Indian Encounters:The Turks, The Mongols, and Islam

Some people would say the Mongols were a key development to civilization. However, the progress they made is nothing compared to their cruelty and the process they used to conquer the majority of Asia and parts of the Middle East. The Mongols were originally a small, nomadic tribe that originated from the steppes of Central Asia. The tribe placed little value on objects, considering they moved around in yurts and hardly settled. Led by Genghis Khan, they conquered land worth double the size of the Roman Empire. The Mongols were greedy, bloodthirsty barbarians who had little to no regard for human life. They went to unthinkable lengths to conquer land while destroying countless ancient cities.

According to the statistics of Ministry of Information and Broadcasting of India the third largest Muslim population of the world is embedded in India. Even though the major religion of India is Hinduism, and Islam is in the second place of its minor religion still it has the largest Muslim minority all over the world (World Directory of Minorities- Muslim of India). This statistics clearly depicts the successful expansion and establishment of Islam in early period of India even though India was populated with indigenous religious beliefs. Islam is a monotheistic religion that was spread with bunch of beliefs and faiths after the Prophet Mohammad. In order to that the colonization of Muslims initiated in India was the key place from where

The Mongol empire was the world’s largest empire. The Mongol’s practices and beliefs had both positive and negative effects. The large Mongolian empire promoted communication and diversity; however, despite this positive effect, the Mongolian empire housed the deaths of many innocent people. In addition to this, the Mongol empire fostered various religions, but enforced the same practices on everyone, no matter what religion they may follow; this brought order amongst the Mongolian empire.

The major legacies of the Mongol rule in the Islamic world are that they supported trade, built roads, increased religious tolerance, further advanced in medicine and astronomy and built paper money. They reopened four major trade routes which were closed – Silk Road, sea route from China to Persian Gulf, Siberian Route and an alternate route from lower Volga. The four major legacies of Genghis Khan, the founder of Mongol empire were tolerance, written language, legal code and trade and crafts.

Until the 12th and 13th centuries, cross-cultural interactions were unprolonged and less in number when compared to later centuries. However, the assimilation of much of the Eurasian landmass into the Mongol empire as well as the later European exploration of the Americas contributed to the creation of prolonged global connections in which the world’s major continents were connected. Two of the most notable developments include the caravel, which aided European explorers in their conquest of the Americas, and the stirrup and composite bow, which the Mongols used to conquer Eurasia and eventually led to the Pax Mongolica. These technological developments had major effects on both societies.

People, places, and/or things come and go, changing from one thing to another or none at all. In other cases, it is just not people, places, and/or things, it can also be generations or empires. Empires are known to adopt similar traditions or beliefs from other empires. In addition, some empires have similar, but slightly different laws and/or goals. Two of the empires that were similar, but different is many ways are the Ottoman and Mughal Empires.

Since the beginning, all empires have faced change in many ways, declining and rising in status. Many empires have collapsed, only to start again under a different name. Like all empires, the three Muslim Empires, the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals have faced this inevitable state. Although each individual empire is different, they each have similarities in their reasons for decline. Whether it is social, religious, economic, or political reasons, the empires, like many others, have fallen.

Although harsh conquers, the Mongols were peaceful rulers. The areas they invaded were often too greatly destroyed, and no longer suitable for resettlement because of the destruction their armies created. However the Mongols were extremely tolerant rulers, and hardly ever imposed their own beliefs and customs on those they conquered. Their simple, nomadic lifestyles meant they probably had fewer customs that didn’t even fit the lives of the settled people they ruled. Often times, Mongol rulers would even adopt aspects of the cultures of the people they ruled, for example the Ilkhan and Golden Horde converted to Muslim. Still, this led to increasing cultural differences that caused the empire to

In 455 CE - 484 CE, the horse nomads coming from Mongolia had finally risen fully to power and were known as the White Huns, the name coming from the large white war horses that Alexander and Rome used in their expedition much earlier in history. These White Huns would have a great impact on the Indian Empire, which was weakened due to the decline of their country post classic era. The Huns began their invasion of India in around 470 CE, first targeting the rich monastic communities like the Buddhist complexes. After this, The Tegin (or governor) Khingila, is said to have led these raids into India, taking numerous cities wealth and even people in around the year 475 CE. After this they descended from the Kabul valley into Punjab, sacking towns

The Islamic peopled tried many ways to transmit knowledge to places around the world, and to modern intellectualism. Every empire was different, civilizations were different. Raids and rebellions were lead by different people, caliphs of Muhammad. They lead their own rebellions, and through them were the transmissions of knowledge throughout the nation.

Spain and the Balkans came under a long period of Muslim rule as did Iran and the middle eastern countries, which were completely subsumed. Indian culture showed remarkable vitality and survived. Perhaps this was a positive aspect of the rigid codification of laws and the caste system. China and Japan were geographically isolated and never faced large scale invasion from Islam, which anyway spread in Indonesia , the Philippines and malaysis, with the waning of Indian power. East Asia was in fact an important sphere of Indian cultural export, with the Srivijaya Empire, the Majpahit Empire and so on ruling for long. Here as Indian power fragmented and declined. Islam and then European commercialist colonialism stepped in. And yet much of Indian culture survived, in Indochina and Indonesia among other places, and Bali is still Hindu. Indeed India did expand as a culture, via Buddhism all over East Asia and Ceylon, where Indian sages spread the word of Buddha. Asoka was a self conscious cultural proselytizer. The terms like Bhumiputra as well as names show the persistence of india cultural forms even in the 20th

After the declining of the Gupta dynasty, Islam entered India in two different ways; through peaceful trade conducted by mystical men called Sufis and military invasion from the Umayyad caliphs

There was even a brahman-inspired attempt to assassinate him, but Harsha’s preference of Buddhims over Hinduism strengthened. Muhammad ibn Qasim led over 10,000 horse- or camel-mounted warriors to Sind from India and declared the Sind interior and the Indus valley to be Umayyad provinces. The new caliph in Damascus was Hajjaj’s—the Umayyad viceroy of eastern provinces—enemy. He killed Hajjaj as well as execute his son-in-law, Muhammad ibn Qasim, after disowning him. Islam did little to change life in India. Many converted to Islam. Of these, the most converts included low-castes, outcastes, Buddhists, and some animists. A Muslim community was eventually established in India, although most of the population still remained Hindu, even with the Sufi mystics. Islam spread to Southeast Asia through trade from India, where they had contact with Sufi mystics. Conversions in Southeast Asia were especially made after the fall in the 13th century, when the pious Buddhist trading empire, Shrivijaya, fell, allowing them to convert to Muslim like other traders and

ndo-Europeans in Ancient India About 1500 BC, India was invaded by Indo-European people. These people came from the area between the Black Sea and the Caspian sea. Between 2500 and 2000 BC, many Indo-Europeans migrated all over Eurasia. Some went to Europe and became the Romans and the Greeks, some settled in Turkey and became the Hittites. Others migrated south-east instead. Some of them stopped in Iran, while others continued south-east to Pakistan and India. The slow migration did not arrive in northern India until about 1500 BC. In India, the Indo-Europeans are usually called the Aryans. The Aryans first settled along the Indus River, in the same place where the Harappa people had lived. They settled down and mixed with the local Indian

Around 650 A.D. there was the first Muslim invasion by Mohammad Qasim, similar to that of Alexander’s invasion in the present day Afghan area. Following which the Khilji dynasty’s conquest of northern India brought along with it the religion of Islam. Over the period of their dominion over Delhi in Northern India Hindu-Muslim art, music and trade flourished. The Indians subcontinent was now home to Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism and Jainism.