ABSTRACT
The Islamic Advance into Northern India India at + rst lay beyond the wave of the seventh-century Islamic conquests that engulfed most of the Middle East and North Africa, but Arab traders continued to bring back samples of Indian wealth. Sindh, the lower half of the Indus Valley, was conquered by Arab forces in the eighth century, primarily as a rival trade base. But the major advance came nearly three centuries later, from the newly converted Turks of Central Asia, who had been driven westward and into Afghanistan by earlier Chinese expansion under the Han and the Tang.
