The Foundation of Muslim Rule in India: A History of the Establishment and Progress of the Turkish Sultanate of Delhi, 1206–1290 A.D. c6.s3.15

c6.s3.15

Lower Sind, with its capital at Debal, was under a local dynasty. Mahmud's conquests in those parts were anything but complete. Not long after his death, a local tribe called Sumra, recovered control over the district and became independent. The origin of the tribe is uncertain. Ibn Battuta had heard they were of Arab descent⁴. He is supported by the *Tuhfatul Kiram*⁵, but controverted by Ferishta, Tahir Nisyani and Abul Fazal who assert that they were a local Indian tribe converted to Islam at an early date⁶. Elliot and Tod regarded them as of Rajput stock, a branch of the Paramaras¹. Their rise to power, according to Mir Masum², occurred towards the end of Abdur Rashid Ghaznawide’s reign whose weakness prompted them to establish their sovereignty near the town of Thari. The *Tarikh-i-Tahiri*, however, places the beginning of their independence about 700/1302³. This is near enough to the statement of the *Tuhfatul-Kiram* that they rose to power in the reign of Ghiyasuddin Tughluq⁴. This, however, should in reality, refer to the Summas who, it is certain, supplanted the earlier dynasty and were in possession of Lower Sind when Firoz Tughluq, in 762/1362, opened his attack against the Jam of Thatta. Elliot found evidence dating from 1032 of a Sumra prince (Rai) of Sind receiving communications of a religious import from the Qaramitah leader of the Druzes who were staunch supporters of the Fatimide Caliphs⁵. Their acceptance of the Shiite faith and a resulting intimacy with the Qaramitah of Multan would thus appear to be long-standing. In the list of the Sumra rulers found in the *Tuhfatul-Kiram*, the eleventh, named Chanisar (or Chatisar) is clearly to be identified with Sinanuddin Chanisar, the ruler of Debal who submitted to Iltutmish in 1228⁶. According to Juwaini, he fled from his capital when the Khwarizmi prince Jalaluddin Mangbarni passed through Lower Sind on his way to Iraq⁷. When Muizzuddin captured Debal “as far as the sea” in 578/1182⁸, he must have only