'Travels in Beloochistan and Sinde; accompanied by a geographical and historical account of those countries, with a map.' [‎265] (307/476)

SUMMARY REMARKS. 265
countries that form the basis of this inquiry, and they sunk into
their original and possibly merited obscurity. *
Ninety-two years after the epoch of the Hijree f, the Khaliphas of
Bagdad, incited by the combined motives of zeal for the Mohummu-
dan faith, and desire to revenge an insult that had been offered to their
dignity by the idolators f of Sinde §, dispatched an army against that
kingdom, by the same route that the Macedonian hero had selected
on his return to Babylon, nearly one thousand years antecedent.
This force is expressly stated to have kept close along the sea-coast,
that it might be certain of a supply of water, which is always pro
curable, by digging a foot or two deep in the sandy beach; it con
sequently knew nothing of the inland regions, nor was any attempt
made, as far as I can learn, during the administration of the
Kaliphas of the houses of Oommyuh and Abbass, to explore
them.
When Muhmood, the successor of Subuktaghi, the first Sultan of
the Ghaznuwee dynasty, in the plenitude of his power, turned his
arms towards India, he subjugated the whole of the level districts,
west of the river Indus, to the very base of the Brahooick mountains.
His son Musaood, extended these conquests still more westerly into
Mukran; he adhered, however, to his father's plan of not ascending
those lofty ranges; and all subsequent invaders of Sinde seem to
have been guided by their example; or if they did penetrate a short
way, it was merely a casual inroad, generally made in pursuit of a
* In an ancient Manuscript Higtory of Guzeratte, I find that Shah Beheram Gore,
King of Persia, came to the former kingdom in disguise, and returned through Neemroz,
the present province of Seistan, with a large army, having been discovered in India on a
hunting party. This was in the reign of the Hindoo Emperor Rajdeo, and in the fourth
century of the Christian era. Seistan was then a fertile and populous country, now it is
a desolate sandy waste.
f A. D. 677.
% Hindoos, such is the appellation bestowed on them by Mohummudan writers.
j Vide Division V. Chapter XII.
m m