During the eleventh to thirteenth centuries, Islamic conquest and trade laid the foundation for a new type of Indo-Islamic society in which the organizational forms of the frontier and of sedentary agriculture merged in a way that was uniquely successful in the late medieval world at large, setting the Indo-Islamic world apart from the Middle East and China in the same centuries.

During the early medieval Islamic expansion in the seventh to eleventh centuries, al-Hind (India and its Indianized hinterland) was characterized by two organizational modes: the long-distance trade and mobile wealth of the peripheral frontier states, and the settled agriculture of the heartland. These two different types of social, economic, and political organization were successfully fused during the eleventh to thirteenth centuries, and India became the hub of world trade. During this period, the Middle East declined in importance, Central Asia was unified under the Mongols, and Islam expanded far into the Indian subcontinent. Instead of being devastated by the Mongols, who were prevented from penetrating beyond the western periphery of al-Hind by the absence of sufficient good pasture land, the agricultural plains of North India were brought under Turko-Islamic rule in a gradual manner in a conquest effected by professional armies and not accompanied by any large-scale nomadic invasions. The result of the conquest was, in short, the revitalization of the economy of settled agriculture through the dynamic impetus of forced monetization and the expansion of political dominion. Islamic conquest and trade laid the foundation for a new type of Indo-Islamic society in which the organizational forms of the frontier and of sedentary agriculture merged in a way that was uniquely successful in the late medieval world at large, setting the Indo-Islamic world apart from the Middle East and China in the same centuries. Please note that The Slave Kings and the Islamic Conquest, 11th-13th Centuries was previously published by Brill in hardback (ISBN 90 04 10236 1, still available).

This is the second of a projected series of five volumes dealing with the expansion of Islam in "al-Hind," or South and Southeast Asia. It analyses the conquest of the eleventh-thirteenth centuries, the migration of Muslim groups into the subcontinent, and maritime developments in the same period.

This volume traces the second great expansion of the Islamic world eastwards from the eleventh century to the eighteenth. As the faith crossed cultural boundaries, the trader and the mystic became as important as the soldier and the administrator. Distinctive Islamic idioms began to emerge from other great linguistic traditions apart from Arabic, especially in Turkish, Persian, Urdu, Swahili, Malay and Chinese. The Islamic world transformed and absorbed new influences. As the essays in this collection demonstrate, three major features distinguish the time and place from both earlier and modern experiences of Islam. Firstly, the steppe tribal peoples of central Asia had a decisive impact on the Islamic lands. Secondly, Islam expanded along the trade routes of the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea. Thirdly, Islam interacted with Asian spirituality, including Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism, Taoism and Shamanism. It was during this period that Islam became a truly world religion.

Islam - Background & Bibliography

Arming slaves as soldiers is a counterintuitive idea, yet throughout history, in many varied societies, slaveholders have entrusted their slaves with the use of deadly force. This volume addresses the crucial issues in this matter in order to faciliate cross-cultural comparisons.