The Ghaznavids
A tower in Ghazni (Afghanistan), about 1000 AD
Beginning in the 850s AD,
the Abbasid caliphs of the Islamic
Empire were looking for soldiers they would be able to trust, who
were not other Arabs who would be trying to get into power. The Abbasids
thought that the Turks would be trustworthy soldiers. So they captured
a bunch of young Turks as slaves and made them become soldiers. The
Turks were in fact very good soldiers. But they were so important to
the Abbasids as soldiers that they were able to get more and more power
for themselves. In 962 AD, the Abbasid Caliph tried to fire Alptigin,
the general in charge of Khurasan (modern Afghanistan).
But Alptigin didn't want to be fired. He marched south and captured
the fort of Ghazni from the Samanids who had been ruling it. He died the next year, but his slave soldiers took
over for him and made Afghanistan into their own independent kingdom.
These soldiers were known as the Ghaznavids after their fort. They took
Kabul in 977. Under their great sultan Mahmud, Alptigin's grandson,
they captured Herat from the Samanids in 1000, and ruled part of Persia (modern Iran)
too. Then the Ghaznavids began to invade India.
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(a project)
At first Sultan Mahmud's invasions of India were mainly to get gold and slaves and to destroy images, because Islam said that God didn't like any images of people, animals, or even plants or buildings. Many Hindu temples of northern India were destroyed in these raids, including a famous temple to Shiva in Gujarat. Mahmud got so much plunder that he built a beautiful palace at Ghazni. He had 2500 elephants there! In the winter, when it was too cold at Ghazni, Mahmud and his whole court would move down to Bost (with all the elephants).
Mahmud's palace at Bost
But eventually Mahmud conquered the Punjab (modern Pakistan and northern India) and took it over as its ruler. Mahmud ruled for about 30 years before he died in 1030 AD. But the Ghaznavids didn't last very long after that. By 1040 they had been conquered by the Seljuks and the Ghuris.
Seljuks
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