REQUIRED WORK:
 

*Ikram, Chapter 1: The Impact of the Arabs, pp. 4-21.
Source: S. M. Ikram, Muslim Civilization in India, ed. Ainslie T. Embree (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964). Online for CU students as a "Virtual Reading Room Text." Another source: the public version.

*Go to Prof. Alan Godlas's excellent site on ISLAM and get (re-)acquainted with some of the basic terms and concepts of the Muslim religious tradition. What are the Five Pillars of Islam? What is Sufism?

*Visit the National Geographic MapMachine and play with it a bit, and learn how to use it. Try to locate Sind and Lahore in Pakistan, and see if you can find Ghazni and Ghur in Afghanistan, and any other interesting places that occur to you. Now that GoogleEarth is available, you might want to play with that as well.

*For an internal perspective, the Census of India website, with many maps and much data about the 2000 census.

*And do take a look at our own SARAI, the single best South Asian resource finder. (Though I have to say, I don't think my pages are so bad either.)

 
FURTHER RESOURCES:
 

ONLINE BOOKS:

Marshall Hodgson, The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974. Online through the ACLS History E-Book Project: [ vol. 1 ], "The Classical Age of Islam"; [ vol. 2 ], "The Expansion of Islam in the Middle Periods"; [ vol. 3 ], "The Gunpowder Empires and Modern Times."

*Annemarie Schimmel. Islam: An Introduction. Albany: SUNY Press, 1992: online through NetLibrary. Within their system, here is the exact location.

*Abdullah Yusuf Ali. The Holy Quran. Online on the Univ. of Missouri website. (However, the notes and appendices which are so valuable in the work of this South Asian translator are not online; for those, see the widely available print version: Beirut: Dar ul-Qur'an Publishers, n.d.)
 

ONLINE ARTICLES:

*George Rafael, "A is for Arabs," a lighthearted overview (by a CC alumnus) of Muslim contributions to our lives: on the CU website.

*Toby Lester, "What is the Koran?" The Atlantic, January 1999: on the Atlantic website; on the CU website.

*A modern Pakistani version of the history of Raja Dahar and Muhammad bin Qasim: on the CU website.
 

WEBSITES:

*Prof. Jerome W. Clinton's neat website on Islam: at Princeton.

*The best timeline machine for Islamic history: at Princeton.

*A glossary containing many Indo-Muslim terms on the CU website.

*A site at Fordham with links to many Islamic religious and philosophical texts: the Internet Sourcebook.