then he would wail like a mother bereaved. Whenever anyone praised him he would say, “Khubayb—what is Khubayb? If I can escape him, then all is well.” He remained governor of Madinah until he flogged Khubayb and the latter died; after that he asked to be relieved of office, and from that moment sorrow and fear gripped him. He applied himself to worship and to weeping. It had been a slip and a lapse on his part, yet through it Allah brought him abundant good—greater devotion, many tears, constant sorrow and fear, beneficence, justice, charity, filial piety, the freeing of slaves, and other virtues ⦗1⦘.

In that same year Muhammad ibn al-Qasim—cousin of al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf—took the city of Debul and other parts of India. Al-Hajjaj had appointed him to the Indian campaign when he was only seventeen. He advanced with the armies and met the Indian king Dāhir, who commanded a mighty host and twenty-seven chosen elephants. They fought, and Allah routed the enemy; King Dāhir fled. When night fell the king returned with a vast multitude, and a fierce battle ensued in which Dāhir and most of his men were slain. The Muslims pursued the fleeing Indians and killed them. Muhammad ibn al-Qasim then marched on, captured the city of al-Kabraj and its surrounding countryside, and returned with enormous spoils and wealth beyond counting—gems, gold, and much else besides ⦗2⦘.

Thus, under the Umayyads the marketplace of jihad was flourishing; they had no other preoccupation. The word of Islam towered over east and west, land and sea alike. They humbled disbelief and its people, and the hearts of the idolaters were filled with dread of the Muslims. There was no region to which the Muslims set out but that they conquered it. In their expeditionary armies were the righteous, the saints, and the scholars from among the senior tābiʿūn; in every army was a great company through whom Allah granted victory to His religion.

Take Qutaybah ibn Muslim: he was conquering in the lands of the Turks—killing, taking captives, and seizing booty—until he reached the borders of China. He sent word summoning its emperor to Islam, whereupon the emperor, although powerful and well supplied with troops, was stricken with fear and sent gifts, presents, and vast sums of money, seeking his favor; indeed, all the kings of those regions paid him tribute out of fear. Had al-Hajjaj lived, he would not have withdrawn from China; only the final meeting with its emperor remained. When al-Hajjaj died, however, the army turned back, as mentioned. Later Qutaybah himself was killed—slain by some of the Muslims.

Maslamah ibn ʿAbd al-Malik—the brother of the caliph al-Walīd—and another of their brothers campaigned in Byzantine territory with the armies of Syria until they reached Constantinople, where Maslamah built a mosque for the worship of Allah; the hearts of the Franks were filled with terror of them. Muhammad ibn al-Qasim, the nephew of al-Hajjaj, was waging jihad in India, capturing its cities with a contingent from Iraq and others, while Mūsā ibn Nuṣayr was fighting in the Maghrib, conquering its cities and provinces with troops from Egypt and elsewhere. All of these regions embraced Islam and abandoned idol-worship.

Earlier still, in the days of ʿUmar and ʿUthmān, the Companions had already opened most of these lands and entered their principal cities, after conquering the great early provinces such as Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Yemen, and the first