In 710, the Umayyad governor of Iraq, al-Hajjaj, heard that some Muslim women had been captured by pirates in Sind (modern Pakistan). He sent word to its Brahman Hindu king demanding their release, but when the king disavowed any control over the pirates, Hajjaj decided to send an army led by one of his cousins, Muhammad ibn Qasim. The army was raised from Syrian and Iraqi forces around Shiraz, a garrison city founded in 693 to control Iran.
The army of 6000 marched through coastal Iran, capturing any cities along the way, while supply ships sailed to meet them. This was the most organized, professional invasion yet. When they set up a siege of Daybul (whose name meant “temple” in Sanskrit), they used a giant catapult. It was the kind that needed a lot of men to pull on a rope all at once, lifting and flinging the arm, and it was so large that it needed 500 men. The catapult targeted the tallest building that had a dome and banner; it may have been a Buddhist stupa.
Daybul’s walls were scaled by ladders. The invading Muslims tore down Hindu and Buddhist temples and killed priests. Muhammad ibn Qasim ordered the building of a mosque and a new garrison town for 4000 Muslims.
But at the next fortified town on the Indus River, Buddhist monks came out to meet the army. They argued that war was against their religious principles and negotiated peace terms. This happened repeatedly, so that only one city, where the Hindu governor refused to cooperate with Buddhist peace efforts, was actually destroyed. A nomadic-agricultural tribe, the Zutts, chose to join the Muslims both in arms and as converts, so the army only grew as it went.
Finally, there was a full-scale battle across the Indus River. The Hindu regional king Dahir rode an elephant, one of sixty. His litter also contained female slaves to hand him arrows and betel nuts. His large army stood ready to deny the Muslim army its crossing.
But Muhammad ibn Qasim ordered his men to build a pontoon bridge of boats and swing it into the current while arrows covered them by keeping the men on the far bank under attack. It worked, the Muslim army crossed the river. The king’s litter caught fire from a flaming arrow, and his maddened elephant ran into the river. After the king’s death, Hindu resistance in Sind was over. Captured women were sent back to Iraq and Damascus, although a number of women at court burned themselves together in a house.
Muhammad ibn Qasim set about governing his new province, and gradually the Brahmin caste put out feelers to cooperate with him. The Hindu king’s widow became Muhammad ibn Qasim’s wife. Brahmins began working for the Muslim regime as tax collectors. Buddhist temples were falling into disrepair because the conquered people were afraid to bring donations to the old religion. But after Hajjaj told his cousin that it was all right to leave the Buddhists alone, their temple customs returned to normal.
The Brahmins convinced Muhammad ibn Qasim not only to restore them to elite status but to continue the old custom of treating the poor peasants called Jats in a discriminatory way. This is interesting because in earlier invasions, the poor tended to convert to Islam quickly in order to be part of the more powerful class for once. That didn’t happen here. The social status that predated Islam just continued, which made Sind much easier to govern.
The military expedition ended far up the Indus River. All the way up the river, cities were sending people out to meet the Muslims with music and dancing. But in the city of Aror, the people first thought that the dead king was still alive and would save them, but Muhammad ibn Qasim showed them the widow, now his wife, and at last they believed. As the city surrendered, many residents gathered at a Buddhist shrine, where Muhammad ibn Qasim took a bracelet from the statue to show its powerlessness. The widow, Ladi, asked Muhammad not to execute the people of the city, not even the soldiers.
These Indus River cities were extremely wealthy, especially in gold. Destroying their social systems would decrease their tribute-paying ability by a lot and bring order into chaos. But Buddhists and Hindus were so obviously idol-worshippers, it was clear that strict application of Islam would require mass destruction. In Iran, they had decided to treat Zoroastrians as if they were Jews or Christians. Muhammad ibn Qasim now decided Buddhist and Hindu temples were just churches. Even unconverted, they could pay the jizya tax and become protected minorities, or dhimmis. Muslims didn’t destroy statues.
Muhammad ibn Qasim’s extremely successful time in Sind came to an end when Caliph Walid and Emir al-Hajjaj both died in 714. By 715, he was back in Iraq being imprisoned and tortured to death. It’s not clear why, except that he was closely associated with Hajjaj, and now the political wheel turned. He was remembered fondly in Sind, where they even grieved over his recall and disgrace. The Muslim government in Sind had been among the mildest and most tolerant.
- Great Arab Conquests, by Hugh Kennedy