INTRODUCTION BY THE EDITOR The rise of Mohammed and the spread of Islam were events fraught with momentous consequences for the East and for the history of the world. India came in for her share in the changes thus brought about and was subjected to the religious and political sway of this great movement whose impulse she first felt in the eighth century of the Christian era. So important in general and so far-reaching were the influences exerted that few readers will object to the fact that three vol- umes of the present series are devoted to this period of Indian history which is commonly designated as the Mediaeval Period. The first of the three forms part of the work of Professor Stanley Lane-Poole, and deals with the suc- cessive invasions that began when the Arabs landed in Sind and were later followed by the Moslem Afghans, who made inroad after inroad into Hindustan and gave place in turn to the raiding Turks, and they again to the Mongols. The history of these events, which led up to the founding of the great Moghul Empire in the
