WI: The Arabs fail to conquer Sindh

Broadly-speaking, the Arab Caliphate failed entirely to conquer any of the Indian subcontinent, and Islam was only imported there after Turkic peoples arrived in the twelfth century. Indeed, Islam was so attached to Turkic peoples in the Indian subcontinent that Islam was known in early Hindu sources as Turaka Dharma, or Turkic Dharma, and Turaka, or Turkic, was used as a term for any Muslim. However, there was one exception to this rule: Sindh. Sindh was easily conquered by the Arabs due to a population that resented the recently-established Brahmin dynasty, and it became the gateway through which the Caliphate absorbed Hindu ideas, with the Sindhi scholar Siddharta introducing the Arabic numerals to Arabia. It is for this reason that Sindhi is more Arabic-influenced than any other Indic language, the Sindhi language uses the Arabic script rather than the Perso-Arabic script in use with most Indo-Islamic languages, and Sindhi people are more Arabized in morality than any other Indian people.

Now, what if the Arabs failed to conquer Sindh? Say, the more popular Buddhist dynasty that ruled before the Brahmins continued to rule Sindh and the Arabs faced the same roadblocks against conquest that they faced everywhere else in India? I'd expect that Indian ideas would not enter Islamic culture so soon, Arabic numerals would never exist in the first place, Hindu medicine would not be as well-known to the Arabs, and Sindh would be Hindu-Buddhist for longer. Hindu thought would enter the Islamic world eventually when the Turks invade India, but it would be considered more "foreign", if you will. If it is indeed Islamicized by Turkic peoples, it would be less Arab in character, and Persianate like the rest of Indo-Islamic culture.
 

raharris1973

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Sounds like a reasonable set of predictions. Is this going to slow some of the Arab commerce and missionary work in the direction of southeast Asia too?
 
Reviving the thread...
I think an unconquered hindu Sindh would still have a sizeable, steadily-growing muslim minority. I find it hard to survive against invasion from the abbasids, as these were focused in eastern expansion.
However, if we can keep the abbasids away from the rule of Dar Al-Islam in a TL where the umayyads also fail to conquer the Sindh, then we could see the Chacha dynasty have better chances of survival.
(I find that name funny. "Chacha". "I like to dance the chacha".)
 
Reviving the thread...
I think an unconquered hindu Sindh would still have a sizeable, steadily-growing muslim minority. I find it hard to survive against invasion from the abbasids, as these were focused in eastern expansion.
However, if we can keep the abbasids away from the rule of Dar Al-Islam in a TL where the umayyads also fail to conquer the Sindh, then we could see the Chacha dynasty have better chances of survival.
(I find that name funny. "Chacha". "I like to dance the chacha".)

I think that's ignoring the main reasons a Muslim population was established in Sindh in the first place - they came, after all, as Arab conquerors. This is too early to discuss merchants as a method for widespread conversion in any case.

Plus, Sindh was geographically isolated and populous. I think it might have survived in a world where it wasn't riven by internal divisions. Obviously there are certain structural reasons the Indian kingdoms struggled against the Turkic invaders, but those needn't apply to the early Arab conquerors.
 
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