Mahmūd of Ghazna

Muslim sultan of Ghazna (r. 997-1030)

• Born: 971
• Birthplace: Ghazna, Central Asia (now Ghaznī, Afghanistan)
• Died: 1030
• Place of death: Ghazna, Central Asia (now Ghaznī, Afghanistan)

Maḥmūd of Ghazna conquered and ruled over much of what is now Afghanistan, Eastern Iran, and Pakistan, and is known as the first Muslim sultan to plunder large areas of what is now India.

Early Life

Maḥmūd (MAWK-muhd) of Ghazna (GAWZ-naw) was born in the declining years of the Sāmānid Dynasty , based in Bukhara (now in Uzbekistan). Although the Sāmānid rulers asserted the value of Persian culture and language, they often relied on military conscripts from the Turkic tribes to their east.

Maḥmūd’s father, Subüktigin , a former captured slave of Turkic descent who converted from Buddhism to Islam, eventually rose to the rank of general in the service of Alptigin, a Turkic provincial administrator for the Sāmānids. During a period of turmoil over succession to the Sāmānid throne, Alptigin and his general moved their forces to the south of the kingdom and established themselves in Ghazna in 962, but Alptigin died soon thereafter. Eventually, Subüktigin, whose continued military skill and personal dignity inspired the admiration of the nobility in Ghazna, was chosen to rule the city-state, which was nominally still part of the fading Sāmānid realm. His son Maḥmūd, only seven at the time, was almost immediately given administrative authorities. Maḥmūd had been trained in combat skills and had also been tutored in Islamic scripture, literature, and politics. He began to accompanying his father on military campaigns to defend and expand the territory of Ghazna, and he distinguished himself in battles against the Hindu ruler Jaipal who ruled much of the neighboring Punjab region and, later, against the governor of Khorāsān (now Eastern Iran), who rebelled against the Sāmānid authority.

Life’s Work

As a reward for crushing the rebels in a decisive battle near Herāt (now in northwest Afghanistan), in 994, the Sāmānid ruler appointed Maḥmūd as the new governor of Khorāsān province, resulting in a significant expansion of his father Subüktigin’s power. However, when Subüktigin died in 997, Maḥmūd became involved in a succession struggle of his own against his younger brother Ismāl, who had been given the authority to rule their Ghazna homeland. Maḥmūd quickly defeated Ismāl, and after imprisoning him, became, at age thirty, the ruler of an expanded Ghazna. In the meantime, a new Sāmānid ruler had given Maḥmūd’s recently acquired Khorāsān province to the general Begtuzun, who imprisoned, blinded, and overthrew the new monarch. Begtuzun was defeated by Maḥmūd, who maintained his father’s traditional loyalty to the Sāmānids in spite of the disappointment he had just experienced. Soon, however, in 999, the last major claimant to the remnants of the Sāmānid kingdom was conquered by the Ilak Khan of Kashghar, his neighbor to the east, and Maḥmūd became the emperor of a vast area covering much of central Asia and eastern Iran.

This very real political and material power was soon recognized by a respected authority in the Muslim world, the caliph in Baghdad, who gave Maḥmūd honorific titles and sent him a robe. Chronicles of the era mark this time as the official replacement of the Sāmānid Dynasty by Maḥmūd’s Ghaznavid Dynasty (977-1186). A new phase in the career of Sultan Maḥmūd began, as he increasingly directed his campaigns to the south. He was able to use the legitimacy conferred on him by the caliph to rationalize his wars of conquest and plunder as “holy wars” against “heretics” (mostly Ismālī and other Shīՙite residents of these areas, whose interpretations of Islam differed from those of the caliphs in Baghdad), and “infidels” (Hindus, Buddhists, and other non-Muslim groups). A pattern emerged as he started a series of invasions of the Indian subcontinent. These invasions, which amounted to seventeen by the end of his reign, usually took place during the winter months. He alternated these invasions by defending attacks on his empire and from intrigues within.

Maḥmūd’s first two invasions of the subcontinent constituted a renewal of his father’s war with Jaipal, the raja (prince or chief) of the Punjab region (between northwest India and eastern Pakistan). In 1000, Maḥmūd captured some forts along his southern frontier, and in 1001, he returned, approaching the town of Peshawar with a huge army. Jaipal responded with an even larger army, but Maḥmūd defeated them and captured Jaipal, who, after paying ransom, immolated himself on a funeral pyre, following Rājput custom. Before his death, however, Jaipal named his son Anandpal the new ruler, thus extending the old conflict into the next generation on both sides.

In 1004, Maḥmūd crossed the Indus River to attack the raja of Bhatiya (now Bhera, north Punjab), an independent city-state on the Jhelum River. After a ferocious battle lasting four days, Sultan Maḥmūd led a decisive charge into the defenders’ ranks, and the raja killed himself in retreat from the city. On the way back to Ghazna, Maḥmūd, whose forces and supplies had been reduced, was attacked by the ruler of Multan. This ruler and many of his subjects were Ismālī Muslims, followers of the Carmathian beliefs, and therefore fierce enemies of the ՙAbbāsid caliph who had blessed Maḥmūd’s activities. In 1005, Maḥmūd planned an expedition to avenge the previous years’ attack and promote his own more orthodox branch of Islam. Anandpal came to Dād’s aid, but was defeated, and Dād purchased peace with treasure and the promise to follow Sunni Muslim orthodoxy. Maḥmūd wanted to maintain Ghaznavid authority in the area and appointed Jaipal’s grandson Sukhpal, a new convert to Islam, governor of the area before returning north.

This arrangement was short-lived. Sukhpal recanted, allying himself with his uncle Anandpal. Under Anandpal’s leadership, the kingdoms of Northern and Central India, supported enthusiastically by their subjects, joined forces against the invader. After fighting a serious threat from his former ally Ilak Khan in Khorāsān, Maḥmūd returned in 1008 to fight the hosts assembled against him. An epic battle ensued, and Maḥmūd’s army appeared to be losing, when a stroke of luck aided his victory: Anandpal’s war elephant was startled by an explosion, became disoriented, plunged away from the battle, and carried the leader along. The allied Indian forces and rulers, who before the external threat emerged had been warring against each other, assumed Anandpal had deserted them, and the coalition collapsed in chaos. After Maḥmūd plundered the undefended Hindu temple at Nagarkot (Kangra) in the foothills of the Himalayas, Anandpal bargained for peace, thereby exposing his neighbors to Maḥmūd’s power. Maḥmūd returned to Ghazna with treasure and slaves, continuing to build an army that included many members of the very Hindu and non-Sunni Muslim populations that he was supposedly converting. They were allowed to practice their own religions, and the Hindu Tilak became a trusted general in the service of Maḥmūd’s son Masՙūd. To some extent, this was a continuation of the pattern of upward social mobility through military ranks that had resulted in Maḥmūd’s own father’s rise from captured slave to monarch. For such people, however, the price of survival and advancement was total obedience, including participation in attacks on their own cultures.

Maḥmūd continued to make deep but temporary incursions into India every few years, but annexed areas on his own borders. When Anandpal died, Maḥmūd fought against his grandson Nidar Bhim and eventually formed a permanent government in Lahore. He was frustrated in attempts to invade the mountainous region of Kashmir. However, in 1018, he swept across the plain along the Jamuna River and subdued the cities of Mahaban, Bulandshahr, and Mathura. His next-to-last campaign in India (1024-1026) was perhaps the most dramatic and risky. On the coast of Gujarat, where the Krishna River joins the Indian Ocean, was the great Śiva temple of Somnath, a site of ancient symbolic importance and held sacred by Hindus, who brought offerings from great distances. Maḥmūd had heard stories of the wealth of the temple. He traveled there by crossing the desert and swampland at great speed, and then attacked the city. After a desperate struggle of several days, he entered the temple and took the treasure, which is said to have surpassed the wealth of any other kingdom of his time. During his return, his forces were attacked by the Jats (Indo-Aryans) of Multan, and his last invasion (1027) was to punish and enslave them.

His final years were spent fighting the Seljuk Turks to the west of his kingdom. During his reign, he had transferred a good part of the wealth of the northern subcontinent to Ghazna and spent lavishly on architecture, art, schools, and mosques until it became one of the most impressive capitals of the Islamic world. The culture of the court was largely inspired by his Sāmānid predecessors of northeastern Persia. The Persian poet Firdusi spent twenty-five years completing Shahnamah (c. 1010; the book of kings), an epic poem that glorified Maḥmūd and Persian history. Although Firdusi suffered mistreatment at court because of his Shīՙite religious beliefs, his poem is regarded as a classic of Persian literature. Another important scholar in the court of Maḥmūd was al-Bīrūnī, active in the fields of history, mathematics, languages, logic, and astronomy. He came to Ghazna before 1017 and learned Sanskrit from the Hindu pandits (wise men) of the court. His most famous work is Kitāb-ul-Hind , a detailed study of Hindu life and philosophy based on his personal observations and reading of Sanskrit texts. Al-Bīrūnī continued to serve in the court of Masՙūd after Maḥmūd’s death in 1030.

Maḥmūd’s personal qualities made up a complex mixture of ambition, tempered by practicality and bravery, tempered by caution. He often joined in on battles, which inspired his soldiers and exposed him to danger, and he accumulated battle wounds along with his treasure and slaves. He enjoyed drinking wine and sometimes fought with his own men over female slaves. However, military and political affairs were primary, and he hid his true feelings from those around him. Occasionally, some vulnerabilities emerged: he was self-conscious about his pockmarked face, and when he was dying of a consumptive illness, he is reported to have wept over a display of his many treasures.

Significance

Although he was credited by the caliphate of his day and by some later writers as a champion of Islam and as a destroyer of idols, Maḥmūd’s personal goals appear to have been primarily political dominance, self-preservation, and the accumulation of wealth. His raids into the Indian subcontinent and destruction of Hindu temples provided a model for later invaders of Central Asia and a warning for subsequent generations of defenders. His administration continued to promote the use of the Persian language in elite circles of Central Asia, thus providing an alternative to Arabic in the Islamic world and helping to stimulate the development of Urdu and other languages of the northern subcontinent. In terms of ideology, his reign represented a continued shift away from the egalitarian spirit of early Islam and asserted the secular monarchy as an absolute power, in spite of his nominal allegiance to the caliphate.

The Ghaznavid Dynasty, 977-1186

Reign

• Ruler

977-997

• Subüktigin (Sāmānid governor)

997

• Ismāՙīl

997-1030

• Maḥmūd of Ghazna

1001-1024

• Invasions of India

1030-1031

• Muḥammad

1031-1040

• Masՙūd I

1040-1041

• Muḥammad (second rule)

1041-1048

• Mawdūd

1048

• Masՙūd II

1048-1049

• ՙAlī

1049-1052

• ՙAbd al-Rashīd

1052-1059

• Farrukhzād

1059-1099

• Ibrāhīm

1099-1115

• Masՙūd III

1115-1116

• Shīrzād

1116-1117

• Malik Arslan Shāh

1117

• Seljuk occupation

1117-1150

• Bahrām Shāh

1150-c. 1152

• Ghūrid occupation

c. 1152-1157

• Bahrām

1157-1160

• Khusraw Shāh in Lahore

1160-1186

• Khusraw Malik

1186

• Ghūrid conquest

Bibliography

Adams, W. H. Davenport. “Maḥmūd the Sultan.” In Warriors of the Crescent. New York: Appleton, 1892. The substantial chapter on Maḥmūd includes interactions with other historical figures.

Flood, Finbarr Barry. “Between Cult and Culture: Bamiyan, Islamic Iconoclasm, and the Museum.” Art Bulletin 84, no. 4 (December, 2002). Argues that the looting of the Somnath temple by Maḥmūd was part of a complex history, one that stands in stark contrast to the traditional argument that Maḥmūd’s act was indicative of a Muslim iconophobia (fear of icons) against South Asian iconophilia (love of icons). Footnotes, photographs.

Habib, Mohammad. Sultan Maḥmūd of Ghaznin. 2d ed. Delhi: S. Chand, 1967. This well-written biography provides an overview of not only Maḥmūd’s life but also the cultural and political context of the time in which he lived, including major developments in the centuries immediately before and after.

Meisami, Julie Scott. Persian Historiography to the End of the Twelfth Century. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999. Explores the writing of Persian-Iranian history during the time of the Sāmānid, Ghaznavid, and Seljuk dynasties. Also discusses Firdusi’s Shahnamah as historical prose. Maps, bibliography, index.

Nazim, Muhammad. The Life and Times of Sultan Maḥmūd of Ghazna. Lahore, Pakistan: Khalil, 1971. A very detailed account, including a chapter on the sultan’s political administrative structures, and appendices with Persian language sources. Map, bibliography, index.

Thapar, Romila. Narratives and the Making of History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Includes a chapter that focuses on what many regard the most symbolic act of Maḥmūd’s career: his destruction of the Hindu idol in the famous temple at Somnath. The author deconstructs various interpretations of the event. Bibliography, index.

Utbi, Abdul Nasr Muhammad bin Muhammad al Jabbar al. Kitāb-i-Yamini. Translated by James Reynolds. 1858. Reprint. Lahore, Pakistan: Qausain, 1975. The contemporary account of Maḥmūd’s court historian, carefully translated, with copious notes.