ABSTRACT
Over the last several decades, a new debate has emerged in the scholarly discourse on medieval Islamization of Kashmir between the proponents of emigrant Sūfi Shaykhs from Central Asia and Persia, most renowned among them Mīr Sayyid ‘Ali Hamadāni, and those of the indigenous Rishī order, founded by Shaykh Nūruddīn Rishī. However, scant scholarly attention has been given to articulations of Islamic space in medieval Kashmir and the Persianate-Islamicate territorialization of pre-Islamic medieval Kashmir from a politico-cultural perspective. Accordingly, this chapter considers Islamization as a dynamic process of adaption, adoption and reconfiguration of earlier traditions and spaces undertaken through a complex yet creative network of relationships and multiplicities involving emigrant Sūfi Sayyids, their accompanying ‘ulama and other ṭawā’if, sultans, nobles, indigenous rishīs, neo-convert elites, and landed aristocracy of medieval Kashmir. Exploring the interplay of these networks and multiplicities, this chapter steers the scholarly debate on medieval Islamization of Kashmir away from its focus on the prominent sectarian agents of Islamization and toward an exploration of heterogeneous multiplicities of Islamization networks among diverse socio-religious, socio-political, and religio-political assemblages in Kashmir between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. Specifically, this chapter focuses on the neo-converts of the early Islamization phase, who were crucial agents of the Islamization process for their deterritorializing material practices, and who formed conduits between Perso-Islamicate tradition and the existing Brahmanical order.
