How Did Islam Influence South Asia

Islam is said to have ‘interacted’ with its Indian environments in various ways. First off, South Asia, the region known as Hind, has one of the largest Muslim populations of any region in the world. According to the 2010 figure, India has a Muslim population of about 177 million, identifying as the second largest religion in India behind Hinduism. Islam began to spread through maritime trade, Arab merchants would go to south Asia and settle there, learning the local language and marrying the local women. This really paved the way for Islam to influence south Asia. The first attempt of conquering the Sindh was made by the second caliph successor of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), Caliph Umar Ibn Al-Khattab, but his expansion didn …show more content…
First and foremost, Arabic is obviously the biggest influencer, it is the language of the holy Quran, the bible of Islam. When Islam reached south Asia, those who knew Arabic in Muslim empires were sought to be a part of an elite class and the high courts. In Eaton’s, “Articulation of Islamic Space”, the orator of the court during the time of the Bahmani, stated that the Sufi shaikh’s had a great influence over the country and they were the ones making sure everything was in order, even though there was a monarch in place, they made sure the country was being run smoothly. They were seen as the most wise people and religion seemed to be the most prominent during that time and the people really believed in them because of how welcoming and kind the Sufis were towards all types of people, mainly the Hindus. These people were known as the ulama, scholars who were filled with ilm, knowledge. They interpreted both the Quran and Shariah law, which is the language of Allah, and the religion of Islam was based off Arabic. More importantly, the ulama, were the only ones who could read and write in Arabic, if you couldn 't do either, you couldn’t be a part of the ulama. The ulama continued to be powerful throughout most Muslim empires, even during the Mughal empire as well as those Muslims that migrated to the Deccan. In addition, the similarity of rituals and practices between Hinduism and Islam had one of the largest influences on its Indian environments. First off, Hindus and Muslims had a great interaction with one another because of the great leaders such as Akbar and Jahangir who wanted to unite all religions together to bring peace in their domain. Akbar was one of the first leaders to bring a sort of unity between Islam and Hinduism, and he did this with the help of the Sufis. They were able to create a sort of accommodation between the Muslims and Hindus and Alam argued that, the