Historian Richard Eaton talks of Pir Ma’bari Khandaya who came to the Deccan as a holy warrior:
“During the period of Ala al-Din Khalaji (Alauddin Khilji, d, 1316), the Shah of Delhi, he (Pir Ma’bari) accompanied the camp of the army of Islam in the year A.H. 710 (A.D. 1310-11) when buried treasures of gold and silver came to the hands of Muslims and the victory of Islam was effect” (Eaton, Sufis of Bijapur).
A hagiography record adds:
(Pir Ma’bari came here and waged Jihad against the rajas and rebels (of Bijapur). And with his iron bar, he broke the heads and necks of many rajas and drove them to the dust of defeat. May idolaters, who by the will of God had guidance and blessings, repented from their unbelief and error , and by the hands of (Pir Ma’bari) came to Islam (Eaton, RM, Sufis of Bijapur).
According to M.L. Kahn, “One intriguing thing about Eaton is that his won research of the medieval literature on Indian Sufis for his Ph.D thesis, published in Sufis of Bijapur 1300-1700, failed to find any trace of peace in the views and actions of Sufis and in their method of conversion. He found that all the revered Sufis, particularly the earlier ones to arrive at Bijapur, were fierce Jihadis and persecutors of Hindus…. His research outcome was so damning to his tendentious, love stricken views about the Sufis that Muslims in India protested against his book leading to its ban in India (Khan, M.A., p, 116-117).
Reference:
Eaton, R (1996). Sufis Of Bijapur. https://archive.org/details/bk1134.
M.A. Khan (2009). Islamic Jihad: A Legacy Of Forced Conversion, Imperialism, and Slavery. iUniverse.
