Muslim conquests in the Indian subcontinent mainly took place from 12th to 16th century, though earlier Muslim conquests include the invasions into modern Pakistan and the Umayyad campaigns in India, during the time of the Rajput kingdoms in the 8th century. Mahmud of Ghazni, the first ruler to hold the title Sultan, who preserved an ideological link to the suzerainty of the Abbasid Caliphate, invaded and plundered vast parts of Punjab and Gujarat, starting from the Indus River, during the 10th century.[1][2][full citation needed] After the capture of Lahore and the end of the Ghaznavids, the Ghurid Empire ruled by Muhammad of Ghor and Ghiyath al-Din Muhammad laid the foundation of Muslim rule in India. In 1206, Bakhtiyar Khalji led the Muslim conquest of Bengal, marking the easternmost expansion of Islam at the time. The Ghurid Empire soon evolved into the Delhi Sultanate ruled by Qutb al-Din Aibak, the founder of the Mamluk dynasty. With the establishment of the Delhi Sultanate, Islam was spread across most parts of the Indian subcontinent. In the 14th century, the Khalji dynasty, under Alauddin Khalji, temporarily extended Muslim rule southwards to Gujarat, Rajasthan and the Deccan, while the Tughlaq dynasty temporarily expanded its territorial reach till Tamil Nadu. The break up of the Delhi Sultanate resulted in several Muslim sultanates and dynasties to emerge across the Indian subcontinent, such as the Gujarat Sultanate, Malwa Sultanate, the Bahmani Sultanate and the wealthy Bengal Sultanate, a major trading nation in the world.[3][4] Some of these were however followed by Hindu re-conquests and resistance from the native powers, and states such as the Kamma Nayakas, Vijayanagaras, Gajapatis, Cheros and Rajput states. Prior to the full rise of the Mughal Empire founded by Babur, one of the gunpowder empires, which annexed almost all of the ruling elites of the whole of South Asia, the Sur Empire ruled by Sher Shah Suri conquered large territories in the northern parts of India. Akbar gradually enlarged the Mughal Empire to include nearly all of South Asia, but the zenith was reached in the end of the 17th century, when the reign under emperor Aurangzeb witnessed the full establishment of Islamic sharia through the Fatawa-e-Alamgiri. The Mughals suffered a massive decline in the early 18th century after Afsharid ruler Nader Shah's invasion, an unexpected attack that demonstrated the weakness of the Mughal Empire.[7] This provided opportunities for the powerful Mysore Kingdom, Nawabs of Bengal and Murshidabad, Maratha Empire, Sikh Empire, Nizams of Hyderabad to exercise control over large regions of the Indian subcontinent.[8] After the Battle of Plassey, Battle of Buxar and the long Anglo-Mysore Wars, the East India Company ended up seizing control of the entire Indian subcontinent. By the end of the 18th century, European powers, mainly the British Empire, commenced to extend political influence over the Indian subcontinent, and by the end of the 19th century, much of the Indian subcontinent, came under European colonial domination, most notably the British Bangladesh is a Muslim majority nation and Islam is the state religion of the People's Republic of Bangladesh.[6][7] As per 2011 census, Bangladesh have a population of 149,772,364 people, of which the Muslim population was approximately 135,394,217, constituting overwhelming 90.4% of the country's population.[8][9][10] and making Bangladesh the third-largest Muslim majority nation in the world after Indonesia and Pakistan. The majority of Bangladeshis are Sunni. They follow the Hanafi Islamic jurisprudence. Religion has always been a strong part of Bangladeshi identity, but the specific identity has varied at different times. Bangladesh is one of the few secular Muslim majority countries in the world.[11] In the 9th century, Arab Muslims established commercial as well as religious contacts within the region before the conquest, mainly through the coastal regions as traders and primarily via the ports of Chittagong. Arab navigation in the region was the result of the Muslim reign over the Indus delta. Following the conquests of Muhammad bin Bakhtiyar Khalji and the establishment of the Delhi Sultanate, Indian Islamic missionaries achieved their greatest success in terms of successful dawah and number of converts to Islam in Bengal.[12][13][14] Shah Jalal is thought to have spread Islam in the north-eastern Bengal and Assam during the beginning of the 12th century. The Islamic Bengal Sultanate, a major trading nation in the world, was founded by Shamsuddin Ilyas Shah after its independence from the Tughlaq dynasty. Subsequently, Bengal was conquered by Babur, the founder of one of the gunpowder empires, but was also briefly occupied by the Suri Empire.