The Defender of Mewar
Turning the Tide Against Arab Expansion
In the 720s and 730s CE, Arab armies that had conquered from Spain to Sindh threatened to sweep through Rajputana and into the heart of India. A coalition of Hindu kings assembled to resist, and among them emerged Bappa Rawal - no longer a hidden prince but a battle-tested leader. The campaigns that followed would halt Arab expansion into India and establish Bappa as one of the foremost defenders of the dharmic civilization.
The Umayyad Tide
By the 720s CE, the Umayyad Caliphate had built the largest empire the world had ever seen, stretching from the Atlantic shores of Spain to the banks of the Indus. Arab armies had swept through Persia in a matter of years, toppled the ancient Sassanid dynasty, pushed into Central Asia where they clashed with Tang China, conquered all of North Africa, and crossed the Straits of Gibraltar to establish Muslim rule in the Iberian Peninsula. The speed and totality of these conquests stunned the world. Only India remained largely unconquered - a subcontinent of wealthy kingdoms, ancient temples, and trade routes that brought gold and spices from across Asia.
The conquest of Sindh in 712 CE gave the Arabs their foothold in the subcontinent. Muhammad bin Qasim had defeated Raja Dahir and established the first permanent Arab governorate on Indian soil. From Sindh, successive governors launched raids deeper into the subcontinent, probing defenses, assessing wealth, identifying weakness. The pattern was grimly familiar to those who had watched Persia fall: probe, raid, weaken, then conquer. The question hanging over every Indian court was whether the subcontinent would follow Persia into submission.
Junaid ibn Abd al-Rahman al-Murri, governor of Sindh from 723-726 CE, launched the most aggressive campaigns yet. According to Arab historian Al-Biladuri, Junaid's forces overran Kathiawar, Kutch, Saurashtra, and Mandor. His armies struck Ujjain in central India, sacked Broach on the Gujarat coast, and pushed deep into southern Rajasthan. For Rajputana's rulers, this was no longer a distant threat but an existential crisis knocking at their gates. The great fortress of Chittor - held by the Mori Rajputs under Man Mori - stood directly in the path of invasion. The smaller Rajput kingdoms faced a stark choice: submit and pay tribute, flee and abandon their ancestral lands, or fight and risk annihilation. Bappa Rawal, now established as a leader with his coalition of Bhil warriors and loyal followers, chose to fight.