Islamic Destruction of Hindu Temples

Islamic Destruction of Hindu Temples

For those who don’t believe or do not know of the amount of destruction that took place in India at the hands of the Muslim invaders and Islamic rulers who established themselves in parts of India, we can review the Islamic chronicles of the deeds of these rulers of the day, as written by the Muslim contemporary writers or historians. So what follows is a review of some of the books and their authors who recorded the histories of the Islamic rulers, and quotes from some of the descriptions within them about the cities they attacked and the temples they destroyed. It really shows how demoniac and cruel these rulers were.
The evidence of destruction of thousands of Hindu temples can be primarily found from two different sources:
1. Literary Evidence from the work of renowned Islamic historians
2. Epigraphic Evidence from the inscriptions on numerous Mosques all over India.
This article deals with only the literary evidence.
Hundreds of Muslim historians have glorified the deeds of their Muslim heroes all over India. This by no means is an exhaustive list! To learn more about this, please read both volumes of, Hindu Temples: What Happened To Them? by Sita RamGoel.
There is elaborate literary evidence from the Islamic sources which glorify the crimes committed by the Muslims in India. Crimes such as the desecration of the Hindu idols, looting of the temples, killing devotees and raping have been well documented by the Muslim historians themselves. They have done so because according to them these Muslim rulers by doing such deeds were following the tenets of Islam and Sunnah of the prophet Mohammed. The literary evidence stated below is in chronological order with reference to the time at which a particular work was written.
1. Name Of The Book: Hindustan Islami Ahad Mein (India under Islamic Rule)
Name Of The Historian: Maulana Abdul Hai.
About The Author: He is a highly respected scholar and taken as an authority on Islamic history. Because of his scholarship and his services to Islam, Maulana Abdul Hai was appointed as the Rector of the Darul Nadwa Ullum Nadwatal-Ulama. He continued in that post till his death in February 1923.
The following section is taken from the chapter Hindustan ki Masjidein (The mosques of India) of the above mentioned book. Here we can see a brief description of few important mosques in India and how each one of them was built upon plundered Hindu temples.
a. Qawwat al-Islam Mosque at Delhi: "According to my findings the first mosque of Delhi is Qubbat al-Islam or Quwwat al-Islam which, Qutubud-Din Aibak constructed in H. 587 after demolishing the Hindu temple built by Prithvi Raj and leaving certain parts of the temple outside the mosque proper; and when he returned from Ghazni in H. 592 he started building, under orders from Shihabud-Din Ghori, a huge mosque of inimitable red stones, and certain parts of the temple were included in the mosque..."
b. The Mosque at Jaunpur: "This was built by Sultan Ibrahim Sharqi with chiseled stones. Originally it was a Hindu temple after demolishing which he constructed the mosque. It is known as the Atala Masjid."
c. The Mosque at Qanauj: "It is well known that this mosque was built on the foundations of some Hindu temple that stood here. The mosque was built by Ibrahim Sharqi in H. 809 as is recorded in Gharbat Nigar."
d. Jami Masjid at Etwah: "This mosque stands on the bank of the Jamuna at Etawah. There was a Hindu temple at this place, on the site of which this mosque was constructed. ."
e. Babri Masjid at Ayodhya: "This mosque was constructed by Babar at Ayodhya which Hindus call the birth place of Ramchandraji... Sita had a temple here in which she lived and cooked for her husband. On that very site Babar constructed this mosque in H.963 "
f. Mosque at Benaras: "Mosque of Benares was built by Alamgir Aurangzeb on the site of Bisheshwar Temple. That temple was very tall and held as holy among Hindus. On this very site and with those very stones he constructed a lofty mosque, and its ancient stones were rearranged after being embedded in the walls of the mosque. It is one of the renowned mosques of Hindustan."
g. Mosque at Mathura: "Alamgir Aurangzeb built a mosque at Mathura. This mosque was built on site of the Govind Dev Temple which was very strong and beautiful as well as exquisite."