of folk, Hindu, and Buddhist elements. Kashmir’s
ethnic composition is diverse, consisting mainly
of Turks, Mongols, Afghans, and Indo-Aryans.
Kashmir was home to competing Hindu and
Buddhist regimes prior to the arrival of the first
Muslims. Islamization occurred gradually over a
number of centuries. Some accounts indicate that
it may have occurred by conquest and forced con-
version, others that it was accomplished through
Sufi missionaries. Most likely a combination
of different processes was involved. The first
Muslims appear to have arrived as Turkish war-
riors imported from Afghanistan or Central Asia
by local Hindu rulers during the 12th century.
The European explorer Marco Polo (d. 1325)
encountered “Saracens” (a medieval term for
Arabs and Muslims) who worked as butchers in
the Kashmir Valley. The Mongol conquests in the
Middle East during the 13th and 14th centuries
brought an influx of immigrants and refugees
from Persia, Afghanistan, and Central Asia, many
of whom were Sufis, Ulama, and artisans. Bulbul
Shah (also known as Sharaf al-Din), a member of
the Suhrawardi Sufi Order, is said to have been
responsible for the conversion of Rinchana, a
Buddhist prince from Ladakh, to Islam early in
the 14th century. Rinchana is recognized as being
Kashmir’s first sUlta n. A number of other Sufis
and religious scholars immigrated from Herat,
Khorasan, Samarqand, and bUkhara. The artisans
came from the same regions and introduced the
crafts of paper making, papier-mâché, bookbind-
ing, woodworking, and carpet weaving for which
Kashmir is still known.
Local sultans provided support for religious
scholars and mosques, thus laying the founda-
tions for the creation of a permanent Muslim
presence and ongoing influence over the local
non-Muslim communities. One of the sultans,
Sikandar (r. 1389–1413), was reported to have
imposed the sharia on his subjects, destroyed
Hindu temples, and forced them to convert to
Islam, but these reports in the chronicles may
have been exaggerated, as they were in chronicles
about Muslim rulers in India. On the other hand
Sikandar’s heir, Zayn al-Abidin (r. 1420–70) was
remembered for having abolished the jizya (a tax
on non-Muslims) and supported temple-building
projects. Hindu Brahmans, later known as Pan-
dits, complained about the Islamic influence that
was spreading through Kashmir, but they learned
Persian, the administrative language, and accepted
appointments as scribes and administrators in
order to retain their higher status in the Hindu
community. The confluence of Islamic and Hindu
religious ideas did not occur among Brahmans
and sultans, but among lower caste Hindus and
Sufis. This is epitomized by the Rishi movement,
which arose during the 15th century in rural
Kashmir. The Rishis, who took their name from a
Sanskrit word for the ancient sages of the Hindu
Vedas, were closely identified with two local
saint-poets—Lalla Ded, a female ascetic devoted
to the Hindu god Shiva, and Shaykh Nur al-Din
Nurani (d. 1438), a Sufi who considered Lalla
Ded his teacher and a second rabia al-adaWiyya
(the famed woman saint of Basra). Members of
the movement were vegetarians, abstained from
marriage, and often appeared as yogis. Their egali-
tarian outlook, spirituality, and charitable activi-
ties made them popular among the commoners.
Nur al-Din’s shrine at Charar-i Sharif, near the
Kashmiri capital of Srinagar, was an important
regional pilgrimage center until 1995, when it was
destroyed in a clash between Kashmiri rebels and
Indian troops.
In modern times Kashmir has become a flash-
point for conflict between india and pakistan
that has cost dearly in terms of human suffering,
loss of life, and economic damage. The Kashmiri
conflict is a consequence of the 1947 partition of
India into two states—India and Pakistan. One
hundred years previously, in 1846, the British had
established a Hindu monarchy to rule Kashmir by
selling the right to rule to Gulab Singh (d. 1857)
and his heirs, making them the Maharajas of
Kashmir. Muslims were subject to excessive taxes
in order to pay for the sale and fund the expensesK 426 Kashmir