Sikandar Butshikan

Sikandar Butshikan
Sultan of Kashmir
Reign	1389–1413 CE
House	Shah Miri dynasty
Religion	Sunni Islam

Sikandar Shah Miri better known as Sikandar Butshikan ("Sikandar the Iconoclast"), was the sixth sultan of the Shah Miri dynasty of Kashmir. He ruled the kingdom from 1389 to 1413 and is remembered for his strenuous efforts to convert the Hindu people, the original inhabitants of Kashmir, to Islam. These efforts included destruction of numerous old temples, prohibition of Hindu rites, rituals and festivals and even the wearing of clothes in the Hindu style.

Sultan Sikandar and Malik Saif-ud-Din working out the motivational inputs of Sufi Saint, Mir Mohammad Hamadani waged a crusade against the Hindus to realise their conversion to Islam. Due to his actions, large numbers of Hindus converted, fled, or were killed for refusal to convert.

Sikandar won the sobriquet of but-shikan or idol-breaker, due to his actions related to the desecration and destruction of numerous temples, caityas, viharas, shrines, hermitages and other holy places of the Hindus and Buddhists. He banned dance, drama, music and iconography as aesthetic activities of the Hindus and Buddhists and fiated them as heretical and un-Islamic. He forbade the Hindus to apply a tilak mark on their foreheads. He did not permit them to pray and worship, blow a conch shell or toll a bell. Eventually he went on burning temples and all Kashmiri texts to eliminate Shirk. Sikandar stopped Hindus and Buddhists from cremating their dead. Jizya (poll-tax) equal to 4 tolas of silver was imposed on the Hindus.

Records Baharistan-i-Shahi:

"Hindus were forcibly converted to Islam and were massacred in case they refused to be converted'," writes Hasan, a Muslim chronicler. He further observes, "And Sikandarpora (a city laid out by Sultan Sikandar) was laid out on the debris of the destroyed temples of the Hindus. In the neighbourhood of the royal palaces in Sikandarpora, the Sultan destroyed the temples of Maha-Shri built by Praversena and another by Tarapida. The material from these was used for constructing a 'Jami' mosque in the middle of the city."

"Towards the fag end of his life, he (Sultan Sikandar) was infused with a zeal for demolishing idol-houses, destroying the temples and idols of the infidels. He destroyed the massive temple at Beejbehara. He had designs to destroy all the temples and put an end to the entire community of infidels," puts Bharistan-i-Shahi.

In his second Rajtarangini, the historian Jonraj has recorded, "There was no city, no town, no village, no wood, where the temples of the gods were unbroken. When Sureshavari, varaha and others were broken, the world trembled, but not so the mind of the wicked king. He forgot his kingly duties and took delight day and night in breaking images."

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