Gujarati Muslims
Muslim group in Gujarat, India
The term Gujarati Muslim is usually used to signify a Muslim from the state of Gujarat on the western coast of India. Gujarati is the mother tongue of most Gujarati Muslims, but for some communities Urdu is the mother tongue. The majority of Gujarati Muslims are Sunni, with a minority of Shia groups.
Gujarati Muslims are very prominent in industry and medium-sized businesses and there is a very large Gujarati Muslim community in Mumbai and Karachi. Having earned a formidable accolade as India's greatest seafaring merchants, the centuries-old Gujarati diaspora is found scattered throughout the Near East, Indian Ocean and Southern Hemisphere regions everywhere in between Africa and East Asia with a notable presence in: Hong Kong, Britain, Portugal, Canada, Réunion, Oman, Yemen, Mozambique, Zanzibar, United Arab Emirates, Burma, Madagascar, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Mauritius, Pakistan, Zambia and East Africa.
Throughout the medieval period, Gujarati Muslim merchants played a pivotal role in establishing Islam in Indonesia, Malaysia and other parts of Southeast Asia.
History
Located in the westernmost portion of India, Gujarat includes the region of Kutch, Saurashtra and the territories between the rivers Banas and Damanganga. Islam came early to Gujarat, with immigrant communities of Arab and Persian traders. The traders built a mosque during the times of Muhammad in Gujarat and other parts of the western coast of India as early as the 8th century C.E, spreading Islam soon as the religion gained a foothold in the Arabian peninsula. Some of these early merchants were Ismaili Shia, both Mustaali and Nizari.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Gujarati Muslims” as muslim group in Gujarat, India. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5617039. The Library of Congress control number is sh2010102973. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Gujarati Muslims” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.