ABSTRACT
The founder of Islam, Muhammad, was born in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, and became an orphan at an early age. Islam preaches brotherhood of all believers and equality of men before God, irrespective of color, race, or class. The followers of Islam were divided between its two principal sects—the Shii, or Shia, who believed that the khalifas had to be blood relatives of the Prophet, and the Sunni, who did not. Political Islam came to India first with the Arab conquest of Sind in 712 CE, ninety years after it was founded in Saudi Arabia. The period of the so-called Sultanate of Delhi extended from 1208 when Muslim rule was, for the first time, established in Delhi to the beginning of the Mughal rule in 1526. The Sultanate of Delhi was held by five separate dynasties: the Slave Dynasty, the Khaljis, the Tughluqs, the Sayyids, and the Lodis.
