[T]he jizyah was levied on the able-bodied males, in lieu of the military service they would have been called upon to perform had they been Musalmans… - Thomas Walker Arnold

Muslim Spain had written one of the brightest pages in the history of mediæval Europe. Her influence had passed through Provence into the other countries of Europe, bringing into birth a new poetry and a new culture, and it was from her that Christian scholars received what of Greek philosophy and science they had to stimulate their mental activity up to the time of the Renaissance.

Official pressure is said never to have been more consistently brought to bear upon the Hindus than in the reign of Aurangzeb. In the eastern districts of the Punjab, there are many cases in which the ancestor of the Musalman branch of the village community is said to have changed his religion in the reign of this zealot in order to save the land of the village. …. Many Rajput landowners in the Cawnpore district, were compelled to embrace Islam for the same reason to save the family property from confiscation. In other cases, the ancestor is said to have been carried as prisoner or hostage to Delhi, and there forcibly circumcised and converted. It should however be noted that the only authority for these forced conversions is family or local traditions and no mention of such is made in the historical accounts of Aurangzeb’s reign. It is established, without doubt, that forced conversions have been made by Muhammadan rulers, and it seems probable that Aurangzeb’s well known zeal on behalf of his faith has caused many families of Northern India (the history of whose conversion has been forgotten) to attribute their change of faith to this, the most easily assignable cause.

[In many cases] there is no doubt that the shrine of a Muslim saint marks the site of some local cult which was practised on the spot long before the introduction of Islam.