Al-Hind

This book provides a new answer to an old and often-asked question: why did the bulk of conversion to Islam take place not in the imperial heartlands of the Indo-Islamic world but among the indigenous populations of the Indus borderlands and the coastal, maritime and insular peripheries of the Indian Ocean and the Malay-Indonesian archipelago?

The answer is found in the conjunction of geographical, political and economic factors affecting the Indo-Islamic states of the 13th to 17th centuries, both in their medieval origins and their interaction with the Portuguese Estado da India and the East India Companies.