Although the Arabs may have maritime con-
nections with India prior to the appearance of
Islam, the first recorded contact between Arab
Muslims and the people of the Indus Valley did
not occur until the campaign led by Muham-
mad ibn Qasim al-Thaqafi (d. 715), who invaded
Sind on behalf of the Umayyad caliphate in 711
and reached as far north as the city of Multan.
Although maligned by later British historians and
Indian nationalists, the only early Islamic account
indicates that the raid was prompted by an attack
on a ship carrying Muslim pilgrims near the coast
of Sind (the lower region of the Indus River). The
non-Muslim subjects were Hindus and Buddhists
whom al-Thaqafi treated as “protected” peoples
(dhimmis), like Jews and Christians who accepted
Muslim rule and paid a special tax called the
jizya. There is little evidence that they were forced
to convert, as some later historians assert. Sind
became a province in the early Muslim empire.
The next major incursions by Muslim armies
did not occur until the turn of the 10th century,
when the controversial Turkic ruler Mahmud of
Ghazni (r. 998–1030) launched up to 17 raids
into Sind and adjacent regions from Ghazni, his
capital in aFghanistan. Mahmud, a defender of
sUnnism, conducted these raids partly to eradicate
Ismaili Shia who had settled in the Sind region.
But he also wanted to control the region to secure
its trade routes and plunder its wealth in order
to enhance revenues for his growing empire and
building projects in Ghazni. Hindu temples were
especially good targets because they contained
gold and precious gems. The most noteworthy of
the temples Mahmud attacked was Somnatha, a
Shiva temple located near a major regional port.
Such temple raids were common in the ancient
world and were also conducted by rival Hindu
kings against each other. Mahmud’s raids paved
the way for direct Muslim rule deep in the Indo-
Gangetic plain. In 1192, the state that Mahmud
had created was destroyed by a short-lived Persian
dynasty known as the Ghurids. The commanders
they assigned to rule in Delhi became indepen-
dent and established the Delhi Sultanate, which
was to rule northern India until the arrival of the
Mughals in the early 16th century.
The first Delhi sultan was Qutb al-Din Aybek
(r. 1206–10), who initiated the building of the
Quwwat al-Islam (Power of Islam) Mosque and
the Qutb Minar, a monumental complex on the
southern outskirts of Delhi. It was built on the
site of a Hindu temple with stones taken from
destroyed temples. Aybek wanted the world to
know that Muslims were the new rulers in
the land. Interestingly, early Hindu sources and
inscriptions suggest that the new rulers were not
seen as Muslims by the local populace. They were
referred to instead in social or ethnic terms as
mlecchas (barbarians), Turushkas (Turks), Shakas
(Central Asians), or Yavanas (Greeks) in remem-
brance of those other foreigners who had invaded
India centuries before the Muslims. Conservative
Ulama of the Delhi Sultanate and later chroniclers
considered the Indians to be unbelievers (kafirs)
and polytheists (mushriks) who must be fought
and subdued. However, this outlook was not the
prevailing one at the time. The practical necessi-
ties of organizing and ruling an expanding state
government meant that the Muslim Afghans,
Turks, and Persians, as minority rulers, had to
find ways of winning the cooperation of the popu-
lation. These included collaborating with Hindu
Rajputs (local kings), bringing non-Muslims into
government service, and treating the populace
not as disbelievers but as dhimmis. Intermarriage
between Muslims and Hindus also occurred. His-
torians of this period have found that there was
no widespread program of forced conversion to
Islam, nor was there wanton destruction of Hindu
places of worship, as is the conventional view
nowadays. Rather, Muslim rulers desecrated only
those temples that were closely identified with
rival Hindu rulers. They also patronized Hindu
temples. During the mid-13th century, the Delhi
Sultanate was home to religious scholars and
Sufis seeking refuge from the Mongol onslaught
that was sweeping through Middle Eastern lands,K (^352) India