 The history of Islam in India is as old as Islam itself. A stretch of the ocean separates India's western coastline from Arabia. Trade between the two coasts predates Islam by a millennia. It therefore stands to reason that Muslim traders came to Kerala from Arabia even during the lifetime of the Prophet in search of spices, particularly pepper, the black gold. They married locally and soon produced a community which came to be known as Mafila. The customs and lifestyle of the Mafilas that evolved down the centuries reflects a synthesis with the local Hindu ethos. While the Kerala Muslims had come as merchants, those that rode in through the northwest passes were conquerors and rulers. The Delhi Sultanate was set up as an independent political unit in 1206, but it was under the Mughals that Muslim rule reached its peak. By the 16th and 17th centuries, the Mughal emperors had unified practically the whole of North India and much of the Deccan under one unified rule. But it were the Sufis and not the Muslim rulers who carried Islam to the masses. These mystics who settled in different parts of the country carried a simple message. Belief in one God and the equality of all men. A message that attracted many converts from the underprivileged sections of Indian society. The Sufis of Karnataka wrote in Dakhni, a newly evolving language. Hwaja Aminuddin was one of the earliest writers in this literature. His Dargah stands outside Bijafur, the capital of the Adil Shahi kingdom and one of the earliest Sufi settlements in the south. The Sufi contribution to literature can be gauged by the fact that over a hundred verses by the Sufi from Punjab, Baba Farid, are found in the Adi Granth, the holiest book of the Sikhs. Sheikh Muhammad, a Sufi who settled in Sri Gunda in Maharashtra, wrote the Yog Sangram, a landmark in Marathi literature. He drew parallels between Sufism and the Vedanta and freely combined the diction of Hindu and Muslim scriptures. His Dargah today is a major attraction for Hindus as well as Muslims. There are also some examples of Sufis forging links with Hindu saints. In Kashmir, for instance, a completely indigenous Sufi order was founded by Sheikh Nuruddin Wali. His followers call themselves Rishis, the Sanskrit word for ascetic. Sheikh Nuruddin, popularly known as Nund Rishi, drew inspiration from a Hindu Bhakti saint, Laleshri. It is this tradition of Hindu-Muslim fusion in the Kashmir valley that allows a part of a Dargah or a Muslim shrine to be used as a Hindu temple. Few people know that the Amarnath cave, one of the holiest pilgrimages for any Hindu, was discovered by a Muslim shepherd named Adam Malik. Even today, every pilgrim is helped and looked after by Muslims all along this arduous journey to the 14,000 feet high snow-covered cave. If Amarnath is among the holiest pilgrimages in the north, Sabarimala in the southernmost state of Kerala is undoubtedly the most popular in the south. Every pilgrim who visits the temple of Ayyappa also prays at the grave of Vavarswamy where a Muslim priest offers them holy ash and vibhuti. This pilgrim center, set among the beautiful woods of the Sabarimala hills and the Pampareva, is a living testimony of the two faiths coexisting for centuries. Indian Muslims have been influenced as much by the local Hindu ethos as by Islamic tenets.