310 A BRIEF SURVEY OF HUMAN HISTORY

homogeneity. The prime factor in our altered national
composition has been the almost unassimilable racial and
teligious element introduced by Islam. The history of this
impact is to us, therefore, of more than mere scholastic in-
terest—

'Except in India, wherever Muhammadans succeeded in
establishing themselves, they transformed society and cul-
ture beyond recognition. Islam simply came, saw, and
conquered. Hindu India was both weak, divided arid de-
cadent. And yet, after centuries of continuous fighting,
India could not be equally submerged. Paradoxical as it
might seem, therefore, India on the eve of the Muslim in-
vasions was both weak and unconquerable. She was poli-
tically most vulnerable, but culturally all but impregnable/1

The first Muslim conqueror of India was Imiad-ud-din
Muhammad (ibn Kasim). He was an Arab and was act-
ing as the agent of the governor of Irak who was himself
under the Caliph of Bagdad. He subdued Sind in 712
A.D. and the Arabs continued to hold it for a little over a
century and a half (to 871 A.D.) But impermanent as this
conquest proved, so far as the Arabs were concerned, Sind
has remained ever since a predominantly Muslim province,
The next Muhammadan invader was the Turkish Mahmud
of Ghazni who raided India seventeen times (1001—25),
despoiled the great Hindu temples of Nagarkot, Thanesar,
Mathura, Brindavan, Kanouj, and Somnath, and earned for
himself the title of Idol-breaker :

The mighty Mahmud, the Victorious Lord,
That all the misbelieving and black Horde
Of Fears and Sorrows that infest the soul
Scatters and slays with his enchanted Sword.

1. S. R. Sharma, The Crescent m India, pp. 1-2.