55their counterparts in the Arabian Peninsula, and the earliest known con-
tacts are traced to the Phoenician era (1500 BC) (Panikkar 1997 , 1). In
the initial years, the contacts between Arab Muslim traders and India
were confined to the southern coastal region, and it was during the early
Umayyad period (660–750 AD), northern India was exposed to the new
faith. In 711 AD, a young 17-year-old military commander Mohammad
bin-Qasim led an expedition force to Sindh to confront the ruler Raja
Dahir “who allegedly had been harassing Arab merchant vessels return
with their cargo from (the present day) Sri Lanka and beyond in the
East” (Ishtiaq 1999 ). The defeat of the local chieftain brought the areas
of present- day Sindh region in Pakistan partially under the control of the
Damascus-based Umayyad and later Abbasid (75–1258 AD) Empires
and thus started the process of Islamization of the local population.
According to historians, the penetration of Islam into the subcontinent
was slow, even though towards the later part of the Umayyad rule, it
sporadically spread to different parts, primarily through the Sufi preachers
who accepted and responded to some of the socio-cultural practices of the
regions. The Arabic expression Hind referred to the lands beyond River
Sindh, and gradually the people of these areas came to be referred to as
Hindus (Ahmad 1969 ). In other words, the etymology of expression India
is traced to the Arab Muslim traders (Barrow 2003 ).
A faster and geographically vast eastward expansion of Islam from
Arabia had to wait until the Turco-Afghan conquest of north-western
India in the eleventh century and soon the faith gained strong roots and
larger territorial canvas through a mix of military conquest, political
patronization of the rulers and Sufi syncretism (Schimme 1980 ). Since
then large parts of India came under direct and indirect Muslim rulers
who helped the propagation of the faith to far-off areas, including the
north-east where tribal affiliation and lineage form the core community
identity. The height of the Muslim rule in India was the Mughal Empire
which ruled much of North, East and Central India between 1526 and
1857 and it ended with the advent of the British colonialism.
Though the faith was gaining new adherents, India was not under the
direct rule of Umayyad, Abbasid, Fatimid, Almohad or Ottoman Caliphs
and in the theological sense was not part of Dar al-Islam. Hence, discus-
sions on the Islamic history tend to ignore India though its Muslims vastly
outnumbered the Arabs. This reflected in the prolonged indifference of
Indian Muslims towards the Caliphate which dominated the political dis-
course of the Middle East for over 13 centuries. Meagre Muslim population
ISLAMIC DIMENSION