After Kashmiri Hindus had converted to Islam they largely retained their family names (kram) which indicated their original profession, locality or community.
[11] In the Jammu region, sizeable population of Kashmiri Muslims lives in the Doda, Ramban and Kishtwar districts, sometimes collectively referred to as the Chenab valley.
[21] However, the greatest missionary whose personality wielded the most extraordinary influence in the spread of Islam in Kashmir was Mir Sayyid Ali Hamadani of Hamadan (Persia) popularly known as Shah-i-Hamadan.
His preaching resulted in a large number of people, including priests of Hinduism and Buddhism and their followers converting to Islam, which became the vastly dominant religion of the Kashmiri masses by the fourteenth century.
The central mosque, Jama Masjid, was closed for 20 years and Muslims were prohibited from issuing the azan (call to prayer).
[28] Lawrence provided evidence that while many of the Kashmiri Pandit officials may have been ''individually gentle and intelligent, as a body they were cruel and oppressive.''
Scholar Ayesha Jalal states that the Maharajahs nurtured ties with Kashmiri Pandits and their Dogra kinsfolk in Jammu to trample on the rights of their subjects.
[33] During the famine of 1877-9 not a single Pandit died of starvation during these annihilative years for the Muslim cultivators, according to reports received by Walter Roper Lawrence.
During the famine the office of Prime Minister was held by a Kashmiri Pandit, Wazir Punnu, who is said to have declared that there ''was no real distress and that he wished that no Musulman might be left alive from Srinagar to Rambhan (in Jammu).
''[34] When lands fell fallow temporarily during the famine, Kashmiri Pandits took over substantial tracts of them claiming that they were uncultivated waste.
[35] A large number of Muslim Kashmiris migrated from the Kashmir Valley[14] to the Punjab due to conditions in the princely state[14] such as famine, extreme poverty[36] and harsh treatment by the Dogra Hindu regime (according to Prem Nath Bazaz the Kashmiri Muslims faced this harsh treatment because of their religion).
[42] The 1931 Census report explains that the 'phenomenal' increase in the number of Kashmiri Muslims by 556,018 was due to several castes such as Hajjam, Hanji, Sayed and Sheikh being merged into the community.
[43][44] The 1931 Census report stated that the Bhat, Dar, Ganai, Khan, Lone, Malik, Mir, Pare, Rather, Sheikh, Varrier and Wani were the most major tribes among Kashmiri Muslims.
[45] In the early twentieth century, famines and the policies of the Dogra rulers drove many Kashmiri Muslims to flee their native land to Punjab.
Kashmiri Muslims constituted an important segment of several Punjabi cities such as Gujranwala, Sialkot, Gujrat, Lahore, Amritsar and Ludhiana.
[47] An exclusive research conducted by the "Jang Group and Geo Television Network" showed that the Kashmiri community had been involved in spearheading the power politics of Lahore district since 1947.
[48] Notable members of the Kashmiri Muslim diaspora in Punjab include Pakistan's former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif (paternal ancestry from Anantnag), Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, politician Khawaja Asif, and former Chief Justice Lahore High Court Khawaja Muhammad Sharif .
[49] Another notable member of the Kashmiri Muslim diaspora in Punjab was Muhammad Iqbal (who took pride in his Brahman ancestry[50] and whose poetry displayed a keen sense of belonging to the Kashmir Valley).
The 1921 Census report stated that this fact showed that the Kashmiris who had settled in Punjab had adopted the Punjabi language of their neighbors.
[60] Scholar Chitralekha Zutshi states that Kashmiri Muslims settled in the Punjab retained emotional and familial links to Kashmir and felt obliged to struggle for the freedom of their brethren in the Valley.