Mughal Emperor Akbar
In Strange Parallels Victor Lieberman made a reference to “Turkicized Pathans.” The very term has been gnawing at me. To get some sense of the context, Lieberman was sketching out the impact of Islamic civilization upon Indian civilization. Sometimes this “impact” was very literal. The Arab armies had rolled into Sindh in the 8th century, but that influence upon India was militarily marginal. The first real Muslim raider of consequence was Mahmud of Ghazni, a Turkic raider from what is today Afghanistan, who famously plundered the palaces and temples of North India circa ~1000. But even here the the impact is arguably superficial. Mahmud of Ghazni’s raids did not lead to a large Indian domain under his direct rule except in Punjab. Rather, these sallies into India were sources of supplementation to his broader fiscal resources. He was still fundamentally a Central Asian potentate fixated on Central Asian concerns. The real rise of Islamic civilization in India was precipitated by the Delhi Sultanate, a series of short-lived polities beginning circa ~1200 which dominated …