The Islamic frontier in the east: Expansion into south Asia

South Asia: Journal of South Asia Studies

Volumn 4, Issue 1, 1974, Pages 78-90

  Richards, J F ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84953599873     PISSN: 00856401     EISSN: 14790270     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00856407408730690     Document Type: Article

References (27)

1. Hindu/Buddhist is not a purely religious term but is meant to imply that the predominant high cultural forms of this civilization were primarily derived from these two religions.
2. Several generations of historians of the Ottomans have been stimulated by the work of Paul Wittek in his The Rise of the Ottoman Empire. Wittek’s views on the western frontier have helped to shape the consciousness of all who have studied this period.
3. S. M. Ikram, Muslim Civilization in India, ed. Aiııslie T. Embree, (New York, 1964), p. 37.
4. Cf. Vincent Smith. The Oxford History of India (Oxford, rev. ed., 1958), p. 232: “The Muslim conquest of India did not begin until the last quarter of the twelfth century, if the frontier provinces of Kabul, the Punjab, and Sind be excluded from consideration.”
5. This frontier line is in point of fact an historical region as defined by Burton Stein. Stein moves from a definition of a region offered by Joseph Schwartzberg, as “a perceived segment of the time-space continuum differentiated from others on the basis of one or more defining characteristics” Joseph E. Schwartzberg, “Prolegomena to the Study of South Asian Regions and Regionalism” in Regions and Regionalism in South Asian Studies, ed. Robert I. Crane (Durham, N.C., 1966), p. 93. Stein comments: “Going back to the refined definition of region offered by Schwartzberg, in which space and time are seen as axes along which regionally differentiating data must be plotted, I would state that an historical region is one in which any characteristic or related characteristics undergo some basic change in distribution patterns or boundary condition.” Burton Stein, “Comments.”, in Crane (ed.), op. ext., p. 44.
6. A. I. Srivastava, “A Survey of India's Resistance to Medieval Invaders from the North-West: Causes of Eventual Hindu Defeat”, Journal of Indian History, 43 (1965), 349-68.
7. C. E. Bosworth, Sistan Under the Arabs, from the Islamic Conquest to the Rise of the Saffarids (30-250/651-864) (Rome, 1968), p. 14.
8. Cf. Bosworth's views in “Notes on the Pre-Ghaznavid History of Eastern Afghanistan”, Islamic Quarterly, 9 (1965), 12.
9. Giuseppe Tucci, “Oriental Notes, II: an Image of a Devi Discovered in Swat and Some Connected Problems”, East and West, N.S. 14 (1963), 146-81.
10. Tucci, p. 172. G. Scarcia, on the other hand, connects Zun with the Iranian epic figures, Zal and Rustam. However, Scarcia also posits a tie in the pre-Islamic period with the cult of the god Sharva in Lamghan, a proto-Saivite deity. Scarcia's views are summarized in Bosworth, Sistan Under the Arabs, p. 35n.
11. See B. D. Mirchandani, “Chach-Nama: References to Persia, Zabul, Kashmir and Kanauj”, Journal of Indian History, 43 (1965), 369-85.
12. B. D. Mirchandani, “On Hiuen Tsiang's Travels in Baluchistan”, Journal of Indian History, I 15 (1967), 330.
13. Romila Thapar, A History of India (Harmondsworth, 1968), 1. 235.
14. Edward C. Sachau (ed.), Alberuni's India (New Delhi, 1964 reprint), pp. 21-2.
15. Aziz Ahmad, “Epic and Counter-Epic in Medieval India”, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 83 (1963), 473.
16. Digby, p. 13n.
17. Cf. P. M. Holt's distinction between the “external frontier” of Islam “which has largely been the creation of conquering armies” and the “internal frontier” or “the invisible line of division between Muslim and non-Muslim”. The cultural synthesis resulting from this process has created a distinctive Islamic civilization in South Asia and elsewhere. P. M. Holt (ed.), The Cambridge History of Islam (Cambridge, 1970) 2, 19.
18. For a full historical study of the process of Islamization in another area, see Speros Vryonis, Jr, The Decline of Medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor and the Process of Islamization from the Eleventh through the Fifteenth Century (Berkeley, 1971).
19. P. M. Holt (ed.), The Decline of Medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor and the Process of Islamization from the Eleventh through the Fifteenth Century, 2, 3-34.
20. Alessandro Bausani, “Can Monotheism Be Taught?” Numen, 10 (1963), 184. I am indebted to Dr Peter Hardy for this reference.
21. Irfan Habib, “Technological Changes and Society, 13th and 14th Centuries”, Presidential Address, Medieval India Section, 31st Session of the Indian History Congress, Varanasi, December 1969.
22. Rawson, “Technological Changes and Society, 13th and 14th Centuries”, p. 23.
23. Irfan Habib, “The Social Distribution of Landed Property in pre-British India”, Enquiry, N.S., 2 (Winter, 1965), 45.
24. R. L. Singh and K. N. Singh, “Evolution of the Medieval Towns in the Saryu-par Plain of the Middle Ganga Valley: a Case Study”, The National Geographical Journal of India, 9 (1963), 1-11
25. K. N. Singh, “The Territorial Basis of Medieval Town and Village Settlement in Eastern Uttar Pradesh, India” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 43 (1968), 203-19.
26. Pradhan, p. 95.
27. Cf. the Farman of Jahangir reproduced in B. N. Goswamy and J. S. Grewal. The Mughals and the Jogis of Jakhbar (Simla, 1967), pp. 76-81, with the document opposite p. 113 in Pradhan, The latter, also presumed to be a farman from Jahangir, is either a copy, a summary of the original order, or a badly done forgery. The tughra is missing; the seal and the epithets of the Emperor, as well as the language employed do not appear genuine.