A recent study is redefining the comprehension of Kashmir’s 14th-century Islamisation, contending that the process was not solely a spiritual or political event but a complex, comprehensive strategic media initiative.
The study extensively utilises media theory to reevaluate the introduction and triumph of Mir Syed Ali Hamadani, locally known as Shah-i-Hamadan, and his Persian-speaking followers in a primarily Kashmiri-speaking community.
Titled “Reassessing the Islamisation of Kashmir in the 14th Century A.D. via Media Theory”, the study presents a persuasive argument by integrating Everett Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovations, Marshall McLuhan’s notion of “the medium is the message and James Carey’s ritual model of communication.
The research identifies Sufi khanqahs, vernacular poetry, ritual practices and embodied performances as pre-modern media systems, significantly transforming the integration and ritualisation of Islamic notions inside Kashmir’s social structure.
“Historical narratives frequently lay stress on political power transitions or spiritual tenets, yet they rarely elucidate how Persian-speaking missionaries such as Mir Syed Ali Hamadani engaged so adeptly with the Kashmiri-speaking Brahman community,” says Umar Manzoor Shah, a media scholar from Amity School of Communication, who conducted the research.
“I am often asked: How did these outsiders succeed in converting the local population? The solution, I contend, resides in their adept strategic utilisation of media—not alone language, but also ritual, performance and institutional development,” Shah said while speaking to the news agency – Kashmir News Observer (KNO).
His archival investigation and discussions with relatives of early Sufi missionaries uncover a calculated, multifaceted initiative. The missionaries abstained from employing coercion or political means. They integrated Islamic principles into everyday life via khanqahs, which served as both spiritual and communicative centres. Sermons were conducted interactively, with Imams reciting passages and encouraging congregations to repeat them, a participatory educational method aimed at memorisation and internalisation.
Umar said this methodology was bolstered by the Rishi order, whose members—like Sheikh Noor-ud-din Noorani—rendered Islamic concepts into the indigenous Kashmiri vernacular via poetry, spiritual asceticism, and public presentations.
The study claims the evolution of khanqahs into media centres, wherein architecture, communal dining, prayer practices, and collective stillness served as modalities of symbolic communication. “The medium constituted the message,” Shah said. “The physical environment and ceremonial traditions of the khanqah conveyed Islamic egalitarianism in a manner that surpassed linguistic limitations.”
Shah’s findings contest the prevailing notion of Islamisation as either a hierarchical imposition or a solely spiritual resurgence. He presents it as a meticulously coordinated campaign of symbolic and interpersonal communication, adapted to the cultural and linguistic milieu of Kashmir—(KNO)
