Standing among desolate salt flats on a former mouth of the Indus and the only major site in a sparsely populated region, Banbhore is plausibly identified as Daibal, the first town in Sind to fall to the Moslems, in 712. Excavations revealed that occupation began in the Scytho-Parthian period (1st century bc to 2nd century ad) and ended in the 13th century. Like Siraf, the city was located on a barren coast, which could not have supported a town without the wealth generated by trade. It was a port of call for ships voyaging between India and the Persian Gulf and an outlet for commodities from the interior; in the 2nd century, the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea mentions an entrepot in the Indus delta which exported lapis lazuli from the Hindu Kush, musk from the Himalayas etc. In the Islamic period, Banbhore was a walled town, just over 500 metres across. Within the walls, the most imposing building was the congregational mosque. Outside the walls, the excavators found an industrial quarter and a reservoir or enclosed harbour.
The Macmillan dictionary of archaeology, Ruth D. Whitehouse, 1983Copied