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I am not sure you understand the meaning of dark ages. India as a nation and subcontinent not only doing fine at the time but also thriving[1]. This prosperity period is carried over to the Moghul dinasty as some historians considered its beginning as part of Medieval India.

Dark ages meant that there is a sharp decline in the quality of life especially in the knowledge and scholarly departments.

If the Sultanates are really bad as you have described there should be no Hindu left in the India sub-continent but the last time I checked they are still the majority. The Sultanates can easily pull a Spanish Inquisition style by killing or forced conversion. They can drive away the Hindu away like what the Spanish Christians did during inquisition to the Muslim and Jews by not spare anyone of them and eliminated all the mosques and sinagogues from Spain[2].

[1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_India

[2]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Inquisition

1 comments

India at that time had lost most of its accumulated scientific and technological knowledge - burnt and destroyed by Islamic Invaders, suffered extraordinary cultural and education decline (destruction of temples, gender equality) and had an enslaved and subjugated populace. There was extraordinary loss of life and population declines.

It fits all metrics of a dark age. A distinct minority of the population being prosperous does not repudiate this.

The slaughter of Indians in that era even exceeds the Spanish Inquisition. There were regular massacres of over >100K folks after a city surrendered. (Ex: Ghiyas ud din Balban of Delih Sultanate).

The population of Delhi under the Delhi Sultanate was utterly exterminated by Timur. It took another century for the population to recover. He killed 17 million people in his campaign.

https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/time-prism/december-17-i...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timurid_conquests_and_invasion...

A full post on the large-scale massacres during that period are just too many to list here.

I think the myth that is the original article is referring to is probably your version of India dark ages story not the European dark ages story.

Believe it or not, Timur probably killed more muslim in his entire campaign than non Muslim.

The Delhi Sultanates created the Hindustan languages and started the Indo-Islamic architecture that reached its zenith during the Mughal Empire[1]. The Delhi Sultanate is also noted for its integration of the Indian subcontinent into a global cosmopolitan culture[2]. The Sultanate is a few forces in the world that has successfully repelled the Mongul catastrophic invasion. FYI, Mongul successfully decimated Baghdad of Abbasid empire and burnt it to the ground including the largest library known to the world at the time.

[1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delhi_Sultanate

[2]Asher, C. B.; Talbot, C (1 January 2008), India Before Europe (1st ed.), Cambridge University Press, pp. 50–52, ISBN 978-0-521-51750-8