ABSTRACT
It was in the seventh century, AD 610 to be precise, thatMuhammad, a Meccan merchant, given to austere tastes andsolitary meditation had a grand vision which led to the founding of a new world religion in the Arabian peninsula. The first person to accept Muhammad’s message as prophetic revelation was his wife, Khadija, giving her a position of pre-eminence in what was to soon become a very large community of the Faithful. The role of women in the construction of the community of Islam is quite crucial, but scholars are only now turning their attention to uncovering that veiled reality. The historical spotlight has remained on the spread of the Islamic doctrine through a dramatic expansion of Muslim political power. By the fifteenth century Muslims either ruled or lived in all known corners of the world, presenting one of the greatest challenges to earlier established religions and cultures. But contrary to stereotypical distortions of Islam as a religion of the sword and of Muslims as unbending fanatics thriving on hatred and violence against non-believers, the Prophet Muhammad’s teachings allowed for tolerance and assimilation of regional and local cultures. One of the most spectacular of these processes of accommodation was the fashioning of an Indo-Islamic cultural tradition in the South Asian subcontinent. Both military conquest and religious conversion in the medieval period need to be understood in historical context.
