Sensor

text: Technological progress allows more and more sensors to be manufactured on a microscopic scale as microsensors using MEMS technology. In most cases, a microsensor reaches a significantly faster measurement time and higher sensitivity compared with macroscopic approaches. Due to the increasing demand for rapid, affordable and reliable information in today's world, disposable sensors—low-cost and easy‐to‐use devices for short‐term monitoring or single‐shot measurements—have recently gained growing importance. Using this class of sensors, critical analytical information can be obtained by anyone, anywhere and at any time, without the need for recalibration and worrying about contamination.


title: Sensor

text: Most sensors have a linear transfer function. The sensitivity is then defined as the ratio between the output signal and measured property. For example, if a sensor measures temperature and has a voltage output, the sensitivity is a constant with the units [V/K]. The sensitivity is the slope of the transfer function. Converting the sensor's electrical output (for example V) to the measured units (for example K) requires dividing the electrical output by the slope (or multiplying by its reciprocal). In addition, an offset is frequently added or subtracted. For example, −40 must be added to the output if 0 V output corresponds to −40 C input.


title: Sensor

text: For an analog sensor signal to be processed, or used in digital equipment, it needs to be converted to a digital signal, using an analog-to-digital converter.


title: Sensor

text: Since sensors cannot replicate an ideal transfer function, several types of deviations can occur which limit sensor accuracy:


title: Sensor

text: All these deviations can be classified as systematic errors or random errors. Systematic errors can sometimes be compensated for by means of some kind of calibration strategy. Noise is a random error that can be reduced by signal processing, such as filtering, usually at the expense of the dynamic behavior of the sensor.


title: Sensor

text: The "sensor resolution" or "measurement resolution" is the smallest change that can be detected in the quantity that it is being measured. The resolution of a sensor with a digital output is usually the numerical resolution of the digital output. The resolution is related to the precision with which the measurement is made, but they are not the same thing. A sensor's accuracy may be considerably worse than its resolution.


title: Sensor

text: A chemical sensor is a self-contained analytical device that can provide information about the chemical composition of its environment, that is, a liquid or a gas phase. The information is provided in the form of a measurable physical signal that is correlated with the concentration of a certain chemical species (termed as analyte). Two main steps are involved in the functioning of a chemical sensor, namely, recognition and transduction. In the recognition step, analyte molecules interact selectively with receptor molecules or sites included in the structure of the recognition element of the sensor. Consequently, a characteristic physical parameter varies and this variation is reported by means of an integrated transducer that generates the output signal.


title: Sensor

text: A chemical sensor based on recognition material of biological nature is a biosensor. However, as synthetic biomimetic materials are going to substitute to some extent recognition biomaterials, a sharp distinction between a biosensor and a standard chemical sensor is superfluous. Typical biomimetic materials used in sensor development are molecularly imprinted polymers and aptamers.


title: Sensor

text: In biomedicine and biotechnology, sensors which detect analytes thanks to a biological component, such as cells, protein, nucleic acid or biomimetic polymers, are called biosensors.


title: Sensor

text: Whereas a non-biological sensor, even organic (carbon chemistry), for biological analytes is referred to as sensor or nanosensor. This terminology applies for both in-vitro and in vivo applications.


title: Sensor

text: The encapsulation of the biological component in biosensors, presents a slightly different problem that ordinary sensors; this can either be done by means of a semipermeable barrier, such as a dialysis membrane or a hydrogel, or a 3D polymer matrix, which either physically constrains the sensing macromolecule or chemically constrains the macromolecule by bounding it to the scaffold.


title: Sensor

text: Neuromorphic sensors are sensors that physically mimic structures and functions of biological neural entities. One example of this is the event camera.


title: Sensor

text: Metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) technology originates from the MOSFET (MOS field-effect transistor, or MOS transistor) invented by Mohamed M. Atalla and Dawon Kahng in 1959, and demonstrated in 1960. MOSFET sensors (MOS sensors) were later developed, and they have since been widely used to measure physical, chemical, biological and environmental parameters.


title: Sensor

text: A number of MOSFET sensors have been developed, for measuring physical, chemical, biological and environmental parameters. The earliest MOSFET sensors include the open-gate field-effect transistor (OGFET) introduced by Johannessen in 1970, the ion-sensitive field-effect transistor (ISFET) invented by Piet Bergveld in 1970, the adsorption FET (ADFET) patented by P.F. Cox in 1974, and a hydrogen-sensitive MOSFET demonstrated by I. Lundstrom, M.S. Shivaraman, C.S. Svenson and L. Lundkvist in 1975. The ISFET is a special type of MOSFET with a gate at a certain distance, and where the metal gate is replaced by an ion-sensitive membrane, electrolyte solution and reference electrode. The ISFET is widely used in biomedical applications, such as the detection of DNA hybridization, biomarker detection from blood, antibody detection, glucose measurement, pH sensing, and genetic technology.


title: Sensor

text: By the mid-1980s, numerous other MOSFET sensors had been developed, including the gas sensor FET (GASFET), surface accessible FET (SAFET), charge flow transistor (CFT), pressure sensor FET (PRESSFET), chemical field-effect transistor (ChemFET), reference ISFET (REFET), biosensor FET (BioFET), enzyme-modified FET (ENFET) and immunologically modified FET (IMFET). By the early 2000s, BioFET types such as the DNA field-effect transistor (DNAFET), gene-modified FET (GenFET) and cell-potential BioFET (CPFET) had been developed.


title: Sensor

text: MOS technology is the basis for modern image sensors, including the charge-coupled device (CCD) and the CMOS active-pixel sensor (CMOS sensor), used in digital imaging and digital cameras. Willard Boyle and George E. Smith developed the CCD in 1969. While researching the MOS process, they realized that an electric charge was the analogy of the magnetic bubble and that it could be stored on a tiny MOS capacitor. As it was fairly straightforward to fabricate a series of MOS capacitors in a row, they connected a suitable voltage to them so that the charge could be stepped along from one to the next. The CCD is a semiconductor circuit that was later used in the first digital video cameras for television broadcasting.


title: Sensor

text: The MOS active-pixel sensor (APS) was developed by Tsutomu Nakamura at Olympus in 1985. The CMOS active-pixel sensor was later developed by Eric Fossum and his team in the early 1990s.


title: Sensor

text: MOS image sensors are widely used in optical mouse technology. The first optical mouse, invented by Richard F. Lyon at Xerox in 1980, used a 5µm NMOS sensor chip. Since the first commercial optical mouse, the IntelliMouse introduced in 1999, most optical mouse devices use CMOS sensors.


title: Sensor

text: MOS monitoring sensors are used for house monitoring, office and agriculture monitoring, traffic monitoring (including car speed, traffic jams, and traffic accidents), weather monitoring (such as for rain, wind, lightning and storms), defense monitoring, and monitoring temperature, humidity, air pollution, fire, health, security and lighting. MOS gas detector sensors are used to detect carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, ammonia, and other gas substances. Other MOS sensors include intelligent sensors and wireless sensor network (WSN) technology.


The Muslim conquests in the Indian subcontinent mainly took place from the 13th to 17th centuries. Earlier Muslim conquests include the invasions into what is now modern-day Pakistan and the Umayyad campaigns in India in eighth century and resistance of Rajputs to them.


title: Muslim conquests in the Indian subcontinent

text: Mahmud of Ghazni, who was the first Sultan, and preserved an ideological link to the suzerainty of the Abbasid Caliphate, invaded and plundered vast parts of Punjab and Gujarat, starting from the Indus River during the 11th century.


text: After the capture of Lahore and the end of the Ghaznavids, the Ghurid ruler Muhammad of Ghor laid the foundation of Muslim rule in India. In 1206, Bakhtiyar Khalji led the Muslim conquest of Bengal, marking the easternmost expansion of Islam at the time. The Ghurid Empire soon evolved into the Delhi Sultanate, ruled by Qutb ud-Din Aibak, the founder of the Mamluk dynasty. With the Delhi Sultanate established, Islam was spread across most parts of the Indian subcontinent.


text: In the 14th century, the Khalji dynasty, under Alauddin Khalji, temporarily extended Muslim rule southwards to Gujarat, Rajasthan, and the Deccan. The Tughlaq dynasty, meanwhile, temporarily expanded its territorial reach to Tamil Nadu. The break up of the Delhi Sultanate resulted in several Muslim sultanates and dynasties to emerge across the Indian subcontinent, such as the Gujarat Sultanate, Malwa Sultanate, Khandesh Sultanate, Bahmani Sultanate, the Madurai Sultanate, and the wealthy and powerful Bengal Sultanate, a major trading nation in the world. Some of these, however, were followed by Hindu reconquests and resistance from the native powers and states, such as the Kamma Nayakas, Vijayanagaras, Gajapatis, Cheros, and Rajput states.


text: The Sur Empire, ruled by Sher Shah Suri, conquered large territories in the northern parts of India prior to the full rise of the Mughal Empire, founded by Babur, one of the three gunpowder empires which included a majority of the ruling elites of South Asia. Akbar gradually enlarged the Mughal Empire to include a large portion of the subcontinent. The zenith was reached at the end of the 17th century, when the reign under emperor Aurangzeb witnessed the full establishment of Islamic Sharia through the Fatawa al-Alamgir.


text: The Mughals suffered a major decline in the early 18th century, mostly after their defeat in the Mughal-Rajput Wars and Mughal–Maratha Wars. Afsharid ruler Nader Shah's invasion was an unexpected attack which demonstrated the weakness of the Mughal Empire. This provided opportunities for the powerful Rajput States, Mysore Kingdom, Nawabs of Bengal and Murshidabad, Maratha Empire, Sikh Empire, and Nizams of Hyderabad to exercise control over large regions of the Indian subcontinent. The Maratha Empire was the dominant force on the subcontinent after the Mughals.


text: After the Battle of Plassey, the Battle of Buxar, Anglo-Mysore Wars, Anglo-Maratha Wars and Anglo-Sikh Wars the British East India Company seized control of much of the Indian subcontinent. By the end of the 18th century, European powers continued to exert a large amount of political influence over the Indian subcontinent, and by the end of the 19th century most of the Indian subcontinent came under European colonial domination, most notably the British Raj.


text: Considering the complex history of the Muslim conquests of India, their recollection and legacy is indubitably controversial. The legacy of the Muslim conquest of South Asia is a hotly debated issue and argued even today.


text: Islam in South Asia existed in communities along the Arab coastal trade routes in Sindh, Bengal, Gujarat, Kerala, and Ceylon. The religion originated and had gained early acceptance in the Arabian Peninsula. The first incursion by the new Muslim successor states of the Arab world occurred around 636 AD or 643 AD, during the Rashidun Caliphate, long before any Arab army reached the frontier of India by land. Uthman ibn Abi al-As al-Thaqafi, the governor of Bahrain and Oman, sent out ships to raid Thane, near modern-day Mumbai. His brother Hakam sailed to Broach and a third fleet sailed to Debal under his younger brother Mughira either in 636 or 643 AD, according to one source, which does not specifically state the results but mentions that these expeditions were sent without the Caliph Umar's consent, and he rebuked Uthman, saying that had the Arabs lost any men in the expeditions, the Caliph would have killed an equal number of men who had participated from Uthman's tribe in retaliation. However, another source states Mughira was defeated and killed at Debal. The expeditions may have been sent to attack pirates to safeguard Arabian trade in the Arabian Sea, and not to start the conquest of India. Shortly after the Muslim conquest of Persia, the connection between the Sindh and Islam was established by the initial Muslim missions during the Rashidun Caliphate.


text: The kingdoms of Kapisa-Gandhara in modern-day Afghanistan, Zabulistan, and Sindh (which then held Makran) in modern-day Pakistan, all of which were culturally and politically part of India since ancient times, were known as "The Frontier of Al Hind". Makran had been conquered by Chach of Alor in 631 AD, but ten years later, it was described as "under the government of Persia" by Xuanzang, who had visited the region in 641 AD.


text: The first clash between a ruler of an Indian kingdom and the Arabs took place in 643 AD, when Arab forces defeated Rutbil, the King of Zabulistan in Sistan. Arabs led by Suhail b. Abdi and Hakam al Taghilbi defeated a local army in the Battle of Rasil in 644 AD at the Indian Ocean sea coast, then reached the Indus River. Caliph Umar ibn Al-Khattab denied them permission to cross the river or operate on Indian soil and the Arabs returned home.


text: Abdullah ibn Aamir led the invasion of Khurasan in 650 AD, and his general Rabi b. Ziyad Al Harithi attacked Sistan and took Zaranj and surrounding areas in 651 AD while Ahnaf ibn Qais conquered the Hepthalites of Herat in 652 AD and advanced up to Balkh by 653 AD. Arab conquests now bordered the Kingdoms of Kapisa, Zabul and Sindh in modern-day Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Arabs levied annual tributes on the newly captured areas, and leaving 4,000 men garrisons at Merv and Zaranj retired to Iraq instead of pushing on against the frontier of India. Caliph Uthman b. Affan sanctioned an attack against Makran in 652 AD, and sent a recon mission to Sindh in 653 AD. The mission described Makran as inhospitable, and Caliph Uthman, probably assuming the country beyond was much worse, forbade any further incursions into India.


text: Al-Hakim ibn Jabalah al-Abdi, who attacked Makran in the year 649 AD, was an early partisan of Ali ibn Abu Talib. During the caliphate of Ali, many Hindus of Sindh had come under the influence of Shi'ism and some even participated in the Battle of Camel and died fighting for Ali. Under the Umayyads (661–750 AD), many Shias sought asylum in the region of Sindh, to live in relative peace in the remote area. Ziyad Hindi was one of those refugees.


text: Mu'awiya I established the Umayyad rule over the Arabs after the First Fitna in 661 AD, and resumed expansion of the Muslim's empire. Al-Baladuri wrote that "In the year 664 AD, and in the days of the Mu'awiya I, Muhallib son of Abu Safra made war upon the same frontier, and advanced as far as Banna (Bannnu) and Al-Ahwar (Lahore) which lie between Multan and Kabul.”


text: After 663-665 AD, the Arabs launched an invasion against Kapisa, Zabul and what is now Pakistani Balochistan. Abdur Rahman b. Samurra besieged Kabul in 663 AD, while Haris b Marrah advanced against Kalat after marching through Fannazabur and Quandabil and moving through the Bolan Pass. King Chach of Sindh sent an army against the Arabs, the Arabs were trapped when the enemy blocked the mountain passes Haris was killed and his army was annihilated. Al-Muhallab ibn Abi Sufra took a detachment through the Khyber pass towards Multan in Southern Punjab in modern-day Pakistan in 664 AD, then pushed south into Kikan, and may have also raided Quandabil. Turki Shah and Zunbil expelled Arabs from their respective kingdoms by 670 AD, and Zunbil began assisting in organizing resistance in Makran.


text: This was the beginning of a prolonged struggle between the rulers of Kabul and Zabul against successive Arab governors of Sistan, Khurasan and Makran in modern-day Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Kabul Shahi kings and their Zunbil kinsmen blocked access to the Khyber Pass and Gomal Pass routes into India from 653 to 870 AD, while modern Balochistan, Pakistan, comprising the areas of Kikan or Qiqanan, Nukan, Turan, Buqan, Qufs, Mashkey and Makran, would face several Arab expeditions between 661 and 711 AD. The Arabs launched several raids against these frontier lands, but repeated rebellions in Sistan and Khurasan between 653 and 691 AD diverted much of their military resources in order to subdue these provinces and away from expansion into Al Hind. Muslim control of these areas ebbed and flowed repeatedly as a result until 870 AD. Arab troops disliked being stationed in Makran, and were reluctant to campaign in the Kabul area and Zabulistan due to the difficult terrain and underestimation of Zunbil's power. The Arab strategy was tribute extraction instead of systematic conquest. The fierce resistance of Zunbil and Turki Shah stalled Arab progress repeatedly in the "Frontier Zone".


text: Arabs launched several campaigns in eastern Balochistan between 661 and 681 AD. Four Arab commanders were killed during the campaigns, but Sinan b. Salma managed to conquer parts of Makran including the Chagai area, and established a permanent base of operations in 673 AD. Rashid b. Amr, the next governor of Makran, subdued Mashkey in 672 AD. Munzir b. Jarood Al Abadi managed to garrison Kikan and conquer Buqan by 681 AD, while Ibn Harri Al Bahili conducted several campaigns to secure the Arab hold on Kikan, Makran and Buqan by 683 AD. Zunbil saw off Arab campaigns in 668, 672 and 673 AD by paying tribute. Although Arabs occupied the areas south of Helmand in 673 AD permanently Zunbil defeated Yazid b. Salm's army in 681 AD at Junzah, and Arabs had to pay 500,000 dirhams as ransom to get free their prisoners, but the Arabs defeated and killed Zunbil in Sistan in 685. The Arabs were defeated in Zabul in next invaded Zabul in 693 AD.


text: Al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf Al Thaqifi, who had played a crucial role during the Second Fitna for the Umayyad cause, was appointed the governor of Iraq in 694 AD. He further extended his reign to Khurasan and Sistan in 697 AD. Al-Hajjaj also sponsored Muslim expansion in Makran, Sistan, Transoxiana and Sindh.


text: The Arab's hold on Makran had weakened when Arab rebels seized the province, and Hajjaj had to send three governors between 694 and 707 AD before Makran was partially recovered by 694 AD. Al Hajjaj also fought Zunbil in 698 AD and 700 AD. The 20,000 strong army led by Ubaidullah ibn Abu Bakra was trapped by the armies of Zunbil and Turki Shah near Kabul, and lost 15,000 men to thirst and hunger, earning this force the title of the "Doomed Army". Abd al-Rahman ibn Muhammad ibn al-Ash'ath led 20,000 troops each from Kufa and Basra in a successful campaign in 700 AD, but when he wanted to stop during winter, Al-Hajjaj's insulting rebuke led to mutiny. The mutiny was put down by 704 AD, and Al-Hajjaj granted a 7-year truce to Zunbil.


text: Raja Dahir of Sindh had refused to return Arab rebels from Sindh and furthermore, "Meds" and others. Meds shipping from their bases at Kutch, Debal and Kathiawar during one of their raids had kidnapped Muslim women travelling from Sri Lanka to Arabia, thus providing a "casus belli" against Sindh Raja Dahir. Raja Dahir expressed his inability to help retrieve the prisoners and after two expeditions was defeated in Sindh. Al Hajjaj equipped an army built around 6,000 Syrian cavalry and detachments of "mawali" from Iraq, six thousand camel riders, and a baggage train of 3,000 camels under his Nephew Muhammad bin Qasim to Sindh. His artillery of five catapults were sent to Debal by sea ("manjaniks").


text: Muhammad bin Qasim departed from Shiraz in 710 AD, the army marched along the coast to Tiaz in Makran, then to the Kech valley. Muhammad re-subdued the restive towns of Fannazbur and Armabil (Lasbela), finally completing the conquest of Makran. Then the army met up with the reinforcements and catapults sent by sea near Debal and took Debal through assault. From Debal, the Arabs moved towards north along the Indus, clearing the region up to Budha. Some towns like Nerun and Sadusan (Sehwan) surrendered peacefully, while tribes inhabiting Sisam were defeated in the battle. Muhammad bin Qasim moved back to Nerun to resupply and receive reinforcements sent by Hajjaj. The Arabs crossed the Indus further South and defeated the army of Dahir, who was killed. The Arabs then marched north along the east bank of the Indus after the siege and capture of Rawer. Brahmanabad, then Alor (Aror) and finally Multan, were captured alongside other in-between towns with only light Muslim casualties. Arabs marched up to the foothills of Kashmir along the Jhelum in 713 AD, and stormed the Al-Kiraj (probably the Kangra valley). Muhammad was deposed after the death of Caliph Walid in 715 AD. Jai Singh, son of Dahir captured Brahmanabad and Arab rule was restricted to the Western shore of the Indus. Sindh was briefly lost to the caliph when the rebel Yazid b. Muhallab took over Sindh in 720 AD.


text: Junaid b. Abd Al Rahman Al Marri became the governor of Sindh in 723 AD. He conquered Debal, defeated and killed Jai Singh, secured Sindh and Southern Punjab and then stormed Al Kiraj (Kangra valley) in 724 AD. Junaid next attacked a number of Hindu kingdoms in what is now Rajasthan, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh aiming at permanent conquest, but the chronology and area of operation of the campaigns during 725–743 AD is difficult to follow because accurate, complete information is lacking. The Arabs moved east from Sindh in several detachments and probably attacked from both the land and the sea, occupying "Mirmad" (Marumada, in Jaisalmer), "Al-Mandal" (perhaps Okhamandal in Gujarat) or Marwar, and raiding "Dahnaj", not identified, "al-Baylaman" (Bhilmal) and "Jurz" (Gurjara country—north Gujarat and southern Rajasthan), attacking "Barwas" (Broach), and sacking Vallabhi. Gurjara king Siluka repelled Arabs from "Stravani and Valla", probably the area North of Jaisalmer and Jodhpur, and the invasion of Malwa but were ultimately defeated by Bappa Rawal and Nagabhata I in 725 AD near Ujjain. Arabs lost control over the newly conquered territories and part of Sindh due to Arab tribal infighting and Arab soldiers deserting the newly conquered territory in 731 AD.


text: Al Hakam b. Awana Al Kalbi in 733 AD, founded the garrison city of Al Mahfuza ("The Well Guarded") similar to Kufa, Basra and Wasit, on the eastern side of a lake near Brahmanabad. Hakam next attempted to reclaim the conquests of Junaid in Al Hind. Arab records merely state that he was successful, Indian records at Navasari details that Arab forces defeated "Kacchella, Saindhava, Saurashtra, Cavotaka, Maurya and Gurjara" kings. The city of Al Mansura ("The Victorious") was founded near Al Mahfuza to commemorate pacification of Sindh by Amr b. Muhammad in c738 AD. Al Hakam next invaded the Deccan in 739 AD with the intention of permanent conquest, but was decisively defeated at Navsari by the viceroy Avanijanashraya Pulakeshin of the Chalukya Empire serving Vikramaditya II. Arab rule was restricted to the west of Thar desert.


text: When the Abbasid Revolution overthrew the Umayyads in 750 AD after the Third Fitna, Sindh became independent and was captured by Musa b. K'ab al Tamimi in 752 AD. Zunbil had defeated the Arabs in 728 AD, and saw off two Abbasid invasions in 769 and 785 AD. Abbasids attacked Kabul several times and collected tribute between 787 and 815 AD and extracted tribute after each campaign. Abbasid's Governor of Sindh, Hisham (in office 768–773 AD) raided Kashmir, recaptured parts of Punjab from Karkota control, and launched naval raids against ports of Gujarat in 758 and 770 AD. These raids like other Abbasid Naval raids launched in 776 and 779 AD, gained no territory. Arabs occupied Sindian (Southern Kutch) in 810 AD, only to lose it in 841 AD.


text: Civil war erupted in Sindh in 842 AD, and the Habbari dynasty occupied Mansurah, and by 871 AD, five independent principalities had emerged, with the Banu Habbari clan controlling in Mansurah, Banu Munabbih occupying Multan, Banu Madan ruling in Makran, and Makshey and Turan falling to other rulers, all outside direct Caliphate control. Ismaili missionaries found a receptive audience among both the Sunni and non-Muslim populations in Multan, which became a center of the Ismaili sect of Islam. The Saffarid Dynasty of Zaranj occupied Kabul and the kingdom of Zunbil permanently in 871 AD. A new chapter of Muslim conquests began when the Samanid Dynasty took over the Saffarid Kingdom and Sabuktigin seized Ghazni.


text: After the Decline of the Caliphate, Muslim incursions resumed under the later Turkic and Central Asian dynasties like the Saffarid dynasty and the Samanid Dynasty with more local capitals. They supplanted the Abbasid Caliphate and expanded their domains both northwards and eastwards. Continuous raids from these empires in the north-west of India led to the loss of stability in the Indian kingdoms, and led to the establishment of Islam in the heart of India.


text: Under Sabuktigin, the Ghaznavid Empire found itself in conflict with the Kabul Shahi Raja Jayapala in the east. When Sabuktigin died and his son Mahmud ascended the throne in 998 AD, Ghazni was engaged in the North with the Qarakhanids when the Shahi Raja renewed hostilities in east once again.


text: In the early 11th century, Mahmud of Ghazni launched seventeen expeditions into Indian subcontinent. In 1001 AD, Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni defeated Raja Jayapala of the Hindu Shahi Dynasty of Gandhara (in modern Afghanistan), in the Battle of Peshawar and marched further towards the west of Peshawar (in modern Pakistan) and, in 1005 AD, made it the center for his forces.


text: In 1030 AD, Al Biruni reported on the devastation caused during the conquest of Gandhara and much of northwest India by Mahmud of Ghazni following his defeat of Jayapala in the Battle of Peshawar in 1001:


text: The Ghaznavid conquests were initially directed against the Ismaili Fatimids of Multan, who were engaged in an ongoing struggle with the provinces of the Abbasid Caliphate in conjunction with their compatriots of the Fatimid Caliphate in North Africa and the Middle East; Mahmud apparently hoped to curry the favor of the Abbasids in this fashion. However, once this aim was accomplished, he moved onto the looting of Indian temples and monasteries. By 1027 AD, Mahmud had captured parts of North India and obtained formal recognition of Ghazni's sovereignty from the Abbasid Caliph, al-Qadir Billah.


text: Ghaznavid's rule in Northwestern India (modern Afghanistan and Pakistan) lasted over for 175 years, from 1010 to 1187. It was during this period that Lahore assumed considerable importance, apart from being the second capital, and later the only capital of the Ghaznavid Empire.


text: At the end of his reign, Mahmud's empire extended from Kurdistan in the west to Samarkand in the Northeast, and from the Caspian Sea to the Punjab in the west. Although his raids carried his forces across Northern and Western India, only Punjab came under his permanent rule while Kashmir, the Doab, Rajasthan, and Gujarat remained nominal under the control of the local Indian dynasties. In 1030, Mahmud fell gravely ill and died at age 59. As with the invaders of three centuries ago, Mahmud's armies reached temples in Varanasi, Mathura, Ujjain, Maheshwar, Jwalamukhi, Somnath and Dwarka.


text: Mu'izz al-Din, better known as Shahāb-ud-Din Muhammad Ghori was a conqueror from the region of Ghor in modern Afghanistan. Before 1160, the Ghaznavid Empire covered an area running from central Iran east to the Punjab, with capitals at Ghazni on the banks of Ghazni river in present-day Afghanistan, and at Lahore in present-day Pakistan. In 1173, Muhammad of Ghor was crowned Ghazni. In 1186, he conquered Lahore ending the Ghaznavid empire and bringing the last of Ghaznavid territory under his control. His early campaigns in the Indian Subcontinent were against the Qarmatians of Multan.


text: In 1191, he invaded the territory of Prithviraj III of Ajmer, who ruled his territory from Delhi to Ajmer in present-day Rajasthan, but was defeated at the First Battle of Tarain. The following year, Mu'izz al-Din assembled 120,000 horsemen and once again invaded India. Mu'izz al-Din's army met Prithviraj's army again at Tarain, and this time Mu'izz al-Din won; Govindraj was slain, Prithviraj executed and Mu'izz al-Din advanced onto Delhi. Within a year, Mu'izz al-Din controlled North-Western Rajasthan and Northern Ganges-Yamuna Doab. After these victories in India, and Mu'izz al-Din's establishment Delhi as the capital of his Indian provinces, Multan was also incorporated as a major part of his empire. Mu'izz al-Din then returned east to Ghazni to deal with the threat on his eastern frontiers from the Turks of the Khwarizmian Empire, whiles his armies continued to advance through Northern India, raiding as far as Bengal.


text: Mu'izz al-Din returned to Lahore after 1200. In 1206, Mu'izz al-Din had to travel to Lahore to crush a revolt. On his way back to Ghazni, his caravan rested at Damik near Sohawa (which is near the city of Jhelum in the Punjab province of modern-day Pakistan). He was assassinated on 15 March 1206, while offering his evening prayers by the assassins from the Ismaili Muslim sect.


text: Muhammad's successors established the first dynasty of the Delhi Sultanate, while the Mamluk Dynasty in 1211 (however, the Delhi Sultanate is traditionally held to have been founded in 1206) seized the reins of the empire. "Mamluk" means "slave" and referred to the Turkic slave soldiers who became rulers. The territory under control of the Muslim rulers in Delhi expanded rapidly. By the mid-century, Bengal and much of central India was under the Delhi Sultanate. Several Turko-Afghan dynasties ruled from Delhi: the Mamluk (1206–1290), the Khalji (1290–1320), the Tughlaq (1320–1414), the Sayyid (1414–51), and the Lodhi (1451–1526). During the time of Delhi Sultanate, the Vijayanagara Empire resisted attempts of Delhi Sultanate to establish dominion in the Southern India, serving as a barrier against invasion by the Muslims. Certain kingdoms remained independent of Delhi such as the larger kingdoms of Punjab, Rajasthan, parts of the Deccan, Gujarat, Malwa (central India), and Bengal. Nevertheless, all of the area in present-day Pakistan came under the rule of Delhi.


text: The Sultans of Delhi enjoyed cordial, if superficial, relations with Muslim rulers in the Near East but owed them no allegiance. They based their laws on the "Quran" and the "sharia" and permitted non-Muslim subjects to practice their own religions if they paid the "jizya" (poll tax). They ruled from urban centers, while military camps and trading posts provided the nuclei for towns that sprang up in the countryside.


text: Perhaps the most significant contribution of the Sultanate was its temporary success in insulating the subcontinent from the potential devastation of the Mongol invasion from Central Asia in the 13th century, which nonetheless led to the capture of Afghanistan and western Pakistan by the Mongols (see the Ilkhanate Dynasty). Under the Sultanate, "Indo-Muslim" fusion left lasting monuments in architecture, music, literature, and religion. In addition it is surmised that the language of Urdu (literally meaning "horde" or "camp" in various Turkic dialects) was born during the Delhi Sultanate period as a result of the mingling of Sanskritic Hindi and the Persian, Turkish, Arabic favoured by the Muslim invaders of India.


text: The Sultanate suffered significantly from the sacking of Delhi in 1398 by Timur, but revived briefly under the Lodi Dynasty. This was the final dynasty of the Sultanate before it was conquered by Zahiruddin Babur in 1526, who subsequently founded the Mughal dynasty that ruled from the 16th to the 18th centuries.


text: Tīmūr bin Taraghay Barlas, known in the West as Tamerlane or "Timur the lame", was a 14th-century warlord of Turco-Mongol descent. He had conquered much of western and central Asia, and founded the Timurid Empire (1370–1507) in Central Asia which survived until 1857 as the Mughal dynasty of India.


text: Informed about civil war in South Asia, Timur began a trek starting in 1398 to invade the reigning Sultan Nasir-u Din Mehmud of the Tughlaq Dynasty in the north Indian city of Delhi. His campaign was politically pretexted that the Muslim Delhi Sultanate was too tolerant toward its "Hindu" subjects, but that could not mask the real reason being to amass the wealth of the Delhi Sultanate.


text: Timur crossed the Indus River at Attock (now Pakistan) on 24 September. In Haryana, his soldiers killed about 50 to 100 Hindu civilians each.


text: Timur's invasion did not go unopposed, however, and he did meet some resistance during his march to Delhi, most notably with the Sarv Khap coalition in northern India, as well as the Governor of Meerut. Although impressed and momentarily stalled by the valour of Ilyaas Awan, Timur was able to continue his relentless approach to Delhi, arriving in 1398 to combat the armies of Sultan Mehmud, already weakened by an internal battle for ascension within the royal family.


text: The Sultan's army was easily defeated on 17 December 1398. Timur entered Delhi and the city was sacked, destroyed, and left in ruins. Before the battle for Delhi, Timur executed more than 100,000 "Hindu" captives.


text: Timur himself recorded the invasions in his memoirs, which were collectively known as "Tuzk-i-Timuri". Timur's purported autobiography, the "Tuzk-e-Taimuri" ("Memoirs of Temur") is a later fabrication, although most of the historical facts are accurate.


text: Historian Irfan Habib writes in "Timur in the Political Tradition and Historiography of Mughal India" that in the 14th century, the word "Hindu" (people of "Al-Hind", "Hind" being "India") included "both Hindus and Muslims" in religious connotations.


text: However, Timur purportedly states in his own autobiography that, during the 15-day massacre of Delhi, "Excepting the quarters of the sayyids, the 'ulama and the other Musalmans (Muslims), the whole city was sacked", thereby implying that Timur differentiated between the Muslims and non-Muslims during his sack of the city.


text: Timur left Delhi in approximately January 1399. In April he had returned to his own capital beyond the Oxus (Amu Darya). Immense quantities of spoils were taken from India. According to Ruy Gonzáles de Clavijo, 90 captured elephants were employed merely to carry precious stones looted from his conquest, which was used to erect a mosque at Samarkand – what historians today believe is the enormous Bibi-Khanym Mosque. Ironically, the mosque was constructed too quickly and suffered from disrepair within a few decades of its construction.


text: Kashmir was conquered by the Shah Mir dynasty in the 14th century. Regional kingdoms such as Bengal, Gujarat, Malwa, Khandesh, Jaunpur, and Bahmanis expanded at the expense of the Delhi Sultanate. Gaining conversions to Islam was easier under regional Sultanates.


text: The term of Deccan Sultanates was used for five Muslim dynasties that ruled several late medieval Indian kingdoms, namely Bijapur Sultanate, Golkonda Sultanate, Ahmadnagar Sultanate, Bidar Sultanate, and Berar Sultanate in South India. The Deccan Sultanates ruled the Deccan Plateau between the Krishna River and the Vindhya Range. These sultanates became independent during the separation of the Bahmani Sultanate, another Muslim empire.


text: The ruling families of all these five sultanates were of diverse origin; the Qutb Shahi dynasty of Golconda Sultanate was of Turkmen origin, the Barid Shahi dynasty of Bidar Sultanate being founded by a Turkic noble, the Adil Shahi dynasty of Bijapur Sultanate was founded by a Georgian-Oghuz Turkic slave while Nizam Shahi dynasty of Ahmadnagar Sultanate and Imad Shahi dynasty of Berar Sultanate were of Hindu lineage (Ahmadnagar being Brahmin and Berar being Kanarese).


text: India in the early 16th century presented a fragmented picture of rulers who lacked concern for their subjects and failed to create a common body of laws or institutions. Outside developments also played a role in shaping events. The circumnavigation of Africa by the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama in 1498 allowed Europeans to challenge Muslim control of the trading routes between Europe and Asia. In Central Asia and Afghanistan, shifts in power pushed Babur of the Timurid dynasty (in present-day Uzbekistan) southward, first to Kabul and then to the heart of Indian subcontinent. The dynasty he founded endured for more than three centuries.


text: A descendant of both Genghis Khan and Timur, Babur combined strength and courage with a love of beauty, and military ability with cultivation. He concentrated on gaining control of Northwestern India, doing so in 1526 by defeating the last Lodhi Sultan in the First battle of Panipat, a town north of Delhi. Babur then turned to the tasks of persuading his Central Asian followers to stay on in India and of overcoming other contenders for power, like the Rajputs and the Afghans. He succeeded in both tasks but died shortly thereafter in 1530. The Mughal Empire was one of the largest centralized states in pre-modern history and was the precursor to the British Indian Empire.


text: Babur was followed by his great-grandson, Shah Jahan (1628–1658), builder of the Taj Mahal and other magnificent buildings. Two other towering figures of the Mughal era were Akbar (r. 1556–1605) and Aurangzeb (r. 1658–1707). Both rulers expanded the empire greatly and were able administrators. However, Akbar was known for his religious tolerance and administrative genius while Aurangzeb was a pious Muslim and fierce advocate of more orthodox Islam.


text: While some rulers were zealous in their spread of Islam, others were relatively liberal. The Mughal emperor Akbar, an example of the latter established a new religion, Din E Elahi, which included beliefs from different faiths and even build many temples in his empire. He abolished the jizya twice. In contrast, his great-grandson Aurangazeb was a more religious and orthodox ruler. Aurangzeb's Deccan campaign saw one of the largest death tolls in South Asian history, with an estimated 4.6 million people killed during his reign, Muslims and Hindus alike. An estimated of 2.5 million of Aurangzeb's army were killed during the Mughal–Maratha Wars (100,000 annually during a quarter-century), while 2 million civilians in war-torn lands died due to drought, plague and famine.


text: In the century-and-a-half that followed the death of Aurangzeb, effective Muslim control started weakening. Succession to imperial and even provincial power, which had often become hereditary, was subject to intrigue and force. The mansabdari system gave way to the zamindari system, in which high-ranking officials took on the appearance of hereditary landed aristocracy with powers of collecting rents. As Delhi's control waned, other contenders for power emerged and clashed, thus preparing the way for the eventual British takeover.


text: Ahmed Shah Abdali – a Pashtun – embarked on conquest in South Asia starting in 1747. In the short time of just over a quarter of a century, he forged one of the largest Muslim empires of the 18th century. The high point of his conquests was his victory over the powerful Marathas in the Third Battle of Panipat, which occurred in 1761. In the Indian subcontinent, his empire stretched from the Indus at Attock all the way to the eastern Punjab. Uninterested in long-term of conquest or in replacing the Mughal Empire, he became increasingly pre occupied with revolts by the Sikhs. Vadda Ghalughara took place under the Muslim provincial government based at Lahore to wipe out the Sikhs, with non-combatant women, children and old men being killed, an offensive that had begun with the Mughals, with the Chhota Ghallughara. but after two months Sikh Misls again assembled and defeated Durranis in Battle of Harnaulgarh, Sikhs Capture Sirhind Labore Multan His empire began to unravel decade before his death in 1772.


text: The single most important power to emerge in the Mughal dynasty was the Maratha Confederacy (1674–1818). The Marathas are responsible, to a large extent for ending Mughal rule in India. The Maratha Empire ruled large parts of India following the decline of the Mughals. The long and futile war bankrupted one of the most powerful empires in the world. Mountstuart Elphinstone termed this a demoralizing period for the Muslims as many of them lost the will to fight against the Maratha Empire. Maratha empire at its peak stretched from Tamil Nadu (Trichinopoly) "present Tiruchirappalli" in the south to the Afghan border in the north. In early 1771, Mahadji, a notable Maratha general, recaptured Delhi and installed Shah Alam II as the puppet ruler on the Mughal throne. In north India, the Marathas thus regained the territory and the prestige lost as result of the defeat at Panipath in 1761. Mahadji ruled Punjab and Sikh "sardars" (leaders) and Rajas of the Cis-Sutlej region paid him tribute. A considerable portion of the Indian subcontinent came under the sway of the British Empire after the Third Anglo-Maratha War, which ended the Maratha Empire in 1818.


text: In northwest India, Punjab, Sikhs developed themselves into a powerful force under the authority of twelve Misls. By 1801, Ranjit Singh captured Lahore and threw off the Afghan yoke from North West India. In Afghanistan Zaman Shah Durrani was defeated by powerful Barakzai chief Fateh Khan who appointed Mahmud Shah Durrani as the new ruler of Afghanistan and appointed himself as Wazir of Afghanistan. Sikhs however were now superior to the Afghans and started to annex Afghan provinces. The biggest victory of the Sikh Empire over the Durrani Empire came in the Battle of Attock fought in 1813 between Sikh and Wazir of Afghanistan Fateh Khan and his younger brother Dost Mohammad Khan. The Afghans were routed by the Sikh army and the Afghans lost over 9,000 soldiers in this battle. Dost Mohammad was seriously injured whereas his brother Wazir Fateh Khan fled back to Kabul fearing that his brother was dead. In 1818 they slaughtered Afghans and Muslims in trading city of Multan killing Afghan governor Nawab Muzzafar Khan and five of his sons in the Siege of Multan. In 1819 the last Indian Province of Kashmir was conquered by Sikhs who registered another crushing victory over weak Afghan General Jabbar Khan.


text: Considering the complex history of the Muslim conquests of India, their recollection and legacy is controversial.


text: 20th-century American historian Will Durant wrote about medieval India, "The Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history."


text: In contrast, there are other historians such as American historian Audrey Truschke and Indian historian Romila Thapar, who claim that such views are unfounded or exaggerated.


text: Considerable controversy exists both in scholarly and public opinion about the conversions to Islam typically represented by the following schools of thought:


text: Embedded within this lies the concept of Islam as a foreign imposition and Hinduism being a natural condition of the natives who resisted, resulting in the failure of the project to Islamize the Indian subcontinent and is highly embroiled within the politics of the partition and communalism in India.


text: Historians such as Will Durant described Islamic invasions of India as "The bloodiest story in history. Jadunath Sarkar contends that several Muslim invaders were waging a systematic jihad against Hindus in India to the effect that "Every device short of massacre in cold blood was resorted to in order to convert heathen subjects".


text: Hindus who converted to Islam however were not completely immune to persecution due to the caste system among Muslims in India established by Ziauddin al-Barani in the "Fatawa-i Jahandari", where they were regarded as an "Ajlaf" caste and subjected to discrimination by the "Ashraf" castes. Others argue that, during the Muslim conquests in the Indian subcontinent, Indian-origin religions experienced persecution from various Muslim conquerors who massacred Hindus, Jains and Buddhists, attacked temples and monasteries, and forced conversions on the battlefield.


text: Disputers of the "conversion by the sword theory" point to the presence of the large Muslim communities found in Southern India, Sri Lanka, Western Burma, Bangladesh, Southern Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines coupled with the distinctive lack of equivalent Muslim communities around the heartland of historical Muslim empires in the Indian subcontinent as a refutation to the "conversion by the sword theory". The legacy of the Muslim conquest of South Asia is a hotly debated issue and argued even today.


text: Muslim invaders were not all simply raiders. Later rulers fought on to win kingdoms and stayed to create new ruling dynasties. The practices of these new rulers and their subsequent heirs (some of whom were born to Hindu wives) varied considerably. While some were uniformly hated, others developed a popular following. According to the memoirs of Ibn Battuta who travelled through Delhi in the 14th century, one of the previous sultans had been especially brutal and was deeply hated by Delhi's population. Batuta's memoirs also indicate that Muslims from the Arab world, Persia and Anatolia were often favoured with important posts at the royal courts, suggesting that locals may have played a somewhat subordinate role in the Delhi administration. The term "Turk" was commonly used to refer to their higher social status. S.A.A. Rizvi ("The Wonder That Was India – II") however points to Muhammad ibn Tughluq as not only encouraging locals but promoting artisan groups such as cooks, barbers and gardeners to high administrative posts. In his reign, it is likely that conversions to Islam took place as a means of seeking greater social mobility and improved social standing.


text: Numerous temples were destroyed by Muslim conquerors. Richard M. Eaton lists a total of 80 temples that were desecrated by Muslim conquerors, but notes this was not unusual in medieval India where numerous temples were also desecrated by Hindu and Buddhist kings against rival Indian kingdoms during conflicts between devotees of different Hindu deities, and between Hindus, Buddhists and Jains. He also notes there were many instances of the Delhi Sultanate, which often had Hindu ministers, ordering the protection, maintenance and repairing of temples, according to both Muslim and Hindu sources, and that attacks on temples had significantly declined under the Mughal Empire.


text: K. S. Lal, in his book "Growth of Muslim Population in Medieval India", claimed that between 1000 and 1500 the Indian population decreased by 30 million, but stated his estimates were tentative and did not claim any finality. His work has come under criticism by historians such as Simon Digby (SOAS, University of London) and Irfan Habib for its agenda and lack of accurate data in pre-census times. Different population estimates by economics historians Angus Maddison and Jean-Noël Biraben also indicate that India's population did not decrease between 1000 and 1500, but increased by about 35 million during that time. The Indian population estimates from other economic historians including Colin Clark, John D. Durand and Colin McEvedy also show there was a population increase in India between 1000 and 1500.


text: Islam's impact was the most notable in the expansion of trade. The first contact of Muslims with India was the Arab attack on a nest of pirates near modern-day Mumbai to safeguard their trade in the Arabian Sea. Around the same time, many Arabs settled at Indian ports- giving rise to small Muslim communities. The growth of these communities was not only due to conversion but also the fact that many Hindu kings of south India (such as those from Cholas) hired Muslims as mercenaries.


text: A significant aspect of the Muslim period in world history was the emergence of Islamic Sharia courts capable of imposing a common commercial and legal system that extended from Morocco in the West to Mongolia in the North East and Indonesia in the South East. While southern India was already in trade with Arabs/Muslims, northern India found new opportunities. As the Hindu and Buddhist kingdoms of Asia were subjugated by Islam, and as Islam spread through Africa, it became a highly centralising force that facilitated in the creation of a common legal system that allowed letters of credit issued in say Egypt or Tunisia to be honoured in India or Indonesia (sharia has laws on the transaction of business with both Muslims and non-Muslims). To cement their rules, Muslim rulers initially promoted a system in which there was a revolving door between the clergy, the administrative nobility and the mercantile classes. The travels of explorer Muhammad Ibn-Abdullah Ibn-Batuta were eased because of this system. He served as an Imam in Delhi, as a judicial official in the Maldives, and as an envoy and trader in the Malabar. There was never a contradiction in any of his positions because each of these roles complemented the other. Islam created a compact under which political power, law and religion became fused in a manner so as to safeguard the interests of the mercantile class. This led world trade to expand to the maximum extent possible in the medieval world. Sher Shah Suri took initiatives in improvement of trade by abolishing all taxes which hindered progress of free trade. He built large networks of roads and constructed Grand Trunk Road (1540–1544), which connects Chittagong to Kabul; parts of it are still in use today. The geographic regions add to the diversity of languages and politics.


text: The divide and rule policies, two-nation theory, and subsequent partition of British India in the wake of Independence from the British Empire has polarised the sub-continental psyche, making objective assessment hard in comparison to the other settled agricultural societies of India from the North West. Muslim rule differed from these others in the level of assimilation and syncretism that occurred. They retained their identity and introduced legal and administrative systems that superseded existing systems of social conduct and ethics. While this was a source of friction it resulted in a unique experience the legacy of which is a Muslim community strongly Islamic in character while at the same time distinctive and unique among its peers.


text: The impact of Islam on Indian culture has been inestimable. It permanently influenced the development of all areas of human endeavour – language, dress, cuisine, all the art forms, architecture and urban design, and social customs and values. Conversely, the languages of the Muslim invaders were modified by contact with local languages, to Urdu, which uses the Arabic script. This language was also known as Hindustani, an umbrella term used for the vernacular terminology of Hindi as well as Urdu, both major languages in South Asia today derived primarily from Sanskrit grammatical structures and vocabulary.


text: Muslim rule saw a greater urbanisation of India and the rise of many cities and their urban cultures. The biggest impact was upon trade resulting from a common commercial and legal system extending from Morocco to Indonesia. This change of emphasis on mercantilism and trade from the more strongly centralised governance systems further clashed with the agricultural based traditional economy and also provided fuel for social and political tensions.


text: A related development to the shifting economic conditions was the establishment of Karkhanas, or small factories and the import and dissemination of technology through India and the rest of the world. The use of ceramic tiles was adopted from architectural traditions of Iraq, Iran, and Central Asia. Rajasthan's blue pottery was a local variation of imported Chinese pottery. There is also the example of Sultan Abidin (1420–1470) sending Kashmiri artisans to Samarqand to learn book-binding and paper making. Khurja and Siwan became renowned for pottery, Moradabad for brass ware, Mirzapur for carpets, Firozabad for glass wares, Farrukhabad for printing, Sahranpur and Nagina for wood-carving, Bidar and Lucknow for bidriware, Srinagar for papier-mache, Benaras for jewellery and textiles, and so on. On the flip-side encouraging such growth also resulted in higher taxes on the peasantry.


text: Numerous Indian scientific and mathematical advances and the Hindu numerals were spread to the rest of the world and much of the scholarly work and advances in the sciences of the age under Muslim nations across the globe were imported by the liberal patronage of Arts and Sciences by the rulers. The languages brought by Islam were modified by contact with local languages leading to the creation of several new languages, such as Urdu, which uses the modified Arabic script, but with more Persian words. The influences of these languages exist in several dialects in India today.


text: Islamic and Mughal architecture and art is widely noticeable in India, examples being the Taj Mahal and Jama Masjid. At the same time, Muslim rulers destroyed many of the ancient Indian architectural marvels and converted them into Islamic structures, most notably at Varanasi, Mathura, Ayodhya and the Kutub Complex in New Delhi.


text: Few groups of Hindus including Rajputs were entering what is today Nepal before the fall of Chittor due to regular invasions of Muslims in India. After the fall of Chittorgarh in 1303 by the Alauddin Khilji of the Khalji dynasty, Rajputs from the region immigrated in large groups into what is today Nepal due to heavy religious persecution. The incident is supported by both the Rajput and Nepalese traditions. Indian scholar Rahul Ram asserts that the Rajput immigration into what is today Nepal is an undoubted fact but there can be questions in purity of blood of some leading families. Historian John T Hitchcock and John Whelpton contends that the regular invasions by Muslims led to heavy influx of Rajputs with Brahmins from the 12th century.


text: The entry of Rajputs in central region of what is today Nepal were easily assisted by Khas Malla rulers who had developed a large feudatory state covering more than half of the Greater Nepal. The Hindu immigrants including Rajputs were mixed into the Khas society quickly as a result of much resemblance. Also, the Magar tribesmen of the Western region of what is today Nepal welcomed the immigrant Rajput chiefs with much cordiality.


text: Parts of India have been subject to Muslim rule from the period of Muhammad ibn Qasim till the fall of the Mughal Empire. While there is a tendency to view the Muslim conquests and Muslim empires as a prolonged period of violence against Hindu culture, in between the periods of wars and conquests, there were harmonious Hindu-Muslim relations in most Indian communities, and the Indian population grew during the medieaval Muslim times. No populations were expelled based on their religion by either the Muslim or Hindu kings, nor were attempts made to annihilate a specific religion.


text: According to Romila Thapar, with the onset of Muslim rule all Indians, higher and lower caste were lumped together in the category of "Hindus". While higher-caste Indians regarded lower castes to be impure, they were now regarded as belonging to a similar category, which partly explains the belief among many higher caste Indians "Hinduism in the last one thousand years has been through the most severe persecution that any religion in the world has ever undergone." Thapar further notes that "The need to exaggerate the persecution at the hands of the Muslim is required to justify the inculcation of anti-Muslim sentiments among the Hindus of today." Hindutva-allies have even framed the Muslim violence against Hindu expressions of faith as a "Hindu Holocaust".


text: Romila Thapar states that the belief in a severe persecution in the last millennium brushes away the "various expressions of religious persecution in India prior to the coming of the Muslims and particularly between the Śaiva and the Buddhist and Jaina sects". She questions what persecution means, and if it means religious conversions, she doubts that conversions can be interpreted as forms of persecution. It is quite correct to mention that Muslim iconoclasts destroyed temples and the broke images of Hindus, states Thapar, it should also be mentioned that Muslim rulers made donations to Hindu sects during their rule.


text: During the Islamic rule period, states David Lorenzen, there was state-sponsored persecution against Hindus, yet it was sporadic and directed mostly at Hindu religious monuments. According to Deepa Ollapally, the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb was clearly discriminatory towards Hindu and all other non-Muslims, displaying an "unprecedented level of religious bigotry", but perhaps this was a consequence of the opposition he faced from a number of his family members. During the medieval span, she states, "episodes of direct religious persecution of Hindus were rare", as were communal riots between Hindus and Muslims.


text: According to Wink, the mutilation and destruction of Hindu religious idols and temples were an attack on Hindu religious practice, and the Muslim destruction of religious architecture was a means to eradicate the vestiges of Hindu religious symbols. Muslim texts of this period justify it based on their contempt and abhorence for idols and idolators in Islamic thought. Jackson notes that the Muslim historians of the medieval era viewed the creation and expansion of Islamic Sultanates in Hindustan as "holy war" and a religious conquest, characterizing Muslim forces as "the army of Islam" and the Hindus as infidels. Yet, states Jackson, these records need to be interpreted and relied upon with care given their tendencies to exaggerate. This was not a period of "uncompromising iconoclasm", states Jackson. Cities that quickly surrendered to the Islamic army, says Jackson, "got a better deal" for their religious monuments.


text: According to Richard Davis, targeting sacred temples was not unique to Muslim rulers in India. Some Hindu kings too, prior to the formation of first Islamic sultanates in India, expropriated sacred idols from temples and took it back to their capitals as a political symbol of victory. However, the sacred temples, icons and the looted image carried away was still sacred and treated with respect by the victorious Hindu king and his forces, states Richard Davis. There is hardly any evidence of "mutilation of divine images and intentional defilement" of Hindu sacred icons or temples by armies in control of Hindu rulers. The evidence that is available suggests that the victorious Hindu kings undertook significant effort to house the expropriated images in new, grand temples within their kingdom. According to Wink, Hindu destruction of Buddhist and Jain places of worship took place before the 10th century, but the evidence for such 'Hindu iconoclasm' is incidental, too vague, and unconvincing. According to Wink, mutilation and defilement of sacred icons is rarely evidenced in Hindu texts, in contrast to Muslim texts on the Islamic iconoclasm in India. Hindu temples were centres of political resistance which had to be suppressed.


text: The destruction of temples and educational institutions, the killings of learned monks and the scattering of students, led to a widespread decline in Hindu education. With the fall of Hindu kings, science research and philosophy faced some setbacks due to a lack of funding, royal support, and an open environment. Despite unfavourable treatment under the Muslim rule, Brahmanical education continued and was also patronised by rulers like Akbar and others. Bukka Raya I, one of the founders of Vijaynagar Empire, had taken steps to rehabilitate Hindu religious and cultural institutions which suffered a serious setback under Muslim rule. Buddhists centres of learning decayed, leading to the rise to prominence of Brahmanical institutions.


text: While Sanskrit language and research on Vedantic philosophy faced a period of struggle, with Muslim rulers often targeting well-established and well-known educational institutions that were often suffering at the time, the traditional educational institutions in villages continued as before, vernacular regional languages based on Sanskrit thrived. A lot of Vedantic literature got translated into these languages between 12th to 15th centuries.


text: Muslim conquest of the Indian subcontinent began in early 8th century AD with a Muhammad ibn Qasim-led army. This campaign is narrated in the 13th-century surviving manuscript of "Chach Nama" by Bakr Kūfī, which was claimed to be based on an earlier Arabic record.


text: The "Chach Nama" mentions temple demolitions, mass executions of resisting Sindhi forces and the enslavement of their dependents; kingdoms ruled by Hindu and Buddhist kings were attacked, their wealth plundered, tribute ("kharaj") settled and hostages taken, often as slaves to Iraq. According to André Wink, a historian specializing in Indo-Islamic period in South Asia, these Hindus were given the choice to either convert to Islam and join the Arab armies, or be sealed (tattooing the hands) and pay Jizya (a tax). The "Chach Nama" and evidence in other pre-11th century Persian texts suggests that these Hindu Jats also suffered restrictions and discrimination as non-Muslims, as was then usual elsewhere for the non-Muslim subjects ("ahl adh-dhimma") per the Islamic law (Sharia), states Wink.


text: Yohanan Friedmann however finds that Chachnama holds most of the contemporary religious as well as political authority to have collaborated with the invaders, and those who promptly surrendered were not only gifted with huge sums of money but also entrusted to rule conquered territories. Friedmann also notes that bin-Qasim "gave his unqualified blessing to the characteristic features of the society"—he reappointed every deposed Brahmin (of Brahmanabad) to their jobs, exempted them from Jizya, allowed holding of traditional festivals, and granted protection to temples but enforced the caste-hierarchy with enhanced vigor, drawing from Sharia, as evident from his treatment of Jats. Overall, Friedmann concludes that the conquest, as described in the "Chach Nama", did "not result in any significant changes in the structure of Indian society".


text: According to Johnson and Koyama, quoting Bosworth, there were "certainly massacres in the towns" in the early stages of campaign against pagan Hindus in Sind, but eventually they were granted "dhimmi" status and peace treaties were made with them.


text: After the conquest of Sindh, Qasim chose the Hanafi school of Islamic law which stated that, when under Muslim rule, people of Indic religions such as Hindus, Buddhists, and Jains are to be regarded as "dhimmis" (from the Arab term) as well as "People of the Book" and are required to pay jizya for religious freedom.


text: The historicity of Chachnama has been questioned. Francesco Gabrieli considers the "Chach Nama" to be a "historical romance" which was "a late and doubtful source" for information about bin-Qasim and must be carefully sieved to locate the facts; on such a reading, he admired bin-Qasim's proclamations concerning "principle of tolerance and religious freedom".


text: Manan Ahmed Asif criticizes the very premises of recovering portions of Chachnama as a historical chronicle of Muslim conquest; he argues that the site and times of production dictated its entire content, and that it must be read in entirety, as an original work in the genre of "political theory" where history is creatively extrapolated with romantic fiction to gain favor in the court of Nasiruddin Qabacha.


text: Wink states that some scholars treat Chachnama and other Muslim texts of its era, as "largely pseudo-history". He concurs that the skepticism about each individual source is justified and Chachnama is part fiction. Yet, adds Wink, taken together the common elements in these diverse sources suggest that Hindus were treated as "dhimmis" and targeted for certain discriminatory measures prescribed in the Sharia, as well as entitled to protection and limited religious freedoms in a Muslim state.


text: Muslim texts of that period are replete with iconoclast rhetoric, descriptions of mass-slaughter of Hindus, and repeats ad nauseam about "the army of Islam obtain[ing] abundant wealth and unlimited riches" from the conquered sites. The Hindus are described in these Islamic texts as infidels, Hindustan as war zone ("Dar-al-Harb"), and attacks on pagan Hindus as a part of a holy war ("jihad"), states Peter Jackson. However, states Wink, this killing was not systematic and "was normally confined to the fighting men" though the wars and episodes of routine violence did precipitate a great famine with civilian casualties in tens of thousands. The pervasive and most striking feature of the Arabic literature on Sind and Hind of the 11th to 13th-century is its constant obsession with idol worship and polytheism in the Indian subcontinent. There is piecemeal evidence of iconoclasm that began in Sind region, but the wholesale and more systematic onslaught against major Hindu religious monuments is evidenced in North India.


text: Richard Eaton, Sunil Kumar, Romila Thapar, Richard H. Davis and others argue that these iconoclastic actions were not primarily driven by religious zeal, but were politically strategic acts of destruction in that temples in medieval India were sites associated with sovereignty, royal power, money, and authority. According to Wink, the iconoclasm was a product of "religious, economic and political" and the practice undoubtedly escalated due to the "vast amount of immobilized treasure" in these temples. As the Indo-Islamic conquests of the 11th and 12th centuries moved beyond Panjab and the Himalayan foothills of the northwest into the Ganges-Yamuna Doab region, states Andre Wink, "some of the most important sacred sites of Indian culture were destroyed and desecrated," and their broken parts consistently reused to make Islamic monuments. Phyllis Granoff notes that "medieval Indian religious groups faced a serious crisis as invading Muslim armies sacked temples and defaced sacred image".


text: The 11th and 12th centuries additionally witnessed the rise of irregulars and then Banjara-like groups who adopted Islam. These were "marauding bands" who caused much suffering and destruction in the countryside as they searched for food and supplies during the violent campaign of Ghurids against Hindustan. The religious icons of Hindus were one of the targets of these Islamic campaigns.


text: The 11th to 13th-century period did not witness any systematic attempts at forced conversions of Hindus into Muslims, nor is there evidence of widespread Islamicization in "al-Hind" that emerged from the violent conquest. The political power shifted from Hindu kings to Muslim sultans in conquered areas. If some temples were not destroyed in these areas, it did result in a loss to Hindu temple building patronage and an uprooting of Hindu sacred geography.


text: The second half of the 13th-century witnessed raids on Hindu kingdoms by Muslim forces controlling the northwest and north India, states Peter Jackson. These did not lead to sustained persecution of the Hindus in the targeted kingdoms, because the Muslim armies merely looted the Hindus, took cattle and slaves, then left. The raids caused suffering, yet also rallied the Islamic faithfuls and weakened the infidel prince by weakening his standing among his Hindu subjects. These raids were into Rajput kingdoms, those in central India, Lakhnawti–Awadh, and in eastern regions such as Bihar.


text: Numerous Islamic texts of that era, states Wink, also describe "forced transfer of enslaved Indian captives ("ghilman-o-jawari, burda, sabaya"), specially women and children" over the 11th century from Hindustan.


text: The Delhi Sultanate started in the 13th-century and continued through the early 16th century, when the Mughal conquest replaced it. The Delhi Sultans of this period saw themselves first and foremost as Islamic rulers, states Peter Jackson, for the "people of Islam". They were emphatically not "sultan of the Hindus". The Muslim texts of the Delhi Sultanate era treated Hindus with disdain, remarking "Hindus are never interesting in themselves, but only as converts, as capitation tax payers, or as corpses". These medieval Muslim rulers were "protecting and advancing the Islamic faith", with two Muslim texts of this period remarking that the Sultan had a duty "eradicate infidelity and humiliate his Hindu subjects".


text: Some of the conquered Hindu subjects of the Delhi Sultanate served these Sultans, who states Jackson, were "doubtless usually slaves". These Hindus built the mosques of this era as well as developed the Indo-Islamic architecture, some served the court in roles such as treasurers, clerks, minting of new coins, and others. These Hindus were not persecuted, instead some were rewarded with immunities and tax exemptions. Additionally, captured Hindu slaves were added as infantry troops in the Sultanate's army for their campaign against other Hindu kingdoms. Some Sultans adopted Indian customs such as ceremonial riding of elephants by kings, thus facilitating the public perception of the new monarch. This suggest that the Sultans cultivated some Hindus to serve their aims, rather than indiscriminately persecute every Hindu.


text: In general, Hindu subjects of Delhi Sultanate were generally accepted as people with "dhimmi" status, not equal to Muslims, but "protected", subject to Jizya tax and with a list of restrictions. Early Sultans of the Delhi Sultanate exempted the Brahmins from having to pay Jizya, thus dividing the Hindus and placing the discriminatory tax burden entirely on the non-Brahmin strata of the Hindu society. Firuz Shah was the first to impose the Jizya on Brahmins, and wrote in his autobiography that countless Hindus converted to Islam when he issued the edict that conversion would release them of the requirement to pay Jizya. This discrimination against Hindus was in force in the latter half of the 14th century, states Jackson, yet it is difficult to establish if and how this was enforced outside of the major centers under Muslim control.


text: The Muslim commanders of Delhi Sultanate regularly raided Hindu kingdoms for plunder, mulct their treasuries and looted the Hindu temples therein, states Jackson. These conquests of Delhi Sultanate armies damaged or destroyed many Hindu temples. Yet, in a few instances, after the war, the Sultans let the Hindus repair and reconstruct their temples. Such instances, states Jackson, has been cited by the Indian scholar P.B. Desai as evidence of "striking degree of tolerance" by Muslim Sultans. But, this happened in frontier areas after they had recently been conquered and placed in direct Muslim rule, where the Sultan's authority was "highly precarious". Within regions that was already under firm control of the Delhi Sultanate, the direct evidence of this is meagre. One example referred to is of a claimed request from the king of China to build a temple in India, as recorded by Ibn Battuta. That is questionable and has no corroborating evidence, states Jackson. Similar few examples near Delhi, such as one for Sri Krishna Bhagwan temple, cannot be verified whether they were ever built either.


text: Some modern era Indian texts mention that Hindu and Jain temples of Delhi Sultanate era received endowments from Muslim authorities, presenting these as evidence of lack of persecution during this period. It is "not beyond the bounds of possibility" that in some instances this happened. But generally, states Jackson, the texts and even the memoirs written by the some Sultans themselves describe how they "set about destroying new temples and replacing them with mosques", and in one case depopulated a town of Hindus and resettled Muslims there. Jackson clarifies that the evidence suggests that the destroyed temples were "new temples", and not the old one's near Delhi whose devotees were already paying regular Jizya to the Sultan's treasuries. In some cases, the policies on destroying or letting Hindus worship in their old temples changed as Sultans changed.


text: The Muslim nobles and advisors of the Sultans championed persecution of Hindus. The Muslim texts of that era, states Jackson, frequently mention themes such as the Hindu "infidels must on no account be allowed to live in ease and affluence", they should not be treated as "Peoples of the Book" and the Sultan should "at least refrain from treating Hindus with honour or permitting idolatry in the capital". Failure to slaughter the Hindus has led to polytheism taking root. Another "wazir" while theoretically agreeing to these view, stated that this would not be practical given the small population of Muslims and such a policy should be deferred till Muslims were in a stronger position. If eradication of Hindus is not possible, suggested another Muslim official, then the Hindus should at least be insulted, disgraced and dishonored. These views were not exceptions, rather consistent with Islamic thinking of that era and are "commonly encountered in polemical writing against the infidel in different parts of the Islamic world at different times", states Jackson. This antagonism towards Hindus may have other general reasons, such as the fear of apostasy given the tendency of everyday Muslims to join in with Hindus as they celebrated their religious festivals. Further, the succession struggle after the death of a Sultan usually led to political maneuvering by the next Sultan, where depending on the circumstances, the victor championed either the orthodox segment of the Islamic clergy and jurists, or gave concessions to the Hindus and other groups for support when the Sultanate facing a military threat from outside.


text: The army of Ala al-Din Khalji from Delhi Sultanate began their first campaign in 1310 against the Hindu kingdom in Madurai region – called Ma'bar by court historians, under the pretext of helping Sundar Pandya. According to Mehrdad Shokoohy – a scholar of Islamic studies and architectural history in Central and South Asia – this campaign lasted for a year during which Madurai and other Tamil region cities were overrun by the Muslims, the Hindu temples were demolished and the towns looted. A detailed record about the campaign by Amir Khusrau the destruction and plunder.


text: A second destructive campaign was launched by Mubarak Shah, Ala al-Din Khalji's successor. While the looted wealth was sent to Delhi, a Muslim governor was appointed for the region. The governor later rebelled, founded the short lived Madurai Sultanate and renamed himself as Sultan Ahsan Shah in 1334. The successive sultans of the new Sultanate did not have the support of the regional Hindu population. The Madurai Sultanate's army, states Shokoohy, "often exercised fierce and brutal repressive methods on the local people". The Sultanate faced constant battles with neighboring Hindu states and assassination by its own nobles. Sultan Sikandar Shah was the last sultan. He was killed by the invading forces of Vijayanagara Empire army in 1377.


text: The Muslim literature of this period record the motive of the Madurai Sultans. For example, Sultan Shams al-Din Adil Shah's general is described as leaving for "holy war against the infidels and taking from them great wealth and a vast amount of booty". Another record states, "he engaged in a holy war (ghaza) and killed a great number of infidels". Madurai region has several Islamic shrines with tombs built during this period, such as one for Ala al-Din and Shams al-Din. In this shrine, the inner columns are irregular and vary in form showing evidence of "reused material". The "destruction of temples and the re-use of their materials", states Shokoohy, was a "practice of the early Sultanates of North India, and we may assume that this tradition was brought to the south by the sultans of Ma'bar".


text: The Madurai Sultanate "sacked and desecrated Hindu temples throughout the Tamil country", and these were restored and reconsecrated for worship by the Vijayanagara rulers, states the Indologist Crispin Branfoot.


text: The Mughal emperor Akbar has been a celebrated unusual example of tolerance. Indologist Richard Eaton writes that from Akbar's time to today, he has attracted conflicting labels, "from a strict Muslim to an apostate, from a free-thinker to a crypto-Hindu, from a Zoroastrian to a proto-Christian, from an atheist to a radical innovator". As a youth, states Eaton, Akbar studied Islam under both Shia and Sunni tutors, but as an adult he looked back with regret on his early life, confessing that in those days he had "persecuted men into conformity with my faith and deemed it Islam". In his later years he felt "an internal bitterness, acknowledging that his soul had been 'seized with exceeding sorrow for what he had done before launching his campaign to "treat all Mughal subjects, regardless of religion, on a basis of legal equality before the state".


text: The reign of Aurangzeb (1658-1707) witnessed one of the strongest campaigns of religious violence in the Mughal Empire's history. Aurangzeb is a controversial figure in modern India, often remembered as a "vile oppressor of Hindus". During his rule Aurangzeb expanded the Mughal Empire, conquering much of southern India through long bloody campaigns against non-Muslims. He forcibly converted Hindus to Islam and destroyed Hindu temples. He also re-introduced the "jizya", a tax on non-Muslims, which had been suspended for the previous 100 years by his great-grandfather Akbar.


text: Aurangzeb ordered the desecration and destruction of temples when conquering new lands and putting down rebellions, punishing political leaders by destroying the temples that symbolized their power. In 1669 he issued orders to all his governors of provinces to "destroy with a willing hand the schools and temples of the infidels, and that they were strictly enjoined to put an entire stop to the teaching and practice of idolatrous forms of worship". According to Richard Eaton these orders appear to have been directed not toward Hindu temples in general, but towards a more narrowly defined "deviant group". The number of Hindu temples destroyed or desecrated under Aurangzeb's rule is unclear, but may have been grossly exaggerated, and he probably built more temples than he destroyed. According to Ikram, "Aurangzeb tried to enforce strict Islamic law by ordering the destruction of newly built Hindu temples. Later, the procedure was adopted of closing down rather than destroying the newly built temples in Hindu localities. It is also true that very often the orders of destruction remained a dead letter." Some temples were destroyed entirely; in other cases mosques were built on their foundations, sometimes using the same stones. Idols in temples were smashed, and the city of Mathura was temporarily renamed as Islamabad in local official documents.


text: The persecution during the Islamic period targeted non-Hindus as well. In some cases, such as towards the end of Mughal era, the violence and persecution was mutual. Hindus too attacked and damaged Muslim tombs, even when the troops had orders not to harm religious refuges of Muslims. These "few examples of disrespect for Islamic sites", states Indologist Nicholas Gier, "pale in comparison to the great destruction of temples and general persecution of Hindus by Muslims for 500 years". Sources document brutal episodes of persecution. Sikh texts, for example, document their "Guru Teg Bahadur accompanying sixteen Hindu Brahmins on a quest to stop Mughal persecution of Hindus; they were arrested and commanded to convert to Islam on pain of torture and death", states Gier, "they all refused, and in November 1675, Mati Das was sawed in half, Dayal Das was boiled alive, Sati Das was burned alive, and Teg Bahadar was beheaded."


text: Records from the campaign recorded in the "Chach Nama" record the destruction of temples during the early 8th century when the Umayyad governor of Damascus, al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf, mobilized an expedition of 6000 cavalry under Muhammad bin Qasim in 712.


text: Historian Richard Eaton has tabulated a campaign of destruction of idols and temples by Delhi Sultans, intermixed with instances of years where the temples were protected from desecration. In his paper, he has listed 37 instances of Hindu temples being desecrated or destroyed in India during the Delhi Sultanate, from 1234 to 1518, for which reasonable evidence is available. He noted that this was not unusual in medieval India, as there were numerous recorded instances of temple desecration by Hindu and Buddhist kings against rival Indian kingdoms between 642 and 1520, involving conflict between devotees of different Hindu deities, as well as between Hindus, Buddhists and Jains. He also noted there were also many instances of Delhi sultans, who often had Hindu ministers, ordering the protection, maintenance and repairing of temples, according to both Muslim and Hindu sources. For example, a Sanskrit inscription notes that Sultan Muhammad bin Tughluq repaired a Siva temple in Bidar after his Deccan conquest. There was often a pattern of Delhi sultans plundering or damaging temples during conquest, and then patronizing or repairing temples after conquest. This pattern came to an end with the Mughal Empire, where Akbar's chief minister Abu'l-Fazl criticized the excesses of earlier sultans such as Mahmud of Ghazni.