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Chapter 3 – The Men of the Mountain – Ghazni and Ghor – 1030–1206 A.D.

Gibbon sums up the history of Asiatic dynasties as “one unceasing round of valour, greatness, discord, degeneracy, and decay.” We have seen the valour and the greatness of Mahmud: the rest was soon to follow. The kingdom he founded endured indeed for a century and a half after his death, but it diminished with every decade. It was not so much the result, however, of the discord and degeneracy of his successors, though discord began at once in the rivalry between his sons, and degeneracy was shown in the luxury and effeminacy of the court. It was rather the inevitable consequence of the increasing pressure of the western Turks, the Ghuzz and other Turkman clans who were pouring into the pastures of Khorasan. What the adventurers of Ghazni had done, others of the same bold and capable race might also achieve, and the pastoral Seljuks, who now flocked from the Oxus lands southward into Persia, were led by chiefs who proved themselves Mahmud’s equals in generalship and his superiors in power of organization. Their history, which carried

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them from Samarkand to the shores of the Aegean, has no bearing on the present subject, except in so far as their brilliant career of conquest cut off all Mahmud’s Persian possessions in less than ten years after the Idol-breaker had passed away from the scene of his triumphs. By 1038 Tughril Beg the Seljuk was proclaimed king of Khorasan, and when Mahmud’s son, Mas’ud, at last awakened to the danger of the shepherd clans, whose presence he had tolerated within his borders, and marched in 1040 to subdue the rebels, he was utterly defeated at Dandanakan near Merv, and thenceforward Persia was lost to the house of Ghazni.

A typical Turkman

The barrier thus set up on the west, whilst it bounded the ambitions of Mahmud’s successors, did not immediately throw them into the far more valuable provinces of India. They continued to hold the Panjab, the only part of his Indian conquests that was permanently annexed, but even there their authority was uncertain, and when it was strongest under a firm governor there was most risk of separation. A capable Turkish amir who had witnessed the successful rise of

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other Turks in Asia was likely to be tempted to convert his distant Indian province into a kingdom. Troubles of this kind began very soon. Mahmud had left All Ariyaruk as governor and commander-in-chief in India. Under Mas`ud, this viceroy’s power became dangerous, and he was allured to Ghazni, where his numerous following of truculent retainers confirmed the fears of the court. Like many Turks, Ariyaruk had a weakness for drink, which proved his undoing. The wise vizir, Khwaja Ahmad Hasan Maimandi, who was in Oriental phrase “a great cucumber,” or man of guile, led the unlucky general on; the king sent him fifty flagons of wine when he was already excited; the poor wretch staggered into the court, lured on by the conspirators, and there was an end of him.

The whole miserable tragedy is described by the garrulous Baihaki, the chronicler of Mas’ud’s court, with the vivid touch of an eye-witness. Such scenes were not uncommon at Ghazni, where zeal for the faith was often combined with a reckless disregard of the law of Islam, which forbids the use of fermented liquor. It was not merely that the soldiery and their officers indulged in drunken brawls; the Sultan Mas’ud himself used to enjoy regular bouts in which he triumphantly saw all his fellow topers “under the table.” We read in Baihaki’s gossiping memoirs how “the amir” – the Ghazni king adopted this title like his modern representative, the amir of Afghanistan – went into the Firozi Garden and sat in the Green Pavilion on the Golden Plain, where, after a sumptuous feast, the army

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passed before him in review: first the star of the crown prince Maudud, next the canopy and standards borne by two hundred slaves of the household, with jerkins of mail and long spears; then many led horses and camels; then the infantry in their order, with banners and stars, and so forth.

When they had all passed by, the serious business of the day began: “let us to it without ceremony,” cried the amir; “we are come into the country, and we will drink.” Fifty goblets and flagons of wine were brought from the pavilion into the garden, and the cups began to go round. “Fair measure,” said the amir, “and equal cups – let us drink fair.” They grew merry and the minstrels sang. One of the courtiers had finished five tankards – each held nearly a pint of wine – but the sixth confused him, the seventh bereft him of his sense, and at the eighth he was consigned to his servants. The doctor was carried off at his fifth cup; Khalil Dawud managed ten, Siyabiruz nine, and then they were taken home; everybody rolled or was rolled away, till only the Sultan and the Khawaja Abdar-Razzak remained. The khwaja finished eighteen goblets and then rose, saying, “If your slave has any more he will lose both his wits and his respect for your Majesty.” Mas’ud went on alone, and after he had drunk twenty-seven full cups, he, too, arose, called for water and prayer-carpet, washed, and recited the belated noon and sunset prayers together as soberly as if he had not tasted a drop; then mounted his elephant and rode to the palace. “I witnessed the whole of

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this scene with mine own eyes, I, Abu-l-Fazl,” says Baihaki.

Such orgies were characteristic of the Turkish rulers of Ghazni. Even the great Mahmud had his drinking-fits, which he excused on the ground that they afforded a rest to his people; but his son Mas’ud carried them to far greater excess. Fortunately he had a remarkably able prime minister in Maimandi, who had served the father till he fell under his displeasure, and whom the son released from prison and restored to office with extraordinary marks of respect. The khwaja (to use the title given to the vizirs of Ghazni, though the word properly means a holy man) made his formal re-entrance at the levee at noon, after careful consultation with the astrologers, who determined the auspicious hour. He was dressed in scarlet cloth of Baghdad embroidered with delicate flowers, and wore a large turban of the finest muslin bordered with lace, a heavy chain, and a girdle weighing a thousand gold pieces, studded with turquoises. The captain of the guard, sitting at the door of the robing-room, presented him, according to custom, with a piece of gold, a turban, and two immense turquoises set in a ring. On entering the presence, he was congratulated by the amir, and kissing the ground, offered his sovereign a valuable pendant of pearls. Then Mas’ud gave him the signet of state, engraved with the royal seal, “that the people may know,” he said, “that the khwaja’s authority is next to my own.” The minister kissed hands, bowed to the earth, and retired, escorted by a splendid retinue, and

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all the world hastened to congratulate him and make him presents. Two days later he took his seat in his office. A fine cloth of brocade set with turquoises was spread for him, and on it he knelt and went through two bowings of prayer; then calling for ink, paper, and sand, he wrote in Arabic a sentence of thanksgiving. All that day till nightfall gifts were pouring in; gold and silver, rich cloths, slaves of high price, pedigree horses and camels – and all were dutifully sent on to the amir, who marvelled why the khwaja would not keep them, and rewarded him with ten thousand gold pieces, half a million of silver, ten Turkish slaves, four horses from the royal stable, and ten camels.

Meanwhile the minister whom he had superseded presented the reverse of the glittering shield. Not only disgraced, Hasanak was accused of heresy, and sent to the scaffold. Clad in nothing but his turban and trousers, his hands clasped together, “his body like shining silver, his face a picture,” he calmly faced his doom. All men wept for him and none would cast the fatal stones. The executioner spared him the indignity of lapidation by a friendly noose. The fallen vizir’s head was served up in a dish at a feast, to the horror of the guests; his body hung seven years on the gibbet; but his mother, weeping beneath it, cried aloud in bitter irony, “What good fortune was my son’s! Such a king as Mahmud gave him this world, and such a one as Mas’ud the next!”

Such pictures of life at Ghazni are valuable for the history of India, since it was on the model of Mahmud

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and his successors that the later courts of Lahore, Agra, and Delhi were formed. It would be a mistake, however, to measure Mas’ud by his luxury and revels. He was no fainéant son of his great father. His generosity won him the name of “the second Ali,” and he was so brave that they called him “another Rustam,” after the famous hero of the “Shah Namah.” His father envied his strength, and it was said that he could fell an elephant at a blow.

A garden at Lahore

No other man could wield his battle-axe. He excelled, moreover, as a patron of letters, and was himself an architect of skill, who adorned his country with noble buildings. He also took a prudent interest in his Indian possessions, and personally inspected the management of the Panjab. The viceroy who succeeded Ariyaruk proved even more ambitious. This Ahmad Niyaltagin had been Mahmud’s treasurer and had accompanied him on all his journeys and knew the ways and plans of the late king; They called him Mahmud’s “sneeze,” or alter ego. On his appointment

Benares and the River Ganges

Benares, the holy; city of the Hindus, with its temples and shrines lining the shore of the sacred Ganges, was first conquered by the Moslem invaders under Mohammad Ghori, and now mosques dedicated to Allah are seen beside the sanctuaries of the Hindu gods.

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as governor of Hindustan he was instructed by the vizir Maimandi not to meddle with political or revenue matters, which belonged to the function of Kadi Shiraz, the civil administrator, but to keep to the duties of commander-in-chief. Besides these military and civil governors, there was the head. of the intelligence department to whom all orders from the Sultan and ministers were sent and who reported everything that occurred to his master. “Yet two must not give trouble to the court,” continued the khwaja, “what you have to write to me must be stated in detail in order to receive a distinct reply. His Majesty thinks it advisable to send with you some of the Dailami chiefs, to remove them to a distance from the court, since they are foreigners; and also some suspected persons and refractory slaves. Whenever you go on a campaign you must take them with you, but be careful that they do not mingle with the army of Lahore, and let them not drink wine or play polo. Keep spies and informers to watch them, and never neglect this duty. These be the king’s secret orders, not to be divulged.” To retain a hold on the new viceroy, his son was detained as a hostage.

In spite of all these counsels, Niyaltagin quickly fell out with his civil colleague, and complaints reached Ghazni. Full of the example of his old master, he was not content with managing a mere province, but copied the Idol-breaker’s daring raids, and actually surprised Benares. No Mohammedan army had ever before pushed so far east, and the great city on the Ganges

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with its forest of temples was a splendid prize. The invaders did not dare to hold it more than a few hours, lest they should be overwhelmed by the Hindus, and before mid-day they had plundered the markets and got off scot free with an immense booty. Niyaltagin was suspected of still more daring schemes; he was said to be buying Turkish slaves secretly, and gave himself out as a son of Sultan Mahmud. Not only was the army of Lahore devoted to him, but Turkmans and adventurers of all sorts were flocking to his standard. The policy of sending suspected and disorderly persons to India was bearing fruit. In short, everything was ripe for rebellion, and in the summer of 1033 news came that the viceroy was in open revolt, the kadi shut up in a fort, and all was turmoil and bloodshed.

To restore order Mas’ud appointed a Hindu, named Tilak, to take over the command in the Panjab. The other generals showed themselves backward in volunteering for the dangerous task, and Tilak’s eager bid for the command pleased the Sultan. The fact that a Hindu should have attained such a position shows how far the process of assimilation between the Turks and the Indians had already gone. Tilak was the son of a barber, a good-looking, plausible fellow, eloquent of speech, a fluent writer both in Hindi and Persian, and a master of dissimulation, which he had studied under the best professors in Kashmir, the home of lies. He is also described as “proficient in amours and witchcraft,” and every one admired him. He gained a great influence over Mas’ud, who set him over the Indian

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troops, and he was equally intimate with the khwaja, who made him his confidential secretary and interpreter. He was granted the distinction of a state tent and parasol, kettle-drums were beaten at his quarters, after the Hindu fashion, and his banners had gilt cusps.

This Hindu paragon set out to chastise Niyaltagin. Matters were going badly and there was anxiety at Ghazni. The Seljuks were beginning to cause serious alarm in the west, and a battle had been lost at Karman in the eastern hills, where the Sultan’s Hindu troops, who formed half the cavalry, had behaved like poltroons and fled the field. When they came back, Mas`ud shut their officers up in the chancery, where six of them committed suicide with their daggers. “They should have used those daggers at Karman,” said the Sultan. At last the news came that the barber’s son had routed Niyaltagin, and that the Jats had caught the fugitive viceroy and cut off his head, which they sold to Tilak for a hundred thousand pieces of silver. The elated Sultan vowed that he would himself go to India and take the fort of Hansi, which he had once before attacked. The ministers in vain tried to dissuade him, urging the troubles in other parts of his empire. If the Seljuks should conquer Khorasan, or take even a village there, they argued, “ten Holy Wars at Hansi would not compensate.” But he was immovable. “The vow is upon my back,” he said, “and accomplish it I will.”

Leaving the khwaja as his deputy, and appointing Prince Maudud viceroy at Balkh, the Sultan set out

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for India by way of Kabul in November, 1034. Falling ill on the road, he determined to renounce wine, threw all the liquor he had into the Jihlam, and broke his flagons. No drinking was allowed throughout the army. How slight was the hold of the Moslems on Hindustan may be realized from the fact that the march to Hansi(about two-thirds of the distance from Lahore to Delhi) was regarded as a dangerous adventure.

Kabulis

The fortress made a desperate resistance, but was mined in five places, and stormed at the point of the sword at the beginning of February. The priests and officers were killed, and the women, children, and treasure were carried to Ghazni. Returning through deep snow,

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Mas’ud kept the New Year’s spring festival at home, and amply repaid himself for his abstinence on the march.

The state of affairs on his return showed that the campaign with its insignificant result had been a mistake. The ministers had been right in urging him to go west instead of east. Khorasan was rapidly falling into the hands of the Seljuks; Western Persia was throwing off the yoke of Ghazni; the empire was breaking up. Mas’ud attempted too late to stern the tide. His generals were defeated, and his own last despairing effort near Merv in 1040, as has been related, ended in utter rout. In a panic he prepared to fly to India before the terror of a Seljuk invasion. The treasures were packed up, the court and the harem were equipped for the journey, and the whole army left Ghazni. As he crossed the Indus, the dishonoured prince was seized by mutineers, who set on the throne his brother, whom he had blinded on his own accession, and, after a brief captivity in the fort of Kiri, Mas’ud was done to death in 1040. “Let wise men reflect upon this,” concludes Baihaki, “and be well assured that man by mere labour and effort, notwithstanding all the wealth and arms and warlike stores he may possess, can in no wise succeed without the help of God Most High. ‘Man cannot strive against fate.’ This prince spared no effort, and gathered vast armies. Though he was one who thought for himself and spent sleepless nights in devising plans, his affairs came to nought by the decree of the Almighty. God knoweth best.”

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The hasty flight to India was premature. The Seljuks were busy in subduing Persia, and left Ghazni undisturbed; thither, after a while, Mas’ud’s son returned with the army, and for more than a century the Ghaznavids, as his descendants are called, dwelt in their mountain city with gradually decaying power. Their names and dates are given in the table at the end of this volume, but their individual reigns are of little importance for the history of India. They are described as men of benevolent character and signal piety; and some of them, such as Ibrahim, devoted themselves to the improvement and good government of their subjects. The fact that Ibrahim and Bahram sat on the throne, the one for over forty, the other for thirty-five years, shows that there was peace and stability, at least in the central government.

But peace was purchased at the cost of power. The later kings of Ghazni, learning by a series of defeats that their western neighbours were not to be trifled with, made terms with the Seljuks and allied the two dynasties by politic marriages, thus reducing Ghazni from the proud position of the capital of a kingdom to little more than a dependency of the empire of Malik Shah. The fratricidal struggles, which were a common feature of Ghaznavid successions, even brought these dangerous Turkish neighbours into the mountains, and in 1116 we find the Seljuk Sanjar in temporary possession of Ghazni as the protector of Bahram against his brother Arslan Shah.

There was little danger, however, of the enemy settling

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A modern Afghan.

From Roskoschny’s Afghanistan.

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permanently in the Afghan country. There was more attractive land to the west, and a dynasty that had spread its dividing branches to the Mediterranean and Damascus was not likely to be enamoured of the crags and glades beneath the Hindu Kush. So long as the kings of Ghazni preserved an attitude of decorous deference, there was little fear of Seljuk aggression. Nor was there much danger of reprisals from the side of India. An army of eighty thousand Hindus did indeed seize Lahore in 1043; but the enemy hastily withdrew on the approach of the forces of Ghazni. The terror of Mahmud’s campaigns had left too crushing an impression to permit the Indians to dream of serious retaliation. The Panjab remained a Moslem province, and a century later became the last refuge of Mahmud’s descendants.

The force that uprooted the Ghaznavids came neither from the east nor from the west. It grew up in their midst. In the rugged hills of Ghor, between Ghazni and Herat, stood the castle of Firoz-kuh, the “Hill of Victory,” where a bold race of Afghan highlanders followed the banner of the chief of Sur. The castle had submitted to Mahmud in 1010, but the conqueror left the native clef in tributary possession, and the Suri horsemen eagerly took the Sultan’s pay and fought in his campaigns against the infidels. These fiery hillmen respected the great soldier, but for his weak successors they cared little, and feared them less. A conflict was brought about by the death of one of the Suri chiefs at the hands of Bahram Shah. The highlanders

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of Ghor marched to avenge his murder, and their rude vigour so overmastered the troops of Ghazni, enfeebled by a century of inglorious ease, that Bahram and his army were driven pell-mell into India (1148). It is true he returned with fresh forces in the winter, when snow cut off the usurpers from their headquarters in Ghor, but the vengeance he took upon the intruders and the execution of their leader only heated the fury of the chief of Firoz-kuh.

Two brothers of the princely race of Sur had now successively been slain by the King of Ghazni: a third brother avenged them. In 1155 Ala-ad-din Husain, reprobated for all time by the title of “World-burner” (Jahan-soz), burst into Ghazni on an errand of slaughter and destruction, slew the men without mercy, enslaved the women and children, and carried fire and sword throughout the land. Of all the noble buildings with which the kings had enriched their stately capital hardly a stone was left to tell of its grandeur. The very graves of the hated dynasty were dug up and the royal bones scattered to the dogs, yet even Afghan vengeance spared the tomb of Mahmud, the idol of Moslem soldiers. That tomb and two lofty minarets, at a little distance from the modern town, alone stand to show that Ghazni was. On one of the minarets one may still read the resonant titles of the Idol-breaker, and on the marble tombstone an inscription entreats “God’s mercy for the great Amir Mahmud.”

India was now to witness something very like a repetition of his swift irresistible raids. For more than

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a century there had been, if not peace, at least little war. The later kings of Ghazni had been mild, unambitious rulers, and had left the Panjab very much to itself. Probably their Hindu troops and Hindu officials had to some extent Indianized them, and the last descendants of Mahmud made their home at Lahore without difficulty. The attempt of Bahram’s son, Khusru Shah, to recover the command in Afghanistan failed utterly; he found Ghazni and the other towns in ruins, the tribes disloyal, and the Ghuzz Turkmans overrunning the land.

Column at Ghazni.

The comparatively orderly rule of the kings of Ghazni had given place to anarchy, and so it remained for many .years. Ala-ad-din, the “World-burner,” was content to rule his clan at Firoz-kuh; but after his death in 1161, and that of his son two years later, his nephew Ghiyas-ad-din ibn Sam became chief of Ghor, and with his accession the Afghan highlanders entered upon a new phase of activity. Ghiyas-ad-din

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recovered Ghazni from the mob of Ghuzz in 1173–4, and established his brother Mu’izz-ad-din on the ruined throne of Mahmud. The two brothers exercised a joint sovereignty, but while the elder maintained his hereditary chiefdom in his forefathers’ castle of the “Hill of Victory,” Mu’izz-ad-din, commonly known as Mohammad Ghori, led a series of campaigns in India which recalled the glorious days of the Idol-breaker nearly two centuries before. For thirty years Mahmud had ravaged Hindustan from the Indus to the Ganges; and for thirty years Mohammad Ghori harried the same country in the same way.

Coin of Ghiyas-ad-din, showing spearman on elephant.

His first object was to gather the Mohammedan provinces of India under his control. He began with the old Arab colony on the Indus, took Multan in 1175 from the heretical Karmathians, whom Mahmud had but temporarily dislodged, marched thence to Anhalwara in 1178, and by 1182 he had subdued the whole of Sind down to Daibul and the seacoast. Meanwhile his armies had not left the exiled King of Ghazni undisturbed. Peshawar was taken in 1179, and Khusru Malik, the last of the Ghaznavids, a feeble, gentle soul, utterly unequal to the task of mastering the anarchy which was ruining the remnant of his fathers’ kingdom, hastened to give his son as a hostage and to offer deprecatory presents to the invader. The final catastrophe was thus delayed for a few years. In 1184, however,

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Mohammad Ghori ravaged the territory of Lahore and fortified Sialkot. This was coming to close quarters, and the king in desperation called in the help of the Gakkars and laid siege to the fortress. The Ghorian outmanoeuvred him by a trick, and getting between Khusru and his capital, compelled him to surrender (1185 or 1186). The prisoner and his son were taken to Firoz-kuh and confined in a fort, where after five years the last of the Ghaznavids were put to death.

Mohammad Ghori had thus rid himself of all Moslem rivals in India: he could now turn to the Hindus. From the accounts of the Persian historians, it is clear that the process of assimilation which had been going on between the Turkish conquerors and the subject Hindus was now checked. The policy of employing native Indian regiments was abandoned, and the new invaders, Afghan Moslems, numerously supported by Turks, were full of religious zeal, and eager to send the “grovelling crow-faced Hindus to the fire of hell.” Mohammad’s first step was to seize and garrison Sirhind. This brought upon him the whole force of the Rajputs, led by Prithivi Raja, the chief of the Chohan dynasty that had succeeded the Tomaras in Delhi and Ajmir. These were a different kind of enemy from those the Afghans had been accustomed to meet. They were well acquainted with the modes of fighting of the Seljuks and other Turks of the Oxus land, but in the Rajputs they encountered a soldiery second to none in the world, a race of born fighters who fought to the death, and many of whose principalities never submitted in more

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than name to Moslem rule. They formed the military caste of the ancient Hindu system and preserved their old feudal system.

“Each division,” as Elphinstone remarks, “had its hereditary leader, and each formed a separate community, like clans in other countries, the members of which were bound by many ties to their chief and to each other. As the chiefs of those clans stood in the same relation to the raja as their own retainers did to them, the king, nobility, and soldiery all made one body, united by the strongest feelings of kindred and military devotion. The sort of feudal system that prevailed among the Rajputs gave additional stability to this attachment, and all together produced the pride of birth, the high spirit, and the romantic notions so striking in the military class of that period. Their enthusiasm was kept up by the songs of their bards, and inflamed by frequent contests for glory or for love. They treated women with a respect unusual in the East, and were guided, even toward their enemies, by rules of honour which it was disgraceful to violate.” With much of the chivalry, they had not the artificial sentiment of the knights of the “Faerie Queene,” and, save for their native indolence, they resembled rather the heroes of the Homeric poems, or of their own Mahabharata, than those of the Round Table. No doubt they had degenerated in a long period of inglorious obscurity, but what the Rajputs are in the present day may teach us that in the twelfth century they were a brilliant and formidable array.

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Mohammad Ghori’s first encounter with the Rajputs was like to have been his last. The two armies met in 1191 at Narain, ten miles north of Karnal, on another part of the great plain which includes the historic field of Panipat, and on which the fate of India has been decided again and again. All the clash of the Moslem cavalry was powerless against the Hindus. The Afghan charges were met by skilful flanking movements, and the Sultan found himself cut off from his shattered wings and hemmed in by Rajput squadrons. He tried to save the day by personal gallantry, charged up to the standard of the raja’s brother, the viceroy of Delhi, and with his spear drove his teeth down his throat; but his rash exposure nearly cost him his life, and he was saved only by the devotion of a Khalji retainer who mounted behind him and carried him off the field. The Sultan’s retirement led to a panic. The Moslems were soon in full retreat, pursued for forty miles by the enemy, and Mohammad did not even stop at Lahore, but hastened to cross the Indus into his own country. Never had the armies of Islam been so worsted by the infidels.

The Sultan could not forget the disaster. At Ghazni, he confessed, “he never slumbered in ease nor waked but in sorrow and anxiety.” The next year saw him again in India, at the head of 120,000 men, Afghans, Turks, and Persians. Prithivi Raja had taken Sirhind, after a year’s siege, and awaited his enemy on the same field of Narain. The Sultan had profited by his former lesson. His cavalry in four divisions of ten thousand

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each harassed the Rajputs on all sides, and when he found their famous soldiery still unbroken he lured them to disorder by a feigned retreat. Then, taking them at a disadvantage, he charged at the head of twelve thousand picked horsemen in steel armour, and “this prodigious army once shaken, like a great building, tottered to its fall and was lost in its own ruins.” Many of the Rajput chiefs were killed in the battle. Prithivi Raja himself mounted a horse and fled, but was captured near Sirsuti and “sent to hell.”

The result of this victory was the annexation of Ajmir, Hansi, and Sirsuti, ruthless slaughter, and a general destruction of temples and idols and building of mosques (1192). Ajmir was left in charge of a son of the late raja, as a vassal of the Sultan, and Kutb-ad-din Aybek, a slave of Mohammad Ghori, was appointed viceroy of India, where, after his master’s death, he founded the kingdom of Delhi. There was much, however, to be done before there could be any talk of kingship. Delhi and Koil indeed fell before the attacks of Kutb-ad-din the same year, but beyond them lay the dominions of the powerful Rathors, who had become rajas of Kanauj on the downfall of the Tomaras. Mohammad, returning from Ghazni, himself led the campaign against them in the following year, and, after a crushing defeat on the Jumna between Chandwar and Etawa, the Rathors fled south to found a new principality at Marwar, and Kanauj and Benares became part of the empire of Ghor. The Moslems were now in Bihar, and it was not long before they found their way into

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Bengal. Whilst Kutb-ad-din was reducing the cities farther west, another general, Mohammad Bakhtiyar, pushed his way to Oudh and on to Lakhnauti, then the capital of Bengal, where its ruins are still identified with those of Gaur near Maldah, and thus brought the extreme east of Hindustan under Moslem rule.

Fort of Ajmir

Meanwhile the Sultan or his viceroy had conquered, if they had not subdued, the greater part of Northern India. Gwalior, Badaun, Kalpi, Kalinjar, and Anhalwara had fallen, and if Mohammad had been content with an Indian empire he might have enjoyed his wish. But the kings of Ghazni were ever looking backward toward the west, where Mahmud had held so vast a sway. Tradition led them to long for the orchards and fat pastures

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of the Oxus and the rich cities and luxury of Persia. The wealth of India could not satisfy these hungry hillmen. Mohammad Ghori must needs invade Khwarizm, the modern Khiva, where his momentary success was followed by such disastrous defeat that he burned his baggage, barely purchased his life, and fled (1203). Such an overthrow means anarchy in an Oriental state. Everywhere the tribes and governors rose in revolt. Ghazni shut its gates in its Sultan’s face, Multan proclaimed a new king, the Gakkars seized Lahore and laid waste the Panjab; the wide dominion of the house of Ghor was shattered. The recovery of his disrupted kingdom was Mohammad’s greatest feat. Kutb-ad-din remained true to him, and so did several cities held by the Sultan’s kindred. Mohammad swept down upon Multan and regained it; Ghazni repented; the Gakkars were subdued and even nominally converted. Conversion did not wipe out the blood-feud, however, and when the Sultan set out once more to gather forces for another effort to realize his useless dream of western empire, he was murdered in his tent on the banks of the Indus by a band of Gakkars who had the deaths of their kinsfolk to avenge (1206).

Compared with Mahmud, the name of Mohammad Ghori has remained almost obscure. He was no patron of letters, and no poets or historians vied with one another to praise his munificence and power. Yet his conquests in Hindustan were wider and far more permanent than Mahmud’s. A large part of these conquests were of course partial, and there were still revolts

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to be crushed and chiefs to be subdued: India was not to be subjugated in a generation. But the conquest was real and permanent, and though Mohammad was no Indian sovereign, but still King of Ghazni with eyes turned toward Persia and the Oxus, he left a viceroy in Hindustan who began the famous Slave dynasty, the first of the many Moslem kings that have ruled India.

Silver coin of Mohammad Ghori struck at Ghazni, A.H. 596 (A.D. 1199).

Of the two tides of Mohammedan invasion that surged into India, Mahmud’s had left little trace. It had been but a series of triumphant raids, and when its violence was spent, scarcely enough strength remained to hold a single province. That province, however, had been held, not without a struggle, and in the Panjab Mohammad Ghori found the necessary base from which to bear upon a wider territory than his precursor. He rose from even smaller beginnings than Mahmud, but his followers possessed the same hardihood and power of endurance as the earlier invaders from the identical mountain valleys, and they carried their arms farther and left surer footprints. The dynasty of Ghor relapsed into the insignificance of a highland chiefdom after its great Sultan’s death; but the

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dominion it had conquered in India was not lost to Islam. It was consolidated under other rulers, and from the days of Mohammad Ghori to the catastrophe of the Indian mutiny there was always a Mohammedan king upon the throne of Delhi.

This collection transcribed by Chris Gage
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