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2 MOHAMMEDAN INVASION themselves. The invaders consisted of armies of men, very few of whom brought their women with them. They married Hindu wives, and the mixed race thus formed intermarried further with the natives, and each generation became more and more Indian. Besides the Moslems descended from the successive armies of in- vaders and their native wives, a very large proportion of the Indian Moslems were and are native converts from Hinduism. It has been estimated that about fifty thousand Hindus " turn Turk " annually, and neither the religion nor the rule of the Moslems has proved intolerable to the natives. Islam commended itself to the Indian intellect as a more congenial faith than Christianity, and the disorder and corruption of Moham- medan government were not distasteful to a people who had never known anything better. Yet the real Mohammedan conquerors of India were not Arabs, but Turks. When the armies of the Saracens spread out over the ancient world in the seventh cen- tury, they overcame most human obstacles, but nature itself was sometimes impregnable. They overran North Africa, but the inhospitable desert of the Sahara dis- couraged any southern expansion; they occupied Spain, but the Atlantic checked their progress west, and being but indifferent sailors they left to their European suc- cessors the glory of discovering the New World. In the East they conquered Persia as far as the great riv- ers of Central Asia, but the icy walls of the Hindu Kush saved India. The famous Arab general Ali Tigin sub- dued Bokhara and Samarkand, but he did not venture