Lost Islamic History

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Today, there are over 500 million Muslims throughout the Indian subcontinent (India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh), making it one of the largest population centers of Muslims in the world. Since Islam first entered India, it has contributed greatly to the area and its people. Today, numerous theories about how India came to be such a largely Muslim land exist. Politically, some (such as the Hindutva movement in India) try to make Islam seem foriegn to India, by insisting it only exists because of invasions by Arab and Persian Muslims. The truth, however, is far from that.

The Earliest Muslim Indians

Even before the life of Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) in the 600s, Arab traders were in contact with India. Merchants would regularly sail to the west coast of India to trade goods such as spices, gold, and African goods. Naturally, when the Arabs began to convert to Islam, they carried their new religion to the shores of India. The first mosque of India, the Cheraman Juma Masjid, was built in 629 (during the life of Prophet Muhammad) in Kerala, by the first Muslim from India, Cheraman Perumal Bhaskara Ravi Varma. Through continued trade between Arab Muslims and Indians, Islam continued to spread in coastal Indian cities and towns, both through immigration and conversion.

Muhammad bin Qasim
The first great expansion of Islam into India came during the Umayyad Dynasty of caliphs, who were based in Damascus. In 711, the Umayyads appointed a young 17 year old man from Ta’if to extend Umayyad control into Sindh: Muhammad bin Qasim. Sindh is the land around the Indus River in the Northwestern part of the subcontinent, in present-day Pakistan. Muhammad bin Qasim led his army of 6,000 soldiers to the far eastern reaches of Persia, Makran.

He encountered little resistance as he made his way into India. When he reached the city of Nerun, on the banks of the Indus River, he was welcomed into the city by the Buddhist monks that controlled it. Most cities along the Indus thus voluntarily came under Muslim control, with no fighting. In some cases, oppressed Buddhist minorities reached out to the Muslim armies for protection against Hindu governors.

Despite the support and approval of much of the population, the Raja of Sindh, Dahir, opposed the Muslim expansion and mobilized his army against Muhammad bin Qasim. In 712, the two armies met, with a decisive victory for the Muslims. With the victory, all of Sindh came under Muslim control.

It is important to note, however, that the population of Sindh was not forced to convert to Islam at all. In fact, for almost everyone, there was no change in day-to-day life. Muhammad bin Qasim promised security and religious freedom to all Hindus and Buddhists under his control. For example, the Brahman caste continued their jobs as tax collectors and Buddhists monks continued to maintain their monastaries. Due to his religious tolerance and justice, many cities regularly greeted him and his armies with people dancing and music.

Patterns of Conversion
The successive waves of Muslim armies penetrating into India followed much the same pattern. Leaders such as Mahmud of Ghazni and Muhammad Tughluq expanded Muslim political domains without altering the religious or social fabric of Indian society.

Because pre-Islamic India was entirely based on a caste system in which society was broken into separate parts, conversion to Islam happened in a step-by-step process. Often, entire castes would convert to Islam at a time. This would happen for many different reasons. Often, however, the equality Islam provided was more attractive than the caste system’s organized racism. In the caste system, who you are born to determines your position in society. There was no opportunity for social mobility or to achieve greater than what your parents achieved. By converting to Islam, people had the opportunity to move up in society, and no longer were subservient to the Brahman caste.

Buddhism, which was once very popular in the subcontinent, slowly died out under Muslim rule. Traditionally, when people wanted to escape the caste system, they would move to the major population centers and convert to Buddhism. When Islam became an option, however, people began to convert to Islam instead of Buddhism, while still leaving the caste system. The myths of Islam violently destroying Buddhism in India are simply false. Buddhists were tolerated under Muslim rule and no evidence exists that shows forced conversions or violence against them.

Wandering teachers also had a major role in bringing Islam to the masses. Muslim scholars traveled throughout India, making it their goal to educate people about Islam. Many of them preached Sufi ideas, a more mystical approach to Islam that appealed to the people. These teachers had a major role in bringing Islam to the masses in the countryside, not just the upper classes around the Muslim rulers.

Did Islam Spread by Force?
While some claim that Islam’s huge population in India is a result of violence and forced conversion, the evidence does not back up this idea at all. Although Muslim leaders replaced Hindu kings in most areas, society was left as is. Stories of forced conversion are very few and often not credible enough to warrant academic discussion.

If Islam spread through violence and warfare, the Muslim community today in India would exist only in the areas closest to the rest of the Muslim world. Thus only the western part of the subcontinent would have any Muslim population at all. What we see instead is pockets of Islam throughout the subcontinent. For example, Bangladesh and its 150 million Muslims are in the far east, separated from other Muslim-majority areas by Hindu lands in India. Isolated communities of Muslims exist also exist in western Myanmar, central India, and eastern Sri Lanka. These communities of Muslims are proof of Islam spreading peacefully throughout India, regardless of whether or not a Muslim government existed there. If Islam spread by force as some claim, these communities of Muslims would not exist.

Conclusions
Islam is an integral part of India and its history. As the Indian subcontinent remains today a multi-ethnic and multi-religious place, it is important to understand the position Islam has in the region. The political claims that some making regarding Islam as if it is an invading religion and foriegn to the people of India need to be defied with the truth of Islam’s peaceful spread throughout India.


How Islam Spread in India | Lost Islamic History

 

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In the mid-1400s, the Muslim Sultanate of Malacca was one of the richest and most powerful kingdoms in S.E. Asia.


The Sultanate of Malacca

As a crossroads of trade between the Indian Ocean and East Asia, the Malay Archipelago has consistently been a wealthy, diverse, and politically important region. Islam began to spread in the region through trade not long after the life of Prophet Muhammad (S). For centuries, the people of Southeast Asia slowly began to accept Islam and create Muslim towns and kingdoms.

Perhaps the most important of these kingdoms was the Sultanate of Malacca (Melaka in Malay), which reached its peak in the mid-1400s. As a powerful and influential kingdom, the continued spread of Islam was intricately tied with the rise of the Malacca Sultanate. Unfortunately, however, the Malacca Sultanate would not last, as the newly powerful Portugal conquered the kingdom in 1511 and began a centuries-long period of European domination.

The Rise of Malacca

One of the most important highways of trade in the pre-modern world was the Strait of Malacca. Bordered on its northern side by the Malay Peninsula and on the southern side by the island of Sumatra, it was the main connection between the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea. As a result, most trade traffic in the region passed through this narrow strait, creating rich trade kingdoms on its shores.

Around the year 1400, a local king, Iskender Shah, established a new kingdom in the present-day location of Malacca, on the North Shore of the Malacca Strait. Some accounts attest to him being a convert to Islam, while others do not support this theory. In any case, within decades, the sultanate he founded, the Sultanate of Malacca, became one of the major promoters of Islam in the region.

As a powerful and expansive kingdom, the Sultanate of Malacca provided a common culture for the surrounding region that neighboring states attempted to adopt. This unified culture helped spark the spread of Islam throughout the region. Adopting Malay culture and converting to Islam were so connected that it was said when someone became Muslim, they masuk Melayu, meaning they “entered the realm of the Malays”.

Adding to the spread of Islam in the region was the continued presence of Indian and Arab Muslim traders coming from the West and bringing their religion with them and spreading it to the local population. Another factor were the numerous visits by the Chinese Muslim admiral Zheng He (who is known as Cheng Ho in Southeast Asia) who helped spread Islam throughout the Malay Archipelago. It is important to note that as the region slowly made its way into the fold of Islam, there were no forced conversions into the region.

The Arrival of the Portuguese

In the late 1400s, the Kingdom of Portugal began to search for new trade opportunities on the high seas. Instead of relying on land routes to Asian spice markets (that were dominated by the Venetians), the Portuguese decided to find a sea route to China. The explorer Vasco de Gama managed to sail around the southern tip of Africa in the late 1400s, with the aid of Muslim navigators who were familiar with the Indian Ocean.

With this new discovery in Europe, Portugal quickly became a naval power in the Indian Ocean and attempted to dominate the Asian spice market. After establishing bases in Indian cities such as Goa and Calicut around 1510, the Portuguese looked to the East to expand their trade empire. In 1511, they decided to conquer the important port of Malacca to control the trade with China. At first they attempted to create friendly relationships with the sultan of Malacca, Mahmud Shah and use that as a foothold in the kingdom. However, after being warned by Tamil Muslims who had seen Portuguese atrocities in Goa, Sultan Mahmud refused to allow the Portuguese into the city.

As a result, on July 25th, 1511, the Portuguese commander, Afonso de Albuquerque, began an assault on the city. Despite allying with neighboring Muslim states, the Sultanate was unable to resist the superior Portuguese weapons and firepower, and by late August the city was conquered. The Portuguese soon began construction on a fortress, known as A Famosa which helped protect the Portuguese in the city from Malay counter-attacks. Much of the city center, including the main mosque and government buildings, was destroyed to provide stone for the fortress. This was the official end of the Sultanate of Malacca as the region came under foreign domination for the first time in its history.

For the next 150 years, the Portuguese would control the famous and rich Strait of Malacca and attempt to subjugate the local population of Malays. Attempts to convert people to Catholicism were overall a failure, but the economic and political domination of the region that would later become Malaysia and Indonesia would continue into the 20th century. After the Portuguese came the Dutch in the 1600s and the British in the 1800s. Despite the European colonial period, Islam continued to flourish in the region and still provides the basis for society in Southeast Asia.

The Sultanate of Malacca | Lost Islamic History

 

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The state of California was given its current name by Spanish explorers in the 1500s. They were familiar with a novel written in 1510 by Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo in which the main character was a queen called Calafia. He adapted her name from the title khalifah (califa in Spanish) since in the novel she joins forces with a Muslim army. When Spanish explorers sailed to the west coast of North America, they named the land California, since it was reminiscent of the land that Queen Calafia ruled over.

wow ! @Talon

@Jazzbot @pkuser2k12

 

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As Russia and Ukraine seemed poised to fight over Crimea, don't forget the original inhabitants of the region.

 

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The first Muslim member of the House of Lords in the UK was Lord Henry Stanley, a British convert to Islam, in 1869.

 

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On this day (9 March 632), Prophet Muhammad ﷺ gave his Farewell Sermon at the Mount of Arafat.

"An Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab nor a non-Arab has any superiority over an Arab; also a white has no superiority over black nor a black has any superiority over white except by piety and good action."

 

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How To Make Money – Ibn Khaldun and Taxes


The 40th president of the United States, Ronald Reagan famously stated in a piece in the New York Times in 1993,

“May I offer you the advice of the 14th century Arab historian Ibn Khaldun, who said: “At the beginning of the empire, the tax rates were low and the revenues were high. At the end of the empire, the tax rates were high and the revenues were low.”

And, no, I did not personally know Ibn Khaldun, although we may have had some friends in common!”1

Although one may agree or disagree with the conservative economic policies of Ronald Reagan, there is no denying the genius of the man he is quoting – Ibn Khaldun. He was centuries ahead of his time. His monumental work, the Muqaddimah, published in 1377, is hard to categorize. All at once it is a resource on history, Islam, science, sociology, economics, politics, warfare, and philosophy. One article on the entire book would be a disservice to Ibn Khaldun and the great amount of knowledge he left for subsequent generations. Instead, this article will focus only on some of his economic ideas, which centuries later form some of the basic ideas we use in government taxation today.

Who is Ibn Khaldun?
He was born in 1332 in Tunis, North Africa to a family of wealthy Andalusians. His family had been forced to flee the Iberian Peninsula in the middle of the Christian conquest of that land from Muslim rulers. At a young age he was educated in the religious studies of Quran, Hadith, jurisprudence, and law, as well as sciences such as physics, mathematics, logic, and philosophy. His strong base in a wide variety of disciplines would help shape his understanding of the world and the way he analyzed it.


A statue of Ibn Khaldun in Tunis, Tunisia

Early in his adult life, he held a number of minor clerical posts across North Africa. When he was offered a job in the emirate of Granada in al-Andalus (Spain) in 1364, he jumped at the opportunity. He worked there as a successful diplomat for government of Granada, working out a peace treaty between Granada and neighboring Christian states. Political intrigue, however, led to him to abandon his post and move back to Africa, where he compiled his Muqaddimah.

Tax Revenues
It is telling that Ibn Khaldun’s discussion of economics is almost always tied to a discussion of government, and the rise and fall of dynasties. He claims that dynasties have a natural life span, almost never going longer than three generations, at which point a new dynasty rises to replace it. Directly tied to this lifespan, is a pattern of taxation that helps determine how long a dynasty or government will actually last.

At the beginning of his section on tax revenues, he states the quote mentioned by Ronald Reagan about low taxes meaning high revenues and high taxes meaning low revenues (for the government). In the next sentence, Ibn Khaldun gives a reason for this:

The reason for this is that when the dynasty follows the ways (sunan) of the religion, it imposes only such taxes as are stipulated by the religious law, such as charity taxes, the land tax, and the poll tax. They mean small assessments, because, as everyone knows, the charity tax on propertyis low.2

Islamically, the religious guidelines for taxes are in fact quite low. The zakat (charity tax), which goes to the poor and not the government, is only 2.5% of accumulated wealth (in gold, silver, or general currency). The other taxes, including land taxes, and poll taxes have historically never been oppressively great in the Muslim world. Ibn Khaldun is making the argument here that when a government abides by its Islamic principles and does not attempt to tax the people excessively, they will find greater success in generating tax revenues.

Honest Government
In conjunction with this, in the next section Ibn Khaldun states that one of the reasons that early tax revenues are so successful is because early in a dynasty the ruler usually is more interested in the unity and cohesion of the state than his own personal wealth:

“At the beginning of the dynasty, the revenues are distributed among the tribeand the people who share in the ruler’s group feeling, in accordance with their usefulness and group feeling and because they are needed to establish the dynasty, as we have stated before. Under these circumstances, their leader refrains in their favor from (claiming) the revenues which they would like to have.”3

Here Ibn Khaldun is offering an explanation of why low taxes are effective early in a dynasty – the lack of government corruption. As long as the government is interested in the unity of the state and the effectiveness of the government, the tax revenues will be used to support and strengthen the state’s offices. In contrast, when an empire becomes corrupt, with a large proportion of the tax revenue going straight towards the ruler’s personal expenses, taxes must naturally be raised to support such uses.

A legendary example of this was the second Caliph of Islam, Umar ibn al-Khattab, who ruled from 634 to 644. He was known to have two different lamps that he would use to light his house. One lamp was funded by tax payer money, and he would use that one only while doing work in his official capacity as the political leader of the Muslim world. The second lamp was funded by his own personal money, and he used it while doing anything besides governmental work. His reason for this was to not waste the tax money of the state on his personal expenses. Thus, during the reign of Umar the newly established Muslim empire was highly effective in most enterprises.

Another example was the reign of Salah al-Din in the 1100s. When he died in 1193, he was known to have only had a few gold and silver coins in his possession, despite being the sultan of Egypt and Syria. He famously used any government money on strengthening the army or other parts of the government. With such actions, he was able to build a strong state that liberated Jerusalem from Crusader control.

Supply-Side Economics
Ibn Khaldun later states another problem with high taxation:

The result [of high taxation] is that the interest of the subjects in cultural enterprises disappears, since when they compare expenditures and taxes with their income and gain and see the little profit they make, they lose all hope. Therefore, many of them refrain from all cultural activity. The result is that the total tax revenue goes down, as (the number of) the individual assessments goes down.4

Ibn Khaldun is making the argument that when a government taxes people greatly (particularly those who have the ability to create jobs), they will no longer feel an incentive to invest their money in more business enterprises (he refers to business enterprises as “cultural activities” here). The reason for this is simple: if the government taxes your money, you have less money to spend on your business, leading to economic stagnation and a thus a decline in tax revenue in general.


President Reagan in 1981 explaining a tax reduction plan in a televised address. Reagan was heavily influenced by supply-side economic ideas.

This idea is today one of the basic principles of supply-side economics. People who support supply-side economics argue that corporations and the wealthy should have low tax rates. The low tax rates will give them more money on hand that can be used to expand business, thus giving more economic opportunities (through jobs) for those who are less wealthy. For this reason, this approach is also called “trickle-down economics”. This forms the basis of many conservative economic policies in the modern world. Conservative politicians (such as Ronald Reagan) have used this approach to defend lower tax rates for the wealthy against more liberal economic ideas of higher taxes on the wealthy.

The Laffer Curve

A basic Laffer Curve showing an optimal tax rate that produces the most revenue at 70%

Ibn Khaldun’s ideas about finding a balance in taxation that leads to higher revenues later became known as the Laffer Curve. The Laffer Curve is used by economists today to determine the perfect taxation rate to produce the most government revenue. The curve usually takes a parabolic shape, with excessively low tax rates leading to low revenues and excessively high tax rates also leading to low revenues. According to this idea, there is a perfect tax rate in the middle that would lead to high revenues without taxing people so much that the incentive to invest further in business is discouraged.

The Laffer Curve is named after American economist, Arthur Laffer. Laffer himself does not claim to have invented to idea, however. He made clear that he got the idea from Ibn Khaldun, stating:

“The Laffer Curve, by the way, was not invented by me. For example, Ibn Khaldun, a 14th century Muslim philosopher, wrote in his work the Muqaddimah: ‘It should be known that at the beginning of the dynasty, taxation yields a large revenue from small assessments. At the end of the dynasty, taxation yields a small revenue from large assessments.’ “5

Conclusions
Clearly, the economic ideas of Ibn Khaldun regarding tax rates were far ahead of his time. Although he lived in the 1300s, his ideas still form much of the basis for modern capitalist thought. The economic and governmental ideas provided in his Muqaddimah are timeless guidelines that should clearly have a role in the modern world. The truly amazing thing, however, is that this article only touched upon some of Ibn Khaldun’s economic ideas. The Muqaddimah is also packed with philosophies of history, government, religion, sociology, psychology, and education. The true genius of this Muslim man from North Africa is far beyond just tax rates and Laffer Curves.



How To Make Money – Ibn Khaldun and Taxes | Lost Islamic History​

 

[MooshMoosh]

Islamic History never gets old.

 

[Kompromat]

I have got my hands on the Muqadimah and going to read it soon.