Sikandar Butshikan (Sikandar Destroyer of idols)

Sikandar Butshikan (सिकंदर बुतशिकन) (Sikandar the Iconoclast), also known as Alexander the Iconoclast, was the second Sultan of the Shah Miri dynasty of Kashmir 1389–1413.

Sikandar won the sobriquet of but-shikan(बुतशिकन) or idol-breaker, due to his actions related to the desecration and destruction of numerous temples, caityas, viharas, shrines, hermitages and other holy places of the Hindus and Buddhists.

Seven mounds of the sacred thread (janeu) of murdered Kashmiri Hindus were burnt by Sikandar But-Shikan. More than a lakh of Kasmiri pandits were brutally murdered and burnt at one spot near Rainawari. The spot is now known as Batta Mazaar (Kashmiri Hindu cemetery).

Sultan Sikandar working out the motivational inputs of Sufi Saint, Mir Mohammad Hamadani waged a crusade against the Hindus to realise their conversion to Islam. Due to his actions, large numbers of Hindus converted, fled, or were killed for refusal to convert.

He banned dance, drama, music and iconography as aesthetic activities of the Hindus and Buddhists and fiated them as heretical and un-Islamic. He forbade the Hindus to apply a tilak mark on their foreheads. He did not permit them to pray and worship, blow a conch shell or toll a bell. Eventually he went on burning temples and all Kashmiri texts to eliminate Shirk. Sikandar stopped Hindus and Buddhists from cremating their dead. Jizya (poll-tax) equal to 4 tolas of silver was imposed on the Hindus.

"Hindus were forcibly converted to Islam and were massacred in case they refused to be converted'," writes Hasan, a Muslim chronicler. He further observes, "And Sikandarpora (a city laid out by Sultan Sikandar) was laid out on the debris of the destroyed temples of the Hindus. In the neighbourhood of the royal palaces in Sikandarpora, the Sultan destroyed the temples of Maha-Shri built by Praversena and another by Tarapida. The material from these was used for constructing a 'Jami' mosque in the middle of the city."

"Towards the fag end of his life, he (Sultan Sikandar) was infused with a zeal for demolishing idol-houses, destroying the temples and idols of the infidels. He destroyed the massive temple at Beejbehara. He had designs to destroy all the temples and put an end to the entire community of infidels," puts Bharistan-i-Shahi.

In his second Rajtarangini, the historian Jonraj has recorded, "There was no city, no town, no village, no wood, where the temples of the gods were unbroken. When Sureshavari, varaha and others were broken, the world trembled, but not so the mind of the wicked king. He forgot his kingly duties and took delight day and night in breaking images."

Temples were levelled and some of the grandest monuments of old damaged and disfigured. Thousands of Hindus escaped across the borders of Kashmir, others were massacred." He further records, "Hindu temples were felled to the ground and for one year a large establishment was maintained for the demolition of the grand Martand temple. But when the massive masonry resisted all efforts, fire was applied and the noble buildings cruelly defaced."