Muhammad bin Qasim and the Conquest of Sindh

Mohammad bin Qasim

During the time when the Muslims marched victoriously out of Arabia, the Sindh was ruled over by a Buddhist king. When the Iranian empire was shattered to pieces at the hands of the Muslims, many Iranian chiefs fled to the Sindh, Turkistan and China and were engaged in preparing for war against the Muslims. Some others embraced Islam and began to lead happy lives in their countries. It was by sheer chance that when the Sectional and family rivalries between Banu Hashim and Banu Umayyah increased, the Iranians were also reminded of their own age-old national rivalry and they began to take part in the conspiracies hatched by Abdullah bin Saba and other hypocrites. These conspiracies and the civil wars among the Muslims breathed new life into the plans of those Iranians who were in exile in Sindh, Kabul, China, and Tibet and among those who were engaged in preparing to fight the Islamic forces. This is one of the reasons that the Muslims had to face hardships repeatedly in Kufa, Basra, Iran and Khorasan.

Because Sindh was nearer to Basra and Kufa and it touched the Iranian border, the refuge of choice for many of the subversive Iranians was the Sindh. The king of Sindh seeing the flood of Islamic victories was very unhappy and employed all possible strategies to help the Iranians re-establish their ancient kingdom. The last king of Iran collected several armies and fought with the Muslims a number of times after the battle of Nahavand (the decisive battle that marked the conquest of Iran). In all those battles, the army of Sindh always allied themselves with the king of Iran. When the Iranian emperor was killed, the king of Sindh annexed the bordering provinces of Iranian and the vanquished Iranians surrendered Kerman and Baluchistan to him willingly so that they might not be occupied by the Muslims and they might continue to enjoy the privilege of the support of the king of Sindh.

All these considerations made it imperative for the Muslims to launch an attack on the king of Sindh and to force him to cut off aid to the Iranian subversives. However, before the Muslims could occupy Iran and Khorasan completely during the caliphate of Uthman bin Affan (رضي الله عنه), the internal feuds in the heartlands of the Islamic territories broke out and no attention was paid to the Sindh, or to any other critical military site. Amir Muawiya (رضي الله عنه) after freeing himself from internal disruptions, turned his attention to the foreign lands and it was during his regime that the first efforts were made to regain the Iranian territory annexed by the king of Sindh. In that connection, a few skirmishes took place with his army but then the internecine wars re-started during Yazid’s regime and consequently the Muslims did not fulfill their military priorities abroad.

During Abdul Malik’s regime, the Muslims again did not have an opportunity to pay attention to foreign campaigns. Hajjaj who was the governor of the eastern countries considered it more strategic to contain Ratbeel the Governor of Afghanistan and Badakhshan than to attack the Sindh simply because Ratbeel was the greater danger to the Islamic province of Khorasan. Therefore, his attention remained centered on Ratbeel. Hajjaj’s Governor Qutaiba achieved continued success in disciplining the rebels in the territories extending all the way to China. Sindh was the only country where the Muslims still had a security situation that was pending. However, before the Muslims could take an initiative on this important work, the king of Sindh himself challenged them virtually inviting an invasion of his country.

The following are the details of the king of Sindh’s fateful error. It is said that a few Muslims traders died in Sri Lanka in the course of their business expedition. The Sri Lankan king decided to use the presence of the orphans and the widows of these traders on the island to attract the kindness and the attention of Hajjaj bin Yusuf and Caliph Waleed bin Abdul Malik to himself. The Sri Lankan king had heard the legendary news of Muslim victories. He was overawed by their express and had been in search of an opportunity and a way to express and pay his respect to the new and dominant nation in the region. He therefore sent the orphans and the widows on his own ship with an escort of some of his most trusted men to Hajjaj. Many invaluable gifts to Hajjaj and the Caliph Waleed also were sent accompanying them with the hope that the orphans and the widows would appreciate his good and kind gesture and applaud him before Hajjaj. The boats left Lanka and sailed towards the Arabian Gulf along the coast. They intended to land in the Gulf and travel to Kufa in order to return the families of the traders and present the gifts to Hajjaj. A storm over took them on the way and they were forced to take shelter in the port of Debal. There the soldiers of Dahir, the king of Sindh, looted the boats and made the passengers their captives. When Hajjaj was informed, he wrote to the king that those boats were on the way to him and so he should punish the looters suitably and send him the passengers along with all the goods that were confiscated. The King gave a very proud and impertinent reply. Hajjaj immediately sent Abdullah Aslami along with six thousand soldiers to Sindh. Abdullah was killed while fighting the king of Sindh and the expedition met with failure. Next, Hajjaj sent another commander named Budail. He also went there along with six thousand soldiers and he was martyred while fighting against the king.

Hajjaj was distressed to hear this news. He then sent Mohammad bin Qasim his nephew and son-in-law, a youth only 17 years old, along with six thousand Syrian troops. This time he chose Syrian troops to accompany Mohammad bin Qasim because Hajjaj suspected that the Iraqi and the Iranian soldiers were in league with the Sindhis. Mohammad bin Qasim first captured the province of Makran (coastal area that is part of modern Iran and Pakistan), which was under the occupation of the Sindhis. Then he came to Debal and conquered it and next moved towards Niroon and Brahminabad. Not only Iranian subversives but also many Arabs who had rebelled against the caliph had fled and taken refuge with King Dahir in Sindh. This was another reason why the invasion of the Sindh was inevitable. King Dahir fought against the Muslim forces but was killed. Then Mohammad bin Qasim started conquering the cities of Sindh one after another until all of Sindh and Multan came under his occupation.

During the conquest of Sindh, Hajjaj kept his attention concentrated on Mohammad bin Qasim. He sent for news and gave instructions daily. Mohammad bin Qasim proved himself to be an extremely benevolent and merciful victor who was concerned about the general welfare of the people. The equality, humility and generosity that this young victor displayed are rarely found anywhere in the annals of world history. He had completed the conquest of Multan when he received the news of Hajjaj’s death but he continued his series of conquests and by 96 A.H., he had brought all of Western India from Surat to Kashmir under his control.