South Asia (including Iraq, Persia and Afghanistan in brief)

As with some of the other regions that had political/military contact with the new Islamic reality, the local South Asian cultures and the Arab-Islamic, Iraqi and Persian cultures mutually interacted. At the advent of Islam, the cultures of South Asia were highly developed in terms of both learning and religion. By South Asia, I include the area covered by modern day India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Iran and Sri Lanka (Sarandeeb in Arabic). India has historically been called Hind while the area now occupied by Pakistan has been called Sind. Incidentally, the main language spoken in Afghanistan today is a form of Persian.

Virtually the first region outside the Arabian Peninsula conquered by the earliest Islamic Arabs (along with the so-called "Holy Land" of the Eastern Mediterranean coast) was actually what we would now call Iran and Iraq. It had had Persian rulers but the Arabs would soon become the masters. It is worth debating the idea that they were masters in name only but that debate will have to wait for another time as I haven't really researched that history. In earlier and later posts I have and will mention Persian influences in the various polities and cultural styles but I haven't fleshed them out fully (and can't yet until I am able to do that research). That must be a project for later. This post will mainly focus on other territories with most of which both Arabs and Persians had already had a long history of trade and limited cultural and political exchanges.

In 711, Muslim Arabs conquered the Indus valley region now roughly occupied by Pakistan and ruled it as an Iraqi sub-province.

The West Coast of what is now India and Southern Arabian cultures traded by sea before the advent of Islam. Indus Valley civilisations also traded before the advent of Islam with Iranian and Iraqi cultures. The second Arab ‘invasion’ of the region (in the 9^th Century) was more a pattern of settlement of Arab (and probably some Persian) traders on the Western Coast of India (called Malabar) particularly in Gujarat near modern Pakistan and at Mumbai also (to the north of the Malabar coast).

The third phase of Islamic involvement was the Turkic Ghaznavid invasion (via Afghanistan) and centuries of Islamic Turkic rule of the Punjab region of central Pakistan and Northern India. Lahore became an important centre at this time. Delhi finally became the seat of a great 14^th Century Sultanate that also encompassed Sind.

The final substantial influence in the region before British rule was the 16^th and 17^th Century Mughal rule of most of India that succeeded the early consolidation of Islamic influence in the region.

Islam thus gained a foothold on the West coast of India and the South West mainly by trade and peaceful settlement and in the North and the Indus Valley and Punjab mainly by the effects of conquest. Sind and Gujarat especially fell under the Isma’ili Shi’a Fatimid influence. Chistiyya and Naqshbandi Sufism were also highly influential in the region.

The Islamic influence on the sub-continent continues especially in Pakistan and Indian cities such as Hyderabad.

Not only that, but Arabism and Turkicisation and Persianisation occurred to varying degrees in various parts of the region especially in the North. The Urdu language (Turkish for “army” as it was the mixed language of the local multi-lingual army) that is now official in Pakistan, for example, came to be written with Arabic script and was based on a mixture of these language influences. A high degree of multilingualism among Muslims on the sub-continent preceded the Mughal period. The cities of Tughluqabad and Delhi typified the multilingualism of the region.

In turn, Indian learning was highly prized by the conquerors and traders. Medical knowledge and knowledge of the pharmaceutical properties of plants and other materia medica were so prized that Sindi physicians were encouraged to work in Baghdad from around 716 to 820. Sindi migration to Iraq, generally (and especially settlement in Basra and Baghdad), was common, too.

Medical and advanced materia medica and mathematical texts were swiftly translated into Arabic. Baghdad was the key place of the transfer of ancient Indian knowledge and wisdom as it had been in relation to the wisdom and learning of the Classical Greeks and others.

South Asia also contributed insights of religion and styles of art to the Arab-Islamic world-view. Sufi music, chants and dress was especially influenced by Buddhism and other South Asian religions.

The Indian decimal system and numerals complete with the until-then elusive concept zero is a major contribution of the sub-continent to the Arab world and via it to Europe, as usual from Hind via Sind. Al-Biruni wrote a famous 11^th Century summary of all the wisdom of the Hind region (now available in English translation) after learning Sanskrit.

New music and instruments were also borrowed from the region as well as ancient fables and yarns that we now regard as Arabic and Persian (notably especially the Sindbad stories from the arguably essentially misogynistic Arabian Nights (probably first translated in about 800 under Harun ar-Rashid, the ‘Abbasid Caliph, and including Persian stories) and Kalila wa Dimna (translated into Arabic in the 8^th Century and into Greek in the 9^th Century and later Syriac, Latin and even Hebrew)).

Even new fashions in Arab clothing and cuisine originated in this region with its many exotic spices and its exotic dances and dancers. The great local works of art and architecture such as the Taj Mahal clearly blend the many northern and sub-continental cultural mutual influences.