The Origins, Anthropology, Ethnology and Afinities of South Asian Muslims

Posted on February 21, 2014 by Mohammed Jehan Khan
By : Mohammed Jehan Khan

Subcontinent Muslims trace two ancestries. Muslims in the southern block of the indian subcontinent (specially Muslims in Kerala, Keelakarai and Muslims living in the Southern and western block of Sri Lanka) trace thier ancestry back to Arab Traders and share similar physical and linguistic background, while Northern Muslims and their ancestral records are quite messy.

Let us start from the southern block. in an article published on my blogsite (March 9th 2013), I breifly explained the history of Mappilla Muslims (Malayali and Keelakarai Muslims) and Sri Lankan Moors. During the 9th Century, what is called the “Medieval era” the Arab Islamic dynasties have reached their peaks.They expanded their voyages eastwards, towards India and China, in search of trade. In the 9th and 10th centuries, an assortment of Persians, Arabs, Abyssinians, all Muslims, speaking Arabic and therefore conveniently called ‘Arabs’ dominated the overseas trade from Baghdad/Basra/Hadramout to China. The Muslims of Sri Lanka and Kerala (a South Indian state) were a part of this trade operation.

According to Historians Elliot and Dowson in their book The History of India as told by its own Historians, the first ship bearing Muslim travellers was seen on the Indian subcontinent coast as early as 630 AD. There is evidence that there were Muslim merchant settlements in Sri Lanka as early as the 7th century. M. A. M. Shukri has used the Arabic (Kufi) inscriptions in Sri Lanka to throw light on the origins of Sri Lanka’s Muslims. He says that the Sri Lanka Moors originally came from Aleppo, a city in Syria. (‘Sri Lanka and the Silk Road of the Sea’ p181)

Marakkalayar/Sonahar (Tamil) or Marikkala/ Yonaka or Yon (Sinhala) is a name given to the Moors of Sri Lanka and in Kerala they are known as the Maappilas or Marakkar which can be translated as (Marakkalam is a wooden boat) `boatmen’. the word Marakkar is usually derived from the Arabic `Markab’, a boat. The story goes that, when the first Arabic Yemenis landed on the shores of Sri Lanka, they were naturally asked by the natives, who they were, and where they came from. In answer they pointed to their boats, and pronounced the word Markab, and they became in consequence “Marakkalaya”, or the people of Markab.

By the time the Umayyad Caliphate formalised diplomatic relations with the court at Sinhalese Kingdom in around 12th to 15th century AD and a large number of Yemeni, Omani, Syrian and Persian merchants established a community in the Western and Soutern Coastal cities of Sri Lanka and in Kerala and Some coastal districts in Tamil Nadu. But the relationship was of much longer standing and had developed from two sources. The first was the export from Sri Lanka of spices, notably cinnamon, and gems, the latter emphasised in an Arab name for the country Jairtu-ul Yaqut or the Island of Rubies. Ninth and tenth century Muslim writers mention also timber, kittul treacle (a palm extract) medicinal herbs and iron. The author of the Arab manuscript Akbar as-Sin wa-l-Hind (851 AD) describes an island off the coast of India called Langabalus [Lanka] where the local people offer from their boats “coconuts, sugarcane, bananas and palm wine: [a non alcoholic palm extract called ‘Kitul’ or ‘Peni’ in Sinhala] is a with beverage that is sweet like honey when one drinks it the moment it is tapped from the coconut palm, but if it is left for a little while it is transformed into wine, and, after a few days, into vinegar’.

There have been Islam in Sri Lanka and South India (Karnataka and Andra excluded) for well over a thousand years. Trading dhows plied the waters between the Middle East and the island known to Arab sailors – like the legendary Sinbad – as Serendib even in pre-Islamic times. The first Arab merchants and sailors may have landed on its shores during the Prophrt Muhammad (PBUH)’s life time. By the 10th century this predominantly Arab community had grown influential enough to control the trade of the south-western ports, whilst the Sinhalese and Malayali Zamorin kings generally employed Muslim ministers to direct the state’s commercial affairs.

However majority of the muslims in the Northern block of the subcontinent who call themselves Arab descendants, came from the untouchables and Sudra hindu caste. Every single Muslim in the Indo-Pak region believes s/he is of Arab descent. If not direct Arab descent, then the illustrious ancestor had come from either Iran or Bukhara. Arab origin is the favourite fiction of all these people. these people insists religious and ethnical coexistence and also detest racism but so unwilling to accept their ethnical background. they say everyman is same before god and yet ashamed to accept the reality of their ancestral background. so let us see how Islam spread through this region.

A ship filled with daughters of Arab and Moor traders who were trading in Sri Lanka was attacked by pirates from Darbal (what is now called Karachi, Pakistan) who captured and enslaved the Sri Lankan women. ISlam was fresh in Sri Lanka in 7th century BC and the Moorish Population of Sri Lanka had a great relationship with the Umayyad Caliphs. Seeking to liberate the women and punish the pirates, an expedition was sent out in 710, led by a 17 year old Yemeni Hashemite general Muhammad bin Qasim, an Arab from the city of Ta’if.

Muhammad bin Qasim led his army of 6,000 soldiers to the far eastern reaches of Persia, Makran. He encountered little resistance as he made his way into Indian Subcontinent. When he reached the city of Nerun, on the banks of the Indus River, he was welcomed into the city by the Buddhist monks that controlled it. Most cities along the Indus thus voluntarily came under Muslim control, with no fighting. In some cases, oppressed Buddhist minorities reached out to the Muslim armies for protection against high caste Brahmin governors. Despite the support and approval of much of the population, the Raja of Sindh, Raja Dahir, opposed the Muslim expansion and mobilised his army against Muhammad bin Qasim. In 712, the two armies met, with a decisive victory for the Muslims. With the victory, all of Sindh came under Muslim control.

The caste system, which originated from Hindu belief, divided society up into very strictly controlled social classes. Those on top led wealthy, comfortable lives, while those on the bottom (particularly untouchables) were seen as the scourge of society. these untouchables were believed to be the victims of Alexander the great’s military conquest and mass rape. the whiteness of their skin complexion is too a reason that they were poluted by the Eurasian invaders. Archeological and genetical evidence substantiates the fact that the Muslims in this region (especially Punjabis who constitute 47% of the Pakistani population and Kashmiris) are Sudras of Kushan branch of the Yuezhi. It has been found that the ancestral node of the phylogenetic tree of all the mtDNA types typically found in Greece and Europe are also to be found in Many North Indian Muslim population at relatively high frequencies. The majority of Indo-Pak-Bengali population share similar genes with other north Indian populations including those from Himachal Pradesh and Haryana, but also show a significant relationship with west Eurasian groups. CRUCIAL QUESTION THEN MUST BE POSTED, how on earth these Eurasian and Greek genes admixtured with Indian gene pool. History has an answer.

Alexander the great invaded India in 326 B.C. Alexander’s raid, which was so significant to Western historians, seemed to have entirely escaped the attention of Subcontinent’s Muslim and Sanskrit authors. From the Indian point of view, there was nothing to distinguish his raid in Indian history. Indian Subcontinent has two entry gates. One in the northern part of present day Kashmir, which is called ‘The Hindu Kush’ and the other is near Sapta Sindu region of present day Pakistanian Punjab. Alexander’s army entered into India through Hindu Kush, and left the subcontinent from Sapta Sindu region. He was neither a noble man nor did he have a heart of gold. His army raided the entire region, destroyed everywhere their feet touched, raped every woman they found. He also had meted out very cruel and harsh treatment to his earlier enemies. Basus of Bactria fought tooth and nail with Alexander to defend the freedom of his motherland. When he was brought before Alexander as a prisoner, Alexander ordered his servants to whip him and then cut off his nose and ears. He then killed him. Many Persian generals were killed by him.

Alexander’s raid of the Persian Achaemenid Empire, finally turned out to be a overthrow of the Achaemenid dynasty, usurpers of the Assyrian Empire. Unable to make headway into India, as Many Indian population had helped and influenced Indian princes to organise and support the Indian war against Alexander. Greek sources cite, after this realisation, at `The City of Brahmans’ (The present day Srinagar in Kashmir) Alexander massacred an estimated 8000-10,000 non-combatant civilians and his army raped around 100,000-800,000 women. these raped women had to carry their illegimitae children and they were isolated from the society and called untouchables who earned the curse of Lord Brahma. these population lived in sheer missery untill Islam came to liberate them.

In fact, the Muslims of Ind0-Pakistanian, Kashmiri and Bengal origin were probably from the this lower caste, as Islam offered them an escape from the oppressive social system they were accustomed to. Because pre-Islamic India was entirely based on a caste system in which society was broken into separate parts, conversion to Islam happened in a step-by-step process. Often, entire lower castes would convert to Islam at a time. This would happen for many different reasons. Often, however, the equality Islam provided was more attractive than the caste system’s organised racism. There was no opportunity for social mobility or to achieve greater than what your parents achieved. By converting to Islam, people had the opportunity to move up in society, and no longer were subservient to the Brahman caste.

Consequently, even after conversion, their ancestors were poor agriculturists, were looked down upon by the Persians, Mughals and Arabs and even those who had converted earlier the same way as they were by the Brahmans when they professed their Vedic belief.

In their need to escape from this shame, within a generation or two, those early converts began the great lie of Arab ancestry to be equal to others. They adopted few Arabic-Aryan surnames such as ‘Khan’, ‘Baloch’, ‘Hashemi’, ‘Sayyidi’, ‘Quraishi’, ‘Rushdi’, ‘Begum’, ‘Shah’, ‘Batool’, ‘Lone’, ‘Nabi’, ‘Mir’, ‘Bhutt’, ‘Dar’ etc and this great lie became universal with time.

The challenge then is for all those, Baloch, Pathan, Punjabi, Hashemi and other Indo-Pak Muslims, who have invented illegitimate fathers for theirselves to get theirselves tested and know the bitter truth.

(Mohammed Jehan Khan is a Sri Lankan Independent Socio-Political writer, a Columnist at The Lahore Times, can read his column athttp://www.lhrtimes.com/author/jehankhan/ and Follow him on Twitter @OfficialJehan)