Author : Wahid Ahmad
During the first round of Arab conquests from 632, right after Muhammad's death to 750, the Ummayyad caliphate was overthrown. Arabs invaded Kashmir twice but failed once, even under the command of Muhammad Ibn Qasim, who had already conquered Sindh and vast portions of Punjab For the next few centuries, there were minor Islamic Emirates South of Kashmir but Kashmir, being a valley surrounded on all sides by mountains, was isolated In fact, it was so isolated that it became a refuge for rebels and people fleeing persecution. I finally broke into India on the back of Mahmud of Ghazni’s horse. Mahmud, not his horse, established the first sultanate in India and also in the world because he was the first ruler to use the title of Sultan. Mahmoud invaded Kashmir twice, once in 1015 and again in 1021 but both times he was pushed back by snowstorms in India. The Ghaznavids were replaced by the Ghurids, who didn’t even try to invade Kashmir from around the year 1000 to 1320 The valley was under the control of the indigenous Lohara dynasty the last Lohar Raja Suhadeva was either killed or fled when a mongol general named Dulacha invaded This left a vacuum for power Suhadeva himself had been a very popular ruler due to his ruthless taxation, from which even the Brahman feasts weren’t exempt.
this vacuum for power was soon filled by a rebellious Tibetan prince named Rinchana he had tried to overthrow his uncle in the Kingdom of Ladakh but after failing he sought refuge in Kashmir, eventually rising up to rule it in 1320 after Lohar Raj collapsed however his reign was short and he died in 1323 but not before converting to Islam and changing his name to Sadruddin shah z he had apparently been influenced by Sufi missionary from Central Asia Sufi missionaries at the time moved around a lot and established networks in various places although according to one unlikely story he had left his faith to chance and decided to convert to the religion of the first person he saw in the morning who just happened to be Muslim the story seems rather murky and unreliable to be honest he was the one who built the Grand Mosque or Bod Masheed of srinagar he also built a new quarter in the city and named it Rinchanpur.
During his reign Rinchana had appointed a Chief Minister named Shah Mir who was probably an Iranian or persianised. Turk according to one story he belonged to the ruling dynasty of Swat according to another he was a descendant of Arjun the great legendary warrior from Mahabharat himself so as you can see there’s a dispute about his ethnic background Shah Mir had moved to Kashmir during the reign of Suhadeva and joined his court where he became an influential figure after Rinchana’s death Shah Mir made a bid for the throne but failed as Rinchana’s young son, Haider was installed as king. However Shah Mir did manage to overthrow Rinchana’s family in 1339. He took the title of Sultan Shams ad-Din he started the Islamization and Persianization of the valley he even implemented the Zoroastrian calendar and did away with the Indian one already in use there his rule was a successful one by all reasonable measures he had brought together the pieces left behind by the Mongol invasion his rule had been accepted by the Hindus the Buddhists and whatever little Muslim population the valley had at the time he died in 1342.
His grandson Sultan Shihab ad-Din ascended the throne in 1355 and expanded the sultanate to Baltistan Ladakh and Jammu he left the Treasury empty in the process a popular story goes that his Hindu Finance minister even suggested melting the statues of Buddha that had been erected previously to Mint Coins but the Sultan refused saying he does not want to create an example for his successors during Shihab ad-Din’s reign there couldn’t have been many Muslim presence in Kashmir based on the records and the fact that almost every minister in the court was Hindu other than a few mosques and charity kitchens here and there the state does not seem to have sponsored Islam in any way by this point however Persian culture of the Muslims to the West in Iran was sponsored.
During the reign of Shihab ad-Din’s brother Qutb ad-Din a Sufi master or khoja named Syed Ali Hamdani arrived in Kashmir Syed Ali Hamdani would prove influential in converting Kashmir to Islam like his contemporary Baha ad-Din Naqshband would in Xinjiang. He was escaping the scourge of God popularly known as Timur the lame or Timur the jerk he arrived in 1381 along with some 700 peoples. Qutb ad-Din greeted them and gave them refuge in return Hamdani and his Sufi’s gave Qutb ad-Din legitimacy and connection to the wider world of Islam it said that Hamdani even gave his own headgear as a sign of approval and endorsement according to some sources Hamdani saw the Kashmiri monarchy as an abomination as the Muslims and Hindus lived together and took cultural things from each other he wanted to fix this an example of this is that Qutb ad-Din had married two sisters at the same time this went against Islamic law where you cannot be married to two sisters who share both parents at the same time Hamdani made his marriages and remarry one of them while permanently divorcing the other it makes sense that Hamdani would influence the Kashmiri monarchy as most of Hamdani’s work is about how commoners and sovereigns should conduct themselves in private and in public.
Around the same time a reformer was born among the Hindus as well Lalleshwari or simply Lala preached a simpler version of Hinduism where all were equal and not restrained by social hierarchy she was against worshiping idols and called the stone idols of Hindu temples nothing more than the stone in the pavement she used Kashmiri language for her teachings rather than Sanskrit because it was the language of the masses hence she was and is revered by the Kashmiris who could for once understand their religious leader as she spoke their language her ideas were very close to the ideas of the Sufis and this helped bridge the gap between Islam and Hinduism the Kashmiris would slowly use this bridge to convert to the religion of the ruling dynasty that is Islam additionally the work of Rishi’s who were a Sufi order of Muslims also helped convert Kashmir to Islam like Lalleshwari they were drawing on the similarities between a simpler Hinduism like the one preached by Lalleshwari and Sufism.
Hamdani left Kashmir after some years but his peoples established a network of Sufis throughout the valley that connected to the Sufis in India and Central Asia as the most bloodthirsty forces raged in Central Asia and Persia Sufi migrants moved to Kashmir Sufism became intertwined with the right to rule to the point that Qutb ad-Din successor Sultan Sikandar built a great shrine for Muhammad Hamdani, Ali Hamdani son which still stands in Srinagar’s old city although surprisingly, Sanskrit not Persian remained the official language and much of the government was run by Hindu Brahmin ministers this would mean that at that time there weren’t many influential Muslims in the valley around the year 1400 or so Sultan Qutb ad-Din died in 1389 and was succeeded by his son Sikander Shah. When Timur invaded India in 1398 he didn’t seem to have any intentions of touching Kashmir instead the barbarian emperors eyes were set on Delhi which he sacked thoroughly however his reputation had preceded him in the sultan of Kashmir, Sikander Shah sent gifts to him and swore loyalty. Timur didn’t want much from him other than money in contrast to his uncle, Shihab ad-Din Sikandar Shah decided to plunder Hindu and Buddhist temples in Kashmir to meltdown the statues and pay this money he destroyed at least four temples which gave him the title of Butshikan, or iconoclast to secure more power he allied himself with puritanical Sufis such as the aforementioned Muhammad Hamdani this led to a crackdown on non Muslims in Kashmir Jizya, had taxed on non-Muslims was implemented hindu Brahmins who had been so influential that they held most of the high offices were insulted and their tax free land grants were evoked Sanskrit books were destroyed there are even mentions of forced conversions however this reign of bigotry and terror wouldn’t last.
Sikander Shah,s son Zain ul-Abideen became sultan in 1420 and he couldn’t have been more different than his father where his father is called the iconoclast Zain ul Abedin is remembered as Bod Shah or the Great King he was the Akbar of Kashmir before Akbar actually lived he was also influenced by the Sufis but not the puritanical ones such as Hamdani but rather the more tolerant ones such as the Rishis he improved relations with the Hindus and the Buddhists by revoking his father’s intolerant policies he evoked the Jizya and reintegrated in those into his court he went so far that he wrote letters to Kashmiris who had fled Kashmir due to persecution and asked them to return and he even told the Muslims who had converted from Hinduism under pressure that they could revert to their old faith he also re conquered lands that had been lost he even minted silver coins in Kashmir which shows that his realm was economically prosperous he patronized scholars of both Sanskrit and Persian and turned this isolated valley into a hub of culture not only did his court and people associated with him produce original works in both languages they also translated them between the two Sanskrit works like Mahabharat and Prithviraj were translated into Persian and Persian works such as Shahnameh and Yusuf Zulaykha were translated into Sanskrit in fact Kashmir was such an active hub of literature that Yusuf Zulaykha was translated into Sanskrit only 20 years after being first composed in Persian Zain ul-Adedin marks a transitory period where at the start of his reign both Sanskrit and Persian were spoken by the people in addition to their native language of Kashmiri brahmans were studying Persian Classics while Iranians were studying Sanskrit Classics must have been quite aside Zain ul-Adedin declared Persian to be the official language of the state. Persian became the everyday written language of Kashmir while Kashmiri itself remained spoken by people slowly Sanskrit would disappear from the valley at least until the modern era at the same time his reintegration of Hindu Brahmins into politics created an elite class called the Kashmiri Pandits that provided India with state officials and even state ministers well into the 20th century by the end of Zain ul Abedin’s 50 year reign in 1470 Kashmir was a formidable Persianized Sultanate in India no longer isolated from the Greater Persianiate and Sanskrit worlds around it by this time we can also say that it probably had a Muslim majority.
After him the state started to decline there was a power struggle between the local Rajas of Kashmir and the Puritan Sufis or Syeds left behind by Saeed Ali Hamdani this led to the sultans being puppets additionally a religious leader named Mir shams ad-Din Iraqi became prominent during this time and preached his rather Shia oriented doctrine which became popular for a while this went on for some 70 years one regional leader would prop up a puppet king who would be deposed by another puppet eventually you know a mogul mercenary invaded and took over Kashmir in 1540 he wasn’t the ruler he was just a puppet master he paid lip service to the Mughal emperor Humayun. While he was a decent ruler he cracked down on Shia and Hindu minorities which led to a popular revolt in 1550 that ended up overthrowing and killing him.
The Shahmiri Dynasty was overthrown in 1555 but the Chak Dynasty ruled until 1586, when the Mughal Empire annexed Kashmir. Kashmir has not been an independent state ever since the Mughal Emperors loved Kashmir and always talked about its beauty and peaceful climate They often stayed there during summers They appointed governors, sometimes good, sometimes bad but this continued until Shahnshah Aurangzeb died in 1707 The Mughal dynasty began to collapse and so did authority in Kashmir During the collapse, instability led to population decrease. A sort of pattern appeared where Shias and Hindus would band together to fight persecution by the Sunni Mughal governors, but Kashmir kept hemorrhaging people, especially Hindus.
In 1753, Ahmad Shah Abdali of the Abdali Empire in Afghanistan invaded and conquered Kashmir His Afghans kept governing it till around 1773, when Abdali died and was succeeded by Timur Shah Then, Afghan authority in Kashmir declined slowly, which led to locals and Afghans clashing over control This finally ended in 1819, when Kashmir was annexed by Maharaja Ranjit Singh of the Sikh Khalsa Empire. 480 years of Muslim rule in Kashmir was brought to an end when the Sikh empire was destroyed by the British. A ruling nobility was able to pay them and secure Kashmir in their name The Hindu Dogra Dynasty continued to rule the Muslim majority of Kashmir until in 1947, when Pakistan and India won independence from the British Empire. Kashmir, like other princely states, was given the choice of joining India or Pakistan or staying independent. Maharaja Hari Singh wanted to be independent. Pakistan invaded Kashmir and Hari Singh signed a deal with India, giving Kashmir and its Muslim population to India Today, some of it is under Indian control and some is under Pakistani control, but both claim all of it.
Kashmir became Islamicized when Arabs invaded in 632, but Islam only entered India during Mahmud of Ghazni’s raids. The valley was secluded until 1320, when Rinchana, a rebellious Tibetan prince, converted to Islam and took over Kashmir. Shah Mir succeeded him and initiated the Islamization and Persainization of the valley by implementing the Zoroastrian calendar and picking up the pieces of the Mongol invasion.
Sufi preachers such as Syed Ali Hamdani helped convert Kashmir to Islam while linking it with Hinduism. Lalleshwari was a reformer who preached a simpler form of Hinduism that helped Muslims reach out to Hindus. Sultan Sikandar, an Iconoclast, demolished temples; instead, his son Zain ul-Abideen, the great king, reversed his policies, revoking Jizya tax and reintegrating Hindus back into his court.
In 1586, the Mughal Empire absorbed Kashmir, which remained under Mughal rule until its end. The British replaced the Sikh Khalsa Empire with the Hindu Dogra Dynasty, which ruled over Kashmir up to 1947. He therefore joined India, hence the present conflict status in this region. Thus, Kashmir continues to be the epitome of complex historical interactions between two primary religious traditions: Islam and Hinduism.