The Arabic narrative sources concerning the early Islamic conquests are well-studied and, while being compiled into a written form many decades after the events they purport to describe, they remain an important well of information for our understanding of the spread of Islam and the establishment of the first Islamic states. After many decades of historical analysis of the central Islamic lands, the past several years have seen a growth in frontier studies within early Islamic history, including an increased focus on regions such as Transoxiana in Central Asia and the Maghreb in North Africa. Far less attention has been paid, however, to the conquest period’s most eastward extant: into the Indian subcontinent and South Asia more generally. This paper will consider the arrival of the early Islamic conquest armies into South Asia in the first century AH/seventh century CE, while also discussing what we can say about the process of the conquerors’ settlement in the region. In particular, it will focus on this reconstruction using the earliest extant narrative accounts that we have that discuss the conquerors’ process in the region that are found in the Kitāb Futūḥ al-Buldān (The Book of the Conquest of Lands) by the ‘Abbāsid-era courtier al-Balādhurī (d. ca. 279AH/892 CE). It will also provide commentary on the Arabic historiographical tradition associated with these accounts. It will discuss the reliance on this unique historical material used by al-Balādhurī and the textual reuse process by later Muslim authors, as this material from Futūḥ al-Buldān is amongst the most transmitted material utilized by later authors from al-Balādhurī’s book.