Muhammad ibn al-Qasim

Muḥammad ibn al-Qāsim al-Thaqafī (محمد بن القاسم الثقفي; –) was an Arab military commander in service of the Umayyad Caliphate who led the Muslim conquest of Sindh (and Punjab part of modern Pakistan), inaugurating the Umayyad campaigns in India. His military exploits led to the establishment of the Islamic province of Sindh, and the takeover of the region from the Sindhi Brahman dynasty and its ruler, Raja Dahir, who was subsequently decapitated with his head sent to al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf in Basra. With the capture of the then-capital of Aror by Arab forces, Muhammad ibn al-Qasim became the first Muslim to have successfully captured Hindu land, which marked the beginning of Muslim rule in South Asia. Muhammad ibn al-Qasim belonged to the Banu Thaqif, an Arab tribe that is concentrated around the city of Taif in western Arabia. After the Muslim conquest of Persia, he was assigned as the governor of Fars, likely succeeding his uncle Muhammad ibn Yusuf al-Thaqafi. From 708 to 711, Muhammad ibn al-Qasim led the Sindh conquest. He established Islamic rule throughout the region, serving as governor of Sindh from 712 until his death in 715. After his last conquest of Multan (Punjab) he returned back to Arab where on the way he died in Mosul, in modern Iraq, though some sources record that his body was buried in Makran, a semi-desert coastal region in Balochistan. Information about Muhammad ibn al-Qasim and the Arab conquest of Sind in the medieval Arabic sources is limited, compared to the contemporary Muslim conquest of Transoxiana. The Futuh al-Buldan ('Conquests of the Lands') by al-Baladhuri (d. 892) contains a few pages on the conquest of Sind and Muhammad's person, while biographical information is limited to a passage in a work by al-Ya'qubi (d. 898), a few lines in the history of al-Tabari (d. 839) and scant mention in the Kitab al-Aghani (Book of songs) of Abu al-Faraj al-Isfahani. A detailed account of Muhammad's conquest of Sind and his death is found in the Chach Nama, a 13th-century Persian text.