Abraham Eraly - The Age of Wrath - A History of the Delhi Sultanate

The crucial factor that led to Sabuktigin’s victory — apart from the ingenious battle tactic he used — was that the Indian cavalry, according to Ferishta, was far inferior to the Turkish cavalry using Central Asian bloodstock. Moreover, the Central Asian soldiers of the sultan were very much hardier than Indian soldiers. The ‘greatest pleasure [of the Ghaznavid cavalrymen] was to be in saddle, which they regarded as if it were a throne,’ claims Al-Utbi. The Ghaznavids also had a psychological advantage over the Indian soldiers, in that they were valorous unto death, in the absolute certainty that if they died fighting infidels they would straightaway go to heaven and enjoy eternal bliss there. Their weapons too were superior to those of Indians, in that they used the composite bow — made of two pieces of wood joined together with a metal band — which, as Sarkar describes it, was ‘the most dreaded weapon of antiquity’.

Sabuktigin was an exceptionally successful monarch, and in every field of government his achievements were substantial. ‘Amir Sabuktigin,’ states Siraj, ‘was a wise, just, brave and religious man, faithful to his agreements, truthful in his words and not avaricious for wealth. He was kind and just to his subjects.’ He was also a prudent and cautious monarch, and he, despite all his military successes, took care to acknowledge the overlordship of the Samanid rulers of Bukhara, and he aided them in their battles against rebels. For those services he was rewarded by the Samanid sultan with the governorship of the province of Khurasan. And Sabuktigin in turn conferred that governorship on Mahmud, his eldest son.

SABUKTIGIN DIED IN 997, after an eventful reign of twenty years, and was succeeded by his son Mahmud, after a brief war of succession. Mahmud was not Sabuktigin’s chosen successor — his preference was for Ismail, his younger son. But that choice was an expression of his sentiment, not of his judgement, for Ismail was a weakling compared to Mahmud. Mahmud seems to have been the son of a concubine of the sultan, and that also probably weighed against him in the eyes of Sabuktigin, even though in Islamic law all one’s children, whether born of a wedded wife or a mistress, are equally legitimate. In any case, the sword was the final arbiter of princely destinies, so a dead king’s will was no barrier to an ambitious prince in his pursuit of power.

Sabuktigin seems to have had a presentiment about Mahmud’s future greatness even at the very time of his birth. ‘A moment before his birth, Amir Sabuktigin saw in a dream that a tree had sprung from the fireplace in his house, and grew so high that it covered the whole world with its shadow,’ writes Siraj. ‘Waking up startled from his dream, he began to reflect upon the import of it. At that very moment a messenger came, bringing the tidings that the Almighty had given him a son. Sabuktigin was greatly delighted by the news, and he said, “I name the child Mahmud”. On the same night he was born, an idol temple in India, in the vicinity of Peshawar, on the banks of the Sind, collapsed,’ portending the iconoclastic zeal that Mahmud would come to have as sultan.

Mahmud was in Khurasan at the time of his father’s death, and from there he wrote a conciliatory letter to Ismail suggesting that he should leave the crown to him (Mahmud) and accept the governorship of Balk and Khurasan, a substantial portion of the kingdom. Ismail rejected the offer. Mahmud then advanced on Ghazni with his army, routed Ismail in a battle, and imprisoned him for life, but generously provided him with all material comforts. Mahmud, aged twenty-seven, then ascended the throne.

Mahmud’s accession to the throne was then legitimised by the Caliph by sending to him a robe of investiture and by conferring on him the title Yamin-ud-Daulah (Right-hand-of-the-empire), so his dynasty thereafter came to be known as the Yamini dynasty. Mahmud responded to the Caliphate honour by taking a solemn vow, at the formal ceremony of receiving the laurels, to undertake jihad, holy war, every year against the idolaters of India.

MAHMUD COULD NOT keep his vow to the letter, because of his several military engagements in Central Asia, but he did lead more than twelve campaigns into India, perhaps as many as seventeen campaigns, during his thirty-two-year reign. The avowed objective of Mahmud’s Indian campaigns, according to Al-Utbi, was ‘to exalt the standard of religion, to widen the plain of right, to illuminate the words of truth, and to strengthen the power of justice.’ Mahmud, adds Ferishta, wanted to ‘root out the worship of idols from the face of all India.’

Mahmud did indeed ‘convert as many as a thousand idol temples into mosques,’ according to Siraj. But the passion for plunder was an equally strong motive, or perhaps an even stronger motive, in Mahmud — he fought for god as well as for mammon, but quite probably more for mammon than for god. These were however interconnected motives, each reinforcing and energising the other.

India was the ideal land for Mahmud to glut both his passions simultaneously, for Hindu temples were depositories of immense treasures, so sacking them earned him great religious merit as well as vast treasures. There was also an important morale boosting military advantage in demolishing temples and smashing their idols, for these were, in the eyes of Ghaznavid soldiers, convincing demonstrations of the invincible power of their god, and the utter powerlessness of Hindu gods. Sometimes the fragments of the smashed idols were sent to Ghazni for embedding them in thoroughfares there, for people to tread on and desecrate them.

Muslim rulers were by convention required to offer three options to their infidel adversaries: become Muslims and be privileged citizens, or live as zimmis (protected non-Muslims: second class citizens), or be killed. But the invaders in the frenzy of battle almost never paused to offer their foes those choices. The religious fervour of Mahmud’s army expressed itself primarily in slaughter, plunder and destruction, but hardly ever in active pursuit of proselytisation. Even the small number of conversions that Mahmud made were done at the point of the sword — it was Islam or death for the vanquished. There was no serious attempt by him to propagandise Islam. Consequently, many of those who became Muslims to save their lives and properties, apostatised when the tide of Ghaznavid invasion receded. Mahmud’s campaigns had hardly any enduring religious effect in India.

There was clearly a strong element of self-serving opportunism in Mahmud’s posture of religious fervour, for he had no hesitation in inducting a large number of Hindus into his army under their own commanders, or even in deploying them in battles against rival Muslim kingdoms in Central Asia. According to Al-Utbi an army he once deployed in Central Asia consisted of ‘Turks, Indians, Khaljis, Afghans and Ghaznavids.’ It is significant that Mahmud was as ruthless in his fight against Muslims of the ‘heretic’ Ismaili sect as he was in his fight against Hindus, and he had no qualms whatever about destroying the centuries-old Muslim kingdom of Multan, massacring a large number of Ismailis there, desecrating their mosques, and, as Al-Utbi reports, in levying from them ‘20,000,000 dirhams with which to alleviate their sins.’

Religious fervour evidently subserved Mahmud’s temporal goals of amassing booty and expanding his power. As for his soldiers, the prospect of booty was undoubtedly their primary motive, though it was religious frenzy and bloodlust that galvanized them. Often, in a single raid into India, they obtained several times more wealth than they could have ever dreamed of acquiring in a whole lifetime of mundane toil. Apart from material treasures, the Turks also seized a large number of people in India — men, women and children — for serving them as slaves, or for selling them to slave traders back home.