Sikandar Shah Miri
Sikandar Shah Miri, also known by his sobriquet Sikandar Butshikan or Idol Breaker, was the seventh Sultan of Kashmir and a member of Shah Mir dynasty who ruled from 1389 until his death in 1413.
Background
The Shah Miri dynasty likely descended from either Khasa chieftains of Panjgabbar valley or Kohistani Dards from Swat; Shah Mir himself was the first to settle in Kashmir. He began to serve in the royal court of the fledgling Deva Dynasty and before long, became the prime-minister of Suhadeva. Soon, he leveraged a power-vacuum in the wake of a crippling Mongol raid to help Rinchan, a Buddhist from Ladakh, usurp the throne and after his death, waged a successful war against widow Kota Rani to claim the kingdom for himself.The Shah Miris actively patronaged Islam and led to the formation of a new social order that chipped away at Brahminic Hinduism. A contemporary Shaivite mystic Lal Ded borrowed from Sufism and local cults to attack core tenets of Brahminism and likely serviced conversion to Islam among the lower strata of society. By Sikandar's time, a considerable section of the populace had already adopted Islam. Nonetheless, the Kings continued to actively patronage Hinduism: Alaud'din had commissioned a Hindu Matha and Qutubu'd-Din had held royal yajnas.
Birth and ascension
Sikandar was the great-grandson of Shah Mir; he was the eldest child of Qutubu'd-Din and Queen Sura, and was born sometime around 1380. Because he was a minor at the time of his father's death—9 August 1389—, his mother had to act as a regent for a while. During her regency, Sura consented to Prime Minister Rai Magre, who was also her cousin, burning his own daughter and son-in-law Muhammad, son of a fellow minister Sahaka, on charges of conspiring against Sikandar. Magre went on to poison Haybat, Sikandar's younger brother and even Sahaka. Sikandar, sensing a possible usurpation of the throne by Magre, chose to exert himself as the ruler c. 1391.Military campaigns
Except for a successful invasion of Ladakh under the command of Rai Magre, Sikandar did not annex any new territory. Soon after this victory, Magre instigated a rebellion and assassinated Sobha's brother before turning against Sikandar with his proteges. The rebellion was ably suppressed with aid from Laddaraja's men without even resorting to warfare and Magre was imprisoned, whence he committed suicide. Palas —probably, a Persian tribe— who aided Magre were brutally suppressed too.In December 1398, Timur had camped on the banks of the Indus river and ordered Sikandar to pay tribute. Despite Sikandar's meek acceptance fearing a military fallout, the order was eventually waived by Timur himself upon being judged to be way above Sikandar's financial capacity. While the two did not meet, they shared a mutual admiration and Timur gifted a pair of male and female elephants to Sikandar. Sikandar was ecstatic on receiving them.
C. 1400, a successful war was waged against Firuz, the Hindu Shahi ruler of Ohind after he refused to recognize Sikandar's suzerainty. Sikandar went on to marry Firuz's daughter Mera whilst giving away one of his daughters from Sobha for marriage to Firuz. Another successful campaign was mounted against Pala Deo, the Rajah of Jammu, after he refused to pay taxes; Jasrath Khokhar was installed as a vassal and Sikandar again entered into a matrimonial alliance with his daughter whilst giving away another of his daughters from Sobha for marriage to Pala Deo.
Sociopolity
The overall economic condition was decent. Jonaraja remarks that the Goddess of Fortune found an abode in Sikandar — "the pleasure of welfare elude verbal description." A welfare state was installed; oppressive taxes were abolished while free schools and hospitals were opened for public use. Waqfs were endowed to shrines and numerous Sufi preachers from Central Asia were provided with jagirs and installed in positions of authority. Land holdings were allotted to vast sections of society including scholars, religious figureheads and the poor. The office of Shaikhu'l-Islam was established to provide monetary stipends and alms to the needy, pilgrims, travelers, physicians, scholars and other deserving people. Sikandar was also the first Sultan to enact sharia — music, dance, gambling, and intoxicants were prohibited — and established the post of qadi for its application. He also began the imposition of jizya on non-Muslims.Persecution of Hindus
Jonaraja advocates that Sikandar's rule terminated Kashmir's long-standing tolerant culture. So do Baharistan-i-shahi and Tohfatu'l-Ahbab, which note that Sikandar cleansed Kashmir of non-muslims. Sikandar is epithetized asSikandar commenced the destruction of Hindu and Buddhist shrines till, in the words of Jonaraja, no idol remained, even in the privacy of peoples' homes. Jonaraja mentions temples at Martand, Vijayesvara, Cakradhara, Suresvari, Varaha, and Tripuresvara to have been destroyed by Sikandar. Hasan Ali adds three temples at Parihaspore, the Tarapitha temples at Iskander Pora, and a neighbouring Maha Shri Temple. Pseud. J notes of a colossal statue of Buddha being razed and melted to produce coins.
File:Sun temple martand indogreek.jpg|thumb|A 1868 photograph of the ruins of the Martand Sun Temple in Mattan, razed by Sikandar. Part of the damage to the demolished temple was also caused by later earthquakes.
Afterwards, Sikandar's focus fell on abolishing the teaching of Hinduism. All Brahmins unwilling to convert to Islam were taxed with Jizya. In contrast to Jonaraja, who mentions Sikandar's successor as having initiated forced conversions for the first time, Hasan Ali notes of forced conversions under Sikandar's tenure; he is stated to have massacred all those who had refused to convert.
Motivations and analysis
Upon a literary reading of Rajatarangini, Sikandar's zeal behind the Islamisation of society is attributable to Mir Muhammad Hamadani — an orthodox Sufi preacher — who advocated the creation of a monolithic society based on Islam as the common denominator to the extent of prohibiting any maintenance of kafir shrines. In particular, a Brahman neo-convert — Suhabhatta who served as Sikandar's counsel — was accused of instigating the King into " delight day and night in demolishing the sculptures of the gods." Notably, in Baharistan-i-shahi, both Sikandar and Suhabhatta play equal roles, with particular significance accorded to Sikandar's religious conviction.Chitralekha Zutshi and Richard G. Salomon uphold the claims of religious persecution but reject the idea only religious motives lay behind Sikandar's actions and instead call for a nuanced contextual reading of Rajatarangini, a work that was commissioned by Sikandar's successor, who wished to bring back the Brahminical elite into the royal fold and establish Sanskrit as an integral part of a Sultanate that strove to be cosmopolitan. According to Zutshi and Salomon, Sikandar's policies were guided by realpolitik and, like with the previous Hindu rulers, were essentially an attempt to secure Islamic political legitimacy by asserting state power of foreign Muslim rulers over Brahmans and gaining access to wealth controlled by Brahminical institutions. J. L. Bhan notes the sole extant example of sculpture from Sikandar's reign to challenge simplistic notions of religious persecution.
Walter Slaje disagrees about such proposed absence of religious motivation, in part, given the differential rituals of destruction undertaken by Hindu and Muslim kings with the latter rendering sites inoperable for long passages of time by massive pollution or outright conversion. Slaje however concludes that the fierce opposition of Hindus to foreign Muslim rulers, including Sikandar, primarily stemmed from their aversion to the slow disintegration of Kashmiri caste society under Islamic influence; Jonaraja explicitly mocks Hamadani's rejection of hereditary caste hierarchies. Mohammed Ishaq Khan emphasizes on the centrality of caste in understanding Jonaraja's reception of Shah Miri — he notes that even Hindu figures like Lal Ded had found no place in the Rajatarangini and other Kashmiri Pandit corpus of history, until recent times. Author Hakim Sameer Hamdani highlights that medieval accounts of widespread destruction of non-Muslim religious sites by Sikandar come from both Hindu as well as Muslim sources, but believes that hagiogrpahical and historical accounts by Muslims might have exaggerated such iconoclasm to display religious devoutness.
Fringe revisionist authors completely reject the narratives of persecution and accuse the Brahmin chroniclers of wanton bias and myth-making, stemming from their personal jealousy at losing socio-economic dominance.
Art and architecture
The locality of Nowhatta was constructed by Sikandar and his royal palace was established at the town center. He constructed the Jamia Masjid at Srinagar—considered to be the finest example of Indo-Saracenic archirecture in Kashmir—, and two other mosques at Bijbehara and Bavan. The two-storied Bavan mosque was enclosed by a garden and doubled as Sikandar's spring-resort. Sikandar also commissioned a new burial ground—Mazar-i-Salatin, on the bank of Jhelum near Zaina Kadal locale in downtown Srinagar—for the royals and elite.Numerous scholars arrived from Central Asia in his court: Sayiid Ahmad of Isfahan drafted a commentary on a Firazi text and also wrote epistles, Sayyid Muhammad Khawari wrote a commentary on Lum'at ul-I'tiqaad as well as another work of unknown genre, and Muhammad Baihaqi composed poems eulogizing Sikandar. The first stone sculpture of Kashmir—a four-armed Brahma, argued to be one of the finest in the history of the subcontinent—was sculpted by son of a Buddhist Sanghapati in 1409 and dedicated to Sikandar.