The rise of the five Deccan sultanates from the chaos of the Bahmanī empire, through the assertion of autonomy by the provincial governors, has been mentioned in the previous chapter. Their subsequent political history is largely a record of continuous strife between them, with occasional and variously aligned alliances but only on one significant occasion a community of interest. Internally, however, in spite of their border troubles, they developed major literary, religious and cultural centres.

To some extent all the sultanates inherited the factionalism of local and foreign elements which had led to the disruption of the Bahmani empire; although the religious tensions implicit in this faction were less prominent, as the influential Shī‘a tended to be concentrated in the Shī‘ī sultanates, Bījāpur and Golkondā. The Barīd Shāhis in Bīdar and the ‘Imād Shāhīs in Barār were Sunnī, as were the Nizam Shāhīs of Ahmad-nagar until Burhān I adopted Shi‘ism in 944/1537. The sultanate of the Barīd Shāhīs was gradually encroached upon in the north and west by Bījāpur, against which Bīdar made occasional alliances with the other sultanates; Bījāpur was subject to continual pressure on the south from the Vijayanagara kingdom, and the only occasion on which all the sultanates, except the northern Barār, acted jointly was when their confederation defeated Vijayanagara at the battle of Tālīkota in 972/15 64-5. Bīdar was finally annexed by the ‘Ādil Shāhis of Bijāpur in 1028/1619.

Algeria (1830–1962)

The occupation of Algiers (1830) led at first to the conquest of Algeria and then to that of the whole of the Maghrib by the French; the conquest was limited until 1834 to a few points on the coast but progressively extended towards the interior in spite of some spectacular reverses. The treaties which were concluded in 1834 and 1837 with the most representative chief of western and central Algeria, the Amīr ‘Abd al-Qādir, seem to have left the French freedom of action in the east. Thus they occupied Constantine in October 1837. The expedition of the Duc d'Orléans which linked Constantine to Algiers without any armed opposition, far from indicating the pacification of Algeria, as the French government maintained, was the beginning of a period of ruthless conflict. On the one side there was General Bugeaud, governor-general from the end of 1840, who obtained from the government men, supplies, credit, and above all complete freedom of movement; on the other, ’Abd al-Qādir, whose authority was based on his personality, his readiness to use force to reduce opposition, his desire to create, in imitation of Muhammad ‘Alī, if not an Algerian nation at least an Algerian state, and finally his good relations with Mawlāy ’Abd al-Rahmān of Morocco. The latter gave him substantial help until his defeat at Isly (1844). Bugeaud hounded ‘Abd al-Qādir and his partisans. Everywhere where the amīr could offer resistance, the general used the methods of total war; devastating the country, and massacring or carrying off women and children.

The coming of Islam

On the whole, accounts of conversion to Islam in Malay and Indonesian literature and tradition are not very reliable, however numerous they may be. There is a kind of uniformity about them which does not ring true. Often the ruler, destined to be the first among his people to pronounce the ‘Two Words’ (the profession of faith), the mere utterance of which will make him a member of the Muslim community, has already received notification of this in a dream or vision, even before the apostle of Islam drops anchor off his shores. Generally his conversion is immediate, with his subjects following soon after. There is no lack of wonders and miracles: opponents are easily persuaded or overawed by magic.

Yet the historian cannot afford to ignore such accounts. They shed a great deal of light on the nature of these societies and their organization, as well as providing clues as to the way Islam was in fact introduced amongst them.

An analysis of these stories suggests that Islam was propagated in South-East Asia by three methods; that is by Muslim traders in the course of peaceful trade, by preachers and holy men who set out from India and Arabia specifically to convert unbelievers and increase the knowledge of the faithful, and lastly by force and the waging of war against heathen states.

Despite recent research, the origins of the Safavid family are still obscure. Such evidence as we have seems to suggest that the family hailed from Kurdistān. What does seem certain is that the Safavids were of native Iranian stock, and spoke Āzarī, the form of Turkish used in Āzarbāyjān. Our lack of reliable information derives from the fact that the Safavids, after the establishment of the Safavid state, deliberately falsified the evidence of their own origins. Their fundamental object in claiming a Shi‘ī origin was to differentiate themselves from the Ottomans and to enable them to enlist the sympathies of all heterodox elements. To this end they systematically destroyed any evidence which indicated that Shaykh Safī al-Dīn Ishāq, the founder of the Safavid tarīqa was not a Shī‘ī (he was probably a Sunnī of the Shāfi‘ī madhhab), and they fabricated evidence to prove that the Safavids were sayyids, that is, direct descendants of the Prophet. They constructed a dubious genealogy tracing the descent of the Safavid family from the seventh of the Twelver Imāms, Mūsā al-Kāzim—a genealogy which is seduously followed by the later Safavid sources—and introduced into the text of a hagiological work on the life of Shaykh Safī al-Dīn, a number of anecdotes designed to validate the Safavid claim to be sayyids. Viewed dispassionately, the majority of these anecdotes appear ingenuous, not to say naïve.