Muhammad bin Qasim awarded grants to Hindu and Budh leaders and treated them with respect and honour.
Imād ad-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Qāsim ath-Thaqafī c. 695 – 715[citation needed]) was an Umayyad general who conquered and controlled the Sindh till Multan along the Indus River for a short period of 4 years for the Umayyad Caliphate. He was born and raised in the city of Ta'if (in modern-day Saudi Arabia). Qasim's conquest of Sindh upto southern-most parts of Multan enabled further Muslim conquests on the Indian subcontinent.
A member of the Thaqif tribe of the Ta'if region, Muhammad bin Qasim's father was Qasim bin Yusuf, who died when Muhammad bin Qasim was young, leaving his mother in charge of his education and care. Umayyad governor Al-Hajjaj Ibn Yusuf Al-Thaqafi, Muhammad bin Qasim's paternal uncle, was instrumental in teaching Muhammad bin Qasim about warfare and governance. Muhammad bin Qasim married his cousin Zubaidah, Al-Hajjaj's daughter, shortly before going to Sindh.
Due to his close relationship with Al-Hajjaj, Bin Qasim was executed after the accession of Caliph Sulayman ibn Abd al-Malik.
Umayyad interest in Sindh
According to Berzin, Umayyad interest in the region occurred because of attacks from Sindh Raja Dahir on ships of Muslims and their imprisonment of Muslim men and women.[1][not in citation given] They had earlier unsuccessfully sought to gain control of the route, via the Khyber Pass, from the Kabul Shahi of Gandhara.[1] But by taking Sindh, Gandhara's southern neighbour, they were able to open a second front against Gandhara; a feat they had, on one occasion, attempted before.[1]
According to Wink, Umayyad interest in the region was galvanized by the operation of the Meds (a tribe of Scythians living in Sindh) and others.[2] Meds had pirated upon Sassanid shipping in the past, from the mouth of the Tigris to the Sri Lankan coast, in their bawarij and now were able to prey on Arab shipping from their bases at Kutch, Debal and Kathiawar.[2] At the time, Sindh was the wild frontier region of al-Hind, inhabited mostly by semi-nomadic tribes whose activities disturbed much of the Western Indian Ocean.[2] Muslim sources insist that it was these persistent activities along increasingly important Indian trade routes by Debal pirates and others which forced the Arabs to subjugate the area, in order to control the seaports and maritime routes of which Sindh was the nucleus, as well as, the overland passage.[3] During Hajjaj's governorship, the Meds of Debal in one of their raids had kidnapped Muslim women travelling from Sri Lanka to Arabia, thus providing a casus belli to the rising power of the Umayyad Caliphate that enabled them to gain a foothold in the Makran, Balochistan and Sindh regions