Mahmud of ghazni

Table of Contents • • • • • • • Mahmud Ghazni: In the 11th century, the Turks under Mahmud Ghazni invaded India from the north-western side. Mahmud was the ruler of Ghazni, who was the son and successor of Subuktgin. He was a great conqueror. He decided to conquer central Asia. But in order to do so, he needed a large, well-equipped army. This required money. He had heard about the Indian wealth. During the twenty-five years of his rule; he raided India seventeen times. He targeted big towns and temples which were known to have vast amounts of wealth in cash, gold and jewellery. He attacked the temple towns of Mathura, Kanauj and Somnath and took back enormous wealth which added glory to his empire. Motives For Invasions: Mahmud Ghazni led seventeen expeditions to India but did not rule over this land. The reasons for the invasions were- • He wanted wealth to carry on his wars in Central Asia for which he needed to maintain a large and strong army. So he came to India with the purpose of amassing wealth. • He wanted to fight against the idol-worshippers and destroy the temple towns, and thus earn merit. • He realised that the political condition of India was very weak as India was divided. He did not have to face any tough resistance and won easily every time he raided India. Important Invasions of Mahmud Ghazni: War Against Jaipal (A.D. 1001): Mahmud Ghazni attacked Jaipal the ruler of Punjab in A.D. 1001. A fierce battle was fought at Peshawar in which the Hindus were de...

MAḤMUD B. SEBÜKTEGIN, YAMIN-AL-DAWLA ABU’L-QĀSEM, the first fully independent ruler of the Turkish Ghaznavid dynasty (see On the maternal side, he was the eldest grandson of a landowner of Zābolestān in eastern Afghanistan (hence the name given to him by some of his poetic eulogists of “Maḥmud-e Zāvoli”) of the Turkish slave ( ḡolām) commander Maḥmud was thus well placed, from his military backing and experience in warfare, to assert his right to succeed his father over all his territories, and not just in Khorasan, when the latter died in 387/997. From motives which are unclear, Sebüktegin designated a younger son, Esmāʿil, as his heir in Ghazna (possibly because Esmāʿil’s mother had been a daughter of his old master Alptigin; regarding Sebüktegin’s possible motivation, see Bosworth, 1963a). But with the support of another brother, Abu’l-Moẓaffar Naṣr, governor at Bost, Maḥmud defeated Esmāʿil’s forces in a battle outside Ghazna and in 388/998 ascended the throne as unchallenged ruler (ʿOtbi, tr., pp. 158-65; Ebn al-Aṯir, IX, pp. 130-31). Now firmly in power, Maḥmud turned against the Samanid slave commander fatḥ-nāma), to the ʿAbbasid caliph al-Qāder in Baghdad. In return, the caliph sent him an investiture charter ( manšur) for all his territories and awarded him the honorifics of Yamin-al-Dawla wa Amin-al-Mella (the first of these becoming the one by which Mahmud was best known, to the extent that later historians such as Juzjāni refer to the Ghaznavid dynasty as the Y...

Mahmud of Ghazni (Persian: محمود غزنوی‎; 2 November 971 – 30 April 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 of Ghazni (Persian: محمود غزنوی‎; 2 November 971 – 30 April 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...

From a Chandella king of Khajuraho wearing Mahmud of Ghazni’s robes to Muhammad Ghori’s Lakshmi coins, the reality of medieval Turks—at the frontiers of both the Persianate and Indic worlds—is far more complex than any modern political binary would have us believe. After all, perhaps the most pervasive idea about Indian history is that it was constantly subject to brutish invasions from West and Central Asia, which were valiantly resisted by “Hindu” kings until “Muslim” invaders eventually succeeded in breaking through and establishing the Delhi Sultanate in the 12 th century. From VD Savarkar and RC Majumdar to recent Bollywood films and TV news anchors, this telling of history has been received as gospel and is considered a justification for discriminating against Indian Muslims today. Of course, just because something is endlessly repeated about the medieval world doesn’t automatically make it true. Even if we were to accept this simplistic Hindu king-Muslim invader binary as a means to interpret our past, “Hindu” kings could and Also read: Mahmud of Ghazni’s Indian soldiers Mahmud of Ghazni was the son of one Sabuktigin, who was a Turk slave-soldier working for the Persian princedoms of this diverse, violent region. Having pried the city of Ghazni away from the “Hindu” Shahis (in reality, a group from present-day Pakistan that we’ll revisit in a future column), the father-son duo sought to build a kingdom of their own on the f...

Mahmud of Ghazni was born, circa 971 CE. His father Sebüktigin, was a former mamluk or Turkish slave who had worked his way up from slavery to a position of power after marrying the daughter of the governor who ruled Ghazni; Sebüktigin later founded the Ghaznavid Empire, which initially consisted of what is today Afghanistan and Khurasan, (the latter a province in Iran). The Ghaznavid Empire grew and flourished from approximately 977 CE to 1186 CE but was at its height under the rule of his son, Mahmud. Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni Mahmud of Ghazni was not his father's choice as his successor but in 997 CE, Mahmud's father died and Mahmud, at age 27, quickly deposed his younger brother, who was their father's preferred successor, and claimed the Ghaznavid Empire for himself, in 998 CE. Mahmud ruled as a sultan, the first ever to do so with this title. 'Sultan' was previously a term used to describe someone with religious authority, someone who was moral, but beginning with Mahmud of Ghazni, it was to represent someone who has secular power. As the new ruler of the empire, Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni aggressively and quite brutally expanded the empire. Mahmud of Ghazni was the first to use the title 'sultan' in a secular sense when he became ruler of the Ghaznavid Empire. The Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni was brutal in his invasions of India as he fought the Rajputs, Hindu Indian nobles, and other Indian kingdoms for their land and their wealth. He leveled and looted Hindu cities and dest...

• Name of the Battle: Mahmud Ghazni's Invasions of India • Venue: Various Parts of India • Year: 1000-1027 AD In 998 AD, the Turkish conqueror, Mahmud of Ghazni, succeeded his father, and established a huge empire in Central Asia, with capital at Ghazni, the present-day South Kabul. He was 27 years old then and the first ruler to get the title as "Sultan", which means authority, thereby implying his power and strength. For 17 times, he attacked India during the period between 1000 and 1027 AD, a significant event in the history of India. The reasons that led to the invasions Mahmud of Ghazni had started his invasions in India during the period when the Rajput power had declined. The two main reasons that led to the conquest of India by Mahmud Ghazni was firstly, to accumulate the vast amount of wealth that existed in India, and secondly, to spread Islam. Another reason was that he wanted to transform Ghazni, his capital city, into a region of formidable power in the entire Central Asia's political scenario. He raided India for the first time in 1000 AD. After that, he is said to have conquered India 17 times, till his death. He was resisted by King Jaipal and then by his son Anandpal but both of them were defeated. Between 1009 AD and 1026 AD, the places that Mahmud of Ghazni invaded were Kabul, Delhi, Kanauj, Mathura, Kangra, Thaneshwar, Kashmir, Gwalior, Malwa, Bundelkhand, Tripuri, Bengal and Punjab. He died in 1030 AD, and before his death, his last invasion of India w...

Who was Mahmud of Ghazni? Yamin ad-Dawlah Abdul-Qasim Mahmud ibn Sebuktigin, better known as Mahmud of Ghazni, had rather humble beginnings. Born the son of a Turkish slave, Mahmud went on to become the ruler of Ghazna in 998. He also became the first ruler in history to use the title of "sultan," a title that would then be used in the centuries after his death. Mahmud's reign saw the further expansion of the Ghaznavid dynasty. Mahmud thought highly of educated men, so this led him to build libraries, mosques, and palaces. This later allowed his capital city to be known as the jewel of Central Asia and attracted many outstanding scholars to settle in this city. Depiction of Mahmud of Ghazni • • • 7K views Early Life of Mahmud of Ghazni Yamin ad-Dawlah Abdul-Qasim Mahmud ibn Sebuktigin was born on November 2, 971 in the city of Ghazna. The location of this city today is, in present-day, southeast Afghanistan. Mahmud was the oldest son to Sebuktigin and a secondary wife. Sebuktigin was Turkic and a former enslaved warrior from Ghazni, who married the daughter of the governor of Ghazna, his former master. When the ruling dynasty of Sebuktigin's home country, the Samanid dynasty, began to crumble, he seized control over Ghazna and began conquering other major Afghan cities. When Sebuktigin was on his death bed, he transferred his power to his son Ismail, the child of his primary wife and younger brother of Mahmud. Sultan Mahmud When Mahmud heard of his younger brother's appoin...