One of these Arab preachers, Pīr Mahābīr Khamdāyat, came as a missionary to the Deccan as early as A.D. 1304, and among the cultivating classes of Bījāpūr are to be found descendants of the Jains who were converted by him.[57] About the close of the same century a celebrated saint of Gulbarga, Sayyid Muḥammad Gīsūdarāz,[58] converted a number of Hindus of the Poona district, and twenty years later his labours were crowned with a like success in Belgaum.[59] At Dahanu still reside the descendants of a relative of one of the greatest saints of Islam, Sayyid ʻAbd al-Qādir Jīlānī of Bag͟hdād; he came to Western India about the fifteenth century, and after making many converts in the Konkan, died and was buried at Dahanu.[60] In the district of Dharwar, there are large numbers of weavers whose ancestors were converted by Hāshim Pīr Gujarātī, the religious teacher of the Bījāpūr king, Ibrāhīm ʻĀdil Shāh II, about the close of the sixteenth century. These men still regard the saint with special reverence and pay great respect to his descendants.[61] The descendants of another saint, Shāh Muḥammad Ṣādiq Sarmast Ḥusaynī, are still found in Nasik; he is said to have been the most successful of Muhammadan missionaries; having come from Medina in 1568, he travelled over the greater part of Western India and finally settled at Nasik—in which district another very successful Muslim missionary, K͟hwājah Khunmir Ḥusaynī, had begun to labour about fifty years before.[62] Two other Arab missionaries may be mentioned, the scene of whose proselytising efforts was laid in the district of Belgaum, namely Sayyid Muḥammad b. Sayyid ʻAlī and Sayyid ʻUmar ʻAydrūs Basheban.[63] [[272]]
Another missionary movement may be said roughly to centre round the city of Multan.[64] This in the early days of the Arab conquest was one of the outposts of Islam, when Muḥammad b. Qāsim had established Muhammadan supremacy over Sind (A.D. 714). During the three centuries of Arab rule there were naturally many accessions to the faith of the conquerors. Several Sindian princes responded to the invitation of the Caliph ʻUmar b. ʻAbd al-ʻAzīz to embrace Islam.[65] The people of Sāwandari—who submitted to Muḥammad b. Qāsim and had peace granted to them on the condition that they would entertain the Musalmans and furnish guides—are spoken of by al-Balād͟hurī (writing about a hundred years later) as professing Islam in his time; and the despatches of the conqueror frequently refer to the conversion of the unbelievers.
That these conversions were in the main voluntary, may be judged from the toleration that the Arabs, after the first violence of their onslaught, showed towards their idolatrous subjects. The people of Brahmanābād, for example, whose city had been taken by storm, were allowed to repair their temple, which was a means of livelihood to the Brahmans, and nobody was to be forbidden or prevented from following his own religion,[66] and generally, where submission was made, quarter was readily given, and the people were permitted the exercise of their own creeds and laws.
During the troubles that befell the caliphate in the latter half of the ninth century, Sind, neglected by the central government, came to be divided among several petty princes, the most powerful of whom were the Amīrs of Multan and Mansūra. Such disunion naturally weakened the political power of the Musalmans, which had in fact begun to decline earlier in the century. For in the reign of al-Muʻtaṣim (A.D. 833–842), the Indians of Sindān[67] declared themselves independent, but they spared the mosque, in which the Musalmans were allowed to perform their devotions undisturbed.[68] The Muhammadans of Multan [[273]]succeeded in maintaining their political independence, and kept themselves from being conquered by the neighbouring Hindu princes, by threatening, if attacked, to destroy an idol which was held in great veneration by the Hindus and was visited by pilgrims from the most distant parts.[69] But in the hour of its political decay, Islam was still achieving missionary successes. Al-Balād͟hurī[70] tells the following story of the conversion of a king of ʻUsayfān, a country between Kashmīr and Multan and Kābul. The people of this country worshipped an idol for which they had built a temple. The son of the king fell sick, and he desired the priests of the temple to pray to the idol for the recovery of his son. They retired for a short time, and then returned saying: “We have prayed and our supplications have been accepted.” But no long time passed before the youth died. Then the king attacked the temple, destroyed and broke in pieces the idol, and slew the priests. He afterwards invited a party of Muhammadan traders, who made known to him the unity of God; whereupon he believed in the unity and became a Muslim. A similar missionary influence was doubtless exercised by the numerous communities of Muslim merchants who carried their religion with them into the infidel cities of Hindustan. Arab geographers of the tenth and twelfth centuries mention the names of many such cities, both on the coast and inland, where the Musalmans built their mosques, and were safe under the protection of the native princes, who even granted them the privilege of living under their own laws.[71] The Arab merchants at this time formed the medium of commercial communication between Sind and the neighbouring countries of India and the outside world. They brought the produce of China and Ceylon to the sea-ports of Sind and from there conveyed them by way of Multan to Turkistan and K͟hurāsān.[72]
It would be strange if these traders, scattered about in the cities of the unbelievers, failed to exhibit the same proselytising zeal as we find in the Muhammadan trader elsewhere. To the influence of such trading communities [[274]]was most probably due the conversion of the Sammas, who ruled over Sind from A.D. 1351 to 1521. While the reign of Nanda b. Bābiniyyah of this dynasty is specially mentioned as one of such “peace and security, that never was this prince called upon to ride forth to battle, and never did a foe take the field against him,”[73] it is at the same time described as being “remarkable for its justice and an increase of Islam.” This increase could thus only have been brought about by peaceful missionary methods. One of the most famous of these missionaries was the celebrated saint, Sayyid Yūsuf al-Dīn, a descendant of ʻAbd al-Qādir Jīlānī, who was bidden in a dream to leave Bag͟hdād for India and convert its inhabitants to Islam. He came to Sind in 1422 and after labouring there for ten years, he succeeded in winning over to Islam 700 families of the Lohāna caste, who followed the example of two of their number, by name Sundarjī and Hansrāj; these men embraced Islam, after seeing some miracles performed by the saint, and on their conversion received the names of Adamjī and Tāj Muḥammad respectively. Under the leadership of the grandson of the former, these people afterwards migrated to Cutch, where their numbers were increased by converts from among the Cutch Lohānas.[74]
Sind was also the scene of the labours of Pīr Ṣadr al-Dīn, an Ismāʻīlī missionary, who was head of the Khojah sect about the year 1430. In accordance with the principles of accommodation practised by this sect, he took a Hindu name and made certain concessions to the religious beliefs of the Hindus whose conversion he sought to achieve, and introduced among them a book entitled Dasavatār in which ʻAlī was made out to be the tenth Avatār or incarnation of Viṣṇu; this book has been from the beginning the accepted scripture of the Khojah sect, and it is always read by the bedside of the dying and periodically at many festivals; it assumes the nine incarnations of Viṣṇu to be true as far as they go, but to fall short of the perfect truth, and supplements this imperfect Vaiṣṇav system by the cardinal doctrine of the Ismāʻīlians, the incarnation and coming manifestation of ʻAlī. Further, he made [[275]]out Brahmā to be Muḥammad, Viṣṇu to be ʻAlī and Adam Siva. The first of Pīr Ṣadr al-Dīn’s converts were won in the villages and towns of Upper Sind: he preached also in Cutch and from these parts the doctrines of this sect spread southwards through Gujarāt to Bombay; and at the present day Khojah communities are to be found in almost all the large trading towns of Western India and on the seaboard of the Indian Ocean.[75]
Pīr Ṣadr al-Dīn was not however the first of the Ismāʻīlian missionaries who came into India. He was preceded by ʻAbd Allāh, a missionary sent from Yaman about 1067; he is said to have been a man of great learning, and is credited with the performance of many miracles, whereby he convinced a large number of Hindus of the truth of his religion.[76] The second Ismāʻīlī missionary, Nūr al-Dīn, generally known by the Hindu name he adopted, Nūr Satāgar, was sent into India from Alamūt, the stronghold of the Grand Master of the Ismāʻīlīs, and reached Gujarāt in the reign of the Hindu king, Siddhā Rāj (A.D. 1094–1143).[77] He adopted a Hindu name but told the Muhammadans that his real name was Sayyid Saʻādat; he is said to have converted the Kanbīs, Khārwās and Korīs, low castes of Gujarāt.[78]
As Nūr Satāgar is revered as the first missionary of the Khojahs, so is ʻAbd Allāh believed by some to have been the founder of the sect of the Bohras, a large and important community of Shīʻahs, mainly of Hindu origin, who are found in considerable numbers in the chief commercial centres of the Bombay Presidency. But others ascribe the honour of being the first Bohra missionary to Mullā ʻAlī, of whose proselytising methods the following account is given by a Shīʻah historian: “As the people of Gujarāt in those days were infidels and accepted as their religious leader an old man whose teaching they [[276]]blindly followed, Mullā ʻAlī saw no alternative but to go to the old man and ask to become his disciple, intending to set before him such convincing arguments that he would become a Musalman, and afterwards to attempt the conversion of others. He accordingly spent some years in the service of the old man, and having learned the language of the people of the country, read their books and acquired a knowledge of their sciences. Step by step he unfolded to the enlightened mind of the old man the truth of the faith of Islam and persuaded him to become a Musalman. After his conversion, some of his disciples followed the old man’s example. Finally, the chief minister of the king of that country became aware of the old man’s conversion to Islam, and going to see him submitted to his spiritual guidance and likewise became a Musalman. For a long time, the old man, the minister and the rest of the converts to Islam, kept the fact of their conversion concealed and through fear of the king always took care to prevent it coming to his knowledge; but at length the king received a report of the minister’s having adopted Islam and began to make inquiries. One day, without giving previous notice, he went to the minister’s house and found him bowing his head in prayer and was vexed with him. The minister recognised the purpose of the king’s visit, and realised that his displeasure had been excited by suspicions aroused by his prayer, with its bowing and prostrations; but the guidance of God and divine grace befitting the occasion, he said that he was making these movements because he was watching a serpent in the corner of the room. When the king turned towards the corner of the room, by divine providence he saw a snake there, and accepted the minister’s excuse and his mind was cleared of all suspicions. In the end the king also secretly became a Musalman, but for reasons of state concealed his change of mind; when however, the hour of his death drew near, he gave orders that his body was not to be burnt, as is the custom of the infidels. Subsequently to his decease, when Sulṭān Z̤afar, one of the trusty nobles of Sulṭān Fīrūz Shāh, king of Dehlī, conquered Gujarāt, some of the Sunnī nobles who accompanied him used arguments to make the people join the Sunnī sect of the Muslim faith; [[277]]so some of the Bohras are Sunnīs, but the greater part remain true to their original faith.”[79]
Several small groups of Musalmans in Cutch and Gujarāt trace their conversion to Imām Shāh of Pīrāna,[80] who was actively engaged in missionary work during the latter half of the fifteenth century. He is said to have converted a large body of Hindu cultivators, by bringing about a fall of rain after two seasons of scarcity. On another occasion meeting a band of Hindu pilgrims passing through Pīrāna on their way to Benares, he offered to take them there; they agreed and in a moment were in the holy city, where they bathed in the Ganges and paid their vows; they then awoke to find themselves still in Pīrāna and adopted the faith of the saint who could perform such a miracle. He died in 1512 and his tomb in Pīrāna is still an object of pilgrimage for Hindus as well as for Muhammadans.[81]
Many of the Cutch Musalmans that are of Hindu descent reverence as their spiritual leader Dāwal Shāh Pīr, whose real name was Malik ʻAbd al-Laṭīf,[82] the son of one of the nobles of Maḥmūd Bīgarah (1459–1511), the famous monarch of the Muhammadan dynasty of Gujarāt, to whose reign popular tradition assigns the date of the conversion of many Hindus.[83]