"There would appear to be three main characteristics for which the Islamic or the didactic religious framework of Muslim historiography, as exemplified by the five writers discussed, was responsible. First, an almost exclusive concentration of the deeds of Muslims in Hindistan. For Barani, ‘Afif, Yahya ibn Ahmad and ‘Isami, non-Muslims are as the furniture and properties for the stage on which the drama of the Muslim destiny and the Muslim political achievement in Hindistanis played. The Hindus are not mentioned, for the most part, except as the passive material on which Muslims impose their will. It is the function of the Hindus to provide opportunities for the practice of Muslim virtue ; they are never interesting in themselves, but only as converts, as capitation tax-payers, or as corpses. .... For them, indeed as for Muslim historians outside India, the only significant history is the history of the Muslim community ; they are historians of the res gestae of the politically prominent members of a group united by ties of common faith rather than historians of the whole people of the area controlled by the Delhi sultan. They are, so to speak, the first Muslim communalists in India."