Indian Muslims and Palestinian Awqaf

At the dawn of the twentieth century, British India contained more Muslims than the collapsing Ottoman Empire.The Indian Muslim elite-of which many claimed descent from various Arab, Iranian and Turkish ethnicities-were always conscious of their membership in trans-Indian, pan-Islamic world-the 'ummah' beyond the borders of their own homeland.Trade and pilgrimage to the Haramayn Sharifayn in Hijaz, Jerusalem in Palestine, Karbala and Najaf in Iraq, kept a steady, annual stream of Indian travel to and from the Middle East.In addition, some Muslim princely rulers such as the Nizam of Hyderabad welcomed migrants from Hijaz and Hadramawt to settle in his Dominions from the late eighteenth century. 1 The Indian Muslim elite maintained deep interest in the affairs of the Ottoman Empire, considering it to be the last political vestige of Muslim political power as the rest of the Islamic world had Indian Muslims and Palestinian Awqaf