Muhammad bin Qasim

Muhammad ibn al-Qasim (about 694 to 715) was the young Arab general of the Umayyad Caliphate who conquered Sindh and carried Arab arms up the Indus to Multan, at the southern edge of the Punjab. Wikipedia says he belonged to the Banu Thaqif and was a cousin of al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf, the Umayyad viceroy of Iraq, who gave him command of the Sindh expedition when he was about 15 to 17.

The campaign, according to Wikipedia. Its sources give as reasons the attacks on Muslim shipping by pirates based at Debal, the capture of Muslim women, and the refuge Raja Dahir gave to rebels. Muhammad left Shiraz with about 6,000 Syrian cavalry.

• 711: siege of Debal, where on al-Hajjaj's orders no quarter was given and the great temple was destroyed.
• 712: Dahir is defeated and killed at Aror. Brahmanabad and Alor fall after it.
• 714: Multan falls after months of fighting, in his last campaign. About 6,000 defenders were killed and their followers enslaved, while artisans, traders and commoners were spared, and a great deal of gold was taken.
• 715: after the deaths of al-Hajjaj and the Caliph al-Walid I, the new Caliph Sulayman recalls him and has him chained. He dies on 18 July 715 at Mosul. Al-Baladhuri says he was tortured to death by the family of a man al-Hajjaj had executed; the Chach Nama tells a different story.

The settlement. Wikipedia describes a conciliatory policy: Hindus and Buddhists were treated as dhimmis who paid jizya, local chiefs were kept, some temples survived on payment, including the Sun Temple of Multan, and conversion was slow. Historians disagree. Older writers such as Elliot saw coercion, while Arnold and later Muslim historians saw a largely peaceful conquest, and some take a middle view.

The sources. The detailed account is the Chach Nama, a Persian work of the thirteenth century, which Francesco Gabrieli called "a late and doubtful source" (as Wikipedia quotes him). The other main source is al-Baladhuri.

Remembered for: in Pakistan, where he is often called the first Pakistani in the Pakistan Studies curriculum, and Wikipedia reports Jinnah's remark that the Pakistan movement began when the first Muslim set foot in Sindh. In the Punjab's history he marks the arrival of Arab rule at Multan, more than seven centuries before Guru Nanak and about three centuries before Mahmud of Ghazni took the city.