The History of Jihad: From Muhammad to ISIS

by Robert Spencer

  Firuz Shah, said Barani, “made the laws of the Prophet his guide.”82 Accordingly, when the sultan discovered that Hindus were not passively accepting the destruction of their temples, but were building new ones, he was enraged. “Under divine guidance,” he recalled later, “I destroyed these edifices, and I killed those leaders of infidelity who seduced others into error, and the lower orders I subjected to stripes and chastisement, until this abuse was entirely abolished.”83 At Kohana, he had some Hindus who had dared to construct a new temple executed in public, “as a warning that no zimmi could follow such wicked practices in a Musalman country.”84 He treated a Hindu sect with similar harshness: “I cut off the heads of the elders of this sect, and imprisoned and banished the rest, so that their abominable practices were put an end to.”85 After discovering that the Brahmins had been exempted from paying the jizya by previous Muslim rulers, he commanded that they pay, and held firm even through a Brahmin hunger strike.86

  At Maluh, near Delhi, he discovered that even some “graceless” Muslims were attending a Hindu religious festival. “I ordered that the leaders of these people and the promoters of this abomination should be put to death. I forbade the infliction of any severe punishment on the Hindus in general, but I destroyed their idol temples and instead thereof raised mosques.”87

  Firuz Shah was likewise zealous for Sunni Islam, recounting that “the sect of Shias, also called Rawdfiz, had endeavoured to make proselytes.”88 The Delhi sultan began a jihad against them: “I seized them all and I convicted them of their errors and perversions. On the most zealous I inflicted capital punishment [siyasat], and the rest I visited with censure [tazir], and threats of public punishment. Their books I burnt in public and by the grace of God the influence of this sect was entirely suppressed.”89 Upon discovering that a Muslim was claiming to be the Mahdi, he demanded that the “doctors learned in the holy Law” kill him forthwith; they complied. “For this good action,” said Firuz Shah piously, “I hope to receive future reward.”90

  Under the pressure of the relentless persecution they suffered, many Hindus converted to Islam, as Firuz Shah later recalled with satisfaction: “I encouraged my infidel subjects to embrace the religion of the prophet, and I proclaimed that every one who repeated the creed and became a Musalman should be exempt from the jizya or poll-tax. Information of this came to the ears of the people at large, and great numbers of Hindus presented themselves, and were admitted to the honour of Islam. Thus they came forward day by day from every quarter, and, adopting the faith, were exonerated from the jizya, and were favoured with presents and honours.”91

  Meanwhile, there was no mercy to be accorded to the captive people. In 1391, the Muslims of Gujarat complained to Muhammad Shah, the son and second successor of Firuz Shah as Tughlaq sultan of Delhi, about a local governor. His crime? Being too lenient with the Hindus. Muhammad Shah immediately removed the wayward governor from office and replaced him with Muzaffar Khan, a man who was less likely to be pliant.92 According to the Tabqat i-Akbari, a sixteenth-century history of India written by the Muslim historian Nizamuddin Ahmed, the Hindus of the Kingdom of Idar began a full-scale revolt, whereupon “the armies of Zafar Khan occupied the Kingdom of Idar and started plundering and destroying it. They levelled with the ground whatever temple they found.”93 Pursuing the fleeing Raja of Idar to the fortress of Bijanagar, “in the morning Zafar Khan entered the fort and, after expressing his gratefulness to Allah, and destroying the temples, he appointed officers in the fort.”94

  Anointing himself Muzaffar Shah, Sultan of Gujarat, independent of the Tughlaqs in Delhi, he proceeded to Somnath in 1395, where the Hindus had rebuilt the temple that Muslims had previously destroyed.95 “On the way,” according to the Tabqat i-Akbari, “he made Rajputs food for his sword and demolished whatever temple he saw at any place. When he arrived at Somnat, he got the temple burnt and the idol of Somnat broken. He made a slaughter of the infidels and laid waste the city.”96 Enraged at what he called the “impudence” of the Hindus, he killed many of them, had a mosque built on the site of the temple, and appointed officials to enforce the Sharia.97

  In 1401, when the Hindus had the temerity to build a temple there again, he returned and once again tore down the temple and had a mosque built.98 Some Hindus resisted; according to Nizamuddin Ahmed, the Muslim warrior Azam Humayun “reached that place speedily and he slaughtered that group. Those who survived took shelter in the fort of the port at Dip [Diu]. After some time, he conquered that place as well, slaughtered that group also, and got their leaders trampled under the feet of elephants. He got the temples demolished and a Jami Masjid constructed”—that is, the main mosque for the area. “Having appointed a qazi, mufti and other guardians of Shariah, he returned to the capital.”99

  Tamerlane in India

  Meanwhile, the Mongols had designs upon India as well. In 1398, Tamerlane, heedless of the authority that the Abbasid caliphs had bestowed upon the Tughlaqs, invaded the Indian subcontinent. His object was not, at least initially, to challenge the power of the Delhi sultanate. An erudite man, Tamerlane is unusual among the great Muslim warriors of jihad in leaving behind an autobiography. In it he made clear, as had other jihad leaders in India before him, that the invasion was all about Islam. He quoted the Qur’an: “O Prophet, fight against the disbelievers and the hypocrites and be harsh upon them.” (9:73) Then he explained his own motives:

  My object in the invasion of Hindustan is to lead a campaign against the infidels, to convert them to the true faith according to the command of the Prophet (on whom be the blessing of God!), to purify the land from the defilement of [misbelief] and polytheism, and overthrow the temples and idols, whereby we shall be Ghazis [raiders] and Mujahids [jihadis], champions and soldiers of the Faith before God.100

  Sharaf ad-Din Ali Yazdi, a fifteenth-century Persian who wrote a biography of Tamerlane, observed that “the Alcoran [Qur’an] says the highest dignity man can attain is that of making war in person against the enemies of his religion. Mahomet [Muhammad] advises the same thing, according to the tradition of the mussulman [Muslim] doctors: wherefore the great Temur always strove to exterminate the infidels, as much to acquire that glory, as to signalise himself by the greatness of his conquests.”101

  Tamerlane also expressed the hope that “the army of Islam might gain something by plundering the wealth and valuables of the Hindus.”102 At the fortress of Kator on the Kashmir, he recounted with satisfaction, Tamerlane ordered the warriors of jihad to “kill all the men, to make prisoners of the women and children, and to plunder and lay waste all their property.”103 Then he “directed towers to be built on the mountain of the skulls of those obstinate unbelievers.”104

  At Bhatnir, he “made great slaughter,” as the Qur’an directs (8:67), at a Rajput fortress. He wrote in his autobiography: “In a short space of time all the people in the fort were put to the sword, and in the course of one hour the heads of 10,000 infidels were cut off. The sword of Islam was washed in the blood of the infidels, and all the goods and effects, the treasure and the grain which for many a long year had been stored in the fort became the spoil of my soldiers. They set fire to the houses and reduced them to ashes, and they razed the buildings and the fort to the ground.”105

  Tamerlane clearly relished all of this bloodshed and thought of himself as the executor of the wrath of Allah, as commanded in the Qur’an: “Fight them; Allah will punish them by your hands.” (9:14) At Sarsuti, he recounted, “all these infidel Hindus were slain, their wives and children were made prisoners and their property and their goods became the spoils of the victors.”106 At Haryana, he told his men to “plunder and destroy and kill every one whom they met.”107 The jihadis obeyed; they “plundered every village, killed the men, and carried a number of Hindu prisoners, both male and female.”108 At Delhi, the warriors of jihad took some Muslim prisoners, which was understandable, since the city was the capital of the Tughlaq’s Delhi sultana
te.

  Tamerlane commanded that the Muslim prisoners “should be separated and saved, but the infidels should all be dispatched to hell with the proselytizing sword.”109

  Even when those prisoners had been killed, however, the immense success of Tamerlane’s jihad presented him with a problem: he had a hundred thousand Hindu prisoners. As he prepared to face an army of the Tughlaqs in an internecine jihad battle, his advisors told him “that on the great day of battle these 100,000 prisoners could not be left with the baggage, and that it would be entirely opposed to the rules of war to set these idolaters and enemies of Islam at liberty.”110 Thus, “no other course remained but that of making them all food for the sword.”111 Tamerlane recalls: “I proclaimed throughout the camp that every man who had infidel prisoners should put them to death, and whoever neglected to do so should himself be executed and his property given to the informer. When this order became known to the ghazis of Islam, they drew their swords and put their prisoners to death. One hundred thousand infidels, impious idolaters, were on that day slain. Maulana Nasiruddin Umar, a counselor and man of learning who, in all his life, had never killed a sparrow, now, in execution of my order, slew with his sword fifteen idolatrous Hindus, who were his captives.”112

  Tamerlane’s warriors defeated the Tughlaqs and found in Delhi that “a great number of Hindus with their wives and children, and goods and valuables, had come into the city from all the country round.”113 He ordered them to be taken captive, and their property given to the Muslims.

  Many of them [Hindus] drew their swords and resisted.… The flames of strife were thus lighted and spread through the whole city from Jahanpanah and Siri to Old Delhi, burning up all it reached. The Hindus set fire to their houses with their own hands, burned their wives and children in them and rushed into the fight and were killed.… On that day, Thursday, and all the night of Friday, nearly 15,000 Turks were engaged in slaying, plundering and destroying. When morning broke on Friday, all my army…went off to the city and thought of nothing but killing, plundering and making prisoners.… The following day, Saturday the 17th, all passed in the same way, and the spoil was so great that each man secured from fifty to a hundred prisoners, men, women, and children. There was no man who took less than twenty. The other booty was immense in rubies, diamonds, garnets, pearls, and other gems and jewels; ashrafis, tankas of gold and silver of the celebrated Alai coinage: vessels and silver ornaments of Hindu women were obtained in such quantities as to exceed all account. Excepting the quarter of the Sayids, the ulama and other Musulmans, the whole city was sacked.114

  The Jihad Against China

  In 1404, Tamerlane resolved to take the jihad to China, even though he had been warned by one of his envoys who had gone to Beijing that “the Emperor of China was lord of so many warriors that when his host went forth to wage war beyond the limits of his Empire, without counting those who marched with him he could leave four hundred thousand horsemen behind to guard his realm together with numerous regiments of footguards.”115

  Tamerlane was undeterred. On his way to China, he decided to subdue for Islam the Kingdom of Georgia, which he had left alone many times as he passed to and from India. His warriors found a way into the fortress of Kurtin, where, shouting “Allahu akbar,” they surprised and overwhelmed the Georgians. Delighted, Tamerlane rewarded these jihadis with gorgeous robes, weapons, horses, land, and a large number of sex slaves.116

  As Tamerlane advanced in Georgia, according to a contemporary chronicler, “he plundered seven hundred towns and villages, laying waste the cultivated lands, ruining the monasteries of the Christians and razing the churches to the very foundations.”117 He continued his destruction of churches and the countryside, killing so many people that the piles of skulls became the tallest feature of the landscape. When the king of Georgia agreed to pay the jizya, however, it was time to move on to China.118

  Tamerlane’s biographer Yazdi compared the advance of the jihadis to the progress of medicine in the human body.

  In the same manner, God, who was pleased to purge the world, made use of a medicine which was both sweet and bitter, to wit the clemency and the wrath of the incomparable Temur; and to that effect inspired in him an ambition to conquer all Asia and to expel the several tyrants thereof. He established peace and security in this part of the world so that a single man might carry a silver basin filled with gold from the east of Asia to the west. But yet he could not accomplish this great affair without bringing in some measure upon the places he conquered destruction, captivity and plunder, which are the concomitants of victory.119

  Tamerlane’s desire for cleansing destruction, captivity, and plunder was stymied by the savage Central Asian winter, which was so severe, said Yazdi, that “several men and horses perished in the road, some losing their hands and feet, others their ears and noses.”120 The ground was blanketed with snow so thick that the warriors of jihad made their way only with great difficulty. But Tamerlane was undeterred. The march to China would continue.

  The Muslim historian Ahmed ibn Arabshah, a contemporary of Tamerlane, noted the warlord’s determination not to let the weather stop him. But the onslaught was relentless. “But winter dealt damage to him, breaking on him from the flanks with every wind kindled and raging against his army with all winds blowing aslant, most violent, and smote the shoot of the army with its intense cold.”121

  Still Tamerlane would not call off the march, even as the warriors of jihad began to succumb to the inhuman conditions. “On all sides,” said Arabshah with a fine poetic flair, “with the snow that fell from above the whole earth became like the plain of the last judgment or a sea which God forged out of silver. When the sun rose and the frost glittered, the sight was wonderful, the sky of Turkish gems and the earth of crystal, specks of gold filling the space between.”122

  Beautiful, but deadly. By the middle of January 1405, the jihadis had gotten only as far as Otrar in Kazakhstan. Everywhere the snow was so deep as to be impassible. Soon the great warrior, by now sixty-eight years old, caught a cold. His condition rapidly worsened, no doubt in part because one of the treatments tried on him involved covering his chest with ice. He asked those attending him to say “Allahu akbar” and recite the Fatiha, the first chapter of the Qur’an, to comfort him. Before long, he was dead. China was saved from the sword of jihad by the deep snow, the bitter cold, and the freezing wind.

  India: The Long Persecution

  The jihad in India found more favorable weather. In 1414, the Gujarat sultan Ahmed Shah appointed an official whose sole task was to ensure the destruction of all the temples in Gujarat. The following year, he invaded Sidhpur and converted the temple at Rudramahalaya into a mosque.123 In 1419, according to the Tabqat i-Akbari, Ahmed Shah “encamped near Champaner” and “destroyed temples wherever he found them.”124

  Muslim rulers in other parts of India behaved in the same way. Sultan Mahmud Khalji of the Marwa sultanate in central India, who reigned in the middle of the fifteenth century, once approached a fort near Kumbhalmir that was, said Nizamuddin Ahmed, “a very big fort of that province, and well-known for its strength all over Hindustan.” The Muslims quickly saw that “a magnificent temple had been erected in front of that fort and surrounded by ramparts on all sides. That temple had been filled with weapons of war and other stores.”125

  The Muslims were victorious, whereupon “a large number of Rajputs were made prisoners and slaughtered. About the edifices of the temple, he ordered that they should be stocked with wood and fired, and water and vinegar was sprinkled on the walls. That magnificent mansion which it had taken many years to raise, was destroyed in a few moments. He got the idols broken and they were handed over to the butchers for being used as weights while selling meat. The biggest idol which had the form of a ram was reduced to powder which was put in betel-leaves to be given to the Rajputs so that they could eat their god.”126

  At Mandalgadh in 1456, Mahmud K
halji “issued orders that trees should be uprooted, houses demolished and no trace should be left of human habitation.” When the Muslims defeated the Hindus, “Sultan Mahmud offered thanks to Allah in all humility. Next day, he entered the fort. He got the temples demolished and their materials used in the construction of a Jami Masjid. He appointed there a qazi, a mufti, a muhtasib, a khatib and a muezzin, and established order in that place.”127 He also led jihadi warriors into Nepal, where they destroyed the temple of Svayambhunath in Katmandu.128

  Islamic piety always underlay the jihad. A Hindu ruler, the Mandalika of Junagadh, was paying tribute to the Gujarat sultan Mahmud Bigarha, but in 1469 Mahmud invaded Junagadh anyway. The Mandalika, dismayed, reminded the sultan that he had always been prompt and regular with his payments. Mahmud was unmoved, explaining to the Mandalika that he wasn’t interested in money as much as he was in spreading Islam. He forced the Mandalika to convert and renamed Junagadh Mustafabad.129 Mahmud also offered conversion to the Hindu ruler of Champaner, Raja Jayasingh, but Raja refused and was duly murdered. Mahmud renamed Champaner after himself, Mahmudabad.130

  The Bahmani sultan Muhammad Shah was just as pious. The sixteenth-century Persian historian Firishta recounted that at Kondapalli in 1481, “the King, having gone to view the fort, broke down an idolatrous temple and killed some brahmans who officiated at it, with his own hands, as a point of religion. He then gave orders for a mosque to be erected on the foundations of the temple, and ascending the pulpit, repeated a few prayers, distributed alms, and commanded the Khutba [Friday sermon] to be read in his name. Khwaja Mahmud Gawan now represented that as his Majesty had slain some infidels with his own hands, he might fairly assume the title of Ghazi [warrior for Islam], an appellation of which he was very proud. Muhammad Shah was the first of his race who had slain a brahman.”131