Introduction
A COMPLEX OPENING
The Opening Pages of Indo-Islamic History
Within ithin a few years of Hazrat Muhammad's death in AD 632, Arab invasions started; 'the armies of Islam' fanning out from the 'Hejaz, spreading rapidly through Persia, Iraq, Maghreb, the Levant' and the Byzantine lands. By the eighth century AD, catholic Spain had submitted to the sword of Islam, which now knocked on the peripheries of today's France. The Arabs by now held the largest, and the most powerful empire in the world, from the Bay of Biscay to the shores of the Indus, and from the Aral Sea to the Upper Nile'. By AD 662, the spreading influence of the Khalifa began touching the land frontiers of Hindustan, too, but neither the Umayyads nor the Abbasids succeeded in moving farther in land. Contrary to the generally held views, it took the Arabs several attempts, and close to four hundred years to gain a foothold in India