Origins
The name Zunbil, rendered by Arabic writers as Rutbil or Ratbil, was a royal title, connected with the god Zun, whose temple stood at Zamindawar on the Helmand. The rulers of Zabulistan were probably related to the Turk Shahis who ruled from Kabul, and the dynasty may have had roots among the Hephthalite and Turkic peoples who had ruled the region since the fifth century. Chinese records of the Tang dynasty mention the kingdom under the name Xieyu.
The cult of Zun is described by Arab geographers as worship of an idol of gold with ruby eyes, set on a sacred mountain. Scholars have connected it with a sun god or with Shiva, and the region also had Buddhist communities. Little is known of it beyond these descriptions.
Resisting the caliphate
After the Arab conquest of Iran in the mid-seventh century, Arab governors of Sistan repeatedly invaded Zabulistan and Kabulistan. The Zunbils fought them for two centuries, sometimes paying tribute, sometimes refusing it. In 698 the governor Ubayd Allah ibn Abi Bakra led an army deep into Zunbil territory, where it was trapped in the mountains and largely destroyed; the Arab sources called it the army of destruction. The governor of the east, al-Hajjaj, sent a great army under Ibn al-Ash'ath to avenge it, but Ibn al-Ash'ath made peace with the Zunbil and turned his army against al-Hajjaj in a rebellion that shook the Umayyad state. After his defeat at Dayr al-Jamajim in Iraq in 701 he fled to the Zunbil. Under pressure from al-Hajjaj, who offered the Zunbil years of relief from tribute, the king gave him up around 704, and Ibn al-Ash'ath died, by most accounts throwing himself from a height rather than be taken. The episode shows both the reach of the Zunbils' resistance and the price at which the caliphate could buy their cooperation.
In the eighth century the Abbasids also campaigned against the Zunbils, with intermittent success. The kingdom's resistance, along with that of the Kabul Shahis, is one reason why Islam spread so slowly into eastern Afghanistan and the north-west of the subcontinent.
The end
In the 860s Ya'qub ibn al-Layth, a coppersmith turned commander who founded the Saffarid dynasty in Sistan, invaded Zabulistan and killed the Zunbil ruler. He went on to take Kabul, and sent captured idols to the caliph at Baghdad. With the fall of the Zunbils and the retreat of the Kabul Shahis eastward, the region came under Muslim rulers, and Ghazni, within former Zunbil territory, became the seat of the Ghaznavids a century later.
Further reading
- Wink, Andre. Al-Hind: The Making of the Indo-Islamic World. Brill, 1990
- Kulke, Hermann. A History of India. Routledge, 2004
- Singh, Upinder. A History of Ancient and Early Medieval India. Pearson, 2008
See also
- Buddhist and Hindu kingdoms of Afghanistan — The Buddhist and Hindu kingdoms of Afghanistan were a succession of polities in Gandhara, Bactria, and the Kabul valley — including the Kushan Empire and the later Kabul Shahi and Hindu Shahi dynasties — that governed the region before its Islamization was completed in the 11th century CE.
- Turk Shahi dynasty — The Turk Shahis ruled the Kabul valley and Gandhāra from the seventh to the ninth century CE, holding the passes into India against the Arab advance for two hundred years.
- Hindu Shahi dynasty — A Hindu dynasty that ruled Kabul, Gandhara, and the Punjab from the mid-9th to the early 11th century CE, remembered chiefly for its sustained military resistance to the Ghaznavid conquest of the northwestern subcontinent.
- Alchon Huns — The Alchon Huns were a Central Asian people who invaded northwestern India from the late fourth century CE, ruled the Punjab and reached Malwa under Toramāṇa and Mihirakula, and are held partly responsible for the collapse of Gupta power.
This entry was last revised on 12 November 2026.