Conversion and the ahl al-dhimma

Between 632 and about 1500 the great majority of the people between the Atlantic and India, and many beyond, converted to Islam. The texts differ slightly, to take account of the varying backgrounds of the converts and the different faiths and beliefs that they are required explicitly to renounce as they become Muslims. In Africa Berbers brought Islam across the Sahara, and it was carried southwards from one group to another by traders. Islam seems to have reached different parts of South-East Asia between the end of the seventh/thirteenth and the eleventh/seventeenth centuries. Turks and Mongols, who invaded the Iranian region and came close to taking over the whole of the Islamic world, converted to Islam in Central Asia. Reality again, however, in the form of the vast size of the Hindu subject population, pointed the way to a solution, and Hindus were recognised as ahl al-dhimma from an early date.