In all of the South Asian subcontinent, Bengal was the region most receptive to the Islamic faith. This area today is home to the world's second-largest Muslim ethnic population. How and why did such a large Muslim population emerge there? And how does such a religious conversion take place? Richard Eaton uses archaeological evidence, monuments, narrative histories, poetry, and Mughal administrative documents to trace the long historical encounter between Islamic and Indic civilizations.

Moving from the year 1204, when Persianized Turks from North India annexed the former Hindu states of the lower Ganges delta, to 1760, when the British East India Company rose to political dominance there, Eaton explores these moving frontiers, focusing especially on agrarian growth and religious change.

Richard M. Eaton is Professor of History at the University of Arizona, Tucson, and the author of The Sufis of Bijapur (1978).

"A convincing and thoroughly well-worked-out argument which is judiciously and lucidly expounded. It rests on sources in Persian, Arabic, Bengali, Sanskrit, and European languages, as well as some notably fruitful research in the Persian records of the Sylhet and Chittagong collectorates. Most of all, however, it rests on years of thought on the issues involved."—Journal of Islamic Studies

"For the study of Islam in Bengal, this is . . . the most important book to appear to date, and it deserves to be read by all historians of India and the Islamic world."—International History Review

"[A] magnificent study of the Bengal region. . . . For depth of scholarship, insightful analysis, and elegant writing, Eaton's study must rank among the finest contributions to South Asian scholarship."—Choice

"Enormously rich and insightful analyses."—American Historical Review

"By focusing on the history of Bengal over a period of more than half a millennium, [Eaton] has shown the close interaction between political, economic, ecological, and religious forces in the history of the region. He has also highlighted the distinctive importance of the frontier in shaping Bengali history. . . . "—Journal of Asian Studies

"A major step forward in our understanding of conversion and Islamization in India."—Oxford Journals on Oriental and African Studies

Winner, Albert Hourani Award, Middle Eastern Studies Association
Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy Book Prize, South Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies