Another missionary movement may be said roughly to centre round the city of Multan. [887] This in the early days of the Arab conquest was one of the outposts of Islam, when Muḥammad b. Qāsim had established Muhammadan supremacy over Sind (A.D. 714). During the three centuries of Arab rule there were naturally many accessions to the faith of the conquerors. Several Sindian princes responded to the invitation of the Caliph ʻUmar b. ʻAbd al-ʻAzīz to embrace Islam. [888] The people of Sāwandari—who submitted to Muḥammad b. Qāsim and had peace granted to them on the condition that they would entertain the Musalmans and furnish guides—are spoken of by al-Balādhurī (writing about a hundred years later) as professing Islam in his time; and the despatches of the conqueror frequently refer to the conversion of the unbelievers. That these conversions were in the main voluntary, may be judged from the toleration that the Arabs, after the first violence of their onslaught, showed towards their idolatrous subjects. The people of Brahmanābād, for example, whose city had been taken by storm, were allowed to repair their temple, which was a means of livelihood to the Brahmans, and nobody was to be forbidden or prevented from following his own religion, [889] and generally, where submission was made, quarter was readily given, and the people were permitted the exercise of their own creeds and laws. During the troubles that befell the caliphate in the latter half of the ninth century, Sind, neglected by the central government, came to be divided among several petty princes, the most powerful of whom were the Amīrs of Multan and Mansūra. Such disunion naturally weakened the political power of the Musalmans, which had in fact begun to decline earlier in the century. For in the reign of al-Muʻtaṣim (A.D. 833–842), the Indians of Sindān [890] declared themselves independent, but they spared the mosque, in which the Musalmans were allowed to perform their devotions undisturbed. [891] The Muhammadans of Multan succeeded in maintaining their political independence, and kept themselves from being conquered by the neighbouring Hindu princes, by threatening, if attacked, to destroy an idol which was held in great veneration by the Hindus and was visited by pilgrims from the most distant parts. [892] But in the hour of its political decay, Islam was still achieving missionary successes. Al-Balādhurī [893] tells the following story of the conversion of a king of ʻUsayfān, a country between Kashmīr and Multan and Kābul. The people of this country worshipped an idol for which they had built a temple. The son of the king fell sick, and he desired the priests of the temple to pray to the idol for the recovery of his son. They retired for a short time, and then returned saying: “We have prayed and our supplications have been accepted.” But no long time passed before the youth died. Then the king attacked the temple, destroyed and broke in pieces the idol, and slew the priests.