Debal (Urdu, Arabic, Sindhi: ديبل) was an ancient port located near modern Karachi, Pakistan.[1] It is adjacent to the nearby Manora Island and was administered by Mansura, and later Thatta. In Arabic history books, most notably in the early eighth century accounts of the arrival of Islam in the Indian subcontinent, it was documented as Daybul (Dīwal ~ Dībal ديبل). One view is that the name was derived from Devalaya, meaning abode of God in Sanskrit. According to modern archaeologists, Debal was founded in the 1st century CE, and soon became the most important trading city in Sindh. The port city was home to thousands of Sindhi sailors including the Bawarij. Ibn Hawqal, a 10th-century writer, geographer and chronicler, mentions huts of the city and the dry arid land surrounding the city that supported little agriculture. He mentions how efficiently the inhabitants of the city maintained fishing vessels and trade. The Abbasids were the first to build large stone structures including a city wall and a citadel. An earthquake in 893 AD reportedly destroyed the port city of Debal
As late as 1221, Debal appears to have remained an important port city; according to the Jahan-kusha describes that Jalal al-Din Mangburni approached the city that year, and its ruler Hasrar fled, allowing him to enter the city unopposed.[3] However, the city must have gone into decline shortly thereafter - the Indus changed course around that time, and the site was eventually abandoned. [5] By the early 1300s, Debal is completely absent from Ibn Battuta’s description of Sindh.[3] Its role as Sindh’s main commercial port was transferred to the newer city of Lahari Bandar.[3]
Debal and the Manora Island were visited by Ottoman admiral Seydi Ali Reis (1498-1563) and mentioned in his book Mir'ât ül Memâlik in 1554. In 1568 Debal was attacked by the Portuguese Admiral Fernão Mendes Pinto (1509 - 1583) in an attempt to capture or destroy the Ottoman vessels anchored there. Fernão Mendes Pinto also claims that Sindhi sailors joined the Ottoman admiral Kurtoğlu Hızır Reis on his voyage to Aceh. Debal was also visited by the British travel writers such as Thomas Postans and John Elliott. According to Eliot, who is noted for his vivid account on the city of Thatta, parts of the city of Karachi and the island of Manora at the port of Karachi constituted the city of Debal.
Abū Muḥammad al-Ḥajjāj ibn Yūsuf ibn al-Ḥakam ibn ʿAqīl al-Thaqafī (Arabic: أبو محمد الحجاج بن يوسف بن الحكم بن عقيل الثقفي; Ta'if 661 - Wasit, 714 (40-95 AH)), known simply as al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf (Arabic: الحجاج بن يوسف, romanized: al-Ḥajjāj ibn Yūsuf), was probably the most notable governor who served the Umayyad Caliphate. He began his service with the Umayyads under Caliph Abd al-Malik (r. 685-705), who successively promoted him as the head of the caliph's shurta (security forces), the governor of the Hejaz (western Arabia) in 692-694, and the practical viceroy of a unified Iraqi province and the eastern parts of the Caliphate in 694. Al-Hajjaj retained the last post under Abd al-Malik's son and successor al-Walid I (r. 705-715), whose decision-making was highly influenced by al-Hajjaj, until his death in 714.
As governor of Iraq and the east, al-Hajjaj instituted key reforms. Among these were the minting of silver dirhams with strictly Muslim religious formulas instead of the coins' traditional, pre-Islamic Sasanian design; changing the language of the dīwān (bureaucracy) of Iraq from Persian to Arabic; and the introduction of a uniform version of the Quran. To revive agricultural production and increase tax revenue, al-Hajjaj expelled non-Arab Muslim converts from the garrison cities of Kufa and Basra to their rural villages of origin and collected from them the jizya (poll tax) nominally reserved for non-Muslim subjects and oversaw large-scale canal digging projects. In 701, al-Hajjaj, with reinforcements from Syria, crushed a mass rebellion led by the Kufan Arab nobleman Ibn al-Ash'ath whose ranks spanned the Arab troops, Muslim converts and religious elites of Iraq. Consequently, al-Hajjaj further tightened control over the province, founding the city of Wasit to house the loyalist Syrian troops whom he thereafter relied on to enforce his rule.
Al-Hajjaj was a highly capable though ruthless statesman, strict in character, and a harsh and demanding master. Widely feared by his contemporaries, he became a deeply controversial figure and an object of deep-seated enmity among later, pro-Abbasid writers, who ascribed to him persecutions and mass executions.
In this series you will know all the details about his Origin early life career Relations with the caliphs & his Death and legacy.
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