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, the name given by the Arabs to the ancient Pand̲j̲ābī city of Mulasthana (B.C. Law, Historical geography of ancient India, Paris 1954, 112), thought to be Malli of Alexander’s historians (Quintus Curtius Rufus, History of Alexander , Cambridge, Mass. 1946, ii, 433). 1. History. Multān was one of the cities conquered by the Arabs during Muḥammad b. al-Ḳāsim’s expedition to India in 92-5/711-14. Like the city of Manṣūra [ q.v.], Multān became one of the centres of Muslim rule in Western India. Due to the wealth found in it by the early conquerors, Multān was dubbe…

al-T̲h̲aḳafī , a military commander of the Umayyad dynasty and conqueror of Sind. A highly respected member of the tribe of T̲h̲aḳīf ( as̲h̲raf T̲h̲aḳafī fī zamānihi ), he was a favourite of al-Ḥad̲j̲d̲j̲ād̲j̲ who even considered him a suitable match for his sister Zaynab ( Ag̲h̲ānī 1, vi, 28-9). His fame is due chiefly to his military exploits in the western Indian province of Sind. Al-Ḥad̲j̲d̲j̲ād̲j̲ appointed him to lead an expedition to Sind between 89/708 and 92/711 (for various dates, see F. Gabrieli, in East and West, xv [1965], 282, n. 1 ter , and Ibn al-At̲h…

, a Persian history of the Arab incursions into Sind in the 1st/7th and 8th centuries, with an introductory chapter concerning the history ¶ of the province on the eve of the Arab conquest (ed. Dāʾūdpota, New Delhi 1939, 14-72) and an epilogue describing the tragic end of the Arab commander ¶ Muḥammad b. al-Ḳāsim and of the two daughters of Dāhir, the defeated king of Sind ( ibid., 243-7). According to the author, ʿAlī b. Ḥāmid b. Abī Bakr Kūfī (about whom see Storey, i, 650), the Čač-Nāma is a translation of an Arabic book which Kūfī found some time after 613/1216-17 in the possession of the ḳāḍī …

, a people who lived in Sind at the time of the early Arab invasions. Arab historians mention the Mēd in their brief descriptions of the battles which the Arabs waged in Sind but fail to furnish us with any substantial information concerning them. Even the form of the name is not certain: the manuscripts read either m-y-d or m-n-d (cf. al-Balād̲h̲urī, 435 n. f; al-Iṣṭak̲h̲rī, 176 n. c), and the article on this people appeared in EI 1 under mand. However, some modern ethnographers report that the name is Mēd (H. Risley, The people of India, London 1915, 145, 328); this is valuable evidence …

, the principal city of the province of Sind under the Arabs. It was founded by ʿAmr b. Muḥammad b. al-Ḳasim, the son of the celebrated conqueror of Sind, in 120/738 or shortly afterwards (al-Balād̲h̲urī, Futūḥ , 444; al-Yaʿḳūbī, ii, 389; Caetani, Chronographia Islamica , 1507), 47 miles to the north-east of modern Haydarabad [see hind ]. i. Geography, at iii, 407], Al-Bīrūnī’s statement, according to which Manṣūra is merely a Muslim name given by Muḥammad b. al-Ḳāsim to the ancient city of Brahmanābād at the time of its conquest ( al-D̲j̲amāhir fī maʿrifat al-d̲j̲awāhir …