Arab conquest of Sindh

Timeline

1. 7th c. Several earlier Arab raids on Sindh and the Makran coast fail
2. 710–11 Pirates off Debal seize ships carrying gifts to the Caliph; al-Hajjaj uses this as the pretext for war
3. 712 Muhammad bin Qasim storms Debal, then defeats and kills Raja Dahir at Raor on the Indus
4. 712–13 Brahmanabad, Alor (Dahir’s capital) and Multan fall
5. 715 A new Caliph recalls Muhammad bin Qasim; he is imprisoned and dies

Who sent the expedition, and why

• Sent by the Umayyad Caliphate (capital Damascus) under Caliph al-Walid I. The campaign was organised by al-Hajjaj bin Yusuf, governor of Iraq.
• Muhammad bin Qasim — al-Hajjaj’s nephew and son-in-law — was only about 17 when he led the army.
• Immediate cause: piracy off the Sindh coast. Pirates near the port of Debal plundered ships carrying gifts from Sri Lanka to the Caliph, and Dahir said he had no control over them.
• Deeper motives: expansion of the Caliphate, control of the sea trade route to India, and wealth.

Sindh on the eve of the conquest

• Sindh was ruled by Raja Dahir of the Chach dynasty, a Brahmin line founded by Chach, who had displaced the earlier Rai dynasty.
• Capital: Alor (Aror).
• Sections of the population (Jats, Meds and some Buddhist communities) were discontented with Dahir’s rule, which weakened resistance.

The campaign

• 712: Debal (a port near modern Karachi) was taken with the help of catapults (manjaniq).
• Sindh was defeated and Raja Dahir was killed in battle at Raor; the women of the fort, led by his queen, committed jauhar.
• Brahmanabad, Alor and Multan followed. Multan’s temple treasure was so large that the city was called the “city of gold”.

Administration after the conquest

• Non-Muslims were treated as zimmis (protected subjects) and paid jizya — the first time jizya was levied in India.
• Local Brahmin officials were largely kept on to run revenue administration.

A “triumph without results”

• Stanley Lane-Poole called the conquest “a triumph without results”: the Arabs never advanced much beyond Sindh and Multan.
• Why the conquest stalled:
• the Thar desert east of the Indus
• strong Indian kingdoms — the Gurjara-Pratiharas in the north and the Chalukyas in the west — checked Arab raids
• the Caliphate’s own troubles after 715, and Muhammad bin Qasim’s recall
• Sindh came to be called “Bab-ul-Islam” — the gateway of Islam into India.

Cultural contact

• The conquest opened a channel for Indian learning to reach Baghdad: the decimal numerals and zero, astronomy (Brahmagupta’s work, translated as Sindhind), medicine (Charaka, Sushruta) and fables (the Panchatantra, as Kalila wa Dimna).

Source

• Chachnama — a Persian chronicle, translated in the 13th century by Ali Kufi from an older Arabic account. It is the main source on the Chach dynasty and the Arab conquest of Sindh.