Lehal Library

20 The Punjab and I.be Birth of Sikhism monsoon birds flew back to Africa after a sojourn of a few months, not all Arab traders returned to their homes in the desert. Many married Indian women and settled down in India. The advent of Mohammed (AD 569-632) changed the idolatrous and easy-going Arabs into a nation unified in faith and fired with a zeal to spread the gospel of Islam to every shore. The merchant seamen who had brought dates and frankincense year after year now brought a new faith with them. From the yeat· AD 636 onwards, scattered settlements of Arab Muslims sprang up in western India, particularly in Malabar. The new faith was well received by the people of south India. Muslims were allowed to build mosques, those who were single found wives, and very soon an lnd<>-Arabian community came into being.t Early in the 9th century, Muslim missionaries gained a notable convert in the person of the king of Malabar. The Muslim community grew and spread to the Tamil regions on the east coast. Then Islam spread northwards and more colonies of Muslims grew up on the coast of Cambay. The peacefol spread of Islam was suddenly checked when Muslim armies began to invade India. In AD 672, the seventeenyea.r-ol<l Mohammed-bin-Qasim marched through Baluchistan and overran the whole of Sindh. The Muslims began to be looked upon as foreign invaders who had to be resisted, and conversions to Islam ceased for some time. There was a lull after Qasim 's invasion. 111e storm bursL in all its fory with the invasion of Mahmud of Ghazni (AD 971-1030), who swept across northern India down to Gujarat, annihilating all opposition and destroying Hindu temples whereYer he went. Thereafter invasions by Muslim armies became a regular feature of life in northem India. But neither the succession of victories by Muslim annies nor the massacre of Hindus and the destruction of their temples brought many Hindus into the fold of Islam. On the contrary, as would be natural in the circumstances, conquest 2 ln Malabat, the Arab came to be known as mapilla, meaning 'the great child' or 'bridegroom'--the ancestor of the prt>sent-day Moplah. (Tara Chand, Injluenu of Islam on Indian Cultur~, p. 35.)