________________
APRIL, 1882.)
COINS OF THE ARABS IN SIND.
COINS OF THE ARABS IN SIND. BY ED. THOMAS, F.R.S., CORRESPONDING MEM. DE L'INSTITUT
AND OF THE ACADÉMIE DE ST. PETERSBOURG. THE subject of this paper, though obscure with it the loose teachings of the race beyond
1 and still in the infancy of its develop the nomadic tents of their primeval desert. ment, bids fair, under fostering hands, to aim The sole possible preface to such obscure inat a youth and maturity which local antiquaries vestigations as the present has to be gleaned alone can ensure for it.
from the casual contributions of Arabian writers It is in this sense that I seek the assistance to the annals of an outlying province, with of all those who may chance to have opportu- which they were seldom brought into personal nities of securing coins, authentic MSS., native contact. home traditions, Arab tribal genealogies, or other In framing the subjoined table of the Arab waifo and stray contributions to the archeology rulers of Sind, I have taken, as my leading of the period : falling short of the grand test of authority, a writer who seems to have had further excavations in situ, in the Muslim capital extensive and exceptional knowledge of his subof Manýûrah, or, for the higher purposes of ject. This list was originally compiled from M. early Indian history, in the sacred city of Renaud's text and translation of Balá xari, Brahmanâbâd.
the author in question for my edition of PrinThe conquest of Sind by the Arabs, in A.H. sep's Essays, it has been further collated with 98 (A.D. 712), constitutes a marked epoch in Sir H. M. Elliot's independent work on the Arabs the history of the land, and is associated with in Sind, which has ultimately been incorporated many instructive coincidences-in its incep- in his great work on The Historians of India. tion, in the temporary domestication of the A.D. A.H. conquerors on an alien soil, and their gradual 711-712 93 1. Muhammad bin Kasim (under disappearance into obscurity.
the Khalif Walid). The daring advance of Muhammad bin Kasim
2. Yazid bin Abd Kabshah alwas freely backed by the encouragement and
Saksaki, (under Khalif Sulai
mân). support of the celebrated Hij&j bin Yûs af
714-715 96 3. Habib bin Muhallab (under who so completely reversed the Khalif 'Umar's
Khalif Sulaiman.) favourito policy of non-extension of the Muslim
4. 'Amr bin Muslim Al-BahAlt, boundaries to the eastward.
(under the Khalif 'Umar). It is curious to note the case with which
5. Junatd bin 'Abd al rahman Althe conquerors settled themselves as residenta,
Marré (under the Khalif Hisand the facile refuge this isolated corner of the
hâm). Muhammadan world afforded to persecuted or
| 725-726 107 6. Tamim bin Zaid Al-'Utbi. heretical members of the new faith-while they
7. Al hakim bin 'Awanah Al
Kalbi. retained among themselves, in their new home, 80 many of their ancient tribal divisions and
('Amru bin Muhammad). jealousies; and it is instructive to follow the
(Sulaiman bin Hishåm-Aba
Al-Khabab) under the 'Abuntold tale of ethnic subsidence and final absorp
b&side Khalifs. tion into the Indian native element, when the
8. 'Abd al rahman bin Muslim 'Al pure Arab blood came to be exhausted by suc
Abdi, defeated by the local cessive local admixtures, as in other parallel cases
Governor of the previous wherever the standard of the Prophet carried
Ummath Khalifs. This paper was originally prepared for the second Aba J'afir Ahmad bin Yahya ibn Jabir al Ballari, volume of the Archeological Reports of the Survey of W.
si India, and is now revised by the author.
author of the ulalyi ci lis flourish. : "The position of women amongst them (the Arabs) was ed at the court of Baghdad, inter 258 and 279 A.H., Ibn not a very elevated one, and though there are instances on Khaldun, p. 438. Reinaud, in his Fragments Arabes et record of heroines and poetesses who exalted or celebrated Persans inédits, relatifs à l'Inde, (originally published in the honour of their clan, they were for the most part looked the Paris Journal Asiatique for 1844), also fixes his decense on with contempt. The marriage knot was tied in the in 279 A.H. (892 A.D.), P. xix. simplest fashion and untied as easily, divorce depending • Appendix to the Arabs in Sind : Cape Town, 1858. only on the option and caprice of the husband. Prof. Elliot quoting Tohfat ul Kiram, in The story of India, Palmer, Introduction to the Koran, p. xi. London: as told by its own Historians, London, 1867, Vol. 1, p. 418, 1880.
edited by Prof J. Dowson.
