This is an introductory level course on the history of Muslim communities and institutions in South Asia. Its aim is to introduce students to the broad historical currents of the expansion of Islam in the Indian subcontinent, the nature of pre-modern Muslim political authority, interactions between Muslim and non-Muslim religious communities, Islamic aesthetics and contributions to material culture, the varied engagements and reactions of Muslims to colonial rule, the creation of new religious identities in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and the contemporary concerns of South Asia’s Muslims. This course assumes no prior knowledge of South Asian or Islamic history. This course fulfills the L&S breadth requirements in Historical Studies and Social and Behavioral Sciences.