MAHMUD OF GHAZNI LOOTED SOMNATH

Islam Comes to India 16

Three hundred years after bin Qasim’s death, Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni, the ferocious Muslim,  the first ruler to hold the title Sultan, led a series of raids against Rajput kingdoms and rich Hindu temples, and established a base in Punjab for future incursions. In 1024, the Sultan set out on his last expedition to the southern coast of Kathiawar along the Arabian Sea, where he sacked the city of Somnath and its renowned Hindu temple.

Mahmud assumed the throne in 997 AD. He was very conscious of the wealth he could achieve from further conquests into India. He was also a religious fanatic who aimed to spread Islam. Mahmud is said to have invaded India seventeen times between 1001 -1027 AD. King Jaipal and later his son Anandpal resisted Mahmud but were defeated. Between 1009 and 1026 AD he invaded Kangra, Thaneshwar, Kanauj, Mathura, Gwalior, Kashmir and Punjab. In 1025AD Mahmud invaded Somnath on the coast of Saurashtra or Kathiwar. Enormous treasure of the fortified temple was looted. His last invasion was in about 1027 AD. He died in 1030AD. 

Mahmud of Ghazni ( 971 – 1030) was the first independent ruler of the Ghaznavid dynasty, ruling from 999 to 1030. At the time of his death, his kingdom had been transformed into an extensive military empire, which extended from northwestern Iran proper to the Punjab in the Indian subcontinent, Khwarazm in Transoxiana, and Makran. 

Highly Persianized, Mahmud continued the bureaucratic, political, and cultural customs of his predecessors, the Samanids, which proved to establish the groundwork for a Persianate state in northern India. His capital of Ghazni evolved into a significant cultural, commercial, and intellectual center in the Islamic world, almost rivaling the important city of Baghdad. The capital appealed to many prominent figures, such as al-Biruni and Ferdowsi. 

He was the first ruler to hold the title Sultan (“authority”), signifying the extent of his power while at the same time preserving an ideological link to the suzerainty of the Abbasid Caliphate. During his rule, he invaded and plundered parts of the Indian subcontinent (east of the Indus River) seventeen times. 

Mahmud was born in the town of Ghazni in the region of Zabulistan (now present-day Afghanistan) on 2 November 971. His father, Sabuktigin, was a Turkic slave commander (ghilman) who laid foundations to the Ghaznavid dynasty in Ghazni in 977, which he ruled as a subordinate of the Samanids, who ruled Khorasan and Transoxiana. Mahmud’s mother was the daughter of an Iranian aristocrat from Zabulistan, and is therefore known in some sources as Mahmud-i Zavuli (“Mahmud from Zabulistan”). Not much about Mahmud’s early life is known, he was a school-fellow of Ahmad Maymandi, a Persian native of Zabulistan and foster brother of his. 

Mahmud married a woman named Kausari Jahan, and they had twin sons Mohammad and Ma’sud, who succeeded him one after the other; his grandson by Mas’ud, Maw’dud Ghaznavi, also later became ruler of the empire. His sister, Sitr-e-Mu’alla, was married to Dawood bin Ataullah Alavi, also known as Ghazi Salar Sahu, whose son was Ghazi Saiyyad Salar Masud.
Sabuktigin died in 997, and was succeeded by his son Ismail as the ruler of the Ghaznavid dynasty. The reason behind Sabuktigin’s choice to appoint Ismail as heir over the more experienced and older Mahmud is uncertain. It may due to Ismail’s mother being the daughter of Sabuktigin’s old master, Alptigin. Mahmud shortly revolted, and with the help of his other brother, Abu’l-Muzaffar, the governor of Bust, he defeated Ismail the following year at the battle of Ghazni and gained control over the Ghaznavid kingdom. That year, in 998, Mahmud then traveled to Balkh and paid homage to Amir Abu’l-Harith Mansur b. Nur II.He then appointed Abu’l-Hasan Isfaraini as his vizier,and then set out west from Ghazni to take the Kandahar region followed by Bost (Lashkar Gah), which he turned into a militarised city.

Map of Khorazan

Mahmud’s companion was a Georgian slave Malik Ayaz, and his love for him inspired poems and stories. 

In 994 Mahmud joined his father Sabuktigin in the capture of Khorasan from the rebel Fa’iq in aid of the Samanid Emir, Nuh II. During this period, the Samanid Empire became highly unstable, with shifting internal political tides as various factions vied for control, the chief among them being Abu’l-Qasim Simjuri, Fa’iq, Abu Ali the General Bekhtuzin as well as the neighbouring Buyid dynasty and Kara-Khanid Khanate. 

Mahmud’s father Sabuktigin himself had defeated Maharaja Jayapala.