The Sultanate of Delhi, 711–1526 A.D. c8.s2.9

c8.s2.9

Some modern scholars, notably, Woolseley Haig, seem to hold that the main cause of the conflict between the Arabs and Sindh was the provocation given by the latter owing to its ruler’s failure to make a reparation for certain Arab ships plundered by some pirates off the coast of Sindh. The details given above from contemporary sources, however, reveal the fact that ever since their rise to power the Arabs had cast their eyes on our rich ports and had before their final success in 712 A.D. made many unsuccessful attempts to capture Sindh and the kingdoms of Kabul and Zabul by force of arms. Their design on India and their successful conquest of Sindh was only a part of their general aggressive scheme which brought under their sway, within a hundred years of the death of their Prophet, Syria, Mesopotamia, Armenia, Iran, Baluchistan, Trans-Oxiana, the whole of the northern coast of Africa, Upper and Lower Egypt, Spain and Portugal and the southern part of France, besides their own native Arabia. Thus the political and territorial ambition of the Arabs, and not the brigandage of the Sindh pirates, constituted an important cause of their invasion of Sindh. Coupled with this was the overpowering economic incentive, the desire to acquire wealth by easy and quick means, that is, fighting and plundering, and thereby to improve their material condition. But the principal driving force was the religious zeal which made them feel and act as if God was using them as agents for the propagation of Islam and the uprooting of infidel faiths from the face of the earth. Almost all the modern writers have either ignored or minimised the religious cause, forgetting the stark naked truth that the Arabs not only imposed their own religion and culture on the conquered people everywhere, but even almost completely wiped out the indigenous faiths and ways of life from most of the countries that they subjugated. Verily, the Arab ambition of imposing Islam on Sindh was one of the most powerful causes of this invasion.