हिंदीOn this day
Ruined

Aror (Alor)

The ruined capital of Sindh under the Rai kings and then Chach and his son Dahir, on a ridge near Rohri. It fell to Muhammad bin Qasim after Dahir’s death, and the river that fed it later moved away.

Built: Capital of the Rai and Brahmin kings of Sindh, 6th–8th centuryWhere: Sindh (near Rohri), Pakistan, Pakistan27.65° N, 68.98° E
  1. c. 641
  2. 7th century
  3. 712–713
Photo: Bernard Gagnon · CC BY-SA 3.0

01The seat of Sindh

The Chachnama, a 13th-century Persian translation of an older Arabic history, makes Aror the capital of the Rai dynasty of Sindh. When Rai Sahasi II died, his Brahmin minister Chach married the widowed queen and took the throne; from Aror he and then his son Dahir ruled a kingdom reaching from the sea at Debal to Multan and the borders of Kashmir. The Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang, who passed through Sindh in the 640s, describes a capital with many Buddhist monasteries and Deva temples and a king of the Shudra caste, which fits the Rai house before Chach.

02Fall, and a river that left

Dahir fell near Rawar in 712. His son held out in Aror for a time, but the Chachnama says the city opened its gates to Muhammad bin Qasim after its people were told of the king’s death. Aror stayed an important town under Arab rule. Some time around the 10th century the Indus shifted its course west, the city lost its water, and the people moved to Rohri and Sukkur. Today the ridge above the village of Aror carries broken walls, and a hilltop shrine of Kalka Devi that Sindhi Hindus still visit.

The life of this place

  1. c. 641Xuanzang visits the capital of Sindh.
  2. 7th centuryChach, minister of the Rai kings, takes the throne at Aror.
  3. 712–713After Dahir’s death Aror falls to Muhammad bin Qasim.

People

Raja DahirRuler
Reigned until 712 CE

Raja Dahir

Last Hindu king of Sindh

Nearby

Mohenjo-daroExcavated
The Sindhu–Sarasvati Civilisation

Mohenjo-daro

The largest city of the Sindhu–Sarasvati civilisation, on the Sindhu in Sindh, with its Great Bath, its grid of baked-brick streets and covered drains. The bronze dancing girl and the yogi seal many see as Pashupati were found here.

Tanot Mata TempleStanding
Independent Bharat

Tanot Mata Temple

A Devi temple a few kilometres from the Pakistan border, where in 1965 the shells that fell around the shrine did not go off. The Border Security Force has served the temple ever since.

ChanhudaroExcavated
The Sindhu–Sarasvati Civilisation

Chanhudaro

A small Harappan town on the old Indus plain south of Mohenjo-daro, with no citadel but whole workshops for beads, seals and shell. Its craftsmen drilled the long carnelian beads that were traded as far as Mesopotamia.

BrahmanabadRuined
The long resistance: Sindh to Tarain

Brahmanabad

The walled city in lower Sindh that held out for months against Muhammad bin Qasim after Raja Dahir’s death in 712. Its ruins lie beside those of Mansura, the Arab capital of Sindh, and the two are often treated as one site.