The advent of Islam and the first Turkish invasion

711 to 1186 CE

A new faith rose in Arabia in the seventh century and within a hundred years its Arab armies reached the Indus. They took Sindh in 711 to 715 and were held there. Three centuries later Turkish soldiers, once the caliphs' slaves and by then kings with Persian courts, came through the Khyber: Mahmud of Ghazni raided north India again and again between 1000 and 1027, sacking Thanesar, Mathura, Kanauj and Somnath, while Al Biruni, who came in his train, wrote the most careful foreign account of India of the age. The Ghaznavids then shrank to Lahore, Indian kings turned back several later raids, and in the hills of Ghor a new power rose.

Phase:

The Arabs in Sindh, 711 to 715 CE: Muhammad bin Qasim marched through Makran, took Debal in 711, won at Rawar in 712 and reached Multan, while the Pratiharas and the Rashtrakutas held the frontier beyond.

Arab Sindh and Multan, 711 to c. 870
Site
Port
Settlement
Battlefield
Capital
Sacred site
Pillar edict
Held the frontier against the Arabs
UNESCO World Heritage Site
Destroyed, with year
Raided, with year
Held against the raider
Battle, with year

a Rawar

Literary sources

Chachnama: an Arabic account of the conquest of Sindh, put into Persian by Muhammad Ali Kufi of Uch in 1216; the only detailed narrative, told from the conquerors' side.
Futuh al Buldan (Al Baladhuri, 9th century): an Arab history of the conquests, agreeing in outline with the Chachnama.
Tarikh i Yamini (Utbi, Mahmud's secretary): the court history of Mahmud, written in his praise and silent on Indian resistance.
Tarikh i Baihaqi and Zain ul Akhbar (Baihaqi, Gardizi): later Ghaznavid histories.
Kitab ul Hind (Al Biruni, c. 1030): the most careful account of Indian learning and society by any foreign writer of the age.
Al Kamil (Ibn al Athir, 13th century): a later Arab history, the source of the number killed at Somnath.
Rajatarangini (Kalhana, c. 1148): the Sanskrit chronicle of Kashmir, unusual for weighing its sources.
Prithviraja Vijaya (Jayanaka): a Chahamana court poem, with Arnoraja's victory near Ajmer.

Foreign accounts

Al Masudi (10th century): the Arab traveller who called the Rashtrakuta king, the Balhara, one of the four great kings of the world.

Inscriptions

Gwalior prasasti of the Pratiharas: Nagabhata I destroying the armies of the mleccha.
Kumaradevi's inscription at Sarnath: Govindachandra appointed to protect Varanasi from the Turushka.
Vigraharaja IV's inscription of 1164 on the Ashokan pillar now at Delhi: the land cleared of mlecchas.

Coins

Coins of Dahir's predecessors and of the Arab governors of Sindh mark the change of rule.

Archaeology and monuments

Brahmanabad and Banbhore, the likely site of Debal, show the towns of Sindh before and after the conquest.
Layers of destruction and rebuilding at Somnath, Mathura, Thanesar and Nagarkot match the chronicles.

Arabia before Islam

Arabia was a land of desert herders, the Bedouin, and of trading towns on the caravan routes of the western coast, the Hejaz.
Mecca was the richest of these towns, and held the sanctuary of the Kaaba, where the tribes kept the images of their gods.
The Quraysh tribe controlled Mecca and the Kaaba, and grew rich from its pilgrims and its trade.
There was no state: the tribes warred and allied by custom, and Jewish and Christian communities lived in the oases.

The Prophet Muhammad

The Prophet Muhammad was born in Mecca about 570, into the Banu Hashim clan of the Quraysh.
Orphaned young, he was raised by his grandfather and then by his uncle Abu Talib, and worked in the caravan trade.
About 610, in the cave of Hira outside Mecca, he received the first revelation and began to preach.
His message was tawhid, the oneness of God, together with the equality of believers and care for the poor, the orphan and the widow.
The leaders of the Quraysh opposed him, because his preaching threatened the gods of the Kaaba and the trade that came with them.

The Hijra and the first community

In 622 the Prophet and his followers left Mecca for the oasis of Yathrib, which came to be called Medina, the city of the Prophet.
This migration, the Hijra, is the first year of the Islamic calendar, which is lunar and about eleven days shorter than the solar year.
At Medina he led the first Muslim community, the umma, which was both a faith and a small state.
War with Mecca followed, at Badr in 624, Uhud in 625 and the Trench in 627, until a truce at Hudaybiya in 628.
In 630 he entered Mecca with little fighting and the Kaaba was cleared of its images, and he died at Medina in 632.
His revelations form the Quran, and his sayings and practice, the Hadith and the Sunna, are the second source of guidance.

The rightly guided caliphs

The Prophet named no successor, so the community chose a khalifa, a successor or deputy, to lead it: a ruler, not a prophet.
The first four caliphs are called the Rashidun, the rightly guided: Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman and Ali.
Under Umar (634 to 644) Arab armies took Syria, Iraq and Egypt and broke the Sassanid empire of Persia.
Under Uthman (644 to 656) the Quran was given its single written text.

The first conflicts

Uthman was killed by rebels in 656, and the community split over who should rule.
Ali, the Prophet's cousin and son in law, became caliph and fought the Battle of the Camel in 656.
He then fought Muawiya, the governor of Syria, at Siffin in 657, and agreed to an arbitration.
A group who rejected the arbitration, the Kharijites, broke away, and one of them killed Ali in 661.
Muawiya founded the Umayyad caliphate at Damascus and made the office hereditary.
At Karbala in 680 Ali's son Husayn was killed by an Umayyad army, and his death is mourned each year in Muharram.

Sunni and Shia

Those who held that leadership belonged to Ali's family became the Shia, the party of Ali, and follow imams of his line.
The majority, who accepted the caliphs as the community chose them, are the Sunni.
In India the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughals were Sunni, while Bijapur and Golconda were Shia states.

The Abbasids

In 750 the Abbasids, rising from Khorasan with Persian support, overthrew the Umayyads.
They built Baghdad in 762, where the House of Wisdom translated Greek, Persian and Indian learning into Arabic.
Their court took on Persian ways, and their army came to rest on Turkish slave soldiers, as the next tab tells.
The Mongols sacked Baghdad in 1258 and ended the Abbasid caliphate there.

From the Prophet to Baghdad

c. 570
The Prophet Muhammad born at Mecca
c. 610
The first revelation, in the cave of Hira
622
The Hijra to Medina, year one of the Islamic calendar
632
The Prophet Muhammad dies at Medina; Abu Bakr the first caliph
656
Uthman killed; the first civil war
661
Ali killed; Muawiya founds the Umayyad caliphate at Damascus
680
Husayn killed at Karbala
750
The Abbasids, rising from Khorasan, overthrow the Umayyads
762
The Abbasids build Baghdad
1258
The Mongols sack Baghdad and kill the last Abbasid caliph

From the Prophet Muhammad's birth to the fall of Baghdad, the ten dates that frame the caliphate.Source: Medieval Theme 1 handout

Three peoples, three roles

The Arabs gave the faith: Islam, the Quran, and Arabic as the language of religion and law.
The Persians gave the court: kingship, administration, and Persian as the language of government and poetry.
The Turks gave the soldiers and, in India, the rulers.
The men who conquered north India after 1000 were Turks, who governed in Persian and followed the faith the Arabs brought.

West and Central Asia: old regions, modern countriesTap to enlarge

The old regions in colour over the modern countries in grey, with Mecca, Baghdad, Bukhara, Ghazni and the other cities of the story marked.

The Arabs

Their homeland was the Arabian peninsula, today Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain.
After the conquests Arabic spread to Iraq, Syria, Egypt and North Africa, the Arab world of today.
Arabic is a Semitic language, related to Hebrew and Aramaic, and is written from right to left.
Arab merchants were sailing to the Malabar coast long before Islam.

The Persians and their ancient empires

Their homeland is the Iranian plateau, today Iran, and Persian is also spoken as Dari in Afghanistan and Tajik in Tajikistan.
Persian is an Indo European language, a cousin of Sanskrit, so that ahura and asura, haoma and soma are the same words.
The Achaemenids (550 to 330 BCE) of Cyrus and Darius ruled from the Aegean to the Indus, with Gandhara as a province. (Persian and Greek invasions, and the rise of Magadha)
Their Aramaic script gave the north west of India its Kharoshthi.
The Parthians ruled in the north west of India as the Pahlavas. (The northwestern invasions: Indo Greeks, Shakas, Pahlavas, Kushanas and the Western Satraps)
The Sassanids (224 to 651) were Zoroastrian, and under Khusrau I the Panchatantra was put into Persian, from which it travelled west.

Persia after the Arab conquest

The Arabs ended the Sassanid empire by 651, but Persian culture outlived the conquest.
Some Zoroastrians left by sea for Gujarat and became India's Parsis.
Persian came back as a literary language, now written in the Arabic script, and Firdausi's Shahnameh (c. 1010) retold the old Persian kings in it.
Persian ministers ran the courts of the caliphs and, later, of the Turkish kings.

The Turks of the steppe

Their homeland was the grassland of Central Asia, from Mongolia west to today's Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan.
Turkic peoples live today in Turkey, Azerbaijan and Xinjiang as well, but the steppe was their first home.
Their languages are Turkic, unrelated to Arabic or Persian.
They were horse breeding nomads and the finest mounted archers of the age, shooting the composite bow at a gallop.
Their old religion honoured Tengri, the sky, and Buddhism reached some of them before Islam did.

Arabs, Persians and Turks

	Arabs	Persians	Turks
Homeland and modern countries	The Arabian peninsula: Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain; Arabic later spread to Iraq, Syria, Egypt and North Africa	The Iranian plateau: Iran, with Persian also spoken as Dari in Afghanistan and Tajik in Tajikistan	The Central Asian steppe: the Altai and Mongolia, then Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan; Turkic peoples today also in Turkey, Azerbaijan and Xinjiang
Language and family	Arabic, Semitic, kin to Hebrew and Aramaic	Persian, Indo European of the Indo Iranian branch, a cousin of Sanskrit	Turkic, unrelated to Arabic or Persian
Script	Arabic, written right to left	The Arabic script, after the conquest	Not given
Way of life before Islam	Bedouin herders and caravan traders; merchants sailing to Malabar	An imperial civilisation: the Achaemenids, 550 to 330 BCE, the Parthians, and the Sassanids, 224 to 651	Horse herding nomads, the finest mounted archers of the age
Religion before Islam	Tribal gods at the Kaaba, beside Jewish and Christian communities	Zoroastrian under the Sassanids	Tengri, the sky; then Buddhism, Manichaeism and Islam reached them
What they gave the Indo Islamic world	The faith, and Arabic as its language	The courtly culture, and Persian as the court language of the Sultanate and the Mughals	The soldiers and, in India, the rulers

Three peoples, three languages, three homelands: the Arabs brought the faith, the Persians the courtly culture, the Turks the soldiers and, in India, the rulers.

From slaves to kingmakers

The caliphs bought Turkish boys as ghulams, slave soldiers trained from childhood and loyal only to their master.
The caliph al Mutasim built a Turkish guard and moved his capital to Samarra in 836 to house it.
From 861 Turkish commanders were killing and enthroning caliphs: the slaves had become kingmakers.

From kingmakers to kings

In the east, a Turkish slave general of the Persian Samanids of Bukhara founded the kingdom of Ghazni.
The Seljuk Turks took Baghdad in 1055 and ruled in the caliph's name with the title Sultan.
Both governed in Persian through Persian ministers, such as the Seljuk vizier Nizam ul Mulk.
The Turks were not Mongols, who were a different steppe people with a different language.
Babur, the first Mughal, was a Turk who wrote his memoirs in Turki.

Old names and modern places

Old name	Where it is today
Hejaz	Western Arabia, with Mecca and Medina, in Saudi Arabia
Iraq	Iraq: Kufa, Basra and Baghdad
Khorasan	Northeast Iran, with Herat and Balkh in Afghanistan and Merv in Turkmenistan
Transoxiana, or Mawarannahr	The land beyond the Oxus: Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, with Bukhara and Samarkand
Ghazni and Ghor	Afghanistan
Makran	Coastal Baluchistan
Sindh and Multan	Pakistan

The old names the chronicles use, set against the countries on a map today.

The kingdom of Sindh

Sindh is the lower valley of the Indus, in today's Pakistan, fertile along the river and dry on either side.
Its royal seat was Alor, near Rohri, and its main port was Debal, near today's Karachi.
In the 630s Chach, the Brahmin minister of the Rai kings, married the widowed queen and took the throne.
His son Dahir became king about 695, ruling a people with many Buddhists in the towns.

Seventy five years of failed raids

Arab raids on Sindh began in 636, under the caliph Umar, by sea and along the Makran coast.
They failed, and Umar is said to have judged Sindh a land where a small army would be killed and a large one would starve.
Later raids failed in turn, for about seventy five years.

The cause of 711

Pirates near Debal seized ships carrying gifts and Muslim women from Sri Lanka to the Arab lands.
Hajjaj bin Yusuf, the Umayyad governor of Iraq, demanded their return, and Dahir replied that the pirates were beyond his control.
The seizure was a pretext: Sindh was rich, it bordered conquered Persia, and the earlier failures had hurt Arab prestige.

Muhammad bin Qasim's march

Hajjaj chose his nephew and son in law, Muhammad bin Qasim, then about seventeen, to lead the army.
Qasim gathered 6,000 Syrian cavalry and a camel corps at Shiraz and marched through the Makran desert.
His siege engines came by sea to the mouth of the Indus.

The conquest, 711 to 713

Debal fell in 711 to the catapults, the manjaniq, and the Chachnama records three days of killing and the temple pulled down.
Nirun and Sehwan surrendered, and many Buddhist towns submitted without a fight.
At Rawar in 712, fire weapons, naphtha, panicked Dahir's elephants and Dahir was killed in the battle.
His queen Rani Bai held the fort of Rawar, and the Chachnama says its women burned themselves when it fell.
Brahmanabad, defended by Dahir's son Jaisiah, fell next, and the Chachnama records its fighting men killed and their families enslaved.
Multan surrendered after its water supply was cut, and it was the furthest the Arabs reached.

How Qasim governed

Qasim treated Hindus and Buddhists as dhimmis, protected subjects who paid a poll tax, the jizya, and a land tax, the kharaj.
Temples were allowed to stand, Brahmins kept their customary dues, and local officials kept their posts.
This settlement became a precedent that later Muslim rulers in India followed.

The end of the advance

Hajjaj died in 714 and the caliph Walid in 715, and the new caliph recalled Qasim, who was killed about 715.
The Chachnama's story that Dahir's daughters brought about his fall by a false charge is treated by historians as legend.
The Pratihara king Nagabhata I defeated the Arabs who pushed into Rajasthan, as the Gwalior prasasti records. (North India: Harsha, Palas, Pratiharas)
The Arab writer Al Masudi named the Rashtrakuta king, the Balhara, among the four great kings of the world.
By the 9th century Sindh had passed to two local Arab dynasties, the Habbaris at Mansura and the Amilas at Multan.

What the conquest left

It was a cul de sac, not a bridgehead: Arab rule went no further for three centuries.
It left a lasting Muslim community in Sindh, where conversion came slowly over centuries.
Through Sindh, Indian scholars and Brahmagupta's work reached Baghdad in the 770s, carrying Indian numerals west.

From slave general to kingdom

The Samanids, a Persian dynasty at Bukhara, ruled Khorasan and Transoxiana for the caliph with Turkish slave troops.
One of their Turkish generals, Alptigin, broke away and seized Ghazni, in today's Afghanistan, in 962.
His successor Sabuktigin (977 to 997) made Ghazni a kingdom and turned it toward India.

India's gatekeepers: the Hindu Shahis

Between Ghazni and the Punjab ruled the Hindu Shahis, with their capital at Udabhandapura, called Waihind, on the Indus near Attock.
Sabuktigin defeated their king Jayapala and took the land up to Laghman.
The Shahis were the buffer between Ghazni and the plains of India.

Mahmud of Ghazni

Mahmud ruled Ghazni from 998 to 1030 and was the first ruler to be called Sultan.
The caliph gave him the title Yamin ud Daula, and he called himself a ghazi, a fighter for the faith.
His court was Persian, with the poet Firdausi, the historians Utbi and Baihaqi, and the scholar Al Biruni.
Ghazni, high and poor, could not pay for his army and court, and the wealth of Indian temples could.

The raids

Tradition counts seventeen raids between 1000 and 1027, though historians debate the number.
They came through the Khyber and Gomal passes and sought wealth, not lands beyond the Punjab.
In 1001 Mahmud defeated Jayapala near Peshawar, and Jayapala, humiliated, burned himself to death.
By 1021 the Punjab was annexed and governed from Lahore, and the Shahi kingdom was gone.

The main raids

Year	Target	What happened
1001	Jayapala, near Peshawar	Mahmud's first campaign; Jayapala defeated and captured
1004 to 1005	Bhera, in the Punjab	Taken and looted; the local ruler submitted
1006	Multan	Taken from its Ismaili ruler; the Ismailis massacred
1008	Anandapala at Waihind	The coalition of six kingdoms broken
1009	Nagarkot, the Kangra fort	The fort taken and the temple treasury looted
1014	Thanesar	Looted; the old Pushyabhuti capital
1018 to 1019	Mathura and Kanauj	The deepest campaign; Rajyapala fled Kanauj
1021 and 1023	Kalinjar	Ganda held the fort; Mahmud took tribute and withdrew
1025 to 1026	Somnath	The temple sacked and the lingam broken

Nine of the traditional seventeen raids: the Punjab first, then as far as Kanauj and Kalinjar, and Gujarat.Source: Medieval Theme 3 handout

Waihind, 1008

Jayapala's son Anandapala gathered the kings of Ujjain, Gwalior, Kalinjar, Kanauj, Delhi and Ajmer against Mahmud.
The coalition was close to winning when Anandapala's elephant turned and fled, and his army broke.
It was the only such alliance against Mahmud, and it was never formed again.

Thanesar, 1014

Thanesar, the old Sthanvishvara of Harsha's family, was a great centre of pilgrimage.
Mahmud's historian Utbi writes that the defenders were cut down until the stream ran red with their blood.
The town was plundered and its images broken.
Al Biruni records that its bronze image of Chakrasvamin was carried to Ghazni and thrown into the hippodrome.

Mathura and Kanauj, 1018 to 1019

At Mathura, Utbi reports Mahmud's admiration for the great temple, which he reckoned would take two hundred years to build.
Mahmud then had the temples burned and the gold and silver images broken up and carried away.
At Kanauj, the old Kanyakubja, the Pratihara king Rajyapala fled without a fight.
Utbi counts the temples of Kanauj in thousands and records them destroyed and its people killed or taken captive.
Utbi writes that the captives of this campaign were so many that slaves became cheap in the markets of Ghazni.
The Chandellas later killed Rajyapala for his flight.

Somnath, 1025 to 1026

Somnath, on the Saurashtra coast, was one of the twelve Jyotirlingas and among the richest temples in India.
Mahmud marched about 1,500 km across the Thar, and the Chaulukya king Bhima I withdrew before him.
The people of Somnath defended the temple, and Ibn al Athir, writing two centuries later, puts the dead at over fifty thousand.
Mahmud broke the lingam, and Al Biruni writes that its pieces were laid in the hippodrome and at the mosque door in Ghazni.
On the way home through Sindh, the Jats attacked his army from boats on the Indus.

How Somnath has been remembered

The temple was rebuilt by Bhoja of Malwa and by the Chaulukya Kumarapala about 1169, and again in later centuries.
In 1842 the Governor General Ellenborough claimed to bring its gates back from Ghazni, and the gates proved to be of another age.
Romila Thapar has traced how different communities remembered the raid over nine centuries.
Historians weigh the motive: wealth was central, for Mahmud also attacked the Muslim Ismailis of Multan, while his chroniclers praised the raids as holy war.

What the raids changed, and what they did not

The Punjab became a Ghaznavid province, ruled from Lahore for a century and a half.
Vast wealth went to Ghazni, while the kingdoms east of the Punjab survived and rebuilt.
There was no conversion of the people outside the Punjab, and no change in caste or village life.

The scholar

Abu Rayhan al Biruni was born in 973 in Khwarazm, in today's Uzbekistan, and was the greatest astronomer and mathematician of his age.
When Mahmud conquered Khwarazm in 1017, Al Biruni was taken to Ghazni.
He spent years in the Punjab with the Ghaznavid army, learned Sanskrit from pandits and read the texts himself.

The book and its method

His book, the Kitab ul Hind, written in Arabic about 1030, has eighty chapters.
Each chapter begins with a question, then describes the Indian view from Sanskrit texts, and ends by comparing it with other cultures.
His comparisons are mostly with the Greeks, Plato, Aristotle and Galen, and with the Sufis.
He lets Indian books speak for themselves, and says when he is reporting rather than believing.

How Al Biruni built a chapter

Step	What he does
Question	Each chapter opens with a question
Indian view from the texts	He sets out the Indian answer from Sanskrit books, lets them speak for themselves, and says when he is reporting rather than believing
Comparison	He closes by comparing it with other cultures, above all the Greek, Plato, Aristotle and Galen, and the Sufis

Every one of the eighty chapters follows the same three steps.

The barriers he names

In his first chapter he names the barriers to understanding India, starting with Sanskrit, a hard language rich in synonyms.
The second barrier was religion, which kept Hindus and Muslims apart in food, touch and custom.
The third was Indian self regard: the Hindus, he wrote, believe there is no country, nation, king, religion or science like theirs.
He added that their ancestors had not been so narrow minded.

What the eighty chapters cover

Religion and philosophy: God and the soul, rebirth and liberation, drawing on the Samkhya, Patanjali's Yoga and the Gita.
Literature: the Vedas, the Puranas and the epics, scripts and metre.
Geography: measures, rivers, cities and the distances between them.
Astronomy and the calendar: the eras of Saka, Vikrama, Gupta and Harsha, which historians still use to date inscriptions.
Society: castes, marriage, law, food, festivals and pilgrimage.

What he thought

On caste, he described the four varnas and the antyaja outside them, and compared the varnas with the four classes of ancient Persia.
He rejected the idea of pollution by touch as contrary to the laws of nature.
On Mahmud, he wrote that Mahmud utterly ruined the prosperity of the country and scattered the Hindus like atoms of dust.
He saw this as the cause of the Hindus' aversion to foreigners, and of Hindu learning retreating to Kashmir and Banaras.
On Indian science he was admiring and critical, comparing its books to pearls mixed with sour dates, the gems mixed with astrology and legend.

His other work

He translated Patanjali's Yoga Sutra and Samkhya texts into Arabic, and, he says, Euclid into Sanskrit.
His great astronomical work, the Qanun al Masudi, is dedicated to Mahmud's son Masud.

Dandanaqan, 1040

Mahmud's son Masud I lost Khorasan to the Seljuk Turks at Dandanaqan in 1040.
The Ghaznavids were left with Afghanistan and the Punjab, and later held Ghazni as Seljuk dependants.

The princes of Ghor

Ghor is the mountain country of central Afghanistan, home of the Shansabani family, with its capital at Firozkoh.
Their Minaret of Jam still stands, a World Heritage Site in Afghanistan.
The Ghaznavid Bahram Shah (1117 to 1157) quarrelled with the princes of Ghor and had one of them killed.

The world burner

In revenge, Alauddin Husain of Ghor sacked Ghazni about 1150 and burned it for seven days.
He was remembered as Jahan suz, the world burner.

The brothers of Ghor

Ghazz Turks held Ghazni from about 1163, until the Ghurid Ghiyasuddin took it in 1173.
He gave Ghazni to his younger brother Muizzuddin Muhammad bin Sam, known as Muhammad of Ghor.
Ghiyasuddin fought in the west, while Muizzuddin turned to India.
The last Ghaznavids held on at Lahore under Khusrau Malik, until 1186.

Why the second invasion was more dangerous

Factor	In Mahmud's time, c. 1000	In Ghor's time, c. 1175	Why it mattered
Northwest frontier	The Shahi kingdom still a buffer	The Shahis destroyed; the Punjab Ghaznavid for 150 years	No frontier power to absorb the attack; Ghor could advance straight from the Punjab
Punjab	Under Rajput and local chiefs	Ghaznavid for 150 years, with a Muslim population	A base to resupply and recruit, not a march from Afghanistan
Rajput unity	A coalition briefly assembled at Waihind, 1008	Chahamana and Gahadavala enmity; no coalition possible	The two strongest kingdoms in 1192 were not allied
Ghaznavid legacy	No Muslim administration in the heartland	A template: Muslims could administer India	Ghor's lieutenants had a model and Persian trained local talent
Strategic intent	Mahmud raided for wealth	Ghor meant systematic conquest	An empire in the making, not a raid

Five differences between 1000 and 1175 that turned raids into conquest.Source: Medieval Theme 3 handout

The Prophet Muhammad
prophet
Born about 570 CE at Mecca; the first revelation about 610, the Hijra to Medina in 622; died at Medina in 632.
Abu Bakr
caliph
The first Rashidun caliph, 632 to 634 CE, chosen by the community after the Prophet Muhammad's death.
Umar
caliph
The second Rashidun caliph, 634 to 644 CE; Arab armies took Syria, Iraq, Egypt and most of Persia under him.
Uthman
caliph
The third Rashidun caliph, 644 to 656 CE; the Quran was given its standard written form under him; killed in 656.
Ali
caliph
The fourth Rashidun caliph, 656 to 661 CE, the Prophet Muhammad's cousin and son in law; fought at the Camel and Siffin; killed by a Kharijite.
Muawiya
caliph
Governor of Syria who fought Ali at Siffin in 657 CE and founded the hereditary Umayyad caliphate at Damascus.
Husayn
Ali's son
Killed by the Umayyad army at Karbala in 680 CE; the Shia mourn his death every year at Muharram.
Khusrau I
king
Sassanid king under whom the Panchatantra was put into Pahlavi, the root of Kalila wa Dimna.
Firdausi
poet
About 940 to 1020 CE; his Shahnameh, about 1010, retold the pre Islamic kings of Persia, composed at Mahmud's court.
Al Mutasim
caliph
Abbasid caliph who built a Turkish guard and a new capital at Samarra in 836 CE.
Chach
king
Brahmin minister who took the throne of Sindh from the Rai dynasty in the 630s CE; Dahir's father.
Dahir
king
Chach's son, king of Sindh from about 695 CE; killed in battle at Rawar in 712.
Rani Bai
queen
Dahir's queen, who held the fort of Rawar after his death in 712 CE.
Jaisiah
prince
Dahir's son; held Brahmanabad after Rawar until it fell, then fled north; died about 713 CE.
Hajjaj bin Yusuf
governor
Umayyad governor of Iraq, about 661 to 714 CE; organised the Sindh expedition and chose his nephew to lead it.
Muhammad bin Qasim
commander
About 695 to 715 CE; Hajjaj's nephew and son in law; conquered Sindh at about seventeen; recalled and killed about 715.
Nagabhata I
king
Gurjara Pratihara, about 725 to 760 CE; the Gwalior prasasti says he destroyed the armies of the powerful Mleccha king.
Al Masudi
geographer
Arab geographer, about 943 CE; called the Rashtrakuta king, the Balhara, one of the four great kings of the world.
Alptigin
king
Turkish ghulam of the Samanids who seized Ghazni in 962 to 963 CE; died 963.
Subuktigin
king; also Sabuktigin
Ruled Ghazni 977 to 997 CE; defeated the Hindu Shahi Jayapala and took the land to Laghman.
Jayapala
king
Hindu Shahi king of Udabhandapura; defeated by Subuktigin, then defeated and captured by Mahmud near Peshawar in 1001 CE.
Anandapala
king
Hindu Shahi king, Jayapala's son; his coalition broke at Waihind in 1008 CE when his elephant fled.
Mahmud of Ghazni
sultan
Born 971, ruled 998 to 1030 CE; the first ruler called Sultan; raided north India from 1001 to 1027, Somnath in 1025 to 1026.
Utbi
historian
About 961 to 1036 CE; Mahmud's secretary, whose Tarikh i Yamini, written to praise him, is the chief contemporary account of the raids.
Al Biruni
scholar
973 to 1048 CE, of Khwarazm; learned Sanskrit and wrote the Kitab ul Hind in Arabic about 1030.
Ibn al Athir
historian
Arab historian writing two centuries after Somnath, who puts the dead of its defence at over 50,000.
Rajyapala
king
Pratihara king who fled Kanauj before Mahmud in 1018 to 1019 CE and was then killed by the Chandellas.
Ganda
king
Chandella king, about 1017 to 1029 CE; held Kalinjar against Mahmud in 1021 and 1023.
Bhima I
king
Chaulukya king of Gujarat, about 1022 to 1064 CE, who fled before Mahmud at Somnath in 1025.
Masud I
sultan
Mahmud's son, ruled 1030 to 1040 CE; lost Khorasan to the Seljuks at Dandanaqan in 1040; Al Biruni dedicated the Qanun al Masudi to him.
Bahram Shah
sultan
Ghaznavid, 1117 to 1157 CE, a Seljuk dependant; quarrelled with the princes of Ghor and had one of them killed.
Alauddin Husain
king; also Jahan suz
Ghurid, about 1149 to 1161 CE; called Jahan suz, the world burner, for burning Ghazni about 1150 in revenge.
Govindachandra
king
Gahadavala king whom his queen Kumaradevi's Sarnath inscription calls the protector of Varanasi from the Turushka.
Kumaradevi (Gahadavala)
queen
Govindachandra's queen, whose inscription at Sarnath says Hari set him to protect Varanasi from the Turushka.
Arnoraja
king
Chahamana, about 1135 to 1150 CE; defeated a Turkish force near Ajmer; the Prithviraja Vijaya ties the Ana Sagar lake to it.

The Kaaba, Mecca
The Kaaba in the Masjid al Haram at Mecca, the sanctuary at the centre of the pilgrimage, during the Hajj.
Adli Wahid, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The Prophet's Mosque, Medina
The mosque at Medina from the south, with its minarets and the green dome.
Konevi, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
Behistun relief of Darius
Darius I of the Achaemenids, carved on the rock at Behistun with the inscription around him.
Patrick C, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Persepolis
The standing columns of the Apadana at Persepolis, the Achaemenid ceremonial capital.
Bernard Gagnon, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
A Sassanid silver plate
A Sassanid silver and gilt plate of a king hunting on horseback, 303 to 309 CE, in the Cleveland Museum of Art.
Wmpearl, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
The Samanid mausoleum, Bukhara
The brick tomb of the Samanids at Bukhara, the dynasty whose Turkish ghulams founded the Ghaznavids.
Bgag, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
Banbhore, the site of Debal
The excavated walls at Banbhore near Karachi, the port Muhammad bin Qasim took first, in 711.
Usman.pg, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The minarets of Ghazni
The minaret of Bahram Shah at Ghazni, with the minaret of Masud III behind it.
AhmadElhan, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The Minaret of Jam
The Ghurid minaret in its valley in Ghor, at the site of Firozkoh, a World Heritage Site.
David Adamec, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Somnath temple today
The rebuilt temple at Prabhas Patan, one of the twelve Jyotirlingas.
Ms Sarah Welch, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Kangra fort
Nagarkot, the Kangra fort above its river, whose temple treasury Mahmud looted in 1009.
John Hill, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Kalinjar fort, 1814
The Chandella fort on its hill that Ganda held against Mahmud in 1021 and 1023, drawn in 1814.
Colin Mackenzie, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
The Delhi Topra pillar
The Ashokan pillar on Firuz Shah Kotla at Delhi, on which Vigraharaja IV had his inscription cut in 1164.
Rangan Datta Wiki, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Ana Sagar, Ajmer
The lake at Ajmer that the Prithviraja Vijaya ties to Arnoraja's victory over a Turkish force.
Jakub Hałun, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Kaaba: The sanctuary at Mecca, where the Arabs worshipped tribal gods before Islam; cleared of its idols when the Prophet Muhammad entered Mecca in 630.
Quraysh: The leading tribe of Mecca, into whose Banu Hashim clan the Prophet Muhammad was born; its leaders opposed his preaching.
Hijra: The Prophet Muhammad's migration from Mecca to Yathrib, renamed Medina, in 622; year one of the lunar Islamic calendar.
Umma: The community of believers; the first Muslim community was the one the Prophet Muhammad led at Medina.
Quran: The revelations the Prophet Muhammad received, given their standard written form under the third caliph Uthman.
Hadith: The reported sayings of the Prophet Muhammad; with the Sunna, the second source of guidance after the Quran.
Sunna: The practice of the Prophet Muhammad; with the Hadith, the second source of guidance after the Quran.
Tawhid: The oneness of God, at the centre of the Prophet Muhammad's preaching.
Khalifa: Caliph: successor or deputy of the Messenger, the political and community leader of the Muslims, not a prophet.
Rashidun: The rightly guided: the first four caliphs, chosen by the community, Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman and Ali, 632 to 661.
Umayyad: The hereditary caliphate Muawiya founded at Damascus in 661, which sent the Sindh expedition and fell to the Abbasids in 750.
Abbasid: The caliphate that rose from Khorasan, overthrew the Umayyads in 750 and built Baghdad in 762; the Mongols ended it in 1258.
Shia: The party of Ali: those who held that leadership of the Muslims belonged to Ali's line; Husayn's death at Karbala is their central tragedy.
Sunni: The majority of Muslims, who accepted the caliphs chosen by the community as legitimate.
Kharijite: One of those who rejected the arbitration after Siffin and broke away from Ali; one of them killed Ali in 661.
Ghulam: A slave soldier, bought as a boy, trained to fight and loyal to his master alone; Turkish ghulams rose to command and then to rule.
Sultan: Power, authority: the title of a ruler holding power in the caliph's name; Mahmud of Ghazni was the first ruler called Sultan.
Ghazi: A warrior for the faith; Mahmud of Ghazni styled himself one.
Tengri: The sky, worshipped by the Turks of the steppe before Buddhism, Manichaeism and then Islam reached them.
Khorasan: The old region of northeast Iran, with Herat and Balkh in Afghanistan and Merv in Turkmenistan; the Abbasids rose from it.
Transoxiana: Mawarannahr, the land beyond the Oxus: Uzbekistan and Tajikistan today, with Bukhara and Samarkand.
Dhimmi: A protected non Muslim subject who paid the jizya and kharaj, kept his religion and was exempt from military service; Qasim applied it in Sindh.
Jizya: A tax per head on adult male non Muslims under Muslim rule, the price of the protection covenant.
Kharaj: Land revenue on agricultural produce, paid by Muslim and non Muslim cultivators alike.
Manjaniq: A catapult or trebuchet for breaching walls, used at Debal in 711.
Chachnama: The chief account of the Arab conquest of Sindh, first in Arabic and put into Persian by Muhammad Ali Kufi of Uch in 1216; also the Fathnama i Sind.
Jyotirlinga: One of the twelve most sacred Shiva shrines, of the pillar of light; Somnath is one.
Kitab ul Hind: The Book on India, Al Biruni's study of India in eighty chapters, written in Arabic about 1030.
Antyaja: Those outside the four varnas, as Al Biruni describes them in the Kitab ul Hind.
Turushkadanda: A tax named in the Gahadavala grants whose purpose is debated: a levy to fight the Turks, or to pay them.

Was the Somnath raid plunder or holy war?

Holy war

Mahmud styled himself a ghazi, broke the lingam himself, and Utbi celebrates the destruction of temples as a religious virtue.
His persecution of the Ismailis of Multan shows that the doctrinal side of his raids was not purely cynical.

Plunder

Ghazni was poor, and Indian temples were the richest stores of wealth, paying for his court, his army and his wars in Persia and Central Asia.
He also attacked and looted the Ismailis of Multan, Muslims who stood in his way, so religion was not the consistent driver.

The motive was primarily economic: the religious justification was real but secondary, a legitimising ideology laid over a plunder economy.

Why did the Arabs stop at Sindh?

Indian resistance

The Pratihara Nagabhata I defeated the Arabs advancing into Rajasthan, as the Gwalior prasasti records, and Arab sources admit defeat by the Juzr king.
Al Masudi names the Rashtrakuta Balhara as the chief power containing the Arabs, so two enemies of each other both held the frontier.

The Arabs' own limits

Qasim's recall and killing about 715 removed the commander, and the advance was never renewed.
After the Abbasid revolution of 750 the caliphate looked elsewhere, and the governors of Sindh, busy holding it, became independent by the 9th century.

Both together: the caliphate's turn away ended the drive, and the Pratihara and Rashtrakuta resistance held the line, so Sindh was a cul de sac, not a bridgehead.

How far did Al Biruni understand India?

Deeply

He learned Sanskrit, read the texts himself, let Indian books speak for themselves and said when he was reporting rather than believing.
He alone among medieval observers wrote with intellectual empathy, and his account of philosophy, caste and science is the most accurate foreign one.

Within limits

He could not travel freely: his access was largely the Punjab and the northwest, and the south and the Deccan came to him only from texts.
He wrote with the Ghaznavid army, named barriers of language and religion, and saw India through his own Islamic philosophical frame even at his most sympathetic.

He understood the India of the Sanskrit books better than any foreigner of his age, but he saw it from the Punjab, through texts and in the wake of the raids.