ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the region of the Indian Ocean and on the particular history of Muslims in that region. It mainly focuses on the region of the Indian Ocean and its history in the long duree constitutes an attempt to establish relationships between technological and general socioeconomic and political developments, and how the Muslim reactions to those developments, helped shape particular Muslim identities within this region. The Islamization process of the south Indian towns started well before the Muslims invasions from Central Asia which brought Islam to north India. By the 12th and 13th centuries the coastal towns had well-established Muslim communities, and the Islamization of the inland Tamil communities is dated in the 13th and 14th century. Conventional Western historiography on Muslims in the 18th century has portrayed the period as a 'dark age', with a focus on the disintegration of the gunpowder empires and a general defeat to Western powers.
