Note 126 — Chapter IX · THE SPREAD OF ISLAM IN INDIA.

It is difficult to say when this Islamising influence first made itself felt in the country. The first Muhammadan king of Kashmīr, Ṣadr al-Dīn,126 is said to have owed his conversion to a certain Darwesh Bulbul Shāh in the early part of the fourteenth century. This saint was the only religious teacher who could satisfy his craving for religious truth when, dissatisfied with his own Hindu faith, he looked for a more acceptable form of doctrine. Towards the end of the same century (in 1388) the progress of Islam was most materially furthered by the advent of Sayyid ʻAlī Hamadānī, a fugitive from his native city of Hamadān in Persia, where he had incurred the wrath of Tīmūr. He was accompanied by 700 Sayyids, who established hermitages all over the country and by their influence appear to have assured the acceptance of the new religion. Their advent appears, however, to have also stirred up considerable fanaticism, as Sultan Sikandar (1393–1417) acquired the name of Butshikan from his destruction of Hindu idols and temples, and his prime minister, a converted Hindu, set on foot a fierce persecution of the adherents of his old faith, but on his death toleration was again made the rule of the kingdom.127 Towards the close of the fifteenth century, a missionary, by name Mīr Shams al-Dīn, belonging to a Shīʻah sect, came from ʻIrāq, and, with the aid of his disciples, won over a large number of converts in Kashmīr.