Southern Asia, controlling the main trade route linking the Indian subcontinent with the Middle East, Central Asia and the Persian Gulf. The territory became part of the Seleucid Empire after the departure of Alexander, and was later invaded by Chandragupta Maurya who brought Buddhism from India. It is mentioned by Strabo that a treaty of friendship was established eventually between these two empires. The Maurya emperor Ashoka erected a pillar there with a bilingual inscription in Greek and Aramaic. The Greco-Bactrian Kingdom occupied Kandahar after the Mauryans, but then lost the city to the Indo-Scythians.
Islamization and Mongol invasion
In the 7th century AD, Arab armies conquered the region with the new religion of Islam but were unable to succeed in fully converting the population. In 870 AD, Yaqub ibn Layth Saffari, a local ruler of the Saffarid dynasty conquered Kandahar and the rest of the nearby regions in the name of Islam.
"...Arab armies carrying the banner of Islam came out of the west to defeat the Sasanians in 642 AD and then they marched with confidence to the east. On the western periphery of the Afghan area the princes of Herat and Seistan gave way to rule by Arab governors but in the east, in the mountains, cities submitted only to rise in revolt and the hastily converted returned to their old beliefs once the armies passed. The harshness and avariciousness of Arab rule produced such unrest, however, that once the waning power of the Caliphate became apparent, native rulers once again established themselves independent. Among these the Saffarids of Seistan shone briefly in the Afghan area. The fanatic founder of this dynasty, the coppersmith�s apprentice Yaqub ibn Layth Saffari, came forth from his capital at Zaranj in 870 AD and marched through Bost, Kandahar, Ghazni, Kabul, Bamiyan, Balkh and Herat, conquering in the name of Islam."
�N. Dupree, 1971
It is believed that the Zunbil dynasty, who
