But the legend certainly bears witness to the peaceful character of the proselytising influences that were at work on the Malabar coast for centuries. The agents in this work were chiefly Arab merchants, but Ibn Baṭūṭah makes mention of several professed theologians from Arabia and elsewhere, whom he met in various towns on the Malabar coast.[37] The Zamorin of Calicut, who was one of the chief patrons of Arab trade, is said to have encouraged conversion to Islam, in order to man the Arab ships on which he depended for his aggrandisement, and to have ordered that in every [[266]]family of fishermen in his dominion one or more of the male members should be brought up as Muhammadans.[38] At the beginning of the sixteenth century the Mappillas were estimated to have formed one-fifth of the population of Malabar, spoke the same language as the Hindus, and were only distinguished from them by their long beards and peculiar head-dress. But for the arrival of the Portuguese, the whole of this coast would have become Muhammadan, because of the frequent conversions that took place and the powerful influence exercised by the Muslim merchants from other parts of India, such as Gujarāt and the Deccan, and from Arabia and Persia.[39]
But there would appear to be no record of the individuals who took part in the propaganda, except in the case of the historian ʻAbd al-Razzāq, who has himself left an account of his unsuccessful mission to the court of the Zamorin of Calicut. He was sent on this mission in the year 1441 by the Tīmūrid Shāh Ruk͟h Bahādur, in response to an appeal made by an ambassador who had been sent by the Zamorin of Calicut to this monarch. The ambassador was himself a Musalman and represented to the Sultan how excellent and meritorious an action it would be to send a special envoy to the Zamorin, “to invite him to accept Islam in accordance with the injunction ‘Summon thou to the ways of thy Lord with wisdom and with kindly warning,’[40] and open the bolt of darkness and error that locked his benighted heart, and let the splendour of the light of the faith and the brightness of the sun of knowledge shine into the window of his soul.” ʻAbd al-Razzāq was chosen for this task and after [[267]]an adventurous journey reached Calicut, but appears to have met with a cold reception, and after remaining there for about six months abandoned his original purposes and made his way back to K͟hurāsān, which he reached after an absence of three years.[41]
Another community of Musalmans in Southern India, the Ravuttans,[42] ascribe their conversion to the preaching of missionaries whose tombs are held in veneration by them to the present day. The most famous of these was Sayyid Nathar Shāh[43] (A.D. 969–1039) who after many wanderings in Arabia, Persia and Northern India, settled down in Trichinopoly, where he spent the remaining years of his life in prayer and works of charity, and converted a large number of Hindus to the faith of Islam; his tomb is much resorted to as a place of pilgrimage and the Muhammadans re-named Trichinopoly Natharnagar, after the name of their saint.[44] Sayyid Ibrāhīm Shahīd (said to have been born about the middle of the twelfth century), whose tomb is at Ervadi, was a militant hero who led an expedition into the Pandyan kingdom, occupied the country for about twelve years, but was at length slain; his son’s life was, however, spared in consideration of the beneficent rule of his father, and a grant of land given to him, which his descendants enjoy to the present day. The latest of these saints, Shāh al-Ḥamīd (1532–1600), was born at Manikpur in Northern India, and spent most of his life in visiting the holy shrines of Islam and in missionary tours chiefly throughout Southern India; he finally settled in Nagore, where the descendants of his adopted son are still in charge of his tomb.[45]
Another group of Muhammadans in Southern India, the Dudekulas, who live by cotton cleaning (as their name denotes) and by weaving coarse fabrics, attribute their conversion to Bābā Fak͟hr al-Dīn, whose tomb they revere [[268]]at Penukonda. Legend says that he was originally a king of Sīstān, who abdicated his throne in favour of his brother and became a religious mendicant. After making the pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina, he was bidden by the Prophet in a dream to go to India; here he met Nathar Shāh, of Trichinopoly, and became his disciple and was sent by him in company with 200 religious mendicants on a proselytising mission. The legend goes on to say that they finally settled at Penukonda in the vicinity of a Hindu temple, where their presence was unwelcome to the Raja of the place, but instead of appealing to force he applied several tests to discover whether the Muhammadan saint or his own priest was the better qualified by sanctity to possess the temple. As a final test, he had them both tied up in sacks filled with lime and thrown into tanks. The Hindu priest never re-appeared, but Bābā Fak͟hr al-Dīn asserted the superiority of his faith by being miraculously transported to a hill outside the town. The Raja hereupon became a Musalman, and his example was followed by a large number of the inhabitants of the neighbourhood, and the temple was turned into a mosque.[46]
The history of Islam in Southern India by no means always continued to be of so peaceful a character, but it does not appear that the forcible conversions of the Hindus and others to Islam which were perpetrated when the Muhammadan power became paramount under Ḥaydar ʻAlī (1767–1782) and Tīpū Sulṭān (1782–1799), can be paralleled in the earlier history of this part of India. However this may be, there is no reason to doubt that constant conversions by peaceful methods were made to Islam from among the lower castes,[47] as is the case at the present day when accessions to Islam from time to time occur from among the Tiyans, who are said to form one of the most progressive communities in India, the Mukkuvans or fisherman caste, as well as from the Cherumans or agricultural labourers, and other serf castes, to whom Islam brings deliverance from the disabilities attaching to the outcasts [[269]]of the Hindu social system; occasionally, also, converts are drawn from among the Nayars and the native Christians. In Ponnani, the residence of the spiritual head of the majority of the Muhammadans of Malabar, there is an association entitled Minnat al-Islām Sabhā, where converts are instructed in the tenets of their new faith and material assistance rendered to those under instruction; the average number of converts received in this institution in the course of the first three years of the twentieth century, was 750.[48] So numerous have these conversions from Hinduism been, that the tendency of the Muhammadans of the west as well as the east coast of Southern India has been to reversion to the Hindu or aboriginal type, and, except in the case of some of the nobler families, they now in great part present all the characteristics of an aboriginal people, with very little of the original foreign blood in them.[49] In the western coast districts the tyranny of caste intolerance is peculiarly oppressive; to give but one instance, in Travancore certain of the lower castes may not come nearer than seventy-four paces to a Brahman, and have to make a grunting noise as they pass along the road, in order to give warning of their approach. Similar instances might be abundantly multiplied. What wonder, then, that the Musalman population is fast increasing through conversion from these lower castes, who thereby free themselves from such degrading oppression, and raise themselves and their descendants in the social scale?
In fact the Mappillas on the west coast are said to be increasing so considerably through accessions from the lower classes of Hindus, as to render it possible that in a few years the whole of the lower races of the west coast may become Muhammadans.[50]
It was most probably from Malabar that Islam crossed over to the Laccadive and Maldive Islands, the population of which is now entirely Muslim. The inhabitants of these islands owed their conversion to the Arab and Persian merchants, who established themselves in the country, [[270]]intermarrying with the natives, and thus smoothing the way for the work of active proselytism. The date of the conversion of the first Muhammadan Sultan of the Maldive Islands, Aḥmad Shanūrāzah,[51] has been conjectured to have occurred about A.D. 1200, but it is very possible that the Muhammadan merchants had introduced their religion into the island as much as three centuries before, and the process of conversion must undoubtedly have been a gradual one.[52] No details, however, have come down to us.
At Mālē, the seat of government, is found the tomb of Shayk͟h Yūsuf Shams al-Dīn, a native of Tabrīz, in Persia, who is said to have been a successful missionary of Islam in these islands. His tomb is still held in great veneration, and always kept in good repair, and in the same part of the island are buried some of his countrymen who came in search of him, and remained in the Maldives until their death.[53]
The introduction of Islam into the neighbouring Laccadive Islands is attributed to an Arab preacher, known to the islanders by the name of Mumba Mulyaka; his tomb is still shown at Androth and as the present qāḍī of that place claims to be twenty-sixth in descent from him, he probably reached these islands some time in the twelfth century.[54]
The Deccan also was the scene of the successful labours of many Muslim missionaries. It has already been pointed out that from very early times Arab traders had visited the towns on the west coast; in the tenth century we are told that the Arabs were settled in large numbers in the towns of the Konkan, having intermarried with the women of the country and living under their own laws and religion.[55] Under the Muhammadan dynasties of the Bahmanid (1347–1490) and Bījāpūr (1489–1686) kings, a fresh impulse was given to Arab immigration, and with the trader and the soldier of fortune came the missionaries seeking to make [[271]]spiritual conquests in the cause of Islam, and win over the unbelieving people of the country by their preaching and example, for of forcible conversions we have no record under the early Deccan dynasties, whose rule was characterised by a striking toleration.[56]