Essay on Arab conquest on sindh

As Harshavardhana and Pulakesin II were struggling for supremacy in India, a revolutionary change was taking place not too far from these shores: the emergence of Islam in Arabia.

Shordy after Prophet Muhammad’s death in AD 632, the Arabs overran and subjugated Persia, Egypt, Palestine and Syria. Emboldened by the victory over Persia, the Arabs were thirsting for expansion.

Before they became Muslims by religion, the Arabs had been coming to India since the earliest times. Normally, their mission was trade and for this purpose they mainly visited the south-west coast of India. They continued with this relationship of trade for a considerable period after embracing Islam. As they acquired more and more power, they felt like securing some territories in India.

It is said that as early as 636-37, under the Khilafat of Omar, there was a naval raid on Thana near Bombay; but it failed.

Afterwards, they made frequent attempts to get some foothold in India through both sea and land. But mostly they desired to capture the North-West territories in the borders of Sindh, particularly Makran.

The first Arab attempt to invade Sindh was in the form of a naval attack against the port of Debal in 643 in which their leader was killed by the governor of Chach.

Khalifa Osman made another attempt in 644 by land through the Makran coast into western Sindh under the leadership of Abdullah-bin-Amar. He (Amar) is reported to have conquered Sistan, de­feated the ruler of Makran and Sindh, but in spite of these victories did not annex the territories. He reported to the Khalifa that in Sindh “water is scarce, the fruits are poor and the robbers are bold. If a few troops are sent, they will be slain; if many, they will starve.” However, Arab attacks continued on the frontiers of Sindh both by land and sea. Plundering raids were carried out in Broach and Debal without any conspicuous success in the next five years.

Around 660, when Ali was Khalifa, a well- equipped Arab army started for Sindh through Kikan on the Bolan pass route. But they met with stiff resistance from the people of Kikan and could not succeed even after six such attempts over the next twenty years. They could only conquer Makran during this period and had to remain satisfied with it.

Considering that historical events have proxi­mate (indirect) causes as also ultimate (direct cause, the seventh century Arab attack on India may be regarded as the result of three proximate and one ultimate causes. Firstly, it was the creed of the Khalifas to spread Islam by conquest and force and the expedition to Sindh was a part of that creed. Secondly, the Khalifa was not only the head of the Islamic religion; he was also the ruler of a kingdom, the Islamic empire. The attack on Sindh was there­fore an effort to increase the size of the empire. Thirdly, doing business with India over centuries, the Arabs knew of the riches and wealth of the land. The raid was therefore an attempt to capture a part of this wealth by force. It would therefore seem the Arabs were waiting for some cause (or pretext) to launch such an attack.

The ultimate cause of the Arab attack on Sindh was the looting of a few Arab trading ships by sea- pirates off the coasts of Sindh. It seems the king of Ceylon was sending by ship some orphaned Muslim women whose fathers had died in Ceylon. They were being sent to Basra as there was nobody in Ceylon to look after them. Pirates captured the ship in which they were travelling off the shores of Debal, a sea port in Sindh. Another view is that the king of Ceylon, having embraced Islam, was sending some women and other presents to the Khalifa by a ship and pirates captured this ship near Debal. There is no evidence of the conversion to Islam of the king of Ceylon, but historians agree that a ship carrying some women, whoever they might be, and presents was seized by pirates near the Sindh coast. The Basra governor, Hajjaj demanded from Dahir, the king of Sindh, the return of the ship or compensation in lieu thereof. Dahir refused stating that he had no control over the pirates in the sea. Peeved with this refusal, Hajjaj decided to conquer Sindh and asked for permission to do so from Khalifa Walid which was given rather unwillingly.

The first expedition was sent under Ubaidullah in 708, but he was defeated and killed. The second expedition under Buddai also met with a similar fate.

A fresh expedition, well equipped and better organised than the previous two, was sent in 711 by Hajjaj under the leadership of his nephew and son- in-law Muhammad-bin-Qasim. Going through Makran, Qasim stormed the fort of Debal and killed the citizens indiscriminately (712). Next he proceed­ed to Nehrun (modern Hyderabad now in Pakistan), and captured it without a fight. From there, advanc­ing along the western bank of the Indus, he conquered Siwistan (Sehwan) and reached a place, on the opposite bank of which Dahir’s army was camping. Another traitor, a chief named Mokah, became Qasim’s ally here after deserting Dahir. Qasim waited here for two months and then crossed the river by a bridge of boats and launched a surprise attack on Dahir near the fort of Raor. Dahir had the better of Qasim in the battle and was at the brink of victory when he was killed and his troops broke up and dispersed. Qasim then laid a seige on the fort of Raor, where Dahir’s widow Ranibai put up a stiff resistance. When everything failed, she alongwith other ladies and children of the fort killed herself in a fire (Jauhar).

From Raor, Qasim proceeded to Brahmanabad, ‘ which was defended byjai Singh, Dahir’s son. After a prolonged, bitter fighting in which more than 10,000 were killed, Jai Singh retreated, leaving Rani Ladi (another widow of Dahir) and her daughters Surya Devi and Parmal Devi, who were taken prisoner by Qasim. Next to fall to the sword of Qasim was the fort in the capital city of Alor. The principal city of Sindh, Multan, was the last Hindu stronghold. It also held back for two months, but gave up when a traitor pointed out to Qasim the source of its water supply (which Qasim promptly cut off). With the fall of Multan, the conquest of Sindh was over. The Arabs got so much gold here that they named Multan the city of gold.

Qasim married Rani Ladi, the widowed queen of King Dahir, and sent the two daughters of King Dahir, Parmal Devi and Surya Devi, to the Khalifa along with other presents. Thereafter he was plan­ning to send an army of ten thousand horses under Abu Hakim to conquer Kanauj, but was himself finished before that could be done.

It seems Parmal Devi and Surya Devi com­plained to the Khalifa that they were violated by Qasim before they were sent to him as presents. An enraged Khalifa thereupon ordered Qasim to be killed which was carried out promptly. Taken by remorse, the sisters then told the Khalifa that their charges were false. A farther enraged Khalifa then ordered the two sisters to be tied to the tails of horses and dragged till they died.

The other view is that there was a group in the Khalifa’s court working against Hajjaj who was the father-in-law of Qasim.

Hajjaj had died in 714 and Khalifa Walid, a year later. The new Khalifa Sulaiman was a sworn enemy of Hajjaj. Qasim was recalled and, by a strange irony of history, the man who conquered Sindh was tortured to death.

In any event, the internal discord in the king­dom of Khalifa prompted the chiefs of Sindh to defy the central authority. Jaisingh reoccupied Bramhanabad. The next Khalifa Umar II (717-20) offered the chiefs of Sindh virtual independence provided they converted to Islam. This they did, but during the reign of Khalifa Hisham (724-43) Jaisingh fell out with the governor of Sindh, Junaid. Jai Singh was defeated, imprisoned and subsequently killed, thus bringing to an end the dynasty of Dahir, and the independence of Sindh.

Junaid now wanted to put into effect the plan Qasim had in mind: further conquests and expansion of territories in India. The Arab army marched through Rajasthan and reached as far as Malwa in the east and Broach in the west. However, the Pratihara King Nagabhatta I and the Chalukya feudatory Pulakesin successfully checked Arab ad­vance. Henceforth, the Arabs were limited to the borders of Sindh, but here again they felt so insecure they built a new city Mansurah for taking refuge in the event of any emergency.

Meanwhile, significant changes were taking place in the Khilafat. The reigning clans, Umayyad Khalifas were losing ground to the up and coming clan of Abbasids. Thus the closing days of the Umayyads saw the virtual collapse of Arab powers in Sindh. A revolution in Damascus in 750 saw the Umayyads replaced by the Abbasids. The Abbasids, beginning afresh, wanted to reestablish the hold of Islam in Sindh. Al-Mansur (AD 754-75) appointed Hisham as the governor and he occupied Multana and Kandahar. That was all he could do; he was unable to make any headway against Lalitaditya Muktapida, the king of Kashmir. A naval expedition sent by Khalifa Al- Mahdi (775/85) failed to produce any result. There were minor gains in western Sindh when Harun-Al- Rashid was the Khalifa, but Jats and Meds kept harassing the Arabs in the neighbourhood of Alor, the old Hindu capital of Sindh, and they did not fare well in those conflicts. The situation seemed to have turned bad for the Arabs when the Hindu chiefs of Sindar rose against its ruler and killed him during the reign of Khalifa Al-Mamun (813-33).

Although the Abbasids on gaining power tried to consolidate the Arab hold in Sindh, their efforts in this direction appear to have been rather flawed. The rivalry of the Abbasids and the Umayyad was transmitted to Sindh and there was a largescale displacement of administrators and personnel. In this situation of flux, the chiefs of Sindh saw an oppor­tunity to assert their independence.

It should also be admitted that the chiefs of Sindh were second to none in defying subordination and this indomitable aspect of their character held the Abbasids in check. Furthermore, the spirited resistance of the Hindu kings bordering Sindh to any kind of Arab aggression was a major factor. The powerful Pratiharas obstructed the Arabs successfully in all their moves for expansion. The Chahamanas defended the borders so well that the Arabs had to fight for every inch of territory.

With the Abbasid power on the wane, Sindh became virtually independent and was a part of the Saffavid kingdom (872-903). When it disintegrated, Sindh was divided into two states with Multan and Mansura as their capitals. Both the states maintained a precarious existence. The Pratiharas always threat­ened to invade Multan and the Multanis countered it with the threat that in such an event they would destroy the famous image of the Sun-God. In this way, peace was maintained (and Multan had its insurance). Mansura, however, had no such luck and was constantly engaged in war with the clan of Meds and others living on the frontiers of Sindh.

Arab presence was, thus, limited to the frontier region and to the lower valley of the Indus. When this is compared to their military exploits in Africa and Europe, their record here would appear to have been rather poor.

There were two Hindu kingdoms in Afghanistan at that time, the kingdoms of Kabul and Jabul, and they also had to face the onslaught of the rising power of the Muslims. When the Arabs conquered Iran in 643, they found themselves poised on the boundaries of these two kingdoms with Iran. For about two centuries the Arabs repeatedly tried to go further, but were held back successfully by these two Hindu kingdoms. They had success in capturing Sistan, but were stalled there for about fifty years. Hajjaj, the governor of Iraq, attempted to conquer these two kingdoms as he did Sindh. But neither he nor his successors was able to make inroads; even their hold on Sistan became precarious.

Till about 870, these two Hindu kingdoms held on and did not allow the Arabs to enter India directly through Afghanistan. They were finally overcome by the Turk, Yakub of Sistan, who laid down the rale of the Saffavid dynasty in Persia.