Another group that caused the Arabs a headache at this time was the Khazars, who had slowly been forging their own identity and establishing their own polity in the wake of the withdrawal of the west Turk confederation from Caucasia in 630. They co-opted many local peoples under their lead, such as the Alans and Sabirs, and from their capital on the river Volga they controlled a large swathe of the Ponto-Caspian steppe in what is now southwest Russia. Taking advantage of the second Arab civil war they launched raids across Caucasia in 685, which brought them into conflict with the Arabs, and in the first half of the eighth century there were numerous confrontations of increasing severity between these two youthful and ambitious powers. 'Abd al-Malik's son Maslama, who took over the governorship of Armenia and Azerbaijan from his uncle in 710, led a number of campaigns into Khazar territory, just beyond Darband, without achieving anything notable, but keeping his opponents on the defensive. In 718, though, encouraged by the failed Arab siege of Constantinople, the Khazars began to take the offensive and to raid Arab lands. They continued this over the next few years and in 722, during a particularly bitter winter, they confronted and wiped out much of an ill-prepared Arab regiment, inaugurating a period of Khazar ascendancy.15
In 726 the Khazar khagan sent his son, Martik, who marched southward as far as Azerbaijan and besieged the settlement of Warthan, to the northeast of modern Tabriz, and defeated and killed the Arab governor of Armenia, who had come to lift the siege. Two years later Maslama targeted the khagan himself, but after a few days of skirmishing he almost fell into the hands of the enemy and only escaped by abandoning all the supplies of his camp, the servants, concubines and maids. Muslim sources merely note that “he returned safely,” but the lack of any of the usual triumphant claims—God defeated the infidels through him, and so on—lends credence to the Christian reports of Maslama's ignominious flight. Martik returned to the fray once again in 730 and besieged Ardabil, the capital of Azerbaijan. Jarrah ibn 'Abdallah, who had been reappointed governor of Armenia, tried to relieve the city, but failed in the face of superior numbers of enemy troops. He sent an urgent message to the caliph Hisham requesting reinforcements, but even as Maslama marched to his aid with as many troops as he had been able to hurriedly muster, Jarrah and his men were put to the sword. The Khazar cavalry roamed unopposed right across the region, plundering as far south and west as Mosul. The residents of Ardabil, seeing no signs of help forthcoming, submitted, with the result that the Arab garrison was massacred, the women and children were taken captive, and “the Khazars took control of Azerbaijan.” A hastily assembled force led by Sa'id al-Harashi, the former governor of Khurasan, was able to rescue the captives and drive the Khazars back, even seizing from them the bronze image that they bore on a standard. It was nevertheless evident that the Khazars had struck a major blow against the Arabs.
Despite harsh weather conditions, Maslama was dispatched in the spring of 731 with instructions to reassert Arab authority. Yet though he was able to inflict heavy losses—“he shed their blood like water on the face of the earth, and sated the birds of the sky and the beasts of the steppe with their flesh”— the Khazars blocked his progress beyond the Caspian Gates, at Darband (Arabic: Bab al-Abwab), and he could do no more than lay the groundwork for a more substantial future expedition. He recruited a large body of craftsmen and laborers and initiated the rebuilding and fortification of Darband, which was to serve as the major Arab garrison in the eastern sector of Caucasia (Figure 4.2), and he sent out a number of units to demand the submission of various strongholds in the vicinity. Command of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and northern Mesopotamia then passed in 732 to the competent Marwan ibn Muhammad, nephew of 'Abd al-Malik, who began by making peace with the Khazar ruler so as to buy time for rallying an army. In the course of 737, supported by Armenian troops, Marwan traversed the Alan Gates (the Darial pass), on the modern Georgian-Russian border north of Tbilisi, and passed through the land of the Alans until he entered the territory of the Khazars. Here he surprised the khagan who was obliged to flee for his life. The following year Marwan visited one by one the local lords in the mountainous region between the Caspian Gates and the Alan Gates, receiving or enforcing their submission. Effectively he was doing what Khusrau I had done two centuries beforehand, establishing a buffer zone between his realm and the steppe peoples to the north.
Though still wary of each other, the Arabs and Khazars had come to realize that neither of them could defeat the other and they moved from conflict to co-existence, consolidating what they already held and demarcating the limits of their territory. This northern limit to Arab Caucasia followed pretty much the same line as had existed between Byzantium and Persia and as exists today between the Caucasian republics and Russia. This is principally a facet of the region's topography, since the high northern Caucasian mountain range forms a natural barrier to north-south movement, bar the Caspian Gates in the east and the Alan Gates in the center. The same three principalities as had existed in Byzantine-Persian times—Armenia, Georgia, and Albania—survived alongside the Arab realm and they managed to maintain a high degree of autonomy. This was easiest for Georgia, which was more remote, and Armenia, which could more easily play the Byzantines and Arabs off against each other. Albania (Arabic: Arran), with its capital at Partaw (modern Barda), suffered greater loss of its independence, for it was easier to enter and traverse due to the wide coastal plain around Baku and the river Kura that ran through it. Moreover, it was the most accessible route for invaders from the north, and so the Arabs maintained a number of garrisons in the region, in particular at Darband, to which they transferred 24,000 Syrian Arabs, again following a policy of the Sasanian Persians before them. The Khazars themselves went from strength to strength, growing rich by acting as middlemen in the overland trade between Scandinavia and the Muslim world. Though tending to side with the Byzantines, they forged their own path, converting to Judaism and creating a distinctive and pluralistic culture.
Sind
The one piece of good news for the Arabs at this time was the conquest of the Indus River valley, known as Sind. The caliph 'Uthman had already shown an interest in this region and had ordered his governor of Basra to send someone to find out whether it was worth conquering or not. The scout reached the arid wastelands of Makran that lead on to Sind and sent back the message: “The water supply is scanty, the dates are inferior, and the robbers are bold; a small army would be lost there and a large army would starve.” As a consequence of this intelligence, 'Uthman did not dispatch any army to this region. Some hardy Arab generals ventured in that direction anyway, but they encountered stiff resistance from the tribes of Qiqan in modern western Pakistan, and two of them lost their lives in the 660s. Others tried to march along the coast, but the going is tough, as Alexander the Great had found almost a millennium before, for rainfall is minimal and the craggy Makran Mountains come very close to the sea. Moreover, it was a sparsely populated region, though the rugged valleys and isolated ports harbored a number of Buddhist communities according to the seventh-century monk xuanzang. In the 670s, a small Arab garrison was established there, but it was a very unpopular posting, a land where “most people are hungry and the rest are depraved.”16
When Hajjaj ibn Yusuf was appointed viceroy of the East in 694, he resolved to take control of this wayward frontier. What allegedly goaded him on to this decision was a rather strange event that has caught the imagination of scholars into modern times. The lord of the “island of rubies” dispatched to Hajjaj, in the hope of winning his favor, some Muslim girls whose fathers were itinerant traders and had recently died. The reference is obscure, but in any case, the Med people of Daybul, a town in the Indus delta, east of modern Karachi, rowed out in canoes and captured the ship and its female cargo. A desperate plea for aid by one of the Muslim women eventually reached the notice of Hajjaj, who sent two generals, one after the other, to answer this entreaty, but both perished without accomplishing their task. A personal request by letter from Hajjaj himself to the local ruler, Dahir, met with the non-committal answer that “they were captured by pirates whom I do not control.” This hard-hearted response and the plight of the Muslim maidens are usually made into the casus belli for the Arab invasion of Sind, though a number of years would appear to have separated the two events.
Hajjaj eventually settled on a kinsman of his as the right man to carry out the difficult job of extending his authority over Makran and Sind, namely, Muhammad ibn Qasim. He made sure his relative was fully equipped, even to the extent of packing for him cotton soaked in vinegar because he had heard that vinegar was scarce there, and then finally dispatched him in 710 with the inducement that “you are governor over whatever lands you conquer.” Muhammad marched via Makran, first subduing Fannazbur in modern southwest Pakistan, and then kept going eastward until he reached Daybul. Using catapults he was able to breach the walls of the fort and damage the tower of the Buddhist temple, whereupon the local governor fled and the temple guardians and many residents were slaughtered. He then pressed on up the Indus valley seeking out the local sovereign, the aforementioned Dahir. When he caught up with him, a fierce battle ensued; Dahir was killed and so “Muhammad ibn Qasim gained complete control of the country of Sind.” He sent a large proportion of the booty back to Hajjaj, who estimated its worth at 120 million dirhams, which pleased him greatly since he had only expended 60 million dirhams on equipping and transporting Muhammad's troops.
This is the outline of events presented by early Muslim sources, which gives us a fairly colorless picture of the Arabs marching around the country demanding submission, awarding guarantees of life and property to those who agreed and conquering by force those who refused, confiscating huge amounts of gold in the process. The only concrete detail concerns the founding of Mansura in the 730s, the capital of Muslim Sind, the ruins of which occupy some four square miles and lie about forty miles northeast of modern Hyderabad. Later sources, especially the famous thirteenth-century epic known as the Chachnama, present dramatically more information, including an account of the events preceding the Arab conquest. It narrates at length how the ruling Buddhist Rais dynasty was ousted in a coup by its Hindu minister, who then married the last Rais Queen. The two of them begot Dahir, who lost the kingdom to the Arabs.17 Although this information has generally made it into the standard history books, none of it can be substantiated by contemporary sources. However, the monotonous statements of Arab victory in Muslim accounts can be set next to two declarations of success in battle against the Arabs by neighboring rulers in Gujarat. Presumably, some Arab contingents had marched south from Sind in search of more conquest and booty, or perhaps sailed in by boat, looking to seize a share of the busy Indian Ocean trade. Two of their encounters with the local population are described in texts written in Sanskrit on copper plates. These survived well in the wet climate of India and so were commonly used to record important transactions, especially land grants, but in addition to this official business, donors would often take the opportunity to proclaim their heroic exploits and virtuous deeds.
The earlier of the two texts, dated to 736, is from the Gurjara king Jayalbhata IV. Having completed the formal part of the text, that is, the details of the land grant, he proceeds to boast about his victory against the Arabs. “This is the same Jayalbhata,” he affirms, “who, with the edge of his sword, has forcibly vanquished, in the city of the lord of Valabhi, the Arabs ((:ajikas), who greatly opposed all people, (and he did this) as a cloud extinguishes with its showers the fire that troubles all people.” Valabhi was a celebrated center of Buddhist learning, possessing one hundred monasteries and six thousand priests according to xuanzang, and it was also a bustling port, on the west side of the Gulf of Cambay, which may have been what attracted the interest of the Arab raiding party. Only a short time later Jayalbhata himself needed to seek help against the Arabs, turning to the more powerful Chalukya kingdom to the south. He gained the ear of a local Chalukya lord, who came to his aid with a contingent of troops. Like Jayalbhata a short time before, this lord makes use of a land grant document to advertise his successes. He vaunts the honors that he has received from the Chalukya sovereign and recounts the battle in which he defeated an Arab army. Since we have almost no such narratives from opponents of the Arabs in this part of the world, it is worth quoting in full:
The Arabs had destroyed many renowned kings with their piercing, brightly gleaming swords. Hurling arrows, lances and clubs, the Arabs were eager to enter the South and conquer. From the outset they came to subjugate the realm of Navasari. The tough noisy hooves of their steeds kicked up the ground to shroud the earth with dust in all directions. Their bodies were hideous, their armour reddened with torrents of blood from innards that had burst out from the heavy bellies of great warriors who had rushed at them wildly and were mangled by the blades of their spears. The best among hosts of kings had not defeated them before. Any number of champions' bodies were armoured with hair that bristled in the fury of their battle spirit. These were men who attacked the Arabs full on, giving their own heads in exchange for the extraordinary gifts and honours they had received from their lord. They bit their pursed lips cruelly with the tips of their teeth, their turbans and honed swords reddened by a thick veil of blood that had poured from wounds in the trunks and sloping cheeks of enemy elephants, which had only the nooks and crannies of countless battlefields for a stable. Though the Arabs were mighty warriors, who sliced enemy necks like lotus stalks and launched a hail of arrows tipped with forged crescent blades in a swift barrage to destroy their foes, they did not attain success. Though their bodies were covered with a coat of bristling hair on account of their martial spirit and excitement, they were defeated on the battle front when headless bodies began a circular dance to the accompaniment of the loud noise of drums beaten continuously in joy caused, as it were, by the thought “Today at least we have, by laying down our heads, paid off the debt we owed to our lord in (this) one life!”
Navasari and Valabhi lie either side of the Gulf of Cambay, through which many ships passed on their way to the ancient port of Barygaza, and so it is very likely that the Arabs were trying to extend their control over international trade routes in the Indian Ocean. The two texts cited suggest that they were thwarted in this endeavor. Another copper plate, dated 753 and stamped with an image of the god Shiva, records that a Rashtrakuta king defeated the Chalukyas in 753 and appropriated their territories. This empire of the Rashtrakutas, religiously tolerant and culturally vibrant, dominated a large portion of the Indian subcontinent and lasted until the tenth century, limiting any further Arab military expansion southward from Sind. It did not stop peaceful commerce, however, and we find a few references in Indian sources to such activity by Arab traders, or at least by those who are described as such (tajikas), though whether this meant ethnic Arabs or Muslims (whether Arab or non-Arab) or inhabitants of the Abbasid Empire of whatever religious persuasion is impossible to tell. From ninth-century Kollam, in southwest India, we have a set of copper plates that record in Tamil a land grant in favor of two trading communities. The text sets out the conditions under which they can trade and is signed and witnessed by fourteen persons writing in Persian (in both Pahlavi and Hebrew script)—comprising Zoroastrians, Jews, and Christians—and eleven persons writing in Arabic, both Muslims and Christians. Evidently, then, trade was a very international business and here Arab Muslims rubbed shoulders with all manner of other races and creeds.18
World History
