Islam’s blood-drenched expansionist invasion and rule in India is held up as something which Muslims can be proud of, something to be lauded and admired. Is it True or is it a piece of fiction written by islamist historians?

Swords flashed like lightning amid the blackness of clouds, and fountains of blood flowed like the fall of setting star. The friends of God defeated their opponents…

GHAZANVID INVASIONS:

Sultan Mahmud’s minister al-Utbi on his campaign to India: Musalmans wreaked their vengeance on the infidel enemies of God, killing 15,000 of them…. making them food of the beasts and birds of prey…. God also bestowed upon his friends such an amount of booty as was beyond all bounds and calculations, including five hundred thousand slaves, beautiful men and women. God also bestowed upon his friends such an amount of booty as was beyond all bounds and calculations, including five hundred thousand slaves, beautiful men and women.’

Alberuni, Great Muslim scholar and scientist, d.1050 : (Sultan) Mahmud utterly ruined the prosperity of the country and performed there wonderful exploits, by which the Hindus became like atoms of dust scattered in all direction… This is the reason, too, why Hindu sciences have retired far away from those parts of the country conquered by us, and have fled to places which our hands cannot yet reach, to Kashmir, Benaras, and other places.’

In the capture of Nagarkot (Kangra) in 1008, the booty amounted to 70,000,000 dirhams in coins and 700,400 mounds of gold and silver, besides plenty of precious stones and embroidered cloths. Sultan Mahmud, marched to attack Thanesar in 1011 ‘for the purpose of planting the standard of Islam and extirpating idolatry, writes al-Utbi.

In the ensuing battle, ‘blood of the infidels flowed so copiously that the stream was discolored, notwithstanding its purity, and people were unable to drink it…The Sultan returned with plunder which is impossible to count. Praise be to Allah for the honor he bestows upon Islam and Musalmans!

Alberuni of Mahmud’s court depicted his invasions of Hindustan as having ‘utterly ruined the prosperity of the country’ and his brutality of the inhabitants was such that ‘the Hindus became like atoms of dust scattered in all directions’ and cherished ‘the most inveterate aversion toward all Moslems.

GHAURIVID INVASIONS:

The Persian historian Hasan Nizami, in his Taj-ul-Ma’sir, records of Muhammad Ghauri’s conquest of Ajmer that ‘one hundred thousand groveling Hindus swiftly departed to the fire of hell’ and the invaders ‘obtained so much booty and wealth that you might have said that the secret depositories of the seas and hills had been revealed.’ Sultan Ghauri marched forward to attack Delhi and ‘torrents of blood flowed on the field of battle…’

In the 1193 campaign of Muhammad Ghauri’s general Qutbuddin Aibak in Aligarh, ‘by the edge of the sword, they (Hindus) were dispatched to the fire of hell,’ notes Nizami. The slaughter was so extensive that ‘Three bastions were raised as high as heaven with their heads, and their carcasses became food for beasts of prey. The tract was freed from idols and idol worship and the foundations of infidelity were destroyed.’

In Aibak’s expedition to Benares, ‘which was the center of the country of Hind… here they destroyed nearly one thousand temples, and raised mosques on their foundations; and the knowledge of the law (Sharia) became promulgated, and the foundations of religion were established,’ adds Nizami. In January 1197, Qutbuddin Aibak advanced against Nahrwala, the capital of Gujarat and ‘fifty thousand infidels were dispatched to hell by the sword and from the heaps of the slain, the hills and the plains became of one level’ and ‘more than twenty thousand slaves, and cattle beyond all calculation fell into the hands of the victors.’ On Aibak’s brilliant achievement in the expedition to Kalinjar in 1202, records Nizami: ‘The temples were converted into mosques… and the voices of summoners to prayer ascended to the highest heaven and the very name of idolatry was annihilated.’ ‘Fifty thousand came under the collar of slavery and the plain became black as pitch with Hindus,’ continues Nizami Sultan Alauddin Khilji (r. 1296–1316) and Muhammad Shah Tughlaq (1325–1351) were great persecutors and exploiters of the infidels of India. Sultan Firoz Tughlaq (1351–88) was the kindest amongst Delhi Sultans. He was very careful when his wars put lives of Muslims, whether of his side or his opponent’s, in danger. Still, in his campaign to

Egyptian Sufi saint Shamsuddin Turk on Sultan Alauddin’s crushing exploitation of Hindus : ‘The Hindu women and children went out begging at the doors of the Musalmans.’

In Bengal, records Shiraj Afif, ‘The heads (of the slain Bengalis) were counted & amounted to rather more than 180,000.’ All earlier Muslim rulers had exempted the Brahmans from jizyah. But a zealously pious Muslim that Sultan Firoz was, thinking that this was a religious error and that ‘the Brahmans were the very keys of the chamber of idolatry,’ he imposed jizyah on them as well.

BAHMANI SULTANS :

The independent Bahmani sultans of Gulbarga and Bidar in Central India ‘considered it meritorious to kill a hundred thousand Hindu men, women and children every year,’ noted Abdul Kadir Badaoni. It was a rule of the Bahmani sultans of the Deccan Sultanate ‘to slay a hundred thousand Hindoos in revenge of the death of single Mussulman,’ records Ferishtah.

TAIMUR INVASIONS :

Amir Timur noted in his memoir, Malfuzat-I Timuri, that he invaded India to fulfil his Islamic duty of waging holy war against the infidels ‘to become a ghazi (infidel slayer)… or a martyr.’ On his order to slaughter a large number of captives in his possession on the eve of his assault on Delhi (December 1398), he wrote: ‘When this order became known to the ghazis of Islam, they drew their sword and put their prisoners to death. 100,000 infidels, impious idolaters, were slain’ on that single day’

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