The first stirrings of resentment against Imad-ud-din Rihan’s authority came, obviously, from the Turkic nobles in the sultan’s court. The fact that a lowly Indian Muslim71 like Rihan could even reach such a high office reveals another vital fact and outcome of the Turkic Muslim invasions of India and the subsequent establishment of the Delhi Sultanate. These invasions had created an entirely new class of Muslims in India—converted forcibly or at the point of a sword—whose number was rapidly growing and with it, their political ambitions. They were generally known as the neo-Muslims, a term of
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