The early expansion of Islam in India

In the wake of the Islamic conquests, trading activity between the Middle East and India appears to have expanded dramatically. Between the Hellenistic period and the first/seventh century, the Arabs had lost their predominance in this trade to the Ethiopians – Byzantium’s trading partners in the Indian Ocean – and, to an even greater degree, to the latter’s political and commercial rivals, the Sasanid Persians. The early Islamic conquests brought Byzantine/ Sasanid rivalry to an abrupt end while bringing the Middle East into a single monetary exchange system and linking the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean under the aegis of a single imperial polity. Gravitating towards Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf, the trade with India became the major external source of wealth for Islam, at the same time that the overland route to China acquired much greater significance with the accession of the Tang dynasty in 618 CE. The Islamic trade with India was a trade in pepper (the ‘black gold of India’) and spices in the broadest sense, but included an almost infinite array of other items, from jewels to metallurgical products and ivory, to teakwood and textiles, which were exchanged against precious metals, horses and many manufactured products such as paper, glass and the like.

There is significant evidence to show that the conquests in Makra¯n and Sind were, at least partly, motivated by the ambition to safeguard the India trade against the (semi-)nomadic tribes of these regions, such as the Jats and M¯ds, whose predatory activities a ı ffected much of the western Indian Ocean, from the mouth of the Tigris up to the coasts of Sri Lanka. The early conquests in the eastern direction enhanced the power of the Azd Uma¯n at the expense of the tribes of the Sindian wastes. These Azd¯ of  Oman were a thoroughly Persianised population of Arab seafaring merchants (Zoroastrians before the rise of Islam) which had been settled on the coasts of Fa¯rs and Kirma¯n–Makra¯n, and as far as Sind from the days of the first Sasanid emperor Ardashir (r. 226–41 CE) onwards.1 The Azd¯ rise to power on the ı easternmost frontiers of the caliphate did not go unopposed (the notorious governor al-H. ajja¯j turned against them in the late first/seventh century) but demonstrates a strong link between the expansion of Islamic commercial interests and the conquests on the Indian frontier. This link persisted until about 447/1055, when the Saljuq Turks occupied Baghdad, the India trade was rerouted to the Red Sea and the Balu¯ ch¯ overran Makra¯n. Until that time, in ı Oman the ports of S.uh.a¯r, Julfar, Daba and Masqat. rose to eminence under the Azd¯ trading network. Many other Persian Gulf cities became important after ı the conquest of Sind and the subsequent foundation of Baghdad, including Bas.ra (newly founded by the Arabs), Ku¯fa, Wa¯sit. and al-Ubulla – the latter city attracting such a large part of the India trade that it came to be regarded as ‘part of al-Hind’. The efflorescence of these cities is another strong indication of the importance, from Abba¯sid times onwards, of the Persian Gulf connection with India, and beyond, with Malaya and China, as well as with Africa. The Bu¯yid dynasty (320–454/932–1062) boosted this trade still further, along the entire littoral, by effectively keeping the Baluch¯ tribes of Kirma¯n at bay. ı Throughout the early centuries, the H. ija¯z and the Red Sea ports were completely eclipsed. Jiddah and Aden were not restored until the rise of the Fa¯t.imids (359–567/969–1171) and the Ayyu¯bids (567–650/1171–1250) in Egypt. By then the intercontinental trade route through Syria and Asia Minor, via Baghdad, to the Persian Gulf was subverted by the arrival of the Saljuq Turks, the subsequent devastation of Fa¯rs by the Shaba¯nka¯ra and other unhinged tribes elsewhere in the Gulf region (including the islands), the concomitant decline of the qAbba¯sids and by the beginning of the Crusades in 485/1096. To some degree the decline of Baghdad, Sh¯ra¯z and of Bas ı .ra and other cities in the Persian Gulf, was offset by the Saljuqs’ policy of rerouting the India trade from Makra¯n to Hormuz and northwards to J¯ruft and Bardas ı ¯r, in Kirma¯n, and as ı far as Yazd and the caravan route to Azerbaijan and Anatolia.2 But the decline of the Persian Gulf and the rise to pre-eminence of the Red Sea and Egypt in the India trade were sealed by the fall of Constantinople in 600/1204, during the Fourth Crusade, and the destruction of the caliphate by the Mongols in 656/1258. From the Red Sea and Egypt, links with Malabar, especially with Calicut, and with the Coromandel were increasingly given emphasis over those with Gujarat and western India, although the latter areas were soon to regain an important role in trade, above all that in textiles. Outside the conquered territories of Makra¯n and Sind, Za¯bul and Kabul, and parts of the Punjab, up to the eleventh century no permanent Muslim communities appear to have been founded in India beyond the coastal towns.3 On the coasts, however, Muslim communities took root in innumerable locations, from Gujarat and the Konkan to Malabar, the Coromandel, Sri Lanka, Bengal and beyond, to the Malay–Indonesian archipelago and China; and everywhere their raison d’être was trade. Sustaining the emerging networks of Indian Ocean trade, we also find significant numbers of Hindus and Jains migrating to the Persian Gulf, Oman, Socotra, to the Red Sea and its islands, as well as to Indonesia, but in all likelihood these did not found permanent communities. If we can go by the later medieval and early modern evidence, Hindus and Jains, beyond India, remained sojourners.4 It was the Muslim diasporas in the Indian Ocean that became numerically the most important and by the thirteenth century overshadowed all others, including the Jews and Parsis, not least because they routinely gave rise to mestizo communities, originally often through mut.qa or ‘temporary marriage’ with women of low fishing and mariner castes, while living under Hindu domination. Up to about the tenth century the largest settlements of Muslim trading groups of this kind, mainly originating from the Persian Gulf region and Oman and to a lesser extent from the Hadramawt, were to be found on the coasts of Gujarat and the Konkan, in the domain of the Rashtrakuta or Ballahara¯ kings. Here the Arab element gradually submerged under the Turkish conquests from as early as the eleventh century but mostly from the late thirteenth century or, in the Konkan, under the expanding Bahmani dominion from the fourteenth century onwards. According to al-Masqu¯d¯, the ı largest settlement was that of about 10,000 Muslims in Saymur (south of present-day Mumbai).5 In the tenth century, many of these were baya¯sira (sing. baysar¯ı), that is ‘Muslims born in al-Hind of Muslim parents’. 6 Particularly the Caulukya king Siddharaja (1094–1143) fostered the growth of coastal Muslim communities in Gujarat – which came to include more and more local converts and ran the gamut from wealthy traders and shipping magnates to sailors, oilmen and other manual labourers.7 In the popular imagination, Siddharaja later became the founder of all important Muslim communities in Gujarat and he was reported to have been converted to their sects by the Bohras and the Khojas – Isma¯q¯lı ¯ communities which became ı larger in Gujarat than anywhere else in India – and even by the Sunn¯s who ı entered Gujarat from the Turkish-dominated areas of the north. The Arab-Muslim trading communities of south India – the Na¯vayat of the Canara coast, the Mappilas of Malabar and the Lappai or ‘Labbai’ (a corruption of qArab¯ı) of the Coromandel – retained the Sha¯fiq¯ legal orientation and ı assiduously fostered the Arab identity that they had brought with them from Baghdad and the Persian Gulf, as well as from Arabia, Yemen and Hadramawt, even though these same communities adopted important elements (such as the matriarchal customs of Malabar) from their Hindu host environment. They remained closely connected, through trade and continued migration, with the Muslims of the Middle East, and developed more important ties (also through intermarriage) with other Sha¯fiq¯-Muslim societies ı which sprang up in the tropical ecosystems of south India, Sri Lanka and the Indian Ocean island archipelagoes than with the ‘Tartars’ of continental India, whom they affected to regard as late converts and who were H. anaf¯.ı 8 With origins going back as far as the eighth century in some places, and some Mappilas in effect claiming to be refugees from the reign of terror of al-H. ajja¯j in Iraq at the end of the seventh century, the coastal Muslims of south India were clearly dominant in maritime commerce (especially long-distance) by the thirteenth century and had grown numerous in many ports. But the position of these south Indian Muslims among the politically empowered Hindu majority in south India always remained extremely ambivalent, especially in caste-conscious Malabar. Here, the Mappila and even the ‘Pardeshi’, or foreign Muslim element, while enjoying a privileged position among the Hindu military upper castes of Na¯yars and Nambu¯tiri Brahmans, nonetheless remained separated from these by a ritual barrier of pollution.9 Other groups of Muslims – of unknown provenance – found employment as mercenaries in the indigenous armies of south India, serving the kings of Malabar and Sri Lanka alike.

The conquest of Zamndawar, Zabulistan and Kabul

By contrast, the sweeping victories in the north of the Indian subcontinent, in the frontier regions of Zam¯nda¯war, Za¯bulista¯n or Za¯bul, and Kabul (all of ı which are now in southern and eastern Afghanistan), as well as in Makra¯n, Balu¯ chista¯n and Sind, allowed the Muslims to assume political power over a Hindu–Buddhist population which vastly outnumbered them but could, as revenue and tribute-paying subjects, be fitted into the easternmost administrative divisions of the caliphate. Zam¯nda¯war was the lowland region around ı Kandahar (‘where people do not eat cows’) and here the Zunbl kings and ı their kinsmen the Kabulshahs – who were probably descendants of a southern branch of the Chionite Hephthalites or ‘White Huns’ – had their winter residence, in the religious centre of their realm where the cult of the Shaivite god Zu n was performed on a hilltop. Zabul was the mountainous zone of the upper Helmand and Kandahar rivers where the Zunb¯ls had their ı summer residence. Partly due to the inaccessibility of their realm, the resistance of the Zunb¯ls was much more effective than that of other Indian kings who took up arms against the invading Muslims. In effect, the Zunbls and the ı related Kabulshahs were able to slow down the final conquest until as late as 256/870 – holding out for more than a century and a half after the remnants of Chionite-Hephthalite power were erased in the upper Amu¯ Darya¯ valley, in Herat and the surrounding region of Ba¯dhgh¯s, as well as in the region of what ı is now northern Afghanistan, and for as long after the Brahman kings of Sind had been overthrown at their first encounter with the Muslim armies. The Zunb¯lsı ’ tenacious resistance thwarted an attempted Muslim advance through Za¯bul and Kabul to the Indus Valley as early as 22/643. 11 Arab forces advanced to the shrine of Zu¯ n in 32/652f., mutilating the icon (the shrine itself survived until as late as the third/ninth century), and after that date mounted frequent plunder and slave expeditions as far as Ghazna, Kabul and Ba¯miya¯n, first from a base in Zarang, in S¯sta¯n, and subsequently from Bust, a town to the east of Zarang which drew great numbers of volunteer gha¯z¯ıs but never became more than a turbulent frontier outpost.12 The Zunb¯l more than once ı struck back at the Arab positions in S¯sta ı ¯n – up to the end of the eighth century this remained the ‘ill-omened frontier’ of consolidated conquests. According to al-Masqu¯d¯,ı ‘the Zunb¯l was that king of al-Hind who marched to S ı ¯sta¯n with ı the design to invade the kingdom of the Syrians’. 13 An army sent under alH. ajja¯j, in 77/697f., to Zam¯nda¯war and almost as far as Kabul, was virtually ı destroyed. Arab infighting in S¯sta¯n, exacerbated by Zunb ı ¯l interventions, ı brought the Islamic conquest to a halt, and for about one-and-a-half centuries no lasting military gains were made in the difficult terrain of the Zunb¯lı ’s dominions, although the latter, lying athwart the vital caravan route from Hind to Khura¯sa¯n, were frequented by Muslim merchants, as well as by renegades, especially Kha¯rijites persecuted by al-H. ajja¯j, and although some Afghans living in the area were possibly converted at this early stage. In the first half of the eighth century, the Zunb¯l instead chose to pay homage to the ı Tang emperor of China. The military breakthrough in Za¯bul and Kabul (although not yet in mountainous Ghu¯ r) occurred in the late ninth century CE, under the S.affa¯rids, a dynasty of local Sagz¯ provenance which had an intimate knowledge of the ı geographical and climatological conditions of these regions. By then the Buddhist ‘Turk Sha¯h¯ı’ dynasty of Kabul had made room for a ‘Hindu¯ Sha¯h¯ı’ dynasty, founded by a Brahman vizier of the old dynasty in a new capital at Wayhind.14 Under the Sa¯ma¯nids, a Turkish slave general by the name of Alptigin set up his headquarters at Ghazna in 322/933, and then founded the dynasty of the Ghaznavids, which drove the Hindu¯ Sha¯h¯ rulers further into ı the Punjab, and ultimately, in the early fifth/eleventh century, into Kashmir, thereby giving a new impetus to Islamic expansion in Hind.


The conquest of Makra¯n

From a military point of view, the first report received by the caliph Uthma¯n relating to the Indian borderlands of Makra¯n revealed conditions which were hardly more encouraging than those of the Zunb¯lı ’s dominions to the north: ‘the water is scanty, the dates are bad and the robbers are bold; a small army would be lost there, and a large army would starve’. 15 This report essentially refers to the ancient Gedrosia, the barren territory where Alexander nearly lost his army in 325 BCE, on his march back from the Indus to Susa. Here the Greeks had been startled, after having become acquainted with the far more civilised barbarian kingdoms of the north-west frontier, by the primitive life of the Ichthyophagoi, or what the Persians called the Ma¯ki-khora¯n – the ‘fish-eaters’ of which the name Makra¯n is said to be a corruption. It was an ancient convention to regard the satrapy of the Gedrosi (Makra¯n), with those of the Arachotae (Kandahar), Arii (Herat) and Parapanisidae (Kabul), as part of India. Al-B¯ruı ¯ n¯, in the ı fifth/eleventh century, similarly maintained that ‘the coast of al-Hind begins with Tiz, the capital of Makra¯n, and from there extends in a south-eastern direction towards the region of Debal’. 16 From a physiographic point of view, Makra¯n is an extension of the Great Desert or Dasht-i Lu¯t of Persia, and the part that was Indianised and ruled by Indian kings lay to the east of a wholly arid tract, extending up to Tiz (the chief commercial centre of Makra¯n, on the Persian Gulf), and was called K¯j-Makra ı ¯n, now constituting the south-western division of the province of Kalat, Balu¯ chista¯n, with a coastline of 320 kilometres. K¯j-Makra ı ¯n consisted largely of mountain ranges with cultivable tracts with towns and villages running from east to west, with K¯j being the largest inland town, on the great highway ı connecting India with Persia which in the early centuries of Islam was even more vital to the economic life of the caliphate than the route running through the Kabul river valley. The Arabs first invaded Makra¯n, routing a large assembly of Indian troops and elephants, in 23/644, towards the end of the caliphate of qUmar, almost three-quarters of a century before Muh.ammad al-Qa¯sim conquered Sind and established the first Muslim settlement on the Indus.17 Parties of horsemen began exploring the Makra¯n coastal regions during the caliphate of qUthma¯n (r. 23–35/644–56). Soon after, under qAl¯ (r. ı 35–40/656–61) and Muqa¯wiya (r. 41–60/ 661–80), military raids into the Makra¯n were resumed which took the Arabs as far inland as Qiqanan, and even beyond, as far as al-Ahwar (Lahore), but these resulted mostly in defeat. Later in the caliphate of Muqa¯wiya, Makra¯n was ‘conquered by force’, and permanent garrisons were established which subdued the country as far as Qandabil, obtaining more regular flows of tribute and slaves, although not without reversals. Some of the main towns of Makra¯n had to be subdued again by Muh.ammad al-Qa¯sim when the latter launched the ‘holy war against Sind and Hind’ which was authorised by the caliph Wal¯d and ı which led to the conquest of Sind by Arab forces around 96/712. 18 In Makra¯n, in the succeeding centuries, an unknown number of Arab Muslims, living in urban enclaves, appear to have asserted authority against largely unconverted and ‘depraved’ native tribes – Jat dromedary-men, an emerging population of Balu¯ ch¯s, pastoral and seafaring M ı ¯ds preying on ı coastal traffic from Sind, and numerous other mobile groups which the Arabs had to contend with, often in violent encounters. Like Za¯bul, Makra¯n became a place of refuge for Kha¯rijites and other extremists, following in the wake of Persian Mazdeans fleeing from Kirma¯n. But there was also the increasing number of Azd¯ Arabs, originating from Oman, which established ı an important mercantile presence in Makra¯n that lasted until the Balu¯ ch¯s, ı under pressure from the Saljuqs, overran the province in about 447/1055 from the west. An important conduit of long-distance commerce, Makra¯n remained more or less under the effective control of the caliphate between 96/712 and 256/870. The authority of the T. a¯hirid, S.affa¯rid and Sa¯ma¯nid dynasties of eastern Persia did not extend as far as Makra¯n, and we find that, by 256/870, Makra¯n was effectively controlled by a number of mutaghalliba chiefs who had ‘usurped’ power without being appointed by Baghdad but who still used the caliph’s name in the Friday prayers in K¯j, and in a place called Mashki, on the ı Kirma¯n border, as well as elsewhere, without paying tribute. Even then however the commercial traffic through Makra¯n and along its coasts appears to have continued undiminished.


The conquest of Sind

Sind, the alluvial plain on both sides of the middle and lower course of the river Indus or ‘Mihran’, extending from Attock and the Salt Range to the coast, and with varying portions of the dry and hilly uplands, such as Qiqanan, adjoining Balu¯ chista¯n, and of the Thar desert included, was conquered under al-H. ajja¯j, ‘governor of Ira¯q and Hind and Sind’ from 74/694 to 95/714. This occurred at a time of great expansionist ambition, amounting to an all-out reorientation of the caliphate in the eastern direction, towards Iraq and the Persian Gulf, towards Ma¯ Warap al-Nahr, and, above all, towards Hind.19 Like Makra¯n, Sind had a mixed Hindu–Buddhist population, with some Zoroastrian elements. Most of Sind also had a pastoral-nomadic economy, and much of it was still wilderness, a land of deserts, marshes and reeds. It probably held no more than several hundred thousand people along the lower Indus, next to perhaps 50,000 in Balu¯ chista¯n. In some places, especially in the areas around al-Mans.u¯ ra and Multa¯n, it was considerably more densely settled by agriculturists, and it was generally more urbanised than Makra¯n, commensurate with its greater commercial importance. For the Arabs, Sind was overwhelmingly important as a thoroughfare of the India trade, both overland and maritime. The first Arab naval expedition to Sind was undertaken in Umar’s reign, either in 15/636 or 23/644, but was unauthorised by the caliph, who was hesitant about naval expeditions at that time.20 The Arab naval force came via Bah.rayn and Oman to Debal and then crossed the sea to Tanah, a port on the west coast of India, near present-day Mumbai.21 The same caliph, having received reports that Sind was inaccessible, ‘even worse’ than Makra¯n, also prohibited an overland expedition from Makra¯n to Sind. qUthma¯n, too, prohibited his troops from invading Sind. Not until Makra¯n was occupied and the M¯ds of the coast of Sind were brought to heel under Mu ı qa¯wiya was such hesitation set aside. The expeditionary force which was then, in 94/710, sent from Sh¯ra¯z in southern Persia under al-H ı . ajja¯j’s nephew and son-in-law, the seventeen-year-old Muh.ammad al-Qa¯sim, consisted of 6,000 Syrian cavalry and detachments from Iraq with the mawa¯l¯ı. These were military men who would not return to their places of origin but would settle down, with native women, in colonies which were known as junu¯d and ams.a¯r, usually in or around the main towns of Sind. The conquest army that invaded Sind in 95/711 was not followed by a mass migration of Arab tribes, nomads or otherwise, as had been the case in Iraq between 17/638 and 25/656. Reinforcements, however, of camel riders were made along the way, and more troops were transferred by sea, while numberless volunteers soon began to arrive from Syria, and local forces of Jats and M¯ds were swept up in the conquest army ı as well. The port city of Debal was taken first, with great slaughter, and here the first mosque of the subcontinent was built. Other cities to the north of Debal capitulated to the conquest army, which then crossed the Indus for the decisive engagement with Dahir, the Brahman king of Sind, who was killed in battle, his head, with those of ‘the chiefs of Sind’ and a fifth of the booty and slaves, sent to al-H. ajja¯j. The governor rightly surmised that this victory practically put all of Sind in his hands and, on the occasion, delivered a sermon in the great mosque of Ku¯fa congratulating his people on ‘the conquest of Hind and the acquisition of immense wealth’. 22 The capital cities of Brahma¯na¯ba¯d, Alor and Multa¯n, with all fortresses in between, were now taken in quick succession, with, according to the sources, casualties on the Muslim side remaining low, while the enslavement of great numbers of women and children accompanied the killing of the ‘fighting men’ of Sind. Few chose to convert. But more mosques were built, and Friday prayers were held and coins were issued in the name of the caliph. The victorious Muh.ammad al-Qa¯sim was executed in 96/715 as part of a purge undertaken against the relatives and protégés of al-H. ajja¯j, upon the latter’s death, after having attempted to thwart the succession of the new caliph Sulayma¯n. Subsequent Umayyad governors made repeated attempts to convert Dahir’s son Hullisha¯h and other surviving members of the Sindian ruling elite, but with little lasting result. Apostasy and rebellion went hand in hand. The Arabs remained at war in Sind, even while conducting immensely lucrative raids, both by land and by sea, as far as Cutch, Gujarat and Rajasthan. Such raids, too, went not without reverses. An inscription in Sanskrit of the Gurjara-Pratihara king Bhoja I commemorates how Nagabhata, the founder of the dynasty, defeated a powerful ‘Mleccha king’ who had invaded his dominion.23 In the last decades of the Umayyad caliphate, in fact, the position of the Arabs not only appears to have deteriorated in many parts of Sind, but they withdrew altogether from regions to the east and south. This was also the time, however, when the two major stronghold towns were built of al-Mah.fu¯z.a and al-Mans.u¯ ra, on opposite sides of a now unknown lake ‘which borders on al-Hind’, and here the Arabs could secure their position.24 Al-Mans.u¯ ra, which appears to have been built adjacent to ‘old Brahma¯na¯bad’, the former capital of the Brahman rajas, became the seat of the later governors. There are now three main masses of ruins in this area, approximately 75 kilometres to the north-east of modern Hyderabad. To none of these the name of al-Mans.u¯ ra is attached, the city having been destroyed, like its predecessor Brahma¯na¯bad and so many other cities of Sind and Hind, by an earthquake and shifts in the course of the river occurring at some time after the fifth/eleventh century. But it was from the secure bases of these twin cities that the early qAbba¯sid governors, displaying varying degrees of loyalty to the caliphate, engaged in a new round of conquest activities, again both by sea and by land, and extending Arab control beyond previous limits, even, fleetingly, to the coasts of Gujarat and Kathiawar. They also regained control of Multa¯n and the upper Punjab, subduing the Jats and M¯ds in a range of localities, ı while at the same time building mosques of increasing size and number

Sind, with Makra¯n, went its own way, under hereditary governing dynasties, by about the same time that the T. u¯lu¯ nids in Egypt and the S.affa¯rids in S¯sta ı ¯n gained practical autonomy, and the Zanj revolt occurred in Iraq. De facto renunciation of caliphal control over Sind occurred in 256/870. By this time Sind, like Makra¯n, was parcelled out among a number of mutaghalliba chieftains who were under the authority of hereditary governors but sent them no revenue or tribute. Among the hereditary Arab governors of Sind the two most important ones in the fourth/tenth century were those of Multa¯n and al-Mans.u¯ ra, both still mentioning the qAbba¯sid caliph in their Friday prayers, although, as the century wore on, Multa¯n appears to have paid allegiance to the Sha¯h¯ rulers rather than Baghdad. Multa ı ¯n became an Isma¯q¯lı ¯ principality when it openly proclaimed the sovereignty of the fourth ı ruler of the Fa¯t.imid dynasty of Egypt, al-Muqizz (r. 341–65/953–76), the anticaliph who was also known as ‘the western one’. Al-Muqaddas¯, visiting Sind ı in 375/985, observed: ‘In Multa¯n the khut.ba is read in the name of the Fa¯t.imid (caliph) and all decisions are taken according to his commands. Envoys and presents go regularly from Multa¯n to Egypt. Its ruler is powerful and just.’ 25 In Sind generally, the Fa¯t.imid daqwa of missionary Isma¯q¯lism ı – an organised Sh¯ıqite Muslim sect with roots in western India and Sind going back to the ninth century but not officially embraced by any ruling dynasty until the Fa¯t.imids of Cairo espoused it – was extraordinarily successful and appears to have been related to the developments in trade.26 When the Fa¯t.imids extended their control down the Arabian and African shores, the Red Sea route gained greatly in importance, eclipsing the Persian Gulf in the trade with India. By the mid-fifth/eleventh century, even Baghdad was temporarily held in the Fa¯t.imids’ name. In Sind, Makra¯n and Balu¯ chista¯n, Isma¯lı ¯ propaganda and Fa ıt.imid trade (which was supported by military intervention, as well as by the introduction of a Fa¯t.imid coinage) developed side by side, indicating that Sind remained the vital commercial hinge that it had become in the second/eighth century. When Mah.mu¯d of Ghazna conquered Multa¯n in 400/1010, the Isma¯q¯lı ¯ communities su ı ffered a severe setback. They later revived significantly, only to be suppressed once more in 570/ 1175 by Muh.ammad Ghu¯ r¯, but never entirely. ı Throughout the three centuries of Arab-Muslim rule in Sind, it appears, urbanism increased. The pastoral and only lightly Indianised Jats and similar tribes which the Arabs encountered in the waste and swamp lands throughout lower and central Sind and which they generally described as‘highway robbers’, ‘thieves’ and ‘pirates’, 27 were brought under the political authority of the Muslim state. They were either demilitarised and domesticated, or enlisted in protection rackets as caravaneers, dromedary-men, watchmen and the like, or directly enlisted in the armies. Significant groups of Jats were also deported as slaves to Iraq, or settled in the swamps of the Shatt al-Arab (a policy inherited from the Sasanids). Throughout these centuries, there also appears to have been a substantial, although by no means complete, shift away from the pastoral nomadism of lower Sind to a more settled, agricultural existence in the Multa¯n area and the Punjab, particularly among the Jats. Even the notorious M¯ds, who ı were especially numerous in south-eastern coastal Sind, do not seem to have engaged in large-scale piracy at sea between 221/836, when Arab attacks on them intensified, and the early fifth/eleventh century, although they held on to a pastoral existence. There is no evidence that conversion to Islam had proceeded very far by the fifth/eleventh and sixth/twelfth centuries anywhere in Sind, nor that the Buddhists converted.28 In the early Islamic world, Arab Sind was, above all, important as a conduit of the India trade. The conquest, the quickened pace of commerce, and the increase of traffic between India and the heartlands of the Umayyad and Abba¯sid caliphates, as well as western Asia, Africa and Europe, also led to a noteworthy dissemination of numerous Indian crops – hard wheat, rice, sugarcane, new varieties of sorghum, banana, sour orange, lemon, lime, mango, as well as spinach, artichoke and eggplant/ aubergine among them – and new agricultural techniques to parts of the world far beyond India.29 This process was relatively slow and less easily visible, but its results revolutionised agriculture and may well have been the most significant legacy of early Muslim rule in Sind over the long term




The next, and most important, chapter in the history of the early expansion of Islam in India begins with the Turks, a people of Central Asian origin but no longer nomadic by the time of their arrival in the subcontinent in the late fourth/tenth and fifth/eleventh centuries. Due to the conquests of the Turks, by the seventh/thirteenth century more people would be living under Islamic imperial rule in India than anywhere else, even though it would be a long time before these numbers would be reflected in the numbers of converts. Meanwhile, the old Islamic heartlands, with only Egypt excepted, between the fifth/eleventh and seventh/thirteenth centuries, suffered nomad invasions on an increasingly large and devastating scale – first the Saljuqs, then the Mongols (with, in Iraq, Bedouin making destructive inroads into the breaches left open by the Mongols) – followed by extensive nomadisation and a concomitant long-term decline of the urban and economic infrastructure. India did not suffer from nomad devastation and already had a population at this time of around 100 million people, which was, moreover, continually increasing. With the majority of these living in the fertile northern plains – at the time one of the richest agricultural regions – which were now coming under Islamic rule, and with the Islamic heartlands in disarray but maritime trade with Egypt expanding, the Indian subcontinent moved to a central position within the Islamic world at large. Nomads have never been able to establish empires in the monsoon climate of India.30 The Turks who established their Islamic empire beyond Sind in the fifth/eleventh century, like their pre-Islamic predecessors (the Shakas, Kushanas and Hephthalites), are better designated as post-nomadic people, with origins in the steppes but no longer active practitioners of pastoral nomadism. The successive post-nomadic empires which they established were a quite specific adaptation to the ecological conditions of India. The Indian subcontinent, from a physiographic point of view, was a zone of transition between the nomadic world of the deserts and steppes which stretched from North Africa to Central and Inner Asia and the humid, equatorial parts of Asia where intensive rice agriculture was practised in alluvial river plains enclosed by rainforests. Because the arid zone of deserts and steppes had important extensions into India, the subcontinent was always closely linked to the nomadic world of the arid zone and it shared some of its features. Historically, it meant, above all, that the Indian subcontinent was conquered repeatedly by people of nomadic background and then colonised to varying degrees, but that it was never subjected to extensive nomadisation. Another branch of the Turks, the still nomadic Saljuqs, in the fifth/eleventh century, sponsored a significant pastoral immigration into Iran and Anatolia, but failed to do so in India. There are remains of Saljuq mausoleums and minarets in Afghanistan, but not beyond. On the Indian frontier, the incidental settlements of Saljuqs that may have occurred remained isolated, like in Baltista¯n (on the bank of the Indus, between Gilgit and Ladakh), where the rajas and viziers claim descent from Saljuq Turks who arrived here just before their fellow tribesmen pushed into Iran and Anatolia.31 And there are some Saljuq families in the Juggaur district of Awadh who claim to be descendants of the brother of Nu¯ r al-D¯n Muh ı .ammad, the Artuqid ruler of Diya¯rbakr, and to have arrived there from Anatolia as part of the Ghu¯ rid armies in 580/1184. But none of these were nomads. Later, in the seventh/thirteenth century, the Mongol nomadic hordes in their turn failed to establish themselves in India on a permanent basis. Only in areas like Binba¯n and the Ku¯h-i Ju¯d, on the north-west frontier of the subcontinent, did Mongol occupation lead to the devastation of agricultural land and large tracts of agricultural land being turned into pasture to sustain the Mongol cavalry. This did not happen in the plains. India was, for climatological and ecological reasons, unsuitable for Mongol-style nomadism. India’s patchy pastoral economy of sheep, goats and cattle always stood in a competitive relationship with sedentary agriculture, and it could not accommodate large hordes of Turkish and Mongol nomads on account of its lack of good pasture-lands and appropriate fodder grasses, particularly for horses. The humid climate of most of the subcontinent was detrimental to the health of horses and did not provide good breeding conditions, outside a few areas that were an extension of the arid zone, as in the north-west, or in some parts of the Deccan. Generally, Turko-Mongol writing is pervaded by fear of India’s hot and humid climate and concomitant unhealthy conditions for horses as well as men. The Turkish conquest of India, then, did not significantly modify the equilibrium between nomadic and sedentary people. The Turks who migrated to India from the steppe, like those who were in the vanguard of the military conquest, always left their nomadism behind. But, even though their numbers were dwarfed by the size of the domestic population of the subcontinent, the impact of the Turks was immensely important. For one thing, the Turks extended the rule of Islam across the Indian plains. For another, the Turks, straddling the arid north-west frontier from Afghanistan to the mouth of the Indus as well as the steppe lands, acquired a virtual monopoly of the regular supply of good warhorses that the subcontinent could not provide for itself. Most importantly, the Turkish conquest armies, consisting of regular and irregular recruits from the nomadic steppes and built around a core of mamlu¯ks but never accompanied by sprawling nomadic hordes with their flocks and herds of sheep, with women and children in tow, brought about a revolution in warfare and military technique that would change the patterns of political and resource mobilisation of the subcontinent forever. The inhabitants of the steppes, living in conditions which were optimal for horse breeding, in medieval times distinguished themselves by the practice of mounted archery, and this allowed the Turks to prevail militarily over their sedentary neighbours, in India as much as in Byzantium, Iran or China. For this reason the Turks could bring about a horse-warrior revolution in India even though they could not bring about a pastoral-nomadic one. The military differential between the Turks and the Indians, both social and technical in origin, was an essential factor in the early centuries of incessant conquest activity, especially because the Turks were relatively few in numbers and prone to be decimated by disease. While the co-ordinated deployment of mounted archers was essential for Turkish military victory, it appears beyond doubt that in India itself archery was left to infantry and a relatively small number of elephant-riders. Although horses and horsemanship had a long history here, India failed to develop mounted archery, and it was this failure which was exposed by the Turks coming from Central Asia. The heavy (although never exclusive) reliance on horses and mounted archery by the post-nomadic Turkish empires is what set them apart not only from the Indians but also from the Muslim Arabs who preceded them in the conquest of the north-western frontier areas of the subcontinent. The battles of the Arabs in the first centuries of Islam were mostly fought by infantry, supported by archers. However, these infantry armies of the Arabs were not recruited from among the nomads but mostly from among the sedentary population of the towns and oases. The relatively minor nomadic element in the Arab armies was largely put to tactical use as light cavalry, especially in raiding excursions. What was essential in the Arab armies was superior mobility in the campaigns in the desert and the ability to concentrate forces over great distances by making use of the dromedary. The role of the dromedary was decisive in the early Arab conquests and explains, at least partly, why these conquests did not go much beyond Sind and the arid regions of the Thar desert. But in spite of the prominent role they gave to the dromedary, the Arab conquerors were clearly not nomads, nor did they introduce mounted archery to India, nor did they bring large numbers of nomadic pastoralists along at a later stage for relocation in Sind. Post-nomadic expansion of the kind that the Turks undertook in India could normally only be consolidated in the interstices of the sedentary world, along India’s inner frontier of arid and semi-arid habitats. Hence the Islamic globalisation of the economy, concomitant with the great increase of the offensive capabilities of mobile warfare in these centuries, followed the vagaries of the arid zone. As a result, in this period of post-nomadic empire formation, the role of horses, dromedaries and oxen increased considerably, enlarging India’s capacity for warfare, transportation and cultivation simultaneously. The importance of the domesticated elephant was, however, from now on gradually reduced in the new warhorse military economy. In India, elephants were kept in forested reservations outside the cultivated realm where they needed a transhumance circuit which included both elevated and lowland, even swamp-like, terrain. Such elephant forests, like grazing pastures for horses, stood in a competitive relationship with sedentary agriculture. Over time, with the agricultural realm expanding, the ecological situation of elephants in many parts of the subcontinent had come to resemble more and more that of horses. Horse-grazing, on the other hand, had the advantage that it could be done in non-contiguous areas, which were, moreover, not necessarily excluded from any other use, as elephant forests mostly were. The mobility of elephants was limited, while they had to be kept in a half-tamed or wild state in forest reservations, and was further impeded by the fodder problem. Horses were more mobile, being always tame, and could more easily be controlled, relocated, concentrated and deployed over long distances. Beginning with the post-nomadic empires of the Turks in the late fourth/ tenth and fifth/eleventh centuries, the disadvantages of the keeping and use of horses relative to elephants were gradually reduced to the point that elephants were bound to become ever more obsolete in warfare. Horses proved to be tactically much more useful in mobile warfare, while elephants could only be deployed statically, in set battles. In general, the evidence shows that the post-nomadic empires of medieval India were in an almost permanent state of military mobilisation, and that they relied specifically on mounted archers, much like nomadic empires. They were almost equally fluid and indeterminate in their institutional infrastructure (lacking, notably, a clear law of succession). The major difference was that they did not rely on pastoral nomadism but on agriculture as their means of subsistence. Post-nomadic armies were thus trimmed of their livestock, and unlike the nomadic armies mobilised by the Saljuqs and Mongols, did not move in conjunction with women, children and other noncombatants, while they were always broken up in smaller contingents and never moved en masse

From Ghazna to Lahore

Al-Biruni, in his ı Kita¯b al-Hind, dates the beginning of ‘the days of the Turks’ from ‘the time when they seized power in Ghazna under the Sa¯ma¯n¯ dynasty, ı and sovereignty fell to Na¯s.ir al-Dawla Sabuktig¯nı ’. 32 The dynasty of the Ghaznavids, which was then founded, was from the beginning preoccupied with the invasion of the major river plains, first of the Indus, then the ‘fiveriver’ land of the Punjab, and finally the ‘two-river’ land of the Ganges– Yamuna Du¯a¯b. It would pursue these goals until 582/1186, when the dynasty was overthrown by the Ghu¯ rids and their Turkish slave generals who, in their turn, would push the conquests as far as the eastern Ganges delta. Thus, for almost two centuries, the Turkish rulers of Ghazna played an important role in the expansion of Islam.33 They were quick to proclaim themselves the caliphal defenders of Sunn¯ orthodoxy against the Shıite Bu¯yids and the Isma¯lı ¯ principalities of Sind. Most importantly, they took it as their historic ı mission to conquer ‘the infidels of al-Hind’. Acutely conscious of their post-nomadic status, the Ghaznavids and their Turkish slaves recast themselves as a Perso-Islamic ruling elite with such zeal (adopting even non-Turkish names) that it is almost impossible to find significant reminders in the Persian historical record of their Turkishness, or of their former paganism, let alone their former nomadism. The fact remains that Turks from the steppes were the most important ethnic component of the Ghaznavid armies from beginning till end, especially of the mamlu¯k leadership and elite troops, even though these armies were at all times rather heterogeneous, including recruits from among the semi-nomadic Arab population of Khura¯sa¯n (which had become ‘a second Arabia’), and now also from among the Afghans (still absent in the Arab armies), Daylam¯ infantry and cavalry ı (originally from the Caspian Sea area), Ta¯j¯ks or ı ‘Persians’ from Khura¯sa¯n and various groups of Indians – soon enough Indian Muslims as well. According to contemporary sources (which are almost certainly highly exaggerating), under Sultan Mah.mu¯d of Ghazna (r. 388–421/998–1030), these regular troops could number over 50,000, excluding provincial garrisons. Volunteer gha¯z¯ıs, who went unregistered and without salaries, living off plunder, are said to have joined in the jiha¯d in even greater numbers. Up to the end of Mah.mu¯d’s reign, such Ghaznavid armies remained extremely mobile, undertaking raids into Hind, after the monsoon rains had subsided, on an almost annual basis, and then withdrawing to Ghazna with booty and slaves. From about 404/1013f., garrisons were beginning to be left behind and forts were conquered on a more permanent basis, while more and more petty Hindu rajas were beginning to be co-opted in the conquest state. Lahore gradually emerged as a second Ghaznavid capital in the Punjab but did not replace Ghazna until 555/1160, when the latter city was taken over by the Ghu¯ rids. There were practically no permanent additions to the Ghaznavid conquests beyond Sind and the Punjab at any time, so that beyond these areas the pattern remained one of lightning raids into ‘infidel’ territory. Some of the major sacred sites of the Hindus, such as Kanauj, Mathura, Thaneshwar and Somnath, were plundered, their icons destroyed or removed, while enormous amounts of treasure which had been accumulated over centuries (the figures given by many texts are astronomical) were transferred to the Ghaznavid capital and brought back into monetary circulation or, in their turn, carried off by the Saljuq armies when they temporarily seized Ghazna in 511/1118. Scores of mosques were erected with the rubble of smashed temples, with carefully selected fragments being remitted to Ghazna to be trampled by the faithful. Demographic losses resulting from the destruction and killing concomitant with warfare, as well as from the large-scale deportation of war captives and slaves, were probably severely aggravated by the outbreak of a famine, followed by epidemic disease, in 423/1033, in the wake of several decades of prolonged campaigning, which seemed to indicate that the great age of Ghaznavid expansion was drawing to a close. According to a later historian, Firishta: ‘This year of 423/1033 was remarkable for a great famine (qah.t) in many parts of the world. The famine was followed by a pestilence which swept away many thousands from the face of the earth. In less than one month 40,000 people died in Is.faha¯n alone. Nor did it rage with less violence in Hindusta¯n, where whole countries were entirely depopulated.’ 34 In the Punjab, when the Hindu Sha¯h¯ ruler Anandapala was forced out (causing ı the Ismalı ¯ı amir of Multa¯n to flee as well), a great exodus of Brahmans appears to have occurred from the increasingly Muslim-dominated province towards the mountain valley of Kashmir, as well as to Varanasi and other areas still beyond the reach of the ‘country-conquering Turushkas’. Among the invading Turks, the most substantial losses of manpower were probably caused by exposure to the almost entirely new disease pool – comprising malaria, smallpox, cholera, bubonic plague and a host of others – of the hot and humid climate of the densely settled plains of India rather than by warfare as such. An investiture patent was sent from the caliphal office in Baghdad in 421/ 1030, officially recognising not only the Punjab as a Muslim domain under the Ghaznavids but also all the areas which they had conquered to the west, as far as Qasdar, Sibi or Walishta¯n, Qiqanan and Makra¯n. The dynasty held on to its possessions in northern and eastern Afghanistan, as well as its Indian conquests, for over a century more. Contemporary authors attached great significance to the establishment of Saljuq suzerainty over Ghazna in 511/1118, consequent upon the death of Masqu¯d. By that time, however, the real threat to the Ghaznavids’ survival came not from the Saljuqs but from the Shansabans of Ghur.

Mountains of Firuzkuh, plains of Hind

The Shansaba¯n¯ dynasty superseded the Ghaznavids in the second half of the ı twelfth century. This dynasty was not of Turkish, nor even Afghan, but of eastern Persian or Ta¯j¯k origin, speaking a distinct Persian dialect of its own, ı like the rest of the inhabitants of the remote and isolated mountain region of Ghu¯ r and its capital of F¯ru¯zku¯ h (in what is now central Afghanistan). Here it ı presided over a mainly agricultural rather than a nomadic population – a source of slaves for the Arabs – whose external commercial connections were alleged to have been in the hands of Jews since the time of Ha¯ru¯ n al-Rash¯d. ı 35 As long as he remained a Ma¯lik al-Jiba¯l or ‘King of the Mountains’, the Ghu¯ rid ruler did not have a cavalry at his disposal but merely an army of footsoldiers equipped with long shields made of bullock-hide and cotton cloth. When Turkish and Mongol pastoral nomads did penetrate into F¯ru¯zku¯ h in the early ı seventh/thirteenth century they, eventually, under Ögedei, utterly destroyed it, bringing the Jewish presence to an end as well. Islam had come to Ghu¯ r, or at least to its capital, long before the Ghaznavids began to meddle with the Shansaba¯n¯sı ’ dynastic disputes and, in the period leading up to the mid-sixth/twelfth century, began to prop up the dynasty against rival mountain chieftains. Gathering strength, the Shansaba¯n¯ı ruler acquired the title of sultan in return for tributary status. Soon after the mid-sixth/twelfth century, however, the Ghu¯ rid sultan qAla¯p al-D¯n Jaha¯nsu ı ¯z (the ‘world-burner’) undertook to use his increased strength for the destruction of the city of Ghazna itself, as well as of the palaces at Bust which had been built by Mah.mu¯d. Now, under an agreement with the Saljuq sultan Sanjar, effective Ghu¯ rid dominion was extended over neighbouring regions like Tukha¯rista¯n, Ba¯miya¯n, Zam¯nda¯war, Bust and parts of Khura ı ¯sa¯n, or as Ju¯zja¯n¯, the chief chronicler of the Shansaba ı ¯n¯ dynasty, wrote, with some ı exaggeration, ‘from Hindusta¯n and the frontier of Chin and Mahachin to Iraq and from the Jihun river in Khura¯sa¯n to Hormuz’. 36 In the process, the composition and character of the Ghu¯ rid armies changed entirely. Not only did the geographic recruitment area of the Ghu¯ rid army broaden in the second half of the sixth/twelfth century, but cavalry became allimportant. In the Ghu¯ rid cavalries that invaded India we find Afghans, Damgha¯n¯s from Qu¯mis in northern Iran, Ta ı ¯j¯ks from Khura ı ¯sa¯n, Khalaj from Garms¯r and Zam ı ¯nda¯war, Saljuq ı am¯rı s from Ru¯m, and innumerable ‘Ghuzz Turks’ who had arrived in Khutlan and Chaghaniyan around 511/1118 and in Tukha¯rista¯n, Ghazna, Kabul and Za¯bul after the mid-sixth/twelfth century. Moreover, when in 556/1161 Sayf al-D¯n Muh ı .ammad succeeded to the throne of F¯ru¯zku¯ h, the Ghu¯ rid state evolved from a local clan-based polity ı into an empire led by a Turkish mamlu¯k elite which was largely purchased in the steppes of Central Asia, thus coming very close to the post-nomadic model of the Ghaznavids who preceded them in the conquest of Hind. Having subdued the Ghuzz Turks at Ghazna, the Ghu¯ rid Muqizz al-D¯n (better ı known as ‘Muh.ammad Ghu¯ r¯ı’) in 569/1173 ‘ascended the throne of Ghazna like Mah.mu¯d’. The Ghu¯ rid conquest of Hind then became the work of Sultan Muqizz al-D¯n, the ruler of the appanage of Ghazna from ı 569/1173 to 599/1203 and of F¯ru¯zku¯ h between ı 599/1203 and 602/1206, and three of his Turkish slaves, Qut.b al-D¯n Aybak, Na ı ¯s.ir al-D¯n Qaba¯cha and Ta¯j al-D ı ¯n Yildiz, and one non-slave, Ikhtiya¯r al-D¯n Muh ı .ammad bin Bakhtiya¯r Khalaj¯. Without ı sons of his own, Muqizz al-D¯n arranged for his Turkish slaves to become the ı heirs to his dominion after his death. Meanwhile he effectively used his prerogative to keep his own Shansaba¯n¯ kinsmen out of his appanage of ı Ghazna, and by extension out of Hind, and could monopolise its by now diminished but still considerable wealth for himself.37 In this way, Turkish predominance in the expanding empire was sealed. The essential difference between the Ghu¯ rids and their Ghaznavid predecessors did not lie in different military strategies or tactics – both relied heavily on mounted archery – but probably in the logistics of supplies. By the late sixth/twelfth century we first hear of the activities in north-western India of regular supply corps or commissariats, the roving bands of grain dealers with bullock trains which in later times were called Banja¯ras. These appear to have made their appearance with the Ghu¯ rid armies at this time, some of them already converting to Islam, according to later tradition, under Muh.ammad Ghu¯ ri.38 The first nomadic Muslim caravaneers (ka¯rwa¯n¯ya ı ¯n) supplying the Ghu¯ rid armies in the field apparently came from the Multa¯n area athwart the route of the earliest Ghu¯ rid campaigns in India. Aiming to bypass the Ghaznavid dominion in the Punjab, Muqizz al-D¯n in ı 570/1175 had taken the southern route through the Gomal Pass, and Multa¯n was the first city he captured, followed by Uch, in upper Sind, leaving both in the hands of a governor. He returned in 573/1178 via the same route, proceeding through the desert towards Nahrwa¯la in Gujarat, still in an attempt to outflank the Ghaznavids. The defeat of his exhausted army by the Caulukya king Mularaja II induced him finally to give up the southern route. But the nomadic caravaneers of Multa¯n, if later tradition can be relied on, accompanied the Ghu¯ rids in many, perhaps all, subsequent campaigns. These subsequent campaigns during the next five years resulted in the subjugation of Sind, as far as Debal and Makra¯n. Peshawar, Sialkot and, through strategem, Lahore were secured by 582/1186, bringing to an end Ghaznavid rule in the Punjab. Coming into a strategic position to advance into the plains of northern India, the Ghu¯ rids then began to engage Pr.thiv¯ra¯ja, the ı Ca¯hama¯na ‘King of the Earth’. Pr.thiv¯ra¯ja, heading a powerful alliance of Indian kings, initially prevailed in the so-called First Battle of Tarapin of 587/ 1191, forcing the ‘army of Islam’ back to Lahore. In the following year, however, Pr.thiv¯ra ı ¯ja’s army was scattered and defeated in the Second Battle of Tarapin, in which the Ghu¯ rid elite guard of 10,000 mounted archers appears to have played a decisive role. In the events which then unfolded, Qut.b al-D¯n Aybak began his meteoric ı rise. The forts of Sarsat¯, Ha ı ¯ns¯, Sa ı ¯ma¯na and Kahram, then Ajmer, M¯rath, ı Baran, Delhi and Kol, were all in his hands prior to 589/1193. Officially, it was still Muqizz al-D¯n who received caliphal authorisation for these conquests and ı who built the first triumphal arches and Ja¯miq Masjid in the emerging new Indo-Muslim capital of Delhi. But Aybak, the former slave, was about to ascend the throne of an independent sultanate of Delhi which was largely his creation – a watershed event that happened in 602/1206. In the intervening years, the conquests were extended from Delhi: to Rajasthan, Varanasi and Bayana; to Gwalior, ‘the pearl of the necklace of the forts of Hind’; up to Bada¯pu¯ n and Katahr, in the northern Du¯a¯b, and as far as the frontier of the country of Ujjayn. The Candella forts of Kalanjar, Mahoba and Khajuraho were taken by Aybak in 598–9/1202–3. Bada¯pu¯ n became the starting point for the conquests of Awadh, Biha¯r and Bengal, by Muh.ammad bin Bakhtiya¯r Khalaj¯,ı in Aybak’s service. Biha¯r was extensively raided by his forces. Buddhist monks took flight, or were massacred, their monasteries turned into horse stables. Muh.ammad bin Bakhtiya¯r took possession of the capital of Nadiya in 600/1204, bringing Sena rule to an end, leaving the city in desolation, and prompting an exodus of Brahmans to the remotest corners of Bengal, then transferring the seat of Muslim government to Lakhnawti, a former northern Sena capital on the Ganges, near Gaur. Here another provincial administration was set up, the khut.ba was read and coins were issued, still in Muqizz al-D¯nı ’s name, while mosques, madrasas and kha¯naqa¯s were founded all over the area. In real terms the conquest was now completed. Well over half a millennium after the beginning of the first campaigns, Muslim arms prevailed from the Indus to the mouths of the Ganges and Brahmaputra.