Page:History of India Vol 3.djvu/37

 THE ARABS IN SIND 13 but name, as too unremunerative to be worth main- taining. The Arab settlers formed independent dynas- ties at Multan and at the new city of Mansura, which Mohammad ibn Kasim's son founded in lower Sind; and when the traveller Mas'udi visited the valley of the Indus in the tenth century, he found chiefs of the Prophet's tribe of the Kuraish ruling both the upper and the lower province. A little later another traveller, Ibn Haukal, explored Sind, where he heard Arabic and Sindi spoken, and observed much friendly toleration be- tween the Moslem and Hindu population. Soon after- ward Multan became a refuge for scattered bands of Karmathians, when the power of those Mohammedan sectaries waned before the rising ascendency of the Fatimid caliphs of Egypt, and when Arabia was deliv- ered from the Karmathian reign of terror. But the meagre annals of this limited and ineffectual occupation of an unimportant province need not long detain us. The Arab conquest of Sind led to nothing, and left scarcely a vestige, save in the names of certain Arab families and in the ruins of the buildings they des- troyed. The Arab cities have perished, but the wrecks of the castles and cities of their predecessors, which formed as usual the quarries for the conquerors' build- ings, still bear witness to the civilization which they uprooted.