History of Medieval India

On the basis of chronicles available in Persian, Arabic and Hindi, but mainly in Persian, European and Indian writers set about reconstructing the history of medieval India. The study of medieval Indian history in modem times may be said to have begun about a century ago when, in the eighteen-sixties, and under the patronage of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, the Indo-Persian chronicles of the medieval period began to be printed in the Bibliotheca Indica Series, and in 1867-77 appeared Elliot and Dowson’s History of India as Told by its Own Historians. Elliot’s work contained in eight fairly bulky volumes translations of extracts from most of the then known Persian chronicles, and soon became indispensable for the researcher on medieval history. The original Persian works were so eulogistic of the cruelties of Muslim conquerors and rulers that the great painstaking scholar Elliot and his followers were perforce constrained to be critical of medieval Indian rulers, and this school held the ground for quite some time. Soon other writers, who would not agree with this criticism, or who were determined to refute it, appeared on the scene, and the situation so created divided the modern Indian writers on medieval history into “objective” and pro-Muslim or “apologist” historians. In the beginning, medieval historiography remained confined to political history or biography writing. Then, gradually, the non-political features of medieval India like the cultural influence of Muslim rule, Islam as a civilisation, literature and art, social and economic life, began to attract the attention of scholars. That history is not to be merely a narrative of kings and wars, but has to be a story of the people as well, has now become well recognized. But this concept has taken time to grow. There is now the conviction that history is a form of critical inquiry into the past and not merely a repetition of testimony and authority. The modern historiographer of Medieval History tries to probe into the ideas behind human actions performed in the past. These motives they find, unlike the medieval historiographer, not only in religious, but in political, economic, social and other causes and try to discover a relationship between them. And lastly, modern historiography applies the critical apparatus of footnotes, appendices, bibliography, and sometimes maps also. However, when medieval Indian historiography was making good headway, India was partitioned into two. Partition of the country has been tragic in many ways, but no branch of study has been perhaps so much directly and vitally affected by it as the historiography on medieval India. Many distinguished scholars conversant with classical Persian went over to Pakistan and history has suffered from their migration. This can be easily seen in the number of students offering Medieval History in colleges and universities and in articles published in the historical journals of the country or papers read at various conferences - as compared with the Ardent or the Modem periods of Indian history. At the Trivandrum session of the Indian History Congress (1958) a seminar was held to probe into the causes of this decline and suggest means of checking it, but nothing much seems to have been done to improve the position. On the other hand, once in a while one even comes across the puerile argument: Where is the necessity of continuing with medieval historical studies in India after the creation of Pakistan? But the worst effect of partition has been that 1947 has tended to produce two historiographies based on territorial differentiation. Comparing the works of Ahmad Ali entitled Culture of Pakistan with Richard Symond’s The Making of Pakistan (London, 1950) on the one hand and Humayun Kabir’s Indian Heritage and Abid Hussain’s National Culture of India on the other, W. Cantwell Smith says that the Pakistani historian “flees from Indian-ness, and would extra-territorialize even Mohenjodaro (linking the Indus-valley civilisation with Sumer and Elam) as well as the Taj (yet though left in India, the monuments and buildings of Agra and Delhi are entirely outside the Indian tradition and are an essential heritage and part of Pakistani culture, - p.205), and omits from consideration altogether quite major matters less easily disposed of (such as Asoka’s reign, and the whole of East Pakistan)…” The Indians “on the other hand seek for the meaning of Muslim culture within the complex of Indian ‘unity in diversity’ as an integral component.”27 So, after 1947, besides the ‘objective’ and ‘apologist’, ‘Secular’ and ‘Communal’ versions, there are the Pakistani and Indian versions of medieval Indian history.28 Today, besides individual workers in many places, some universities in particular, like the Aligarh Muslim University, are specially devoted to medieval Indian historiography. Aligarh has funds, facilities and professoriate for medieval history, and all these have given her advantage over other universities in devoting itself mainly to medieval Indian historical studies. The Medieval India Quarterly, the various texts and books edited and published under Aligarh Historical Series and the studies on Sufi saints may be recounted with a feeling of satisfaction. However, the revised edition of the second volume of Elliot and Dowson’s History of India as Told by its Own Historianspublished from Aligarh contains a long introduction on dialectical materialism and the materialistic interpretation of history by Mohammed Habib. The idea has caught on and there is a clear Marxist influence on the Aligarh school which has prompted Peter Hardy to say that “the significant feature of Professor Habib’s Marxist interpretation of medieval Indian history is not that Marxism has absorbed Islam but that Islam has absorbed Marxism”29

MARXIST HISTORY

Today, Marxist historians and writers are well entrenched in academic and media sectors. Their rise has been encouraged by the Indian government. After Partition, Pakistan declared itself a theocratic state as is natural with Muslim nations. India opted to remain a secular country. This situation was very convenient to the special brand of Indian secularists; they could not become nationalist, so they turned Marxist. What are the salient features of Marxist history in India? To understand this we have to consult Marx himself. Between 1853 and 1857, Marx wrote twenty-three articles on India, and Engels eight, bearing on British rule in India. Marx took the “Europe-centred” view of India’s past. He shared all his assumptions on India with British rulers. Britain was to lay the foundations of the material progress in India on the annihilation of the traditional Indian society. He wrote in 1853: “Indian society has no history at all, at least no known history. What we call its history, is but the history of the successive intruders who founded their empires on the passive basis of that unresisting and unchanging society. The question, therefore, is not whether the English had a right to conquer India, but whether we are to prefer India conquered by the Turk, by the Persian, by the Russian, to India conquered by the Briton.” England had to fulfill a double mission in India: One destructive, and the other regenerating - the annihilation of old Asiatic society, and the laying of the material foundations of Western society in Asia. Arabs, Turks, Tartars, Moguls, who had successively overrun India, soon became Hinduised, the barbarian conquerors being, by an eternal law of history, themselves conquered by the superior civilization of their subjects. According to him the British were the first conquerors who were superior, and therefore inaccessible to Hindu civilization. They destroyed it by breaking up the native communities, by uprooting the native industry, and by levelling all that was great and elevated in the native society. The historic pages of their rule in India, report hardly anything beyond that destruction. “The work of regeneration hardly transpires through a heap of ruins. Nevertheless, it has begun.”30 Indian Marxists accept this thesis and fully subscribe to it. Harold Laski could write in 1927 that “the effort to read the problem of India in the set terms of Marxism is rather an exercise in ingenuity than a serious intellectual contribution to socialist advance.”31 In the early stages there was no concerted effort by Indian historians to interpret Indian history in Marxist terms. M.N. Roy attempted to give a Marxist interpretation of the Indian National Movement,32 but it was not until 1940 that a serious Marxist history was produced by R.Palme Dutt entitled India Today. D.D. Kosambi’s An Introduction to the Study of Indian History (1956), is regarded as a substantial Marxist interpretation of Indian history from the earliest times to the rise of British power in India. During the post-independence period, there has been a tremendous proliferation of Marxism in Indian universities. It appeared to be a fashionable creed, as compared with Gandhism which appeared to be traditional and somewhat unmodern. Where the Marxist, Imperialist, ‘Secularist’ and Muslim communalist historians concur is in their attitude towards Hindu culture. Marxists, as did Marx himself, regard culture as bourgeois and anti-revolutionary. Culture, therefore, had to be denounced, including religion, God and morals, as an obstacle to proletarian change. Culture in the Indian context meant mainly Hindu religion and heritage. Hindu culture had, therefore, to be derided and held as the cause of India’s predicament. The Muslim communalists, who openly believed in religious distinctions and were naturally convinced of their own cultural superiority over that of the others, looked upon Hindu culture with disfavour. While the Marxists denounce in unmistakable terms imperial rule and imperialist historians, they join hands with them to demolish nationalist historians whose nationalism carried with it pride in their cultural past. They also denounce objective historians who, unlike the Marxists, do not seek to employ history as an instrument of change. Marxist attacks on culture also aim at hitting at the roots and source of inspiration of nationalism. Marxist history also lays claim to be counted as objective history. The phrase ‘objective history’ is very attractive, but sometimes under this appellation, all shadows are removed and medieval times are painted in such bright colours by Marxist historians as to shame even the modern age. At others, modern ideas of class-conflict, labour-exploitation and all that goes with it, and many other modern phenomena and problems are projected backwards to fit in the medieval social structure. The word ‘religion’ is tried to be eschewed because it is thought to be associated with bitter memories. If the medieval chronicler cries out ‘Jihad’, it is just not heard: but if he cries aloud persistently, it is claimed that he never meant it. The Marxists or leftists read into history what they think history should be. All this makes the content of Marxist history dubious, needing it to be buttressed by brochures, statements and booklets under a number of signatures. Often, Marxist writers work in groups, mutually admiring each other’s discoveries. The need for this also arises from the fact that Muslim rule in India remained Islamic basically, with firm belief in the superiority and propagation of Islam as an article of faith.33 Atrocities committed by its followers in the name of Islam are often very graphically described by Muslim chroniclers as acts of piety and grace. This aspect has produced an unfortunate character in the Muslim civilization as a whole. It is in the combination of the spiritual and temporal powers, in the confusion of moral and physical authority, that the tyranny which seems inherent in this civilization originated. Its history is soaked in blood of the supposed enemies of Islam. But all this is denied by Marxists who always try to cover up the black spots of Muslim rule with thick coats of whitewash. Sometimes, this tryanny is sought to be condoned by fundamentalists on the plea that the ruler was only performing his duty, or denied by declaring that Muslim polity was not religion-oriented. But condonation or denial has not saved the Muslim regime from the harm its nature has brought to bear upon the reputation of the community and the history of the country.34 With regard to medieval Indian history the Marxist historians unwillingly tow the line of British writers of whom they are otherwise critical. The main interest of the British was to write a history which justified their conquest of India. They claimed that their rule in India was nothing new and that they were legitimate successors of former conquerors like Arabs, Turks and Mughals. The Mughals were represented as empire builders, who united India and gave it law and order, peace and stability. Similar was the mission of the British, they said. Facts, sometimes, compelled the British historians to speak of the atrocities and vandalism of Muslim rule but this did not deter them from upholding its authority. Thus British historians, while trying to legitimise their own rule, also gave legitimacy to their Muslim predecessors. But in the larger national consciousness both were considered as foreign impositions and constantly resisted. This resistance the British historians presented as “revolts” and “rebellions” against the “legitimate” Imperial authority. Marxist and communal historians apply these epithets in the case of Muslim rule, as also did the medieval chroniclers. Like the latter, the protestations of Marxist historians about Muslim rule in India are lofty, but their conclusions are grotesque. Such dichotomy is not new. Even a fourteenth century medieval historian Ziyauddin Barani suffered from such contradiction. He becomes lyrical when describing the benefits derived from the study of history,35 but turns a die-hard fundamentalist when he actually writes it.36 On the basis of the study of medieval chronicles, scholars like Ishwari Prasad and A.L. Srivastava arrived at the conclusion that the medieval age was a period of unmitigated suffering for the Hindus; to others like I.H. Qureshi and S.M. Jaffar it was an age of all-round progress and prosperity. Writing about the Sultanate period, Ishwari Prasad says: “There was persecution, partly religious and partly political, and a stubborn resistance was offered by the Hindus… The state imposed great disabilities upon the non-Muslims… Instances are not rare in which the non-Muslims were treated with great severity… The practice of their religious rites even with the slightest publicity was not allowed, and cases are on record of men who lost their lives for doing so.”37 According to A.L. Srivastava the Sultanate of Delhi “was an Islamic State, pure and simple, and gave no religious toleration to the Hindus… and indulged in stifling persecution.”38 About the Mughal times his conclusion is that “barring the one short generation under Akbar when the moral and material condition of the people was on the whole good, the vast majority of our population during 1526-1803 led a miserable life.”39 On the other hand, I.H. Qureshi had the mendacity to declare that “The Hindu population was better off under the Muslims than under the Hindu tributaries or independent rulers. Their financial burden was lighter than it had been for some centuries in pre-Muslim days… Nor was the Hindu despised socially. The Muslims, generally speaking, have always been remarkably free from religious prejudice.”40

MANIPULATED HISTORY

“History, to be above evasion or dispute,” says Lord Acton, “must stand on documents, not opinions.”41 But history written by people like Qureshi and Jaffar suited the Nehruvian establishment for achieving what it described as national integration. Towards that end many pseudo-secularist and Marxist historians joined the cadre of such writers. And funny though it may sound it was decided to falsify history to please the Muslims and draw them into the national mainstream. Guidelines for rewriting history were prepared by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), and a summary of the same appeared in Indian Express datelined New Delhi, 17 January 1982. The idea was “to weed out undesirable textbooks (in History and languages) and remove matter which is prejudicial to national integration and unity and which does not promote social cohesion… Twenty states and three Union Territories have started the work of evaluation according to guidelines, prepared by NCERT.” The West Bengal Board of Secondary Education issued a notification dated 28 April 1989 addressed to schools and publishers suggesting some ‘corrections’ in the teaching and writing of ‘Muslim rule in India’ - like the real objective of Mahmud Ghaznavi’s attack on Somnath, Aurangzeb’s policy towards the Hindus, and so on. These guidelines specifically say: “Muslim rule should not attract any criticism. Destruction of temples by Muslim invaders and rulers should not be mentioned.” One instruction in the West Bengal circular is that “schools and publishers have been asked to ignore and delete mention of forcible conversions to Islam.” The notification, says the Statesman of 21 May 1989, was objected to in many quarters. “A row has been kicked up by some academicians who feel that the ‘corrections’ are unjustified and politically motivated…” Another group feels that the corrections are “justified”. This experiment with untruth was being attempted since the 30’s-40’s by Muslim and Communist historians. After Independence, they gradually gained strength in university departments. By its policy the Nehruvian state just permitted itself to be hijacked by the so-called progressive, secular and Marxist historians. Communism never struck roots in India, a land of great and deep philosophy. But some Communists, always suspect in the eyes of the majority of the Indian people, did help in the division of the country. After partition they were joined by those communal elements which could never be nationalist, but they also did not want to be dubbed as communalist, and so became communist. The impressive slogan of secularism came handy to them and in place of educating the divisionists, they read repeated lectures to Hindus on secularism. Armed with money and instructions from the Ministry of Education, the National Council of Educational Research, University Grants Commission, Indian Council of Historical Research, secular and Stalinist historians began to produce manipulated and often manifestly false school and college text-books of history and social studies in the Union Territories and States of India. This has gone on for years. But the exercise has proved counter-productive. In place of encouraging national integration, distorted history has only helped increase communalism. For one thing, it has provided a welcome opportunity to the vested interests to assert that no temples were broken, no mosques raised on their sites and no forcible conversions to Islam were made. If people are truthfully educated about the circumstances of their conversion,42 they would not behave as they are prone to at present. On the one hand, the government through the Department of Archaeology preserves monuments the originals of which were destroyed by Islamic vandalism, and on the other, history text-books are directed to say that no shrines were destroyed. Students are taught one thing in the class rooms through their text-books, while they see something else when they go on excursions to historical monuments. At places like Qutb Minar and Quwwat-ul-Islam mosque they see that “the construction is all Hindu and destruction all Muslim”. History books are not written only in India; these are written in neighbouring countries also, and what is tried to be concealed here for the sake of national integration, is mentioned with pride in the neighbouring Muslim countries. Scholars in Europe are also working on Indian history and untruths uttered by India’s secular and progressive historians are easily countered. One thing that arouses unnecessary controversy is about the destruction and desecration of temples and construction of mosques in their stead. Muslim chroniclers repeatedly make mention of success of conquerors and rulers in this sphere. The chroniclers with first hand knowledge wrote that their patrons did so with the avowed object of spreading Islam and degrading infidelity in Hindustan. So Hajjaj instructed Muhammad bin Qasim. So Mahmud of Ghazni promised the Khalifa. Amir Timur (Tamerlane) also proclaimed the same intention. Still it is asserted by some writers that temples were attacked for obtaining their wealth and not because of religious fervour. The declaration of Mahmud of Ghazni in this regard is conclusive. It is related that when Mahmud was breaking the idol of Somnath, the Brahmans offered him immense wealth if he spared the idol which was revered by millions; but the champion of Islam replied with disdain that he did not want his name to go down to posterity as Mahmud the idol-seller (but farosh) instead of Mahmud the breaker-of-idols (but shikan).43 All appeals for pity, all offers of wealth, fell on deaf ears. He smashed the sacred lingam into pieces and as an act of piety sent two of its pieces to be thrown at the steps of the Jama Masjid at Ghazni and two others to Mecca and Medina to be trampled upon on their main streets.44 Alberuni, the contemporary witness writes: “The image was destroyed by Prince Mahmud in 416 H. (1026 C.E.). He ordered the upper part to be broken and the remainder to be transported to his residence, Ghaznin, with all its coverings and trappings of gold, jewels and embroidered garments. Part of it has been thrown into the hippodrome of the town, together with the Cakraswamin, an idol of bronze that had been brought from Thaneshar. Another part of the idol from Somnath lies before the door of the mosque of Ghaznin, on which people rub their feet to clean them from dirt and wet.”45 So, the consideration was desecration, primarily. Mahmud had come to spread Islam and for this undertaking was bestowed the title of Yamin-ud-daula (Right hand of the Caliph) and Amir-ul-Millat (Chief of the Muslim Community) by the Khalifa al Qadir Billah.46 No wonder, in the estimation of his Muslim contemporaries - historians, poets, and writers - the exploits of Mahmud as a hero of Islam in India were simply marvellous and their encomiums endless.47 Of course, invaders like Mahmud also collected lot of loot from wherever they could get, including the precious metals of which idols were made or the jewellery with which they were adorned. The Rasmala narrates that after the destruction of Somnath, Mahmud acquired possession of diamonds, rubies and pearls of incalculable value.48 But spoliation of temple was not the sole or principal aim. If acquisition of wealth was the motive for attacking a temple, where was the need to raze it to the ground, dig its very foundations, desecrate and break the idols, carry the idols hundreds of miles on carts or camels, and to throw them at the stairs of the mosques for the faithful to trample upon, or to distribute their pieces to butchers as meat-weights. For this is exactly what was done not only by invaders but even by rulers, not only during wars but also in times of peace, throughout the medieval period from Mahmud of Ghazni to Aurangzeb.49 We have seen what Mahmud of Ghazni did to the idols of Chakraswamin and Somnath. Let us see what Aurangzeb did to the temple of Keshav Rai at Mathura built at a cost of rupees thirty-three lakhs by Raja Bir Singh Bundela. The author of Maasir-i-Alamgiri writes : “In this month of Ramzan (January 1670), the religious-minded Emperor ordered the demolition of the temple at Mathura. In a short time by the great exertions of his officers the destruction of this great centre of infidelity was accomplished… A grand mosque was built on its site at a vast expenditure… The idols, large and small, set with costly jewels which had been set up in the temple were brought to Agra and buried under the steps of the mosque of Begum Sahib (Jahanara’s mosque) in order to be continually trodden upon. The name of Mathura was changed to Islamabad…”50 In brief, temples were destroyed not for their “hoarded wealth” as some historians propagate, but for humiliating and persecuting the non-Muslims. Destruction of religious shrines of the vanquished formed part of a larger policy of persecution practised in lands under Muslim occupation in and outside India. This policy of oppression was meant to keep down the people, disarm them culturally and spiritually, destroy their self-respect and remind them that they were Zimmis, an inferior breed. Thousands of pilgrims who visit Mathura or walk past the site of Vishvanath temple and Gyanvapi Masjid in Varanasi everyday, are reminded of Mughal vandalism and disregard for Hindu sensitivities by Muslim rulers. And yet some writers delude themselves with the mistaken belief that they can change their country’s history by distorting it, or brain-wash generations of young students, or humour fundamentalist politicians through such unethical exercise. To judge what happened in the past in the context of today's cultural milieu and consciously hide the truth, is playing politics with history. Let history be accepted as a matter of fact without putting it to any subjective interpretations. Yesterday’s villains cannot be made today’s heroes, or, inversely, yesterday’s Islamic heroes cannot be made into robbers ransacking temples just for treasures. Nor can the medieval monuments be declared as national monuments as suggested in some naive ‘secularist’ quarters. They represent vandalism. No true Indian can be proud of such desecrated and indecorous evidence of ‘composite culture’. “History,” says Froude, “does teach that right and wrong are real distinctions. Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral law is written on the tablets of humanity.”51 It is nobody’s business to change this moral law and prove the wrongs of the medieval period to be right today by having recourse to misrepresentation of history. Manipulation in the writing of medieval Indian history by some modern writers is the worst legacy of Muslim rule in India.

ISLAMIC SCRIPTURES AS SOURCE-MATERIALS

The best way to understand the content and spirit of Muslim rule in India and to assess the hollowness of manipulated history is by going through Muslim scriptures besides of course faithfully perusing Muslim historical literature in Arabic and Persian. All medieval chroniclers and historians were scholars of Islamic literature and law. Many of these Ulama were even advisers of kings in matters religious and political. In their writings they often quote from the Quran and Hadis to vindicate the actions of their conquerors and kings. Very often they quote from or use the very idiom of Islamic religious texts in their chronicles. Muslim invaders, conquerors and rulers also repeatedly assert that they worked according to the dictates of the Shara and Sunna to suberve the interests of Islam. Therefore to understand the true nature of Muslim rule and history it is necessary to have at least an elementary knowledge of the religion and scriptures of Islam. The religion and theology of Islam are based on four great works - (1) The Quran, (2) the Hadis, (3) the Siratun-Nabi or the Biography of Muhammad, and (4) the Shariat or Islamic law as elaborated in the Hidaya. The word ‘Quran’ literally means recitation, lecture or discourse. Muslims consider it to be the word of God conveyed to his prophet Muhammad through the angel Gabriel. “The first, final and only canonized version of the Koran was collected nineteen years after the death of Muhammad (‘from ribs of palm-leaves and tablets of white stone and from the breasts of men’) when it was seen that the memorizers of the Koran were becoming extinct through the battles that were decimating the ranks of the believers…”52 The religion of Quran comes nearer to Judaism of the Old Testament as well as the Christianity of the New Testament.53 The Quran, the Book of Allah, is treated with unbound reverence by the Muslims. “Its 6,239 verses, its 77,934 words, even its 323,621 letters have since been painstakingly counted.”54 The book is not only heart of a religion, but it is still “considered by one-eighth of mankind as the embodiment of all science, wisdom and theology”.55 Because of the dearth of efficacious writing material, written copies of Quran would have taken time to make, but it does seem to have been available by the middle of the eighth century.56 Every Muslim chronicler of medieval India had mastered the Quran. For an Alim and a Maulana it was the first must among the works he studied. It is not surprising therefore that its surahs (chapters) and ayats (verses) are sometimes quoted in historical works and its phraseology freely used. A study of the Quran by a scholar of medieval Indian history will be helpful to him in appraising the achievements and spirit of Muslim rule in India. There are many good translations of the Quran in English; a summary translation is also available in T.P. Hughes’s Dictonary of Islam.57 The study of Quran and the necessity of expounding it gave rise to that most characteristically Muslim literary activity, the books of tradition or Hadis, literally meaning “narrative”. It is a compendium of doings, sayings, revelations and judgements of Muhammad. Muslim theologians make no distinction between Quran and Hadis. To them both are works of revelation or inspiration. “In the Quran, Allah speaks through Muhammad; in the Sunnah He acts through him… No wonder that the Muslim theologians regard the Quran and the Hadis as being supplementary or even interchangeable.”58 Within three hundred years of the death of Muhammad, the Hadis acquired substantially the form in which it is known today. Imam Bukhari (d. C.E. 870) compiled ‘authentic’ traditions from a plethora of voluminous traditions. Next in importance are the collections of Imam Muslim (d. 875) and Imam Tirmizi (d. 892). Equally important guide for the Muslims in the performance of their duties is the life-story of Muhammad. Apart from severalmaghazi books dealing with the prophet's campaigns, his first authentic biography too was ready in the eighth century. Its author Ibn Ishaq was born at Medina in 85 H. and died in Baghdad in 151 H. (704-768 C.E.). He wrote the Sirat Rasul Allah.59 Other biographers of note who succeeded him were al-Waqidi, Ibn Hisham, and At-Tabari. Muslims try to mould their lives after the model of Muhammad. “No one regarded by any section of human race as perfect man has been imitated so minutely.”60 The Quran and the Hadis provided the foundation upon which theology and law of Islam were raised. “Law in Islam is more intimately related to religion than to jurisprudence as modern lawyers understand it.”61 Named after their founders Abu Hanifa (C. 699-767), Abu Abdullah Muhammad bin Idris (C. 767-820), Ahmad bin Hanbal (C. 780-855) and Malik bin Anas (C. 715-795) - the four mazahib or schools of Islamic law named Hanafi, Sha’fai, Hanbali and Malaki respectively, too had come into being in the eighth-ninth century. Their compilation is called Hidaya. If at all anything was wanting with regard to Muslim law, it was provided by Hidaya or Guidance.62 The Hidaya is a voluminous treatise based on Sunni law composed by Shaikh Burhanuddin Ali who was born at Marghinan in Transoxiana about 530 H. and died in 593 H. (1135-1196).63 Muslim law in its ultimate form was thus available to the conquerors and Sultans who established their rule in India in the thirteenth century. True, there were no printed editions of these works. But beautiful hand written copies were always available at least to distinguished conquerors and kings and their counsellors. Muslim law is definite, clear and universal. This law was the actual sovereign in Muslim lands: no one was above it and all were ruled by it.64 Such is the reverence paid to these religio-legal treatises that they have remained the model of prose in literary works. The rhymed prose of the Quran has set the standard which almost every conservative Arabic writer consciously strives to imitate. The diction, the idiom, the very phrases of these religio-legal works were adopted by Muslim chroniclers in writing the history of Islamic achievements in India.65 There are two sorts of Muslim historians, the dry annalist, and the pompous and flowery orator. But both use the language of their scriptures - a style more natural to their ideas and sentiments. It is necessary therefore to read these scriptures. It is necessary to know Islam in order to understand the ethos and legacy of Muslim rule in India

FOOTNOTES:

1 E and D, II, p.33. 2 E and D, II, pp.214-15. 3 Barani, pp.216-17. 4 The Qazi quoted from the Quran, Yan yad vaham saghrun, Sale’s trs. p. 152. See also Ain, I, p.237, n.1. 5 Barani, pp.290-291. 6 Barani, Fatawa-i-Jahandari, pp.49, 98. 7 Nizami, K.A., Religion and Politics in India during the Thirteenth Century, p.317; M. Habib, Introduction to Fatawa-i-Jahandari, p. v. 8 Amir Khurd, Siyar-ul-Auliya, Urdu trs. Quddusi, pp.472-73. 9 Badaoni, II, p.258. 10 Ibid., p.257. 11 Ibid., p.258. 12 Ain, I, p.2. 13 Smith, Akbar the Great Mogul, p.108; Badaoni, II, p.383; C.H.I., IV, P.115. 14 Badaoni, II, p.383. 15 Elliot and Dowson, Vol.I, Preface, pp.xx-xxi. 16 Ibid., p.xii. 17 Medieval India under Muhammadan Rule (London,1903), Preface, p.v-vi. 18 A History of the Great Mughals (Calcutta,1905,1911). 19 History of Medieval India (Allahabad,1925),p.ii. 20 Singhal, D.P. ‘Battle for the Past’ in Problems of Indian Historiography, Proceedings of the Indian History and Culture Society, Ed. Devahuti, D.K. Publishers, Delhi 1979. 21 James Tod, Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, Routledge and Kegan Paul (London,l829,1957), 2 vols., I, Introduction, pp. xiv-xv. 22 Ibid., p.xiv. For stray references to works destroyed and Hindus forgetting how to read their ancient scripts, see Minhaj,Tabqat-i-Nasiri, I, p.552; Afif, p.333; Thomas, Edward, Chronicles of the Pathan Kings of Delhi, pp.292-93 and Carr Stephen, Archaeology and Monumental Remains of Delhi, pp. 130,137-38. 23 Sarkar, A Short History of Aurangzeb, p.153. 24 Lal, History of the Khaljis, p.355. 25 See Bibliography, Sanskrit and Hindi Works, in K.S. Lal, History of the Khaljis, pp.374-75. 26 For example, see the comparable account of terror-tactics of the Muslim army as described by Persian chroniclers and Vidyapati in Kirtilata in K.S.Lal, “Striking power of the Army of the Sultanate” in the Journal of Indian History, Trivandrum. Vol.LV, Pt.III, December 1977, pp.85-110. 27 Philips, Historians of India, Pakistan and Ceylon, pp.322-23. 28 As an illustration see Arvind Sharma, The Arab invasion of Sind: a study in divergent perspectives’ in Historical and Political Perspectives (India and Pakistan) ed. Devahuti, Indian History and Culture Society, Books & Books, New Delhi, 1982, pp.193-200. 29 Peter Hardy in Philips, Historians of India, Pakistan and Ceylon, p.309. 30 Karl Marx, “The Future Results of British Rule in India”, vide The Newyork Daily Tribune, 22 July 1853, cited by D.P. Singhal in his Presidential Address to the Indian History and Culture Society, 1981, Proceedings, P.155. 31 H. Laski, Communism (London, 1927), p.194. 32 In his India in Transition, 1922. 33 T.W. Arnold, The Legacy of Islam, p.viii. 34 Cf K.S. Lal., Early Muslims in India (New Delhi,1984), pp.92-93. 35 Barani, Tarikh, pp.10-13. 36 Ibid., eg. pp.216, 290-91. 37 History of Medieval India (Allahabad, 1940 Edition), pp.509-513. 38 The Mughal Empire (Agra, 1964), p.568. 39 Ibid., p.571. 40 The Administration of the Sultanate of Delhi, pp.207-13. 41 Acton, The Study of History, Macmillan & Co. (London, 1905), p.45. 42 For example, see Lai, K.S, Indian Muslims : Who Are They (New Delhi, 1990). 43 Farishtah, I, p.33. 44 loc. cit. 45 Alberuni, II, p.103. Also I, p.117 for Cakraswamin. 46 Aziz Ahmad, Studies in Islamic Culture, p.5. 47 For detailed references see Bosworth, The Ghaznavids, p.50. For praise of Mahmud by modern writers, M. Nazim, The Life and Times of Sultan Mahmud of Ghazna and M. Habib, Sultan Mahmud of Ghaznin. 48 Forbes, Rasmala, I, p.77. 49 Hasan Nizami, Taj-ul-Maasir, E and D, II, p.219; Abdulla, Tarikh-i-Daudi, p.39; Ahmad Yadgar, Tarikh-i-Salatin-i-Afghana, p.47; Rizqullah, Waqiat-i-Mushtaqi, fol. 31b; Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri, II, pp.185-86, 223; Lahori, I, p.452, II, p. 58; Kamboh, Amal-i-Salih, I, p.522, II, p.41; Khafi Khan, I, p. 472. 50 Saqi Mustaad Khan, Maasir-i-Alamgiri, pp.95-96; p-175 for idols from temples of Jodhpur. Also Manucci, II, p.116.Mirat-i-Ahmadi gives detailed account of temple destruction by Aurangzeb. 51 Inaugural lecture at St. Andrews, 1869, cited in Acton, The Study of History, p.45. 52 P.K. Hitti, The Arabs (London, 1948), pp.32-33. 53 Ibid., pp.24,33. 54 Ibid., p.33. 55 Ibid., p.31. 56 Patricia Crone and Michael Cook, Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World, Cambridge University Press, 1977, paperback, 1980, p.3, also P.159. 57 pp.483-531. 58 Ram Swarup, Understanding Islam through Hadis, New Delhi, Reprint, 1983, pp.vii, xi. 59 Trs. by A. Guillaume under the title The Life of Muhammad (Oxford, 1958). 60 Hitti, op. cit., p.29. 61 Ibid., p.78. 62 Trs. by Charles Hamilton, 4 vols. (London, 1791). 63 Hughes, Dictionary of Islam, p.174; D.S. Margoliouth, Mohammed and the Rise of Islam, pp. xix-xx. 64 A. Khuda Bakhsh, Essays, Indian and Islamic (London 1927), p-51. 65 An impressive Bibliography has been provided by Hughes, op. cit., pp.405, 406.