Muslim conquests on the Indian subcontinent mainly took place from the 12th to the 16th centuries, though
earlier Muslim conquests made limited inroads into modern
Afghanistan and
Pakistan as early as the time of the
Rajput kingdoms in the 8th century. With the establishment of the
Delhi Sultanate, Islam spread across large parts of the subcontinent. In 1204,
Bakhtiar Khilji led the Muslim conquest of
Bengal, marking the eastern-most expansion of Islam at the time.
Prior to the rise of the
Maratha Empire which was followed by the
conquest of India by the
British East India Company, the Muslim
Moghul Empire was able to annex or subjugate most of India's Hindu kings. However, it was never able to conquer the Hindu kingdoms in upper reaches of the Himalayas such as the regions of today's
Himachal Pradesh,
Uttarakhand,
Sikkim,
Nepal and
Bhutan and the extreme south of India such as
Travancore.
BACKGROUND-
Like other societies in history,
South Asia has been attacked by
nomadic tribes throughout its long history. In evaluating the impact of Islam on the sub-continent, one must also note that the northwestern sub-continent was a frequent target of tribes from
Central Asia who arrived from the North West. With the fall of the
Sassanids and the arrival of the
Caliphate's domination of the region these tribes began to contest with the new power and were subsequently integrated into it giving rise to Muslim dynasties of Central Asian heritage, generally
Turkic -
Persians. In that sense, the Muslim invasions of the 10th century onwards were not dissimilar to those of the earlier invasions in the
History of Central Asia during the 1st through to the 6th century. What does however, make the Muslim invasions different is that unlike the preceding invaders who assimilated into the prevalent social system, the Muslim conquerors retained their Islamic identity and created new legal and administrative systems that challenged and usually superseded the existing systems of social conduct and ethics. They also introduced new cultural mores that in some ways were very different from the existing cultural codes. While this was often a source of friction and conflict, it should also be noted that there were also Muslim rulers, notably
Akbar, who in much of their secular practice absorbed or accommodated local traditions.
The first incursion by the new Muslim successor states of the
Arab World occurred around 664
CE during the
Umayyad Caliphate, led by
Al Muhallab ibn Abi Suffrahtowards
Multan in Southern
Punjab, in modern day Pakistan. Muhallab's expeditions were not aimed at conquest, though they penetrated only as far as the capital of the
Maili, he returned with wealth and
prisoners of war. This was an Arab incursion and part of the early Umayyad push onwards from the
Islamic conquest of Persia into Central Asia, and within the limits of the eastern borders of previous Persian empires. The last Arab push in the region would be towards the end of Umayyad reign under
Muhammad bin Qasim, after whom the Arabs would be defeated by the south Indian Emperor
Vikramaditya IIof the
Chalukya dynasty and the
Rajputs like Nagabhata of the
Pratihara Dynasty at the
Battle of Rajasthan in 738, and Muslim incursions would only be resumed under later Turkic and Central Asian Mongol dynasties with more local capitals, who supplanted the Caliphate and expanded their domains both northwards and eastwards.
It took several centuries for Islam to spread across India and how it did so is a topic of intense debate.
