52 ISLAM AT WAR
It is worthwhile to consider the Muslim conquests in India in their
entirety. Their six-century span and the enormous numbers of participants
on all sides tends to obscure the basic patterns of a series of events that
clearly overshadowed other Muslim conquests.
Geographic knowledge is not a strength for many modern Westerners,
so it is probably useful to describe the pattern of Muslim advances in
general terms. The first base of the Muslim attacks took Afghanistan, and
from that mountain stronghold raids were launched southwest down the
Ganges River valley. The raids eventually became conquests, and the
Delhi Sultanate roughly followed the river in a broad patch from the Pun-
jab in the northwest to Bengal in the southeast where the Ganges Delta
meets the Indian Ocean. Additional early gains were made in Sind on the
northwestern coast and down the western coast. The central and southern
parts of the subcontinent were the last to be conquered, and by the end of
the Moghul Empire, the land still held Hindu principalities.
Clear patterns in the conquests should be held in mind as one looks at
the details. The most obvious fact is that no one conquest occurred. During
the 600-year period of the invasions, no “One India” waited to be con-
quered—it was an array of princely states that rose and fell with bewil-
dering rapidity. Nor was there any one conqueror—but rather a constantly
changing cast of various warlords and their generally short-lived dynas-
ties. Finally, it was not merely a conquest of Hindu states by Muslim
warlords—fresh waves of Muslims attacked each other with the same
fervor with which native princes had warred for centuries, and would
continue to do so during the conquests.
In fact, the conquests in India well illustrate the difficulties and advan-
tages of medieval Muslim conquest in a foreign culture. In an age in which
power was not shared with the population, it was relatively easy to invade
a province, defeat the defending army, capture a city, and install a gov-
ernor. The attackers had to fight a few thousand armed retainers and not
an entire nation in arms. With the city in hand, the conqueror then estab-
lished a governor, or declared it his capital and set up a new administration
of his own retainers. The Muslim warlords did all of this with some fre-
quency, aided by their excellent cavalry and the general Hindu acquies-
cence to government. But to conquer a city is not the same as conquering
a continent, particularly one heavily peopled with a population with which
the conquerors have little in common.
It is hard to imagine what Muhammad would have made of Hinduism,
and how Allah might have revealed scripture to him had he known that
his followers would attack India. Islam and Hinduism are dramatically
different. Hindus are pantheist, and Muslims are decidedly monotheist.