The Ghaznavid invasions

In the 9th and 10th centuries, a powerful dynasty called the Hindu Shāhis ruled across today's Afghanistan, northern Pakistan and as far as Punjab. With help from other Indian rulers, they held off several invasions.

Their resistance mattered because they controlled the Khyber Pass, one of the main passes through the Hindu Kush mountains. Many invaders entered India through it — but for at least 2,500 years it was also a great trade route to Central Asia, and the road Buddhist monks and scholars travelled. One narrow gap in the mountains, used by armies, merchants and monks alike.

In the end, a Turkic power, the Ghaznavids, overran the Shāhis, then ruled by Jayapāla. Their capital was Ghazna (today's Ghazni in Afghanistan) — hence the name.

In the first decade of the 11th century, the Ghaznavid ruler Mahmūd defeated Jayapāla, and in 1008 his son Ānandapāla, after a long battle, even though several north Indian rulers had helped Ānandapāla. Now Mahmūd had easy access to the Indus plains and beyond. The door was open.

Mahmūd took the title sultan, an Arabic word meaning 'authority' or 'power'; in the Muslim world it came to mean a ruler or king.

Mahmūd led 17 campaigns into India, each time returning to Ghazni with huge amounts of booty (wealth taken by force). He met strong resistance — from the Chandellas of central India, among others — and came close to defeat a few times, but his large army's fast marches and daring attacks by mounted archers won in the end.

A remarkable comment comes from al-Bīrūnī, a scholar who travelled with Mahmūd. He wrote that the Hindu Shāhi dynasty was now completely gone, but that in all their greatness they 'never slackened in the ardent desire of doing that which is good and right', and were 'men of noble sentiment and noble bearing'.

Praise for the defeated, written by someone on the winner's own side, is especially strong evidence: he had nothing to gain by it.