the more so as it was unaccompanied by violence and hostility.  Thus the Mappilas or Moplahs of Malabar appear to be the descendants of Arab immigrants who arrived by sea about 900 A.D., and the sects known as Khojas and Bohras owe their conversion to the zeal of Arab and Persian missionaries who preached in the eleventh century.  Apart from Mohammedan conquests there must have been at this time in Gujarat, Bombay, and on the west coast generally some knowledge of the teaching of Islam.

In the annals of invasions and conquests several stages can be distinguished.  First we have the Arab conquest of Sind in 712, which had little effect.  In 1021 Mahmud of Ghazni annexed the Panjab.  He conducted three campaigns against other kingdoms of India but, though he sacked Muttra, Somnath and other religious centres, he did not attempt to conquer these regions, still less to convert them to Islam.  The period of conquests as distinguished from raids did not begin until the end of the twelfth century when Muhammad Ghori began his campaigns and succeeded in making himself master of northern India, which from 1193 to 1526 was ruled by Mohammedan dynasties, mostly of Afghan or Turki descent.  In the south the frontiers of Vijayanagar marked the limits of Islam.  To the north of them Rajputana and Orissa still remained Hindu states, but with these exceptions the Government was Mohammedan.  In 1526 came the Mughal invasion, after which all northern India was united under one Mohammedan Emperor for about two centuries.  Aurungzeb (1659-1707) was a fanatical Mohammedan:  his intolerant reign marked the beginning of disintegration in the Empire and aroused the opposition of the Mahrattas and Sikhs.  But until this period Mohammedan rule was not marked by special bigotry or by any persistent attempt to proselytize.  A woeful chronicle of selected outrages can indeed be drawn up.  In the great towns of the north hardly a temple remained unsacked and most were utterly destroyed.  At different periods individuals, such as Sikander Lodi of Delhi and Jelaluddin (1414-1430) in Bengal, raged against Hinduism and made converts by force.  But such acts are scattered over a long period and a great area; they are not characteristic of Islam in India.  Neither the earlier Mughal Emperors nor the preceding Sultans were of irreproachable orthodoxy.  Two of them at least, Ala-ud-Din and Akbar, contemplated founding new religions of their own.  Many of them were connected with Hindu sovereigns by marriage or political alliances.

The works of Alberuni and Mohsin Fani show that educated Mohammedans felt an interest not only in Indian science but in Indian religion.  In the Panjab and Hindustan Islam was strengthened by immigrations of Mohammedan tribes from the north-west extending over many centuries.  Mohammedan sultans and governors held their court in the chief cities, which thus tended to become Mohammedan not only by natural attraction but because high caste