Afghan Throws

The Islamic conquest of Afghanistan (642–870) began after the Islamic conquest of Persia, when Arab Muslims defeated the Persian Sassanians at the battles of Walaja, al-Qādisiyyah and Nahavand. The Arabs then began to move towards the lands east of Persia and in 642 captured the city, Herat.

Overview

See also: History of Afghanistan and History of Arabs in Afghanistan

The invasion of Persia was completed five years after the death of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, and all of the Persian territories came under Arab control, though pockets of tribal resistance continued for centuries in the Afghan territories.

During the 7th century, Arab armies made their way into the region of Afghanistan with the new religion of Islam. At this point in time the area that is currently Afghanistan had a multi-religious population consisting of Buddhists, Zoroastrians, Hindus, Jews, as well as others.

The area had been under the rule of the Buddhist and then Hindu dynasty called the Shahis since the 5th century AD. The Arabs were unable to succeed in converting the population because of constant revolts from the mountain tribes in the Afghan area, which may have been recognized as Pashtuns.The Hindushahi were defeated in the early part of the 10th century by Mahmud of Ghazna who ruled between 998 and 1030. He expelled the Hindus from Ghandhara
Earlier In 870, Yaqub bin Laith as-Saffar, a local ruler from the Saffarid dynasty of Zaranj, conquered most of present-day Afghanistan in the name of Islam. In many cases, the people he conquered had rebelled against their Islamic overloards and reverted to prior forms of worship.


From the eighth century to the ninth century, many inhabitants of what is present-day Afghanistan, Pakistan, and areas of northern India were converted to Sunni Islam. It is surmised from the writings of Al Biruni that some Pashtuns living in Pakhtunkhwa (present-day western Pakistan) had not been completely converted. Al Biruni, writing in Tarikh al Hind, also alludes to the Pashtun tribes of Pakhtunkhwa as being neither Muslim nor Hindu, but simply Afghans which may mean that they practiced Pashtunwali.

Various historical sources such as Martin Ewans, E.J. Brill and Farishta have recorded the introduction of Islam to Kabul and other parts of Afghanistan to the invasions of Mahmud of Ghazna

During the end of the ninth century, the Samanids extended its rule from Bukhara to as far south as the Indus River and west into most of Persia. Although Arab Muslim intellectual life was still centered in Baghdad, Shi'a Islam, predominated in the Samanid areas at this time. By the mid-tenth century, the Samanid Dynasty had crumbled in the face of attacks from Turkish tribes to the north and from the Ghaznavids, a rising Turkic dynasty in Afghanistan.

Ghaznavid and Ghorid rule

Main articles: Ghaznavid Empire and Ghurids

Out of the Samanid Dynasty came the first great Islamic empire of the region, the Ghaznavid Empire, whose warriors forged an empire that spanned much of Iranian plateau and Central Asia and conducted many successful raids into South Asia. Their military incursions assured the domination of Sunni Islam in what is now Afghanistan, Pakistan, and parts of India. The most renowned of the dynasty's rulers was Mahmud, who consolidated control over the areas south of the Amu Darya then carried out devastating raids into India - looting Hindu temples in his wake. With his booty from India, Mahmud built a great capital at Ghazni (modern-day Afghanistan), founded universities, and patronized scholars. Mahmud was recognized by the caliph in Baghdad as the temporal heir of the Samanids. By the time of his death, Mahmud ruled a vast empire that stretched from Kurdistan to the entire Hindu Kush region as far east as the Punjab as well as territories far north of the Amu Darya. However, as occurred so often in this region, the demise in 1030 of this military genius who had expanded the empire to its farthest reaches was the death knell of the dynasty itself. The rulers of the Ghorid Empire of Ghor in modern-day Afghanistan, captured and burned Ghazni in 1149, just as the Ghaznavids had once conquered Ghor. Not until 1186, however, was the last representative of the Ghaznavids uprooted by the Ghorids from his holdout in Lahore, in the Punjab.

The Ghorids controlled most of what is now Afghanistan, eastern Iran, Pakistan, and northern India, while parts of central and western Iran were ruled by the Seljuk Turks. From 1200 to 1205 some of the Ghorid lands were conquered by the Shah of the Khwarezmid Empire, whose empire would, in turn, be defeated by the Mongols in 1220.

Mongol invasion and Timurid rule 1220-1506

Main articles: Mongol Empire and Timurid dynasty

Followings years of conquest in China and Central Asia, the Mongol Empire had emerged as a major world power of its day and attempted to co-exist with some of their neighbors including the empire of the Khwarezmia Shah and sent emissaries to establish diplomatic and trading links. As either a bluff to dissuade the Mongols from aggression or as simply a haughty sign of disrespect, the Khwarezmia Shah Ala ad-Din Muhammad II had the diplomats executed and sent their heads back to the Mongols and this prompted a military confrontation. In 1220, the Islamic lands of Central Asia were overrun by the armies of the Mongol invader Genghis Khan (ca. 1155-1227), who laid waste to many cities and settlements and created an empire that stretched from China to the Caucasus. The Mongols under Genghis Khan responded with great severity to the insults they had taken from Muhammad II and took out their revenge against the inhabitants of Khwarezmia including, for example, exterminating every human being in the cities of Herat and Balkh. This devastation had severe consequences for the natives of Afghanistan as the destruction caused by the Mongols depopulated many of the major cities and caused much of the population to revert to an agrarian rural society. Thus, Afghanistan became dominated by cattle breeding tribes who also specialized in horseback riding. Genghis Khan failed to extinguish or even particularly hamper Islam in Central Asia, if that was even his intent, as the religion continued to define many local inhabitants culturally. In fact, by the end of the 13th century, Genghis Khan's descendants had themselves become Muslims (many speculate that the Hazaras of Afghanistan are in fact the descendants of Genghis Khan and his Mongol hordes) and even the title of 'khan' became a not so uncommon name adopted by many local inhabitants. From the death of Genghis Khan in 1227 until the rise of Timur Lenk (Tamerlane) in the 1380s, Central Asia went through a period of fragmentation.

A product of both Turkish and Mongol descent, Timur claimed Genghis Khan as an ancestor. From his capital of Samarkand, Timur created an empire that, by the late fourteenth century, extended from northern India to eastern Turkey. The turn of the sixteenth century brought an end to the Timurid Empire when another Central Asian ruler of Turkic-Mongol extraction, Muhammad Shaybani, overwhelmed the weakened Timurid ruler in Herat. Shaybani (also a descendant of Genghis Khan) and his successors ruled the area around the Amu Darya for about a century, while to the south and west of what is now Afghanistan two powerful dynasties began to compete for influence.

Mughal-Safavid rivalry, ca. 1500-1747

Main articles: Mughal Empire and Safavid dynasty

Early in the sixteenth century, Babur, who claimed descent from Timur on his father's side and from Genghis Khan on his mother's, was driven out of his father's kingdom in the Ferghana Valley (which straddles contemporaryUzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan) by the Shaybani Uzbeks, who had wrested Samarkand from the Timurids. After several unsuccessful attempts to regain Ferghana and Samarkand, Babur crossed the Amu Darya and captured Kabul from the last of its Mongol rulers in 1504. In his invasion of Delhi Sultanate of India in 1526, Babur's army of 12,000 defeated a less mobile force of 100,000 at the First Battle of Panipat, about forty-five kilometers northwest of Delhi. The Delhi Sultanate was itself ruled by expatriate Afghan/Pashtun rulers, the Lodhi dynasty. Although the Mughal Empire would shift largely to India, Babur's memoirs, as related in the Baburnameh stressed his love for Kabul - both as a commercial strategic center as well as a beautiful highland city with an "extremely delightful" climate and was the Mughal Empire's first capital until being moved to Lahore and Delhi by later emperors.

Although Mughal rule technically lasted in parts of Afghanistan until the early 18th century, it came under constant challenge from local Pashtun tribesmen. The Mughals originally had come from Central Asia, but once they had taken India, the area that is now southeastern Afghanistan and western Pakistan was relegated to a mere outpost of the empire as even the name of a prominent Afghan