Al-Walid and the far horizons: Sindh, Central Asia and Iberia

Part oneThree armies, three directions

Al-Walid ibn Abd al-Malik became caliph in 705 and ruled for ten years. They were years of calm at home and of strong governors. He used them to open fronts in three directions, to the south-east, the north-east and the west.

To the south-east, the governor of Iraq, al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf, sent his young kinsman Muhammad ibn al-Qasim to Sindh, the lower Indus valley, around 92 AH (711-712). The campaign took the port of Debal and defeated the local ruler, Dahir, and the army pushed north as far as Multan. Accounts differ on the details of the campaign. Sindh came under Muslim rule, and traders and scholars followed the soldiers. Al-Hajjaj directed the campaign from Iraq by letter, with messengers carrying reports and orders across the long road between them. Muhammad ibn al-Qasim was recalled in 714. The earliest accounts record that people were allowed to keep their temples and pay a tax in return for protection, though later writers added much to the story.

To the north-east, Qutayba ibn Muslim governed Khurasan, in what is now north-eastern Iran and Afghanistan. Between about 705 and 715 he crossed the Oxus river into Transoxiana, "the land beyond the river". Bukhara fell in about 709, and Samarkand and Khwarazm in about 712. He made agreements with local rulers and left many of them in place, in return for tribute. These were already rich trading cities on the Silk Road, and their merchants kept their links with China and Persia. Over the following centuries they became leading centres of Islamic learning.

On the Byzantine front, the caliph's brother Maslama ibn Abd al-Malik led summer raids into Anatolia year after year. These raids prepared the way for the great attack on Constantinople that came a few years later, in the next reign.

In the west, Musa ibn Nusayr governed Ifriqiya, the lands of what is now Tunisia and Algeria, and had brought North Africa to the Atlantic coast. In 711 (92 AH) he sent Tariq ibn Ziyad across the narrow strait that separates Africa from Europe. The rock where Tariq landed took his name, Jabal Tariq, the mountain of Tariq. We still call it Gibraltar.

Most of Tariq's soldiers were Amazigh (Berber) Muslims from North Africa, who had accepted Islam in the years since the first armies reached them. In the summer of 711 they defeated the Visigothic king, Roderic, in a great battle, and marched on to Toledo. A detachment took Córdoba soon afterwards. Musa crossed himself in 712 with more men. In 714 he was called back to Damascus by the caliph, and his son Abd al-Aziz stayed behind as governor. Musa's army took Seville and Mérida, and within a few years most of the peninsula was under Muslim governance. The Muslims called it al-Andalus. A later era of this story begins there.

Part twoMosques at the centre

The caliph's own taste was for building. In Damascus he raised the Umayyad Mosque, one of the great mosques of the world, on ground where a church of St John had stood. Its courtyard, mosaics and prayer hall made it the pride of the capital. Craftsmen were brought from different lands to work on it.

In Madinah, he had the Prophet's ﷺ Mosque enlarged and rebuilt under his governor Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz, who included the rooms of the Prophet's ﷺ wives and the Prophet's ﷺ grave within the mosque's walls. The scale of the work was debated at the time, and the rebuilding was a sign of how much the Muslim world valued the Prophet's ﷺ mosque. His governors also worked on the Masjid al-Haram in Makkah, and building continued at al-Aqsa in Jerusalem.

Damascus itself felt these years in its markets. Goods and people arrived from Sindh and Spain, from Bukhara and Qayrawan. For the first time, a traveller could cross the world from the Atlantic to the Indus under one caliph's authority.

Part threeAfter the conquests

The conquests had costs, and not everything in these years is easy to describe. Armies fought on the borders of many peoples, and the governors who led them were sometimes severe. The pace could not last. Al-Hajjaj died in 714. Al-Walid himself died in 715 (96 AH). Soon afterwards, Qutayba was killed in Khurasan by his own troops.

Historians often call al-Walid's reign the height of Umayyad power. The caliphate now stretched from the Atlantic to the edges of Central Asia and India, and its language, coins and mosques linked cities thousands of kilometres apart. The next ruler, Sulayman, turned the army's attention back to Constantinople. The horizons al-Walid had opened stayed open. Sindh, Transoxiana and al-Andalus remained part of the Muslim world for centuries. The people who lived in these lands came to Islam over many generations, as merchants and teachers arrived, and not through the soldiers alone.

The horizons al-Walid had opened stayed open.

WatchThe lecture for this chapter

Lecture Al Muqaddimahal-Walid, Sulayman and the Peak of the Umayyad Caliphate (opens on YouTube)

The mapWhere it happened

• Debal in Sindh
• Multan
• Samarkand
• Bukhara
• Damascus
• Gibraltar
• Toledo

This map is a simple sketch to help you picture where events took place. Positions, distances and borders are approximate, so please use it for reference only, not as an accurate map.

SourcesSources for this chapter