ABSTRACT
The central fact in the political history of India during the period under review is the decline of the Mughal empire and the erosion of Mughal imperial authority. Philby, the well-known historian of Saudi Arabia basing himself on an authoritative Arab historian of the Wahhabi Movement, writes that, “Forgetting the pure Islamic doctrine of the Oneness of a jealous God, they had gone a-whoring after minor prophets and saints, living and dead. The process had, of course, been gradual and spread over many centuries, with the result that the Arabs of the early eighteenth century had come traditionally to regard their backsliding as the true faith.” The more manifest example of all this at the popular level was the practice of seeking the holy men’s intercession for God’s favours and the visiting of the tombs of religiously eminent personages or the dead saints.
