Page:History of India Vol 5.djvu/53

 MAS'UDFS ACCOUNT OF SIND 27 independence of those states commenced immediately after the death of Ya'kub ibn Lais in 265 A. H. (879 A. D.), for his successors were comparatively powerless, and the Samanis, at the commencement of their rule, had little leisure to attend to so remote a province as Sind. Mas'udi, who visited the valley of the Indus in the year 303 - 304 A. H. (915 - 916 A. D.) and completed his " Meadows of Gold " in 332 A. H. (943-944 A.D.), fur- nishes a brilliant account of the state of Islam in that country. The Amir of Multan was an Arab of the noble tribe of Kuraish, named Abu-1-Dalhat al-Munabba ibn Assad as-Sami, and the kingdom of Multan is repre- sented to have been hereditary in his family for a long time, " nearly from the beginning of Islam " (meaning, probably, from its introduction into Sind). Kanauj, Mas'udi asserts, was then a province of Multan, " the greatest of the countries which form a frontier against unbelieving nations." Abu-1-Dalhat himself was de- scended from Sama ibn Lawi ibn Ghalib, who had estab- lished himself on the shores of Oman before the birth of Mohammed. The amir had an army in his pay, and there were reckoned to be 120,000 hamlets around the capital, while his dominion extended to the frontier of Khorasan. Mansura was governed by another Kuraishi, whose name was Abu-1-Mundar Omar ibn Abdallah. He was descended from Habbar ibn Aswad, who was celebrated for his opposition to Mohammed, and who, on the re- turn of the prophet to Mecca in triumph, was among