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

Mahmud had a poor opinion about his sons, and a bleak view of the future of his empire. ‘Masud is a proud fellow and thinks there is nobody better than himself,’ he once observed. ‘Muhammad is stout of heart, generous, and fearless, but if Masud indulges in pleasure, wine, and the like, Muhammad outdoes him. He has no control over himself, has no apprehension of Masud and is heedless of the important concerns of life … Masud … will devour him.’

That prognostication of Mahmud proved true. Masud was not at all perturbed by his father choosing Muhammad for the throne, for he knew that it was the sword, not parental choice, that would finally determine royal succession. So when a khan expressed to Masud his dismay over Mahmud’s choice of successor, the prince said, ‘Don’t grieve about it. The sword is a truer prophet than the pen.’ And indeed, in the battle between the two princes following the death of the sultan, Masud easily routed Muhammad, blinded and imprisoned him, and ascended the throne.

But Masud himself, for all his conceit, proved to be a disaster as sultan, who sometimes even cravenly chose flight over fight when confronted by enemies. The history of the Ghaznavid dynasty after the death of Mahmud is a sordid tale of endless internecine clashes between brothers, cousins, uncles and nephews, as well as recurrent rebellions by nobles and provincial governors, brutal assassinations, mass murders, mutinies and invasions. There was hardly ever any peaceful royal succession in Ghazni. Only six of the fifteen sultans of the post-Mahmud history of the kingdom died natural deaths while still on the throne; the rest were deposed or murdered. Many of the reigns were very short, a couple of the sultans occupying the throne for just a few weeks. Once a boy of three was raised to the throne in a palace intrigue; his reign lasted just one week.

Even more bizarre than these succession strifes were the rebellions by royal officers. In one such incident, an officer overthrew and put to death his king (along with eleven princes) and ascended the throne, but was himself overthrown and killed by the royal guards in about a month. On another occasion the guards of the royal treasury themselves plundered the treasures. And so it went on. Astonishingly, despite all this chaos, some of the Ghazni sultans had long and relatively peaceful reigns. Such was the case of Sultan Ibrahim of the second half of the eleventh century, who ruled for forty-two years, which was the longest reign in the entire history of the Ghaznavid kingdom; even his son and successor Masud had a fairly long reign, of seventeen years. But these were exceptional cases, just interludes of tranquillity in the swirling chaos in the sultanate following the death of Mahmud.

And as the kingdom slid into terminal and irreversible decline, its very existence was threatened by Seljuq Turks from the west, and by Ghuris from the north. The relationship between the rulers of Ghazni and Ghur was particularly vicious. Matters came to a head when two Ghuri princes were treacherously put to death by the sultan Bahram of Ghazni. That provoked Ala-ud-din Husain, the ruler of Ghur, to seek vengeance. In 1151 he stormed into Ghazni, and for a whole week his soldiers raged though the city, pillaging, slaughtering people, and burning buildings. ‘For seven nights and days he gave it (the city) to the flames,’ reports Siraj. ‘During these seven days the clouds of smoke so darkened the sky that day seemed to be night, and the flames so lighted the sky at night that night looked like day. Plunder, devastation, and slaughter were continuous on these seven days. Every man that was found was slain, and all the women and children were made prisoners. Under the orders of the conqueror, [the remains] of all the Mahmudi kings, with the exception of Mahmud, Masud and Ibrahim, were dragged out from their graves and burnt. All this time, Ala-ud-din sat in the palace of Ghazni occupied with drinking and debauchery.’

Later, when Ala-ud-din returned to Ghur, Bahram, who had, on being defeated by Ala-ud-din, fled to Punjab for refuge, returned to Ghazni. Then it was the turn of Saljuq Turks to menace the kingdom, and in 1157 they drove out Bahram’s successor Khusrav Shah from Afghanistan into Punjab. Lahore then became the last sanctuary of the Yamini dynasty. But even in Lahore their reign lasted only for about three decades, for in 1186 Ghuri prince Muizz-ud-din Muhammad invaded Punjab, seized Lahore, and imprisoned Khusrav Malik, the son and successor of Khusrav Shah. Six years later, in 1192, Khusrav Malik — who, according to Siraj, was ‘exceedingly gentle, liberal, and modest, but fond of pleasure’—was murdered in prison by the Ghuris, as he was a security risk.

‘The house of Mahmud had now come to its end; the sun of its glory had set, and the registrar of fate had written the mandate of its destruction,’ observes Siraj. The Ghazni kingdom had in all 22 sultans, including usurpers, in its 223 years long history from its founding in 963 to its final extinction in 1186. The average reign of the Ghaznavid kings was only about ten years, and some of them occupied the throne for only just a few days.

The kingdom of Ghazni, founded in 963, endured in Afghanistan for nearly two centuries, till 1157, when Saljuq Turks invaded the kingdom and drove its sultan, Khusrav Shah, out of Ghazni into Punjab. But in a few years, in 1173, the Saljuqs themselves were driven out of Ghazni by another invader, Sultan Ghiyas-ud-din Muhammad of Ghur, a mountain kingdom in northern Afghanistan. Ghiyas-ud-din then installed his brother, Shihab-ud-din Muhammad, generally known as Muhammad Ghuri, as the ruler of Ghazni.

Muhammad’s occupation of the throne of Ghazni evidently electrified him with memories of the epic exploits of Mahmud Ghazni, and inspired him to invade India. And, although his campaigns were nowhere near as spectacular as those of Mahmud, their results were far more enduring, for they led to the establishment of the Delhi Sultanate, which marked the decisive stage in the nearly one millennium-long history of the dominance of the subcontinent by foreign people that began with the Ghaznavid incursions into India in the last quarter of the tenth century and ended with the withdrawal of the British from India in the mid-twentieth century.

Muhammad’s first incursion into India, in 1175, was directed against Gujarat, which was the target of Mahmud Ghazni’s most celebrated campaign a century and half earlier. But this proved to be a perilous adventure for Muhammad, though the initial stages of the campaign went off smoothly for him. The sultan entered India through the Gomal Pass in the Sulaiman Range southeast of Ghazni and headed for the city of Multan, which he seized from its Ismaili ruler. He then advanced to the fortress of Uch, which he was able to occupy without a fight, as it was surrendered to him by its malcontent and treacherous queen after putting its ruler, her husband, to death, on Muhammad promising to marry her daughter. Muhammad then proceeded to Gujarat, trudging through the forbidding Great Indian Desert. Taking that route was a grave mistake, for the perils of the desert utterly exhausted his army by the time it reached Gujarat, so it was there easily routed with great slaughter by Mularaja, the Chalukya king of Gujarat, in a battle fought at the foot of Mt. Abu. Muhammad then prudently retreated to Ghazni with the ragged remnants of his army.