Question

Foreigners who came to india in the medieval period

Answer 1

Medieval India refers to a long period of the history of the Indian subcontinent between the "ancient period" and "modern period". Definitions of the period itself vary widely, and partly for this reason, many historians now prefer to avoid the term completely.

One definition, used in the rest of this article, includes the period from the 8th century to the 16th century, essentially the same period as the Middle Ages of Europe. It may be divided into two periods: The 'early medieval period' which lasted from the 6th to the 13th century and the 'late medieval period' which lasted from the 13th to the 16th century, ending with the start of the Mughal Empire in 1526. The Mughal era, from the 16th century to the 18th century, is often referred to as the early modern period,but is sometimes also included in the 'late medieval' period.

An alternative definition, often seen in those more recent authors who still use the term at all, brings the start of the medieval period forward, either to about 1000 CE, or to the 12th century. The end may be pushed back to the 18th century, making the period in effect that between the start of Muslim domination (at least in northern India) and British India. Or the "early medieval" period is begun in the 8th century, ending with the 11th.

The use of "medieval" at all as a term for periods in Indian history has often been objected to, and is probably becoming more rare (there is a similar discussion in terms of the history of China). It is argued that neither the start nor the end of the period really mark fundamental changes in Indian history, comparable to the European equivalents. Burton Stein still used the concept in his A History of India (1998, referring to the period from the Guptas to the Mughals), but most recent authors using it are Indian. Understandably, they often specify the period they cover within their titles.[7] The critic Peter Hardy argues that Muslim historiography on medieval India is often motivated by Islamic apologetics, which tries to justify "the life of medieval Muslims to the modern world".