The Caliphate and India — A Timeline (636–1030)

Four centuries, one banner — the chain from Thana (636) to Ghazni (1030).

This page tests a simple question against four centuries of record: who sent the invaders? For the Arab chapter the answer is literal. Thana (636) was raided under Caliph Umar's governors; Sindh (711–12) was commanded by the Umayyad viceroy al-Hajjaj in Caliph al-Walid's name; Muhammad bin Qasim was a serving officer of that caliphate. For the Turkic chapter the answer is subtler — and more revealing: the Abbasid caliph of Mahmud's day, a captive of the Shia Buyids in his own capital, commanded no armies; he franchised them. At his investiture of 999 Mahmud received the title Yamin al-Dawla — "Right Hand of the State" — and, Gardizi records, vowed a jihad into Hind every year; after each triumph a victory dispatch (fatḥ-nāma) went to Baghdad, and after Somnath fresh titles came back. First the caliphate commanded its generals; later the sultans commanded themselves, and the caliphate signed. The banner never changed.

And what did the banner demand? Submission before conversion. In practice the conquerors taxed unbelief rather than abolishing it: at the Brahmanabad settlement (713) the temples stayed open and the jizya was levied — the dhimma extended, in effect, to Hindus. Conversion advanced with rule, generation by generation, not with the raids themselves; coercion is attested (the Shahi prince Sukhpal, converted in captivity), and so is reversion the moment power receded (Sukhpal again, and Dahir's son Jaisiah, who conformed under Caliph Umar II's invitation while the pressure lasted). The aim of the enterprise, as the sources show it, was the extension of the realm of Islamic rule — political submission sanctified as faith and financed as plunder. The souls were expected to follow the state.

How to read the table. Rows in gold are the repulses and reversals — the entries the textbooks skip.

The timeline

Year	Under whose banner	What happened	The Indian answer
636	Medina — Caliph Umar	The first Arab raids on India — by sea, at Thana near today's Mumbai, then Bharuch and Debal, within four years of the Prophet's death	Repulsed or withdrawn; Umar forbids further sea ventures
644	Medina	Columns reach Makran; the commanders' report on its poverty becomes famous	Umar halts the advance — the Indus is not to be crossed
661–700	Damascus (Umayyad)	Forty years of war at the Kabul–Zabul gates: Kabul taken briefly (665) and lost; an Arab army ransomed (683); the Jaysh al-Fanāʾ — "Army of Destruction" — annihilated by the Zunbil (698); the Peacock Army mutinies (700)	The Turk Shahis and Zunbils hold the gates
708–10	Damascus — viceroy al-Hajjaj	Two expeditions against Dahir of Sindh fail; the commander Budail falls at Debal	Sindh holds
711–12	Damascus — ordered by al-Hajjaj for Caliph al-Walid I	Muhammad bin Qasim: Debal stormed; Raja Dahir dies at Aror (June 712); Multan falls (713)	The one conquest that held — Sindh becomes a caliphal province
713	Damascus	The Brahmanabad settlement: temples open, jizya levied — unbelief taxed, not abolished	Rule, not conversion, is the working aim
715	Damascus — Caliph Sulayman	Qasim recalled in the faction purge; dies in prison, about twenty	The conqueror outlives his conquest by three years
c. 715–24	Damascus — Caliph Umar II	Jaisiah, Dahir's son, recovers the interior; the caliph invites the princes to Islam — they conform while the pressure lasts	Junaid later kills Jaisiah as an "apostate"
724–39	Damascus	Junaid's deep raids: Saurashtra, Malwa, the Rajasthan marches	The great repulse: Bappa Rawal (tradition), Nagabhata I (Gwalior praśasti), Pulakeshin's Navsari victory in stone (739); the Arabs build al-Mahfuza, "the Sheltered", to hide in
733–60	—	The north's high noon: Lalitaditya's Kashmir — Yashovarman humbled, an embassy to the Tang court (733)	The mountain passes stay shut
754	Baghdad (Abbasid)	The caliphate changes house; Sindh a remote province	The frontier is static
c. 776	Baghdad	Arab fleets sail against Saurashtra	Turned back by the Saindhava sea-lords
9th c.	Baghdad — nominal only	Sindh fragments into two autonomous Arab emirates: Habbari Mansura, Banu Munabbih Multan	The caliph's command is over; the banner remains
870	(Saffarid warlord)	Ya'qub the Coppersmith takes Kabul — a Persian dynast's blow, not a caliphal army	The Shahis shift to Hund: the Hindu Shahi line begins
910s	Baghdad — nominal	Al-Masudi sees the Gurjara-Pratihara wall: "no greater foe" of the caliphate's faith	The wall stands
963–77	Ghazni	Alptigin, then Sabuktigin: a Samanid slave-garrison becomes a dynasty on the Hindu marches	The new spearhead is Turkic, not Arab
965–c. 985	Cairo — the Fatimid rival	Multan goes Ismaili; the dāʿī destroys the great sun-temple	One caliphate's outpost defects to the other
986–91	Ghazni	Sabuktigin defeats Jayapala in the Laghman country	The Shahi frontier falls back toward the Indus
999	Ghazni ⇄ Baghdad	The franchise: Caliph al-Qadir invests Mahmud as Yamin al-Dawla; Gardizi records the vow of a jihad into Hind every year	Plunder becomes policy, sanctified annually
1001–26	Ghazni, under Baghdad's blessing	Mahmud's seventeen campaigns: Peshawar (1001), Waihind (1008), Somnath (1026) — and the omitted entries: Lohkot fails twice (1015, 1021), Kalinjar untaken (1023), the desert retreat (1026)	The full ledger, battle by battle: Mahmud of Ghazni — The Raider and the Resistance
1026	Baghdad	The fatḥ-nāma: Somnath reported to the caliph; fresh titles shower on Mahmud and his sons	Victory is currency; the caliph pays in legitimacy
1030	—	Mahmud dies at Ghazni	In that same city, Al-Biruni completes the Kitāb al-Hind
1043	—	The league under the raja of Delhi retakes Hansi, Thanesar and the Nagarkot country	The confederate idea outlives Mahmud
1186	—	The last Ghaznavid extinguished at Lahore — while Kumarapala's rebuilt Somnath (1169) stands	The ledger closes where it began

Sources

• Al-Balādhurī, Futūḥ al-Buldān — Thana, Makran, Qasim, al-Mahfuza, the recall.
• Chachnama, trans. Kalichbeg (1900) — with the cautions noted at Dynasties of India.
• Gardīzī, Zayn al-Akhbār; al-ʿUtbī, Tārīkh al-Yamīnī — the vow, the campaigns, the dispatches.
• Al-Masʿūdī, in Elliot & Dowson, Vol. I; Navsari plates, Epigraphia Indica XXV; Gwalior praśasti, EI XVIII.
• Kalhana, Rājataraṅgiṇī (trans. Stein, 1900), Bks. IV & VII.
• Wink, Al-Hind I (1990); Bosworth, The Ghaznavids (1963); Nazim (1931); Habib (1927); Majumdar (ed.), The Age of Imperial Kanauj and The Struggle for Empire.