Sistan in the context of "Helmand culture"

The Muslim conquests of Afghanistan began during the Muslim conquest of Persia as the Arab Muslims expanded eastwards to Khorasan, Sistan and Transoxiana. Fifteen years after the battle of Nahāvand in 642 AD, they controlled all Sasanian domains except in Afghanistan. Fuller Islamization was not achieved until the period between 10th and 12th centuries under Ghaznavid and Ghurid dynasties who patronized Muslim religious institutions.

Khorasan and Sistan, where Zoroastrianism was well-established, were conquered. The Arabs had begun to move towards the lands east of Persia in the 7th century. The Muslim frontier in modern Afghanistan had become stabilized after the first century of the Lunar Hijri calendar as the relative importance of the Afghan areas diminished. From historical evidence, it appears Tokharistan (Bactria) was the only area conquered by Arabs where Buddhism heavily flourished. Balkh's final conquest was undertaken by Qutayba ibn Muslim in 705.

Zabulistan (Persian: زابلستان, Zābolistān, Zāwulistān or simply زابل ), is an ancient and medieval name for a historical region that included mainly southern Afghanistan as well as southeastern Iran.

By the tenth century, Iranian sources mention Zabulistan as part of the Khorasan marches, a frontier region between Khorasan and India. In the Tarikh-i Sistan, finished around 1062 CE, the author regards Zabol as part of the land of Sistan, stretching from the Hamun Oasis all the way to the Indus River.

Rostam or Rustam (Persian: رستم [rosˈtæm]) is an Iranian legendary hero in Persian mythology, the son of Zāl and Rudaba, whose life and work was immortalized by the 10th-century Persian poet Ferdowsi in the Shahnameh, or Epic of Kings, which contains pre-Islamic Iranian folklore and history. However, the roots of the narrative date much earlier.

In the Shahnameh, Rostam and his predecessors are Marzbans of Sistan (present-day Iran and Afghanistan). Rostam is best known for his tragic fight with Esfandiyār, the other legendary Iranian hero; for his expedition to Mazandaran (not to be confused with the modern Mazandaran Province). He is also known for the story of his Seven Labours.

Khorasan (Middle Persian: 𐬒𐬊𐬭𐬀𐬯𐬀𐬥, romanized: Xwarāsān; Persian: خراسان, Iranian Persian [xoɾɒːˈsɒːn] ) is a historical eastern region in the Iranian Plateau in West and Central Asia that encompasses western and northern Afghanistan, northeastern Iran, the eastern halves of Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, western Tajikistan, and portions of Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan.

The extent of the region referred to as Khorasan varied over time. In its stricter historical sense, it comprised the present territories of northeastern Iran, parts of Afghanistan and southern parts of Central Asia, extending as far as the Amu Darya (Oxus) river. However, the name has often been used in a loose sense to include a wider region that included most of Transoxiana (encompassing Bukhara and Samarqand in present-day Uzbekistan), extended westward to the Caspian coast and to the Dasht-e Kavir southward to Sistan, and eastward to the Pamir Mountains. Greater Khorasan is today sometimes used to distinguish the larger historical region from the former Khorasan Province of Iran (1906–2004), which roughly encompassed the western portion of the historical Greater Khorasan.

Mu'in al-Din Hasan Chishti Sijzi (Persian: معین الدین چشتی, romanized: Muʿīn al-Dīn Chishtī; 1 February 1143 – 15 March 1236), known reverentially as Khawaja Gharib Nawaz (Persian: خواجه غریب نواز, romanized: Khawāja Gharīb Nawāz), was a Persian Sayyid Islamic scholar and mystic from Sistan, who eventually ended up settling in the Indian subcontinent in the early 13th-century, where he promulgated the Chishtiyya order of Islamic mysticism. This particular Tariqa (order) became the dominant Islamic spiritual order in medieval India. Most of the Indian Sunni saints are Chishti in their affiliation, including Nizamuddin Awliya (d. 1325) and Amir Khusrow (d. 1325).

Having arrived in the Delhi Sultanate during the reign of the sultan Iltutmish (d. 1236), Muʿīn al-Dīn moved from Delhi to Ajmer shortly thereafter, at which point he became increasingly influenced by the writings of the Sunni Hanbali scholar and mystic ʿAbdallāh Anṣārī (d. 1088), whose work on the lives of the early Islamic saints, the Ṭabāqāt al-ṣūfiyya, may have played a role in shaping Muʿīn al-Dīn's worldview. It was during his time in Ajmer that Muʿīn al-Dīn acquired the reputation of being a charismatic and compassionate spiritual preacher and teacher; and biographical accounts of his life written after his death report that he received the gifts of many "spiritual marvels (karāmāt), such as miraculous travel, clairvoyance, and visions of angels" in these years of his life. Muʿīn al-Dīn seems to have been unanimously regarded as a great saint after his death.