Note 39 — Chapter VI · THE SPREAD OF ISLAM AMONG THE CHRISTIAN NATIONS IN EUROPE UNDER THE TURKS.

When at the close of the twelfth century, the Saljūq empire had lost all power except in Asia Minor, and when Muḥammad G͟hūrī was extending his empire from K͟hurāsān eastward across the north of India, there was a great revival of the Muslim faith among the Afg͟hāns and their country was overrun by Arab preachers and converts from India, who set about the task of proselytising with remarkable energy and boldness.39 The traditions of the Afg͟hāns represent Islam as having been peaceably introduced among them. They say that in the first century of the Hijrah they occupied the G͟hūr country to the east of Herāt, and that K͟hālid b. Walīd came to them there with the tidings of Islam and invited them to join the standard of the Prophet; he returned to Muḥammad accompanied by a deputation of six or seven representative men of the Afghan people, with their followers, and these, when they went back to their own country, set to work to convert their fellow-tribesmen.40 This tradition is, however, devoid of any historical foundation, and the earliest authentic record of conversion to Islam from among the Afghans seems to be that of a king of Kābul in the reign of al-Maʼmūn.41 His successors, however, seem to have relapsed to Buddhism, for when Yaʻqūb b. Layt͟h, the founder of the Ṣaffārid dynasty, extended his conquests as far as Kābul in 871, he found the ruler of the land to be an “idolater,” and Kābul now became really Muhammadan for the first time, the Afghans probably being quite willing to take service in the army of so redoubtable a conqueror as Yaʻqūb b. Layt͟h,42 but it was not until after the conquests of Sabaktigīn and Maḥmūd of Ghazna that Islam became established throughout Afghanistan.