Page:History of India Vol 5.djvu/59

END OF AKAB POWER IN SIND 33 The Karmathians of India are nowhere mentioned by Ibn Haukal, but it could not have been long after his visit that these heretics, who probably contained within their ranks many converted natives and foreign- ers as well as Arabs, began to spread in the valley of the Indus. It must have been about the year 375 A. H. (985 A. D.) that, finding their power expiring in the original seat of their conquests, they sought new settle- ments in a distant land and tried their success in Sind. There the weakness of the petty local governments favoured their progress and led to their early occupa- tion both of Mansura and Multan, from which latter place history records their expulsion by the overwhelm- ing power of Mahmud of Ghazni, whose victories brought Sind under his triumphant sway, resulting ulti- mately in the extinction of the Arab dominion in that province after a duration of three centuries.'