ABSTRACT
The sultanate of Delhi was not the first Islamic state on Indian soil. In 712, a few months after the Arabs had captured Gibraltar and started their conquest of Spain and a year after Bokhara in central Asia had succumbed to Islamic conquerors, an Arab conqueror had also established a bridgehead in Sind at the mouth of the Indus. This conquest of Sind had started with an insignificant episode: a ship in which the king of Sri Lanka had sent Muslim orphans to the governor of Iraq had been captured by pirates; when the raja of Sind refused to punish those pirates the governor of Iraq launched several punitive expeditions against him until finally the governor’s son-in-law, Muhammad Ibn Qasim, conquered most of southern Sind. In this campaign the governor of Iraq had enjoyed the full support of the caliph, but when a new caliph ascended the throne he recalled Ibn Qasim and had him executed. This did not, however, put an end to the policy of conquest: in 725 other Arab commanders successfully extended their campaigns into Kathiawar and Gujarat as far as southern Rajasthan. The valiant Arabs seemed to be poised for a rapid annexation of large parts of India, just as they had swept across all of western Asia.
