Note 34 — Chapter IX · THE SPREAD OF ISLAM IN INDIA.
Reading edition
In spite of the circumstantial character of this narrative, there is no evidence of its historicity. Popular belief puts the date of the events recorded as far back as the lifetime of the Prophet; with a mild scepticism Zayn al-Dīn thought that they could not have been earlier than the third century of the Hijrah;34 but there is no more authority for the one date than for the other, or for the common Mappilla tradition of the existence of the tomb of a Hindu king at Zafār, on the coast of Arabia, bearing the inscription, “ʻAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sāmirī, arrived A.H. 212, died A.H. 216”;35 and the mosque at Madāyi, said to have been founded by Mālik b. Dīnār, bears an inscription commemorating its erection in A.D. 1124.36