It is in Bengal, however, that the Muhammadan missionaries in India have achieved their greatest success, as far as numbers are concerned. A Muhammadan kingdom was first founded here at the end of the twelfth century by Muḥammad Bak͟htiyār Khiljī, who conquered Bihar and Bengal and made Gaur the capital of the latter province. The long continuance of the Muhammadan rule would naturally assist the spread of Islam, and though the Hindu rule was restored for ten years under the tolerant Rājā Kāns, whose rule is said to have been popular with his Muhammadan subjects,[84] his son, Jatmall, renounced the Hindu religion and became a Musalman. After his father’s death in 1414 he called [[278]]together all the officers of the state and announced his intention of embracing Islam, and proclaimed that if the chiefs would not permit him to ascend the throne, he was ready to give it up to his brother; whereupon they declared that they would accept him as their king, whatever religion he might adopt. Accordingly, several learned men of the Muslim faith were summoned to witness the Raja renounce the Hindu religion and publicly profess his acceptance of Islam: he took the name of Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Shāh, and according to tradition numerous conversions were made during his reign.[85] Many of these were however due to force, for his reign is signalised as being the only one in which any wholesale persecution of the subject Hindus is recorded, during the five centuries and a half of Muhammadan rule in Eastern Bengal.[86]
Conversions, however, often took place at other times under pressure from the Muhammadan government. The Rajas of Kharagpur were originally Hindus, and became Muhammadans because, having been defeated by one of Akbar’s generals, they were only allowed to retain the family estates on the condition that they embraced Islam. The Hindu ancestor of the family of Asad ʻAlī K͟hān, in Chittagong, was deprived of his caste by being forced to smell beef and had perforce to become a Muhammadan, and several other instances of the same kind might be quoted.[87]
Murshid Qulī K͟hān (son of a converted Brahman), who was made governor of Bengal by the Emperor Aurangzeb at the beginning of the eighteenth century, enforced a law that any official or landlord, who failed to pay the revenue that was due or was unable to make good the loss, should with his wife and children be compelled to become Muhammadans. Further, it was the common law that any Hindu who forfeited his caste by a breach of regulations could only be reinstated by the Muhammadan government; if the government refused to interfere, the outcast had no means of regaining his position in the social system of the Hindus, and would probably find no resource but to become a Musalman.[88] [[279]]
The Afg͟hān adventurers who settled in this province also appear to have been active in the work of proselytising, for besides the children that they had by Hindu women, they used to purchase a number of boys in times of scarcity, and educate them in the tenets of Islam.[89] But it is not in the ancient centres of the Muhammadan government that the Musalmans of Bengal are found in large numbers, but in the country districts, in districts where there are no traces of settlers from the West, and in places where low-caste Hindus and outcasts most abound.[90] The similarity of manners between these low-caste Hindus and the followers of the Prophet, and the caste distinctions which they still retain, as well as their physical likeness, all bear the same testimony and identify the Bengal Musalmans with the aboriginal tribes of the country. Here Islam met with no consolidated religious system to bar its progress, as in the north-west of India, where the Muhammadan invaders found Brahmanism full of fresh life and vigour after its triumphant struggle with Buddhism; where, in spite of persecutions, its influence was an inspiring force in the opposition offered by the Hindus, and retained its hold on them in the hour of their deepest distress and degradation. But in Bengal the Muslim missionaries were welcomed with open arms by the aborigines and the low castes on the very outskirts of Hinduism, despised and condemned by their proud Aryan rulers. “To these poor people, fishermen, hunters, pirates, and low-caste tillers of the soil, Islam came as a revelation from on high. It was the creed of the ruling race, its missionaries were men of zeal who brought the Gospel of the unity of God and the equality of men in its sight to a despised and neglected population. The initiatory rite rendered relapse impossible, and made the proselyte and his posterity true believers for ever. In this way Islam settled down on the richest alluvial province of India, the province which was capable of supporting the most rapid and densest increase of population. Compulsory conversions are occasionally recorded. But it was not to force that Islam owed [[280]]its permanent success in Lower Bengal. It appealed to the people, and it derived the great mass of its converts from the poor. It brought in a higher conception of God, and a nobler idea of the brotherhood of man. It offered to the teeming low castes of Bengal, who had sat for ages abject on the outermost pale of the Hindu community, a free entrance into a new social organisation.”[91]
The existence in Bengal of definite missionary efforts is said to be attested by certain legends of the zeal of private individuals on behalf of their religion, and the graves of some of these missionaries are still honoured, and are annually visited by hundreds of pilgrims.[92] One of the earliest of these was Shayk͟h Jalāl al-Dīn Tabrīzī, who died in A.D. 1244. He was a pupil of the great saint, Shihāb al-Dīn Suhrawardī. In the course of his missionary journeys he visited Bengal, where a shrine to which is attached a rich endowment was erected in his honour, the real site of his tomb being unknown. Many miracles are ascribed to him; among others, that he converted a Hindu milkman to Islam by a single look.[93]
In the nineteenth century there was a remarkable revival of the Muhammadan religion in Bengal, and several sects that owe their origin to the influence of the Wahhābī reformation, have sent their missionaries through the province purging out the remnants of Hindu superstitions, awakening religious zeal and spreading the faith among unbelievers.[94]
Some account still remains to be given of Muslim missionaries who have laboured in parts of India other than those mentioned above. One of the earliest of these is Shayk͟h Ismāʻīl, one of the most famous of the Sayyids of Buk͟hārā, distinguished alike for his secular and religious learning; he is said to have been the first Muslim missionary who preached the faith of Islam in the city of Lahore, whither he came in the year A.D. 1005. Crowds flocked to listen to his sermons, and the number of his converts swelled rapidly day by day, and it is said that no unbeliever ever came [[281]]into personal contact with him without being converted to the faith of Islam.[95]
The conversion of the inhabitants of the western plains of the Panjāb is said to have been effected through the preaching of Bahā al-Ḥaqq of Multan[96] and Bābā Farīd al-Dīn of Pakpattan, who flourished about the end of the thirteenth and beginning of the fourteenth centuries.[97] A biographer of the latter saint gives a list of sixteen tribes who were won over to Islam through his preaching, but unfortunately provides us with no details of this work of conversion.[98]
One of the most famous of the Muslim saints of India and a pioneer of Islam in Rajputana was K͟hwājah Muʻīn al-Dīn Chishtī, who died in Ajmīr in A.D. 1234. He was a native of Sajistān to the east of Persia, and is said to have received his call to preach Islam to the unbelievers in India while on a pilgrimage to Medina. Here the Prophet appeared to him in a dream and thus addressed him: “The Almighty has entrusted the country of India to thee. Go thither and settle in Ajmīr. By God’s help, the faith of Islam shall, through thy piety and that of thy followers, be spread in that land.” He obeyed the call and made his way to Ajmīr which was then under Hindu rule and idolatry prevailed throughout the land. Among the first of his converts here was a Yogī, who was the spiritual preceptor of the Raja himself: gradually he gathered around him a large body of disciples whom his teachings had won from the ranks of infidelity, and his fame as a religious leader became very widespread and attracted to Ajmīr great numbers of Hindus whom he persuaded to embrace Islam.[99] On his way to Ajmīr he is said to have converted as many as 700 persons in the city of Delhi.
Of immense importance in the history of Islam in India was the arrival in that country of Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn, who is said to have been born at Buk͟hārā in 1199. He settled in Uch, now in the Bahawalpur territory, in 1244, and converted numbers of persons in the neighbourhood to [[282]]Islam; he died in 1291, and his descendants, many of whom are also revered as saints, have remained as guardians of his shrine up to the present day and form the centre of a widespread religious influence. His grandson, Sayyid Aḥmad Kabīr, known as Mak͟hdūm-i-Jahāniyān, is credited with having effected the conversion of several tribes in the Punjab.[100] About a mile to the east of Uch is situated the shrine of Ḥasan Kabīr al-Dīn, son of Sayyid Ṣadr al-Dīn, who was a contemporary of Jalāl-al-Dīn; both father and son are said to have made many converts, and such was the influence attributed to Ḥasan Kabīr al-Dīn that it was said as soon as his glance fell upon any Hindu, the latter would accept Islam.[101]