Muslim period in the Indian subcontinent is conventionally said to have started in 712, after the conquest of Sindh and Multan by the Umayyad Caliphate under the military command of Muhammad ibn al-Qasim. It began in the Indian subcontinent in the course of a gradual conquest. The perfunctory rule by the Ghaznavids in Punjab was followed by Ghurids, and Sultan Muhammad of Ghor is generally credited with laying the foundation of Muslim rule in Northern India.
The Delhi Sultanate or the Sultanate of Delhi was an Islamic late medieval empire primarily based in Delhi that stretched over large parts of the Indian subcontinent, for 320 years (1206–1526). Following the invasion of South Asia by the Ghurid dynasty, five dynasties ruled over the Delhi Sultanate sequentially: the Mamluk dynasty (1206–1290), the Khalji dynasty (1290–1320), the Tughlaq dynasty (1320–1414), the Sayyid dynasty (1414–1451), and the Lodi dynasty (1451–1526). It covered large swaths of territory in modern-day India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh as well as some parts of southern Nepal.
Sultan Firuz Shah Tughlaq was a Muslim ruler from the Tughlaq dynasty, who reigned over the Sultanate of Delhi from 1351 to 1388. He succeeded his cousin Muhammad bin Tughlaq following the latter's death at Thatta in Sindh, where Muhammad bin Tughlaq had gone in pursuit of Taghi the rebellious Muslim governor of Gujarat. For the first time in the history of the Sultanate, a situation was confronted wherein nobody was ready to accept the reins of power. With much difficulty, the camp followers convinced Firoz to accept the responsibility. In fact, Khwaja Jahan, the Wazir of Muhammad bin Tughlaq had placed a small boy on the throne claiming him to be the son of Muhammad bin Tughlaq, who meekly surrendered afterwards. Due to widespread unrest, his realm was much smaller than Muhammad's. Tughlaq was forced by rebellions to concede virtual independence to Bengal and other provinces. He established Sharia across his realm.
The Sayyid dynasty was the fourth dynasty of the Delhi Sultanate, with four rulers ruling from 1414 to 1451 for 37 years. The first ruler of the dynasty, Khizr Khan, who was the Timurid vassal of Multan, conquered Delhi in 1414, while the rulers proclaimed themselves the Sultans of the Delhi Sultanate under Mubarak Shah, which succeeded the Tughlaq dynasty and ruled the Sultanate until they were displaced by the Lodi dynasty in 1451.
Khatri is a caste originating from the Punjab region of South Asia that is predominantly found in India, but also in Pakistan and Afghanistan. In the Indian subcontinent, they were mostly engaged in mercantilistic professions such as banking and trade. They were the dominant commercial and financial administration class of late-medieval India. Some in Punjab often belonged to hereditary agriculturalist land-holding lineages, while others were engaged in artisanal occupations and some were scribes learned in Sanskrit or Persian.
The Muzaffarid dynasty, sometimes referred as Ahmedabad dynasty, were Sultans of Gujarat in western India from 1391 to 1583. The founder of the dynasty was Zafar Khan who was governor of Gujarat under the suzerainty of the Tughlaq dynasty of the Delhi Sultanate. When the Sultanate was weakened by the sacking of Delhi by Timur in 1398, and Zafar Khan took the opportunity to establish himself as sultan of an independent Gujarat. His son, Ahmed Shah I established the capital at Ahmedabad. The dynasty ruled for almost 200 years, until the conquest of Gujarat by the Mughal Empire in 1572. The sultanate reached its peak of expansion under Mahmud Begada, reaching east into Malwa and west to the Gulf of Kutch.
Qutb-ud-Din Bahadur Shah, born Bahadur Khan was a sultan of the Muzaffarid dynasty who reigned over the Gujarat Sultanate, a late medieval kingdom in India from 1526 to 1535 and again from 1536 to 1537. He ascended to the throne after competing with his brothers. He expanded his kingdom and made expeditions to help neighbouring kingdoms. In 1532, Gujarat came under attack of the Mughal Emperor Humayun and fell. Bahadur Shah regained the kingdom in 1536 but he was killed by the Portuguese on board a ship when making a deal with them.
Lohana are a trading or mercantile jāti in Sindh and Gujarat
Khokhar is a historical Punjabi tribe primarily native to the Pothohar Plateau of Pakistani Punjab. Khokhars are also found in the Indian states of Punjab and Haryana. Khokhars predominantly follow Islam, having converted to Islam from Hinduism after coming under the influence of Baba Farid.
Muslim Rajputs or Musalman Rajpoots are the descendants of Rajputs in the northern regions of the Indian subcontinent who are followers of Islam. They converted from Hinduism to Islam from the medieval period onwards, creating various dynasties and states while retaining Hindu surnames such as Chauhan. Today, Muslim Rajputs can be found mostly in present-day Northern India and Pakistan. They are further divided into different clans.
The Gujarat Sultanate, or the Sultanate of Guzerat, was a late medieval Indian kingdom established in the early 15th century in Western India, primarily in the present-day state of Gujarat, India. The kingdom was founded by Muzaffar Shah I who was appointed as Tughlaq governor of Gujarat after the death of his father in 1371. Following Timur's invasion of the Delhi Sultanate, Delhi was devastated and its rule weakened considerably, so he declared himself independent in 1394, and formally established the Sultanate. The next sultan, his grandson Ahmad Shah I moved the capital to Ahmedabad in 1411. His successor Muhammad Shah II subdued most Rajput chieftains. The prosperity of the sultanate reached its zenith during the rule of Mahmud Begada. He also subdued most Gujarati Rajput chieftains and built a navy off the coast of Diu. In 1509, the Portuguese empire wrested Diu from the Sultanate in the Battle of Diu (1509). The Mughal emperor Humayun attacked Gujarat in 1535 and briefly occupied it, during which Bombay, Bassein & Daman would become a Portuguese colony, thereafter Bahadur Shah was killed by the Portuguese while making a deal in 1537. The end of the sultanate came in 1573, when Akbar annexed Sultanate of Guzerat into his empire. The last ruler Muzaffar Shah III was taken a prisoner to Agra. In 1583, he escaped from the prison and with the help of the nobles succeeded to regain the throne for a short period before being defeated by Akbar's minister Abdul Rahim Khan-i-Khanan.
Muslim communities in South Asia apply a system of social stratification. The stratification that operates among Muslims arises from concerns other than in the concepts of pure and impure that are integral to the Indian caste system. It developed as a result of relations between the foreign conquerors and upper caste Hindus who converted to Islam (Ashraf) and the local lower caste converts (Ajlaf) as well as the continuation of the Indian caste system among local converts. Non-Ashrafs are backward caste converts. The neologism "Pasmanda" includes Ajlaf and Arzal Muslims, and Ajlafs' statuses are defined by them being the descendants of converts to Islam and are also defined by their pesha (profession). These terms are not used in local, sociological vocabulary in places such as Kashmir and Uttar Pradesh, and therefore tell us very little about the functioning of Muslim society.
Ala-ud-Din Hasan Bahman Shah whose original name was Zafar Khan or Hasan Gangu, was the founder of the Bahmani Sultanate.
Hindu Rajput kingdoms in the north-western Indian subcontinent resisted the Muslim invasions of India, beginning with the Umayyad campaigns from the Middle East and the Ghaznavid Turks from Central Asia. They continued resistance against subsequent Muslim empires, including the Arabs, Ghaznavids, Ghurids, Delhi Sultans and the Mughals.
Punjabi Muslims are adherents of Islam who identify ethnically, linguistically, culturally, and genealogically as Punjabis. With a population of more than 109 million, they are the largest ethnic group in Pakistan and the world's third-largest Islam-adhering ethnicity after Arabs and Bengalis. The majority of Punjabi Muslims are adherents of Sunni Islam, while a minority adhere to Shia Islam. They are primarily geographically native to the Punjab province of Pakistan, but many have ancestry from the Punjab region as a whole.
Muzaffar Shah I, born Zafar Khan, was the founder of the Muzaffarid dynasty in Medieval India, reigning over the Gujarat Sultanate from 1391 to 1403 and again from 1404 to 1411. The Kumbalgarh inscription says that Kshetra Singh defeated and captured Zafar Khan, King of Patan and the Khan remain in imprisonment with other Rajas.
Gujarat, a region in western India, fell under Delhi Sultanate following repeated expeditions under Alauddin Khalji around the end of the 13th century. He ended the rule of Vaghela dynasty under Karna II and established Muslim rule in Gujarat. Soon the Tughluq dynasty came to power in Delhi whose emperor carried out expeditions to quell rebellion in Gujarat and established their firm control over the region by the end of the century. Following Timur's invasion of Delhi, the Delhi Sultanate weakened considerably so that the last Tughluq governor Zafar Khan declared himself independent in 1407 and formally established the Gujarat Sultanate.
The Langah Sultanate, also known as the Sultanate of Multan, was a medieval kingdom established and ruled by the Lāngah clan in South Punjab from 1445 to 1540. Their capital was the city of Multan.
