FRONTIER WITH THE HOUSE OF GOLD 45
sermon in both cities was read in the name of the 'Abbasid caliph.^62
These cities had very limited influence outside of their fortifications.
The city states were in constant negotiations with other regional prin-
cipalities, as their revenues depended on travelers and pilgrims. The
little we know of these cities in the ninth and tenth centuries indi-
cates that they did not have many expansionist ambitions. Also of note
is that these were the only cities in the region that included some eth-
nically Arab populations-until the eleventh century-due largely to
consistent migration and settlement traffic from the coasts of Yemen
and Arabia.
In the late ninth century, a new Muslim state was established by
two brothers: Ya'qub and 'Amr bin Layth Saffari. They threatened
Baghdad itself in the 870s and were given a grant by the 'Abbasid ca-
liphs over Sind. The Saffarids took over cities like Ghazna, Qusdar,
Kikan, Qandabil, and Multan, and they held them until 900.^63 They
were dethroned by the Samanid, rivals of the Saffarid from Khurasan,
who poured into Makran and took Multan during the second decade
of the tenth century. By this juncture, the fracturing of the 'Abbasid
polity at Baghdad had eroded even the nominal connection between
the frontier of Sind and the capital of Baghdad.
The Isma'ili da'wa (summons, invitation to convert) spread in Sind
from the Yemeni port cities during early tenth century and was fol-
lowed by the emergence of Isma'ili centers and closer relations with
the Fatimid caliphate in Egypt (r. 909-1171). By 9651 the city of Multan
was a center of Isma'ili missionary activities across the region.^64 The
caliphate in Baghdad was now only a distant observer of the fringes of
their eastern realm.
The history of Baladhuri and the later geographers demonstrate that
in the early centuries of the second millennium, Sind was a connected
space of multiple small polities and courts with markedly diverse pop-
ulations. This Arabic historiography of Muslim campaigns in the region
of Sind further affirms the reading of Sind as an Indian Ocean region
interconne~ed with Arabia and Iran from the seventh century on-
ward. The presence of various mercantile and political communities
throughout the eighth and ninth centuries gives prima facie lie to an
originary encounter which posits conquest as the first contact. Yet the
Arab texts do detail a history of a political frontier where the Muslim