At the beginning of the eleventh century, there arose a Muslim commander was full of zeal for Islam, and had the valor and ruthlessness to bring that zeal to jihad warfare. His name was Mahmud of Ghazni. Here's what you should know about him.
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Mahmud of Ghazni (971-1030) was a native of Khurasan who revived the long-dormant jihad against India and greatly extended Islam’s presence on the subcontinent. For 30 years, Mahmud terrorized non-Muslims in what is today northeast Afghanistan, Pakistan, and northwest India.
In 994, Mahmud became governor of Khurasan. Bestowing upon himself the title of sultan, Mahmud swiftly began to expand his domains—all in the name of Islam.
Mahmud’s domains were nominally under the suzerainty of the Abbasid caliph. When Mahmud secured the caliph al-Qadir bi-’llah’s recognition in 999, he pledged annual jihad raids against India.
He didn’t manage to invade that frequently, but he did lead seventeen large-scale jihad incursions into the subcontinent.
The thirteenth-century Muslim historian Minhaj al-Siraj Juzjani, author of the Tabaqat-i Nasiri, a history of Islam’s rise, noted that as Mahmud waged jihad in India, “he converted so many thousands of idol temples into masjids [mosques].”
Mahmud broke the idols whenever he could, so as to demonstrate the power of Islam and the superiority of Allah to the gods of the people of India.
When he defeated the Hindu ruler Raja Jaipal in 1001, he had Jaipal “paraded about in the streets so that his sons and chieftains might see him in that condition of shame, bonds and disgrace; and that the fear of Islam might fly abroad through the country of the infidels.”
Mahmud made an immense effort to conquer Gujarat, according to Zakariya ibn Muhammad, another 13th century historian, because he hoped that if he was able to destroy Gujarat utterly, its people would be shocked and demoralized into submission, and would convert to Islam en masse.
The people of Gujarat, however, did not submit but resisted, and fifty thousand were killed.
Entering one Hindu temple in Gujarat, Mahmud was overcome with anger at seeing the idols; raising his battle-axe, he hit one with full force, breaking it into pieces.
The pieces were carried to Ghazni and placed at the threshold of the mosque as a sign of the victory of Islam over the idols and the superiority of Allah to them.
Mahmud proceeded with a massive army of jihadis to Thanessar in Hindustan, where he had heard that there was a magnificent temple in which was placed an idol, Jagarsom, that people from all over the region venerated.
Anandapala, the Hindu ruler of the Shahi dynasty in modern-day eastern Afghanistan and northern Pakistan, heard of Mahmud’s advance and sought to make peace, sending an envoy to Mahmud offering the Sultan fifty elephants if he would abandon the jihad against Jagarsom.
Mahmud ignored the offer, but when he and his men arrived in Thanessar, they found the city entirely empty of people.
Nonetheless, there was plenty to plunder. The Muslims roamed the empty streets, seizing and destroying all the idols from the temples.
They transported Jagarsom to Ghazni, where Mahmud ordered that the now broken idol be set in front of the mosque, so that the Muslims would trample upon its pieces on their way in and out for prayer.
The Kitab i Yamini, an eleventh-century account of Mahmud of Ghazni’s reign up to 1020 by the Muslim historian Abu Nasr Muhammad al-Utbi, contains another account of Mahmud’s attacking Thanessar, apparently during one of his other invasions of India.
Al-Utbi recorded that the leader of Thanessar “was obstinate in his infidelity and denial of God. So the Sultan marched against him with his valiant warriors, for the purpose of planting the standards of Islam and extirpating idolatry.”
Mahmud and his jihadis showed no mercy: “The blood of the infidels flowed so copiously that the stream was discoloured, notwithstanding its purity, and people were unable to drink it.”
Al-Utbi was sure this was a sign of the divine favor upon the Muslims: “The victory was gained by God’s grace, who has established Islam forever as the best of religions, notwithstanding that idolaters revolt against it.”
The same historian boasted that Mahmud “purified Hind from idolatry, and raised mosques therein,” but the Sultan wasn’t finished. In 1013, he marched with a large jihadi army toward Lahore, where he found a Buddhist temple.
Inside the temple was a stone bearing an inscription saying, according to al-Utbi, “that the temple had been founded fifty thousand years ago.”
Mahmud “was surprised at the ignorance of these people, because those who believe in the true faith represent that only seven thousand years have elapsed since the creation of the world.”
Mahmud and his men went on to Nandana, the capital of the Kabul Shahi kingdom under King Anandapal. Here again, the jihadis slaughtered the population indiscriminately and destroyed the temples.
Al-Utbi recounted: "The Sultan returned in the rear of immense booty, and slaves were so plentiful that they became very cheap and men of respectability in their native land were degraded by becoming slaves of common shopkeepers."
He continued: "But such is the goodness of Allah, who bestows honour on his own religion and degrades infidelity."
Five years later, Mahmud entered Hindustan again and marched toward the fortress of Mahaban. Al-Utbi said that “the infidels…deserted the fort and tried to cross the foaming river…but many of them were slain, taken or drowned.… Nearly fifty thousand men were killed.”
Then at Mathura, al-Utbi added, “the Sultan gave orders that all the temples should be burnt with naptha and fire, and levelled with the ground.”
At Kanauj, he continued, “there were nearly ten thousand temples. Many of the inhabitants of the place fled in consequence of witnessing the fate of their deaf and dumb idols. Those who didn't fly were put to death. The Sultan ordered his soldiers to plunder and take prisoners.”
Then, at Shrawa, "the Muslims paid no regard to the booty till they had satiated themselves with the slaughter of the infidels and worshippers of sun and fire. The friends of Allah searched the bodies of the slain for three days in order to obtain booty."
"The booty amounted in gold and silver, rubies and pearls nearly to three thousand dirhams, and the number of prisoners may be conceived from the fact that each was sold for two to ten dirhams."
"They were afterwards taken to Ghazni and merchants came from distant cities to purchase them, so that the countries of Mawaraun-Nahr, Iraq and Khurasan were filled with them, and the fair and the dark, the rich and the poor, were commingled in one common slavery."
Al-Utbi concluded with satisfaction that Mahmud “demolished idol temples and established Islam. He captured cities, killed the polluted wretches, destroying the idolaters, and gratifying Muslims. He then returned home and promulgated accounts of the victories he won for Islam.”
Mahmud repeated the vow he had made to the Abbasid caliph that “every year he would undertake a holy war against Hind.”
In 1023, Mahmud prayed to Allah for assistance and invaded India again, this time with a force of thirty thousand jihad warriors on horseback. After crossing a desert, the Muslims came upon a fort, inside of which were wells and abundant water.
The people inside the fort came out and tried to appease Mahmud’s wrath, but the sultan was having none of it: he killed all the inhabitants and broke their idols into pieces.
According to Minhaj al-Siraj Juzjani, "He led an army to Nahrwalah of Gujarat, and brought away Manat, the idol, from Somnath, and had it broken into four parts."
"One of the parts was cast before the entrance of the great Masjid at Ghazni, the second before the gateway of the Sultan’s palace, and the third and fourth were sent to Makkah and Madinah respectively."
In Somnath there was a magnificent temple of Shiva. Manat was the name of one of the pre-Islamic goddesses of Mecca.
It was rumored among the Muslims that when Muhammad cleansed the Ka’aba of its pre-Islamic idols and transformed it into a Muslim shrine, and idol worship was extinguished in Arabia, an idol of Manat was transported to India and set up in the temple in Somnath.
Thus Mahmud, in destroying this temple, was doing something particularly great in Muslim eyes, as he was extinguishing the last remnant of Arabian idol worship and completing a job begun by none other than Muhammad himself.
In any case, the spoils, in both treasure and human beings, were once again immense.
Ghazni was filled with stolen Indian goods that the jihadis had appropriated, and even though the Muslims killed fifty thousand people at Somnath, Hindu slaves were again so plentiful that they sold for as little as two or three dirhams.
The Muslim advance was relentless. Conquering a fortress of Bhim, a Gujarati king, Mahmud and the Muslims plundered it thoroughly, carrying away one hundred gold and silver idols.
Mahmud had one of the more impressive and splendid golden images melted down to make grand new gold doors for the mosque of Ghazni, replacing the old iron ones.
At Mathura in Uttar Pradesh, Mahmud stripped the Hindu temples of all their gold and silver and then had all the temples set ablaze.
Triumphant, Mahmud had coins minted that proclaimed: “The right hand of the empire, Mahmud Sultan, son of Nasir-ud-Din Subuk-Tigin, Breaker of Idols.”
Mahmud of Ghazni died in 1030, having made immense gains for Islam in the Punjab and Sindh, and establishing a foothold also in Kashmir and Gujarat.
His son Masud followed in his footsteps. In 1037, Masud led a jihad force into Hindustan and sacked the Hindu fort of Hansi.
According to the eleventh-century Tarikh-us-Subuktigin, “The Brahmins and other highranking men were slain, and their women and children were carried away captive, and all the treasure which was found was distributed among the army.”
During all of his jihad ventures into India, however, Mahmud had neglected to protect his home base, and by the time Masud ventured into India in 1037, Ghazni itself was vulnerable.
While Masud and his men were enjoying this great jihad victory, the Seljuk Turks, who had converted to Islam in the late tenth century, sacked Ghazni and overran most of Masud’s Western domains.
This precipitated the terminal decline of the Ghaznavids, and the jihad against India came to a halt, albeit, as always, only temporarily.
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