Sind, on the contrary, on account of the distance and difficulty of communication, and the absence of intermediate Arab colonies, was invaded by men prepared for military operations alone; and who could not possess the means of carrying their families with them, when only one baggage-camel was allowed to every four men, for the transport of their food, tents, and other necessary equipments, and when supplies ran short even before the Indus was crossed.
Subsequently, when the road was more open and free, these agreeable additions to their society may have poured in, along with the later adventurers who flocked to the new conquest; but we nowhere meet with even any incidental allusion to the circumstance, but with much that militates against its probability: so that there was, perhaps, among the descendants of the Sindian colonists, less infusion of the real blood of Arabs than in any other province subjected to their dominion.
When Muhammad Kásim, upon passing the Indus, gave to any of his soldiers so disposed leave to retire to their homes, only three came forward to claim their discharge; and of these, two did so, because they had to provide for the female members of their family, who had, with the rest, been left behind in their native country with no one to protect them. Nor were the consolations of a speedy restoration to their deserted homes held out to the first conquerors. To them the return was even more difficult than the advance, as we may learn from a passage in Tabarí, where he tells that, on the accession of the Khalif Sulaimán, he wrote to those ill-used men— the companions of the gallant hero whom he had tortured to death— in these harsh and cruel terms:—“Sow and sweat, wherever you may find yourselves on receipt of this mandate, for there is no more Syria for you.” Here, then, these exiles must have remained during the ten years of his reign at least; and as they were not likely to have returned in any numbers after his death, we may conceive them congregated into several military colonies, seeking solace for their lost homes in the arms of the native women of the country, and leaving their lands and plunder to be inherited by their Sindo-Arab descendants.
These military colonies, which formed a peculiar feature of Arab
settlement were styled junúd and amsár,—“armies” and “cities,”—
the latter appellation implying settled abodes, contrasted with the
previous migrations to which the tribes had been habituated. In
many instances they rose into important cities, as in the case of
Basra, Kúfa, and Damascus, and early became the principal centres
of Arab learning, law, grammar, and theology, as well as of tumult,
violence, perfidy, and intrigue. The principal seats of these cantonments
in Sind appear to have been Mansúra, Kuzdár, Kandábel.
Baizá, Mahfúza, and Multán; and indeed, the military camp near
the latter town,—whether the real name be “Jandaram” or
“Jundrúz” (Gildemeister), “Jundráwár” (Ashkálu-l Bilád), “Jun-
The local troops, which were enlisted in the country, dispersed to their own homes as soon as the necessity was satisfied for which they were raised; but there were some which assumed a more permanent character, and were employed on foreign service, with little chance of return.
That Sindian troops were levied, and sent to fight the battles of the Arabs in distant quarters, we have undoubted proof. I speak not here of the numerous Jats of 'Irak, Syria, and Mesopotamia, who—as I hope to be able to show in another place—were, ere long, transformed into the Jatano, or Gitano,—the Gypsies of modern Europe. These had been too long in their settlements to be called “Sindians” by a contemporary historian, like Dionysius Telmarensis, to whom the terms “Jat,” “Asáwira,” and “Sabábija,” were more familiar. This author, in his Syrian Chronicle, distinctly mentions “Sindian” cohorts as forming a portion of the motley army of Alans, Khazars, Medes, Persians, Turks, Arabs, etc., which made an irruption into the Byzantine territory in 150 A.H.—767 A.D.* Four years afterwards, we find a body of Sindians and Khazars—said to be slaves—attempting to seize upon the imperial treasury in Harrán. Most probably, they also composed part of these foreign levies.
In admitting these provincials into their armies, the Arabs merely imitated the policy of the Romans, who did the same from motives of expediency—hoping to find employment for turbulent spirits, and to neutralize the elements of rebellion, by sending foreign mercenaries into provinces remote from their native soil.* Thus we find Slavones and Berbers, Syrians and Copts, Babylonians and Persians, and even Christians and Jews, Magians and Idolaters, in the early period of the Khiláfat, extending the Arab conquests among distant nations; just as, in the days of its decline, the Khalifs had Africans, Farghánians, Turks, Alans, etc., acting as their Prætorian guards, both in protecting them against their own subjects, and deposing their employers at their own will and pleasure:* —the difference only consisted in this, that the former constituted auxiliary corps, into which, when any foreigner was enlisted, he was adopted by some Arab tribe as a member, and being called maulá, or client, of that tribe, he had the same rights and privileges as if he had been born in it; whereas, Mu'tasim, when he enrolled his foreign bodyguard, made the Arabian troops subordinate to his mercenaries, whom, in order to elude the law, he called his own clients—an evasive practice which was continued by his successors.*
When the profession of faith in God and his Prophet was no longer the symbol which united these furious zealots; when literature, science, philosophy, poetry, and other objects of intellectual culture, ceased to be regarded as criminal pursuits;* when opulence, luxury, and the arts which refine and embellish social life, had converted roaming and rugged soldiers into indolent and effeminate voluptuaries,—the necessity of recruiting their ranks from extraneous sources, led to a modification of their military institutions, and to the abandonment of those exclusive sentiments, which had once bound the Arabs by a common tie of fraternity in rapine and propagandism. Some of these foreign recruits were, no doubt, obtained by the hopes of ready participation in the spoils which were the invariable concomitant of Arab conquests; but most of them were very unwilling soldiers, raised by an arbitrary conscription, and only reconciled to their fate, after long experience of their new profession, and when their distant homes had been forgotten. That the power of levying troops for foreign service was generally felt as a sore grievance by the unfortunate provincials, is evidenced by the terms for which the people of Tabaristán held out, when they capitulated to their victors; for while they agreed to become tributary in the annual sum of five hundred thousand dirhams, they stipulated that the Moslims should at no time levy any troops in their country.*
Commercial activity, also, succeeded to the zeal for war, which
offered no longer the same inducements of honour and profit that
had been realized by the early conquerors. A new stimulus was
thus found for the spirit of adventure which still survived, in the
perils and excitements of trading speculations, both by land and
sea,—prosecuted at a distance and duration, which at that time it is
surprising to contemplate. Sind was not backward in this season of
enterprise, for she appears to have kept up a regular commercial
communication with the rest of the Muhammadan empire. Caravans
were often passing and repassing between that country and Khura-