Sistan
[2] Mostly corresponding to the then Achaemenid region of Drangiana and extending southwards of the Helmand River not far off from the city of Alexandria in Arachosia (present day Kandahar).
In prehistoric times, the Jiroft Civilization covered parts of Sistan and Kerman Province (possibly as early as the 3rd millennium BC).
Other smaller sites have been identified in the region in surveys by American archaeologists Walter Fairservis and George Dales.
The site of Nad-i Ali in Afghan Sistan has also been claimed to date from the Bronze Age (Benseval and Francfort 1994).
Earlier the area was occupied by Iranian peoples Eventually a kingdom known as Arachosia was formed, parts of which were ruled by the Medes by 600 BC.
n the 4th century BCE, Alexander the Great annexed the region during his conquest of the Empire and founded the colony of Alexandria in Arachosia.
After the fall of the Mauryans, the region fell to their Greco-Bactrian allies in 180 BC, before breaking away and becoming part of the Indo-Greek Kingdom.
[citation needed] After the mid 2nd century BC, much of the Indo-Greek Kingdom was overrun by tribes known as the Indo-Scythians or Saka, from which Sistan (from Sakastan) eventually derived its name.
Around 100 BC, the Indo-Scythians were defeated by Mithridates II of Parthia (r. c. 124–91 BCE) and the region of Sakastan was incorporated into the Parthian Empire.
[10] As the Kushan Empire expanded in the mid 1st century AD, the Indo-Parthian lost their Indian dominions and recentered on Turan and Sakastan.
Peroz I (r. 459–484), during his early reign, put an end to dynastic rule in province by appointing a Karenid as its governor.
[11] During the Muslim conquest of Persia, the last Sasanian king Yazdegerd III fled to Sakastan in the mid-640s, where its governor Aparviz (who was more or less independent), helped him.
However, only two years later, the people of Zarang rebelled and defeated Rabi ibn Ziyad Harithi's lieutenant and Muslim garrison of the city.
[16] However, in 663, he was forced to leave the region after suffering a defeat to newly established Umayyad Caliphate, who had succeeded the Rashiduns.
After the Samanids took the province from the Saffarids, it briefly returned to Abbasid control, but in 917 the governor Abu Yazid Khalid made himself independent.
Mahmud's Hindu troops sacked the mosques and churches of Zarang massacring the Muslims and Christians inside.
[citation needed] In 1236, Shams al-Din 'Ali ibn Mas'ud founded Mihrabanid dynasty, another branch of Saffarids, as melik of Sistan for Ilkhanate.
[citation needed] Sistan has a very strong connection with Zoroastrianism and during Sassanid times Lake Hamun was one of two pilgrimage sites for followers of that religion.
