Prophet Muhammad once said that I smell divine fragrance from the side of India. Hazrat Ali also once said that the most pure and fragrant place of all is India
As mentioned earlier, Muslims started making India their home long before the invaders of Turks, Arabs and Central Asian countries. What captures my heart about India is that Prophet Muhammad once said that I smell Rabbani (Divine) from the side of India. Hazrat Ali also once said that the most pure and fragrant place of all is Hind.
Obviously, in a country where such wonderful things have been said by a rophet and an imam, who would not want to settle there? Ibn Qasir has written in Futuh ul Salatin that there is evidence of a Muslim settlement in Benares even fifty years before the attacks of Ghori.
According to research by Khaliq Ahmed Nizami, there are places in Uttar Pradesh, including Badaun, Bahraich, Bilgram and Unnao, where the tombs of many Muslims date back to the Ghori attack. The Sufis used to say that the tombs of the Gaddi Nashins were proof that their ancestors had settled in India long before the attacks of Ghori.
The biggest evidence of this is the dargah named Data Darbar in Lahore (city of united India). This is the dargah of the same Sufi who had settled in Lahore in the 11th century, and his name was Syed Ali Hajveri. The Hindus of Lahore had great respect for him and started lovingly calling him Data Ganj Baksh. Obviously he was not a fighter or a king, nor did he have a sword in his hand, and was a man of peace. However, the commonly held view is a country can be won by the sword, not the heart.
Ghori’s was not a religious one but of conquest
Syed Ali Hajveri was a descendant of Imam Hasan, the grandson of Prophet Hazrat Mohammad. His dargah is now called Data Darbar.
Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti (also known as Khwaja of Ajmer or Khwaja Garib Nawaz), holding the status of the greatest Sufi in India, and had also arrived in India before Ghori’s attack. When he arrived in India, he stayed the first few days in Data Darbar in Lahore, then he traveled on to Imam-e-Mashhad’s Dargah in Samana town near Patiala, after which he made Ajmer his home.
A few days later after he settled in Ajmer, Mohammad Ghori defeated the Rajput king Prithvi Raj Chauhan and captured his kingdom. Some people see the battle of Ghori and Prithvi Raj Chauhan through the lens of a Hindu Muslim religious conflict, but there was no religious angle in it, and it was a war between two rulers.
If it was a war between Hinduism and Islam, why did the rulers of other states of India not support Prithvi Raj? If the battle of Gauri and Prithvi Raj was a battle of religion, why did King Jaichand, who ruled the vast area of Kannauj and Varanasi, not support Prithvi Raj?
King Jaichand betrayed Prithvi Raj Chauhan to protect Ghori
The book Kamil-ul-Tawarikh writes that Raja Jaichand had a huge army of one million soldiers and 700 elephants, and most people understand that King Jaichand betrayed Prithvi Raj Chauhan to protect Ghori, as a secret agent who secretly helped Ghori.
Muslim rule established in India never took the name of Islam
The most important point to note is that after the victory of Ghori, whatever rule formed in India did not take the name of Islam. Sometimes it became a sultanate of Ghulam dynasty, sometimes Tughlaq, sometimes Sayyid, sometimes Lodhi, and sometimes the rulers of Mughal Sultanate ruled India but no one called themselves Islamic or Muslim Sultanate.
Another important point is that these rulers also resisted the attacks of outsiders fiercely. When Timur attacked India, the Tughlaq dynasty came to the fore, when Babur attacked, the Lodhi dynasty clashed with him and when Nadir Shah attacked, Burhan-ul-Mulk, the Nawab of Awadh fought the Mughal army.
Muslim rulers unified India into one country not little Kingdoms as It was previously
It is noteworthy that the Muslim rulers transformed India into a subcontinent uniting India into a vast country instead of small kingdoms or states.
Muslim rulers became part of the life and culture and fought battles to protect india, risking their lives
The second salient feature is that no Muslim ruler ruled India as the British did by making India their slave (sitting in their country) but became a part of the life and culture of this country, settling in India and were buried in the soil of India.
When there was an attack on India from outside, these rulers also put their lives at stake fighting in the forefront to protect India.
(To be continued)