Mahmud of Ghazni raids India

In 1001 Mahmud of Ghazni, the sultan of a Turkic dynasty ruling from Ghazni in what is now Afghanistan, defeats the Hindu Shahi king Jaipal near Peshawar. It is the first of the raids into northern India that Mahmud, who reigned from 998 to 1030, leads almost every year; later tradition counts 17. His army of Turks, Afghans and Indian troops used war elephants and cavalry and returned each year laden with plunder.¹

The Ghaznavid state grew from the Samanid emirate, where Mahmud's father Sebuktegin had been a Turkic commander, and Mahmud took the title of sultan with the Abbasid caliph's recognition. Mahmud's raids were the means to pay his large army, and his targets were rich Hindu temples such as Mathura and, in 1025 or 1026, Somnath in Gujarat. He annexed Punjab, with Lahore later becoming a Ghaznavid capital, so Muslim rule in northern India dates from his time. His court in Ghazni was a center of Persian culture, with the poet Firdausi, and the scholar al-Biruni, who joined the sultan in India and wrote the Book of India, an account of Hindu science and thought.¹