The Kabul kingdom
The Turk Shahis, of Central Asian origin, took the Kabul valley, on ancient India’s north-western edge (modern-day Afghanistan), in the seventh century and ruled a territory spanning the Hindu Kush passes and the Gandhāran plain. Their subjects were largely Buddhist and Hindu, and the dynasty's coinage and inscriptions show it adopting the region's existing religious and administrative forms.
Arab armies from Sistan campaigned against Kabul repeatedly from the 660s onward and took the city more than once, but never held it. The Arab geographers' accounts of these campaigns are the principal source, and they describe a long stalemate at the passes.
Why it mattered
The strategic point is easily missed. The Arab conquest reached Sindh, in ancient India (modern-day Pakistan), in 712 and stopped; the route into northern India through the Khyber remained closed for another three centuries, held first by the Turk Shahis and then by their Hindu Shahi successors. When invasion from the northwest resumed under Mahmud of Ghazni after 1000 CE, it was because the Shahi barrier had finally failed.
The Turk Shahis were displaced around 870 CE by their Brahman minister Lalliya, who founded the Hindu Shahi line. Kabul itself was taken by the Saffarids at about the same time, and the Shahi centre moved east to Udabhāṇḍapura on the Indus.
Further reading
- Behrendt, Kurt A. The Art of Gandhara in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2007
- Coedes, George. The Indianized States of Southeast Asia. University of Hawaii Press, 1968
- Hawley, John Stratton. A Storm of Songs: India and the Idea of the Bhakti Movement. Harvard University Press, 2015
- Samuel, Geoffrey. The Origins of Yoga and Tantra. Cambridge University Press, 2008
- Sen, Tansen. Buddhism, Diplomacy, and Trade. University of Hawaii Press, 2003
See also
This entry was last revised on 1 August 2026.