Gentry in South Asia - Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
[Article]
Malik, Jamal
Leiden
Brill
(1,897 words)
Early Muslim social differentiations in South Asia developed into caste categories and, by early modern times, even reflected structural analogies to the highly stratified Hindu varṇa system with regard to legal punishments that favoured the gentry (ashrāf , pl. shurafāʾ) , as laid out in the Fatāwā-yi ʿĀlamgīrī . Competition amongst various interest groups in South Asia led, over the course of time, to numerous divisions in the social composition of an arguably egalitarian Islam in a hierarchical Hindu majority social system. 1. The emergence of social differentiation Early Muslim social differentiations,