Sindhi

Sindhi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken along the lower Indus, in the region of Sindh after which it is named; the word itself goes back to the Sanskrit síndhu, the ancient name of the Indus. Like other north Indian languages it descends from Sanskrit through the Prakrits and the later Apabhramsha stage.

After the Arab conquest of Sindh in 712 it became the first Indo-Aryan language in sustained contact with Arabic and Persian, absorbing a large stock of loanwords and adopting the Perso-Arabic script.

Early written literature was sparse: Isma'ili devotional hymns from the eleventh century used a related idiom, while from the late fifteenth century Sufi poets such as Qazi Qadan composed in Sindhi itself, a tradition crowned in the eighteenth century by the mystic verses of Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai.