|
Introduction > Page 1
The protection provided by Siddharăja JayasiMha to Muslims and their places of worship was continued by his successors in Gujarat. The population of Muslims as well as their places of worship continued to multiply in several cities of Gujarat as is borne out by numerous inscriptions, particularly from Khambat, Junagadh and Prabhas Patan, dated before Gujarat passed under Muslim rule in the aftermath of Ulugh Khăns invasion in AD 1299.
These records, observes Z.A. Desai, the learned Muslim epigraphist, make an interesting study primarily because they were set up in Gujarat at a time when it had still resisted Muslim authority. That the Muslims inhabited quite a few cities, especially in the coastal line of Gujarat, quite long before its final subjugation by them, is an established fact. The accounts of Arab travellers like Masűdî, Istakharî, Ibn Hauqal and others, who visited Gujarat during the ninth and tenth centuries of the Christian era, amply testify to the settlements of Muslims in various towns and cities. The inscriptions studied below also tend to corroborate the fact that the Muslims had continued to inhabit Gujarat until it became a part of the Muslim empire of Delhi. Moreover, they furnish rare data for an appraisal of the condition of Muslims under non-Muslim rulers of Gujarat. On one hand, they indicate the extent of permeation of Islamic influence in Gujarat at a time when it was still ruled by its own Rajput princes and show that Muslims had long penetrated into different parts of Gujarat where they lived as merchants, traders, sea-men, missionaries, etc.; these settlements were not only on the coastal regions but also in the interior as is indicated by some of these records. On the other hand, these epigraphs form a concrete and ever-living proof of the tolerance and consideration shown vis-a-vis their Muslim subjects by Hindu kings who were no doubt profited by the trade and commerce carried on by these foreign settlers.1
It seems, however, that these merchants, traders, sea-men and missionaries were not satisfied with the situation obtaining under Hindu rule. They kept looking forward to the day when the Dăr al-Harb (land of the infidels against which Muslims are obliged to wage war) that was Gujarat would become Dăr al-Islăm (land of the faithful). The evidence of how these Muslim settlers worked as sappers and miners of Islamic invasions of Gujarat remains to be collected from Muslim annals. Here we are citing an inscription from Prabhas Patan, the city which was famous for its temple of Somanatha.
The inscription is dated AD 1264 and records the construction of a mosque at Prabhas Patan by a Muslim ship-owner. The stone slab containing its Arabic version is now fixed in the Qazis Mosque at Prabhas Patan and is not in situ.
Author : Shri Sita Ram Goel
Foot Notes
1 Arabic Inscriptions of the Rajput period from Gujarat, Epigraphia Indica-Arabic and Persian Supplement, 1961, pp. 1-2. It is, of course, his personal view that Hindu tolerance towards Muslims was inspired in part by profits derived from foreign trade.
|
