108. Karen Armstrongthirteenth century, and by the early fourteenth century Islam
was soundly established in the Ganges basin as far as Bengal.
In the mountainous regions, a few Hindu Rajputs, the Indian
ruling class, held aloof, but most Hindus accepted Muslim
supremacy. This was not as surprising as it might appear. The
caste system confined the exercise of political authority to a
limited number of families, and when these had been ex-
hausted, Hindus were willing to accept anybody in their
place, provided that they did not infringe the caste regula-
tions. As outsiders, Muslims were not bound by these stric-
tures, and they had the strength of a powerful international
society behind them. Muslims remained a minority in India.
Some lower castes and trades, including some of the "un-
touchables," converted to Islam, often as a result of the
preaching of Sufi pirs. But the majority retained their Hindu,
Buddhist or Jain allegiance. It is not true, as often averred,
that Muslims destroyed Buddhism in India. There is evidence
for only one attack on one monastery, and no concrete data to
support widespread slaughter. By 1330 the greater part of the
subcontinent acknowledged the authority of the Sultanate of
Delhi, but unwise government on the part of the sultans led to
rebellions among the Muslim amirs, and it became evident
that the sultanate was too big for one person to govern. In the
usual way, the central power disintegrated and the amirs ruled
their own states, with the help of the ulama. Until the advent
of gunpowder, the Delhi sultanate remained one power
among many in Muslim India.
On the fringes of the Mongol states, the ghazi warriors had
been left to run their own amirates, acknowledging the Mon-
gol rulers as their overlords. These ghazi states were usually
religious with a strong tendency towards Sufism. In Azerbai-
jan and Anatolia, tariqahs were formed which adapted some of
the wilder forms of Sufism to the revolutionary ethos of the
old Shiah. They revived the ghulwww "extremist" theology