The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India c7.6

c7.6

The reason why the Arabs were keen on penetrating into Sind and always bracketed it with Hind, was that Sind was then a big country - as big as Hind in their eyes. According to the authors of *Chachnama* and *Tuhfatul Kiram*, the dominion of Sind extended on the east to the boundary of Kashmir and Kanauj, on the west to Makran, on the south to the coast of the sea and Debal, and on the north to Kandhar, Seistan and the mountains of Kuzdan and Kikanan.¹ It thus included Punjab and Baluchistan, parts of North-West Frontier Province and parts of Rajasthan. Muawiyah, the succeeding Caliph (661-80), sent as many as six expeditions by land to Sind. All of them were repulsed with great slaughter except the last one which succeeded in occupying Makran in 680. Thereafter, for twenty-eight years, the Arabs did not dare to send another army against Sind. Even Makran remained independent with varying degrees of freedom commensurate with the intensity of resistance so that as late as 1290 Marco Polo speaks of the eastern part of Makran as part of Hind, and as the last Kingdom of India as you go towards the west and northwest.² The stubborn and successful opposition of Makran to the invaders was simply remarkable.