The Emirate of Multan was a Muslim state centred on the city of Multan in southern Punjab, in today's Pakistan, from the mid-ninth century until 1010. First ruled by the Arab clan of the Banu Munabbih, it passed in 959 to Isma'ili Shia rulers loyal to the Fatimid Caliphate in Cairo, and was finally conquered by Mahmud of Ghazni. It was a wealthy frontier city where Arab, Persian and Indian worlds met.
From caliphal province to emirate
Multan and Sindh had been conquered by armies of the Umayyad Caliphate led by Muhammad ibn al-Qasim. As the authority of the Abbasid Caliphate over the region faded in the mid-ninth century, local rulers took power. Around 855 the Banu Munabbih, an Arab family claiming descent from the Quraysh, Muhammad's tribe, made Multan the capital of an independent emirate. Its neighbours were the Habbari emirate in Sindh to the south and the Hindu Shahi kingdom in northern Punjab.
The Banu Munabbih
The Banu Munabbih ruled for about a century. According to the scholar al-Biruni, the first of them, Muhammad ibn al-Qasim ibn Munabbih, issued silver coins that carried a Hindu title meaning "sun god" on the reverse. The great sun temple of Multan stood in a crowded part of the city, and taxes connected with it brought large revenues to the Muslim rulers, by some accounts as much as 30 per cent of the state's income. Arab writers nicknamed the city the "Frontier House of Gold". The tenth-century geographers Ibn Rusta and al-Masudi described a settled emirate, and al-Masudi noted that caravans from Khorasan gathered there.
The Isma'ili period
By the mid-tenth century the Qarmatians had gained influence in Multan; an Isma'ili movement. In 959 they overthrew the Banu Munabbih and switched the city's allegiance from the Abbasids in Baghdad to the Fatimid caliph in Cairo. The Fatimid envoy Jalam ibn Shayban governed the city, and towards the end of his rule, after 985, the sun temple was destroyed along with the old Sunni mosque, and a new mosque was built on the temple site. The geographer al-Muqaddasi, who visited in 985, described a prosperous trading city where the Friday sermon named the Fatimid caliph.
Jalam was followed by Shaikh Hamid, whose origins are disputed; the historian Samuel Miklos Stern even suggested his dynasty might be a later invention. Hamid balanced between the Hindu Shahis and the rising Turkish power of Ghazni, and after an invasion by Sabuktigin in 991 he made a truce with him.
Conquest by Ghazni
Hamid's grandson Abu'l-Fath Daud broke with the Ghaznavids and allied with the Hindu Shahi king Anandapala. Mahmud of Ghazni marched on Multan around 1005 to 1006, defeated Anandapala on the way and besieged the city. Daud was forced to renounce his Isma'ili beliefs and pay a heavy yearly tribute, and many Isma'ilis were killed. When Daud rebelled again in 1010, Mahmud returned, defeated him and imprisoned him for life. The Isma'ili mosque was abandoned and the old congregational mosque reopened.
Legacy
Isma'ili hopes did not die at once. Daud's son al-Asghar later led an Isma'ili rising and briefly took Multan's fort in 1041, but Ghaznavid forces recovered the city. The emirate's century and a half of independent rule, first under pro-Abbasid Arab emirs and then under Isma'ili rulers, forms part of the early history of Islam in South Asia.
On our maps
Our 900 map draws the emirate under the label "Multan" in southern Punjab.
From the atlas
Emirate of Multan on our maps
Borders of Time draws the Emirate of Multan on one of its 54 world maps, the one for 900 CE. There it covers about 113,000 km² (43,500 sq mi), roughly the size of Greece today.
On that map it borders the Chauhans, the Pratiharas, the Saffarids and the Samanid Empire.
On the map before it appears (800 CE), the same area belongs to the Hindu states. On the map after its last appearance (1000 CE), it belongs to the Rajput kingdoms.
Measured from the historical-basemaps snapshots this atlas uses. Borders in those maps are approximate, especially for early periods.
Quick answers
- When did the Emirate of Multan exist?
- From 855 CE to 1010, 155 years. The atlas draws it on its maps for 900 CE.
- Where was the Emirate of Multan?
- At its largest, on the 900 CE map, its land lies in today’s India (82%) and Pakistan (18%). On that map it borders the Chauhans, the Pratiharas, the Saffarids and the Samanid Empire.
- What was the capital of the Emirate of Multan?
- Multan.
- How big was the Emirate of Multan?
- The Emirate of Multan was largest on the 900 CE map, at about 113,000 km² (43,500 sq mi).