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 ft^wr a ^/^fr .j^ ARABESQUE FROM A MOHAMMEDAN TOMB. CHAPTER I ARAB CONQUEST OF SIND AS the history of Mohammedan rule in India be- gins with the conquest of Sind by the Moslems, it seems fitting to present an account of the Arab inva- sion as told by one of their own historians. Such a narrative we have, for example, from the pen of al- Baladhuri of Baghdad, a Mussulman chronicler who wrote contemporaneously with many of the events he described, and died in the year 892 A. D., hardly a hun- dred years after the Mohammedans had gained their first foothold in Hindustan. His narrative, which is here slightly abridged, should be compared with the main current of events described in the first chapter of the third volume of this series for a clearer under- standing of some of the incidents whose importance was not fully realized in his time. But it is best to allow al-Baladhuri to tell his own story. ' Ali ibn Mohammad ibn Abdallah ibn Abu Saif has related that the Caliph Omar ibn al-Khattab appointed