The Sultanate of Delhi, 711–1526 A.D. c10.17

c10.17

Fourthly, even after the fall of Sindh and Hindu Afghanistan which opened the flood gates of, first, the Arab and then the Turkish invasions, the Arabs failed to conquer permanently an inch of our territory beyond Sindh and Multan and the Turks had to put up one hundred and fifty years' (870-1026 A.D.) fighting before they could conquer and occupy the Panjab. Counting from 1175, the year of the first invasion of Muhammad of Ghur, to the death of Ala-ud-din Khalji (1316), it took the Turks another century and a half to conquer Northern India minus Kashmir, and Assam and Orissa, and even then the conquest was not effective, many patches of extensive territories remaining interspersed here and there. It is a matter of common knowledge that Rajasthan was never effectually conquered in the medieval age, and that throughout the Sultanate period (1206-1526) annual expeditions had to be undertaken into the Doab, the region between the Ganga and the Yamuna, to collect tribute from the zamindars.¹²