I often read about the history of Inida and I'm shocked how much this nation was conquered by invaders. Mahmud Ghaznawi was one of the many invaders and it looks like that he was one of the worst as he destroyed the Hindu Somnath temple and killed all the Hindus who wanted to defend this temple. He plundered and invaded Hindustan 17 times.
Here are some informations about him:
Yamīn ad-Dawlah Abul-Qāṣim Maḥmūd Ibn Sebüktegīn, more commonly known as Mahmud of Ghazni (Persian: محمود غَزنوی‎ / Maḥmūd-e Ġaznawī; 2 October 971 – 30 April 1030), was the most prominent ruler of the Ghaznavid Empire. In the name of Islam, he conquered the eastern Iranian lands and the northwestern Indian subcontinent from 997 to his death in 1030. Mahmud turned the former provincial city of Ghazna into the wealthy capital of an extensive empire which covered most of today's Afghanistan, eastern Iran, Pakistan and northwestern India.
He was the first ruler to carry the title Sultan ("authority"), signifying the extent of his power, though preserving the ideological link to the suzerainty of the Caliph. During his rule, he invaded and plundered parts of Hindustan (east of the Indus River) 17 times.
Ancestry:
Mahmud was born in 971 AD in the town of Ghazna in Medieval Khorasan (in what is now south-eastern Afghanistan). His father, Abu Mansur Sabuktigin, was a Turkic slave-soldier of the Samanid Emirs of Bukhara. His mother was the daughter of a Persian aristocrat from Zabulistan.[3]
Ghaznawid campaigns:
Following the defeat of the Rajput Confederacy, after deciding to retaliate for their combined resistance, Mahmud then set out on regular expeditions against them, leaving the conquered kingdoms in the hands of Hindu vassals annexing only the Punjab region.[6] He also vowed to raid India every year.
The Indian kingdoms of Nagarkot, Thanesar, Kannauj, Gwalior, and Ujjain were all conquered and left in the hands of Hindu, Jain and Buddhist Kings as vassal states and he was pragmatic enough not to shirk making alliances and enlisting local peoples into his armies at all ranks.
Destroying them would destroy the will power of the Hindus attacking the Empire since Mahmud never kept a permanent presence in the subcontinent; Nagarkot, Thanesar, Mathura, Kannauj, Kalinjar and Somnath were all thus raided. Mahmud's armies stripped the temples of their wealth and then destroyed them at, Maheshwar, Jwalamukhi, Narunkot and Dwarka. During the period of Mahmud invasion, the Sindhi Swarankar Community and other Hindus who escaped conversion fled from Sindh to escape sectarian violence.
Attitude towards religious freedom:
Mahmud, according to several contemporary accounts, considered himself a Ghazi who waged jihad on the Hindus. His plunder of Hindu temples and centers of learning is noted later in the article. Al-Biruni writes:
In the interest of his successors he constructed, in order to weaken the Indian frontier, those roads on which afterwards his son Mahmud marched into India during a period of thirty years and more. God be merciful to both father and son! Mahmud utterly ruined the prosperity of the country, and performed there wonderful exploits, by which the Hindus became like atoms of dust scattered in all directions, and like a tale of old in the mouth of the people. Their scattered remains cherish, of course, the most inveterate aversion towards all Muslims. This is the reason, too, why Hindu sciences have retired far away from those parts of the country conquered by us, and have fled to places which our hand cannot yet reach, to Kashmir, Benares, and other places. And there the antagonism between them and all foreigners receives more and more nourishment both from political and religious sources.[19]
Various historical sources such as Martin Ewans, E.J. Brill and Farishta have recorded the introduction of Islam to Kabul and other parts of Afghanistan to the conquests of and Mahmud:
The Arabs advanced through Sistan and conquered Sindh early in the eighth century. Elsewhere
however their incursions were no more than temporary, and it was not until the rise of the Saffarid dynasty in the ninth century that the frontiers of Islam effectively reached Ghazni and Kabul. Even then a Hindu dynasty the Hindushahis, held Gandhara and eastern borders. From the tenth century onwards as Persian language and culture continued to spread into Afghanistan, the focus of power shifted to Ghazni, where a Turkish dynasty, who started by ruling the town for the Samanid dynasty of Bokhara, proceeded to create an empire in their own right. The greatest of the Ghaznavids was Muhmad who ruled between 998 and 1030. He expelled the Hindus from Gandhara, made no fewer than 17 raids into India,[20]
He encouraged mass conversions to Islam, in India as well as in Afghanistan[20]
Attack on 'Kafiristan':
Another crusade against idolatry was at length resolved on; and Mahmud led the seventh one against Nardain, the then boundary of India, or the eastern part of the Hindu Kush; separating as Firishta says, the countries of Hindustan and Turkistan and remarkable for its excellent fruit. The country into which the army of Ghazni marched appears to have been the same as that now called Kafirstan, where the inhabitants were and still are, idolaters and are named the Siah-Posh, or black-vested by the Muslims of later times. In Nardain there was a temple, which the army of Ghazni destroyed; and brought from thence a stone covered with certain inscriptions, which were according to the Hindus, of great antiquity.[21]
Massacres of Ismailis: In 965 CE, Multan was conquered by Halam b. Shayban, an Ismaili da’i. Soon after, Multan was attacked by the Ghaznavids, destabilizing the Ismaili state. Mahmud invaded Multan in 1005 CE, conducting a series of campaigns during which the Ismailis of Multan were massacred.[22]
Destruction of the Somnath temple:
Mahmud conquered and destroyed thousands of Hindu temples during his raids including the famous Somnath Temple, which he destroyed in 1025 AD,[19] killing over 50,000 people who tried to defend it. The defenders included the 90-year-old clan leader Ghogha Rana. Mahmud had the gilded lingam broken into pieces and had them made into steps for his mosque and palace.[24][25]
The following extract is from “Wonders of Things Created, and marvels of Things Existing” by Zakariya al-Qazwini, a 13th-century Arab geographer. It contains the description of Somnath temple and its destruction:[19]
Somnath: celebrated city of India, situated on the shore of the sea, and washed by its waves. Among the wonders of that place was the temple in which was placed the idol called Somnath. This idol was in the middle of the temple without anything to support it from below, or to suspend it from above. It was held in the highest honor among the Hindus, and whoever beheld it floating in the air was struck with amazement, whether he was a Musulman or an infidel. The Hindus used to go on pilgrimage to it whenever there was an eclipse of the moon, and would then assemble there to the number of more than a hundred thousand.
When the Sultan Yaminu-d Daula Mahmud Bin Subuktigin (Mahmud of Ghazni) went to wage religious war against India, he made great efforts to capture and destroy Somnath, in the hope that the Hindus would then become Muhammadans. As a result thousands of Hindus were forcibly converted to Islam. He arrived there in the middle of Zi-l k’ada, 416 A.H. (December, 1025 A.D.). “The king looked upon the idol with wonder, and gave orders for the seizing of the spoil, and dinars."[19]
Regional attitudes towards Mahmud's memory:
In Afghanistan and Pakistan Mahmud is celebrated as a hero and a great patron of the arts, architecture, literature, and Persian revivalism as well as a vanguard of Islam and a paragon of virtue and piety who established the standard of Islam in India. The military of Pakistan has named its short-range ballistic missile in the honour of Mahmud of Ghazni, the Ghaznavi Missile.[26] In addition to this, the Pakistan Military Academy, where cadets are trained for becoming Officers of the Pakistan Army also gives tribute the Mahmud of Ghazni by naming one of its twelve companies; Ghaznavi Company.
In modern Pakistan he is hailed as a conquering hero who established the standard of Islam upon heathen land, while in India he is a raiding iconoclastic invader, bent upon the loot and plunder of a peaceful Hindu population. In India, Mahmud is therefore seen as a ruthless invader who plundered the temples of India and caused long lasting damage. His attacks on Mathura, Gandhara and Somnath are seen as decisive events in the history of North India and a sign of its subjugation to Islamic invasions. The fact that Mahmud never tried consolidating his conquests choosing instead to target a different region and different temples on each of his invasions is seen as evidence that he was interested in loot.[27]
Iranians remember him as an Orthodox Sunni who was responsible for the revival of the Persian culture by commissioning and appointing Persians to high offices in his administration as ministers, viziers and generals. In addition Iranians remember him for the promotion and preference of Persian language instead of Turkish and patronage of great nationalist poets and scholars such as Ferdowsi, Al-Biruni and Ferishta as well as his Lion and Sun flag which was once a flag symbol in the Imperial state of Iran.
You can rad the whole artice about Mahmud Ghaznawi here: Mahmud of Ghazni - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I think we can easily say that Mahmud Ghazanwi is a very controversial person in world history. Celebratd and respected by most Afghans and Pakistanis because of the spread of Islam but hated and cursed by Hindu Indians because he made their lives to hell.
Here are some informations about him:
Yamīn ad-Dawlah Abul-Qāṣim Maḥmūd Ibn Sebüktegīn, more commonly known as Mahmud of Ghazni (Persian: محمود غَزنوی‎ / Maḥmūd-e Ġaznawī; 2 October 971 – 30 April 1030), was the most prominent ruler of the Ghaznavid Empire. In the name of Islam, he conquered the eastern Iranian lands and the northwestern Indian subcontinent from 997 to his death in 1030. Mahmud turned the former provincial city of Ghazna into the wealthy capital of an extensive empire which covered most of today's Afghanistan, eastern Iran, Pakistan and northwestern India.
He was the first ruler to carry the title Sultan ("authority"), signifying the extent of his power, though preserving the ideological link to the suzerainty of the Caliph. During his rule, he invaded and plundered parts of Hindustan (east of the Indus River) 17 times.
Ancestry:
Mahmud was born in 971 AD in the town of Ghazna in Medieval Khorasan (in what is now south-eastern Afghanistan). His father, Abu Mansur Sabuktigin, was a Turkic slave-soldier of the Samanid Emirs of Bukhara. His mother was the daughter of a Persian aristocrat from Zabulistan.[3]
Ghaznawid campaigns:
Following the defeat of the Rajput Confederacy, after deciding to retaliate for their combined resistance, Mahmud then set out on regular expeditions against them, leaving the conquered kingdoms in the hands of Hindu vassals annexing only the Punjab region.[6] He also vowed to raid India every year.
The Indian kingdoms of Nagarkot, Thanesar, Kannauj, Gwalior, and Ujjain were all conquered and left in the hands of Hindu, Jain and Buddhist Kings as vassal states and he was pragmatic enough not to shirk making alliances and enlisting local peoples into his armies at all ranks.
Destroying them would destroy the will power of the Hindus attacking the Empire since Mahmud never kept a permanent presence in the subcontinent; Nagarkot, Thanesar, Mathura, Kannauj, Kalinjar and Somnath were all thus raided. Mahmud's armies stripped the temples of their wealth and then destroyed them at, Maheshwar, Jwalamukhi, Narunkot and Dwarka. During the period of Mahmud invasion, the Sindhi Swarankar Community and other Hindus who escaped conversion fled from Sindh to escape sectarian violence.
Attitude towards religious freedom:
Mahmud, according to several contemporary accounts, considered himself a Ghazi who waged jihad on the Hindus. His plunder of Hindu temples and centers of learning is noted later in the article. Al-Biruni writes:
In the interest of his successors he constructed, in order to weaken the Indian frontier, those roads on which afterwards his son Mahmud marched into India during a period of thirty years and more. God be merciful to both father and son! Mahmud utterly ruined the prosperity of the country, and performed there wonderful exploits, by which the Hindus became like atoms of dust scattered in all directions, and like a tale of old in the mouth of the people. Their scattered remains cherish, of course, the most inveterate aversion towards all Muslims. This is the reason, too, why Hindu sciences have retired far away from those parts of the country conquered by us, and have fled to places which our hand cannot yet reach, to Kashmir, Benares, and other places. And there the antagonism between them and all foreigners receives more and more nourishment both from political and religious sources.[19]
Various historical sources such as Martin Ewans, E.J. Brill and Farishta have recorded the introduction of Islam to Kabul and other parts of Afghanistan to the conquests of and Mahmud:
The Arabs advanced through Sistan and conquered Sindh early in the eighth century. Elsewhere
however their incursions were no more than temporary, and it was not until the rise of the Saffarid dynasty in the ninth century that the frontiers of Islam effectively reached Ghazni and Kabul. Even then a Hindu dynasty the Hindushahis, held Gandhara and eastern borders. From the tenth century onwards as Persian language and culture continued to spread into Afghanistan, the focus of power shifted to Ghazni, where a Turkish dynasty, who started by ruling the town for the Samanid dynasty of Bokhara, proceeded to create an empire in their own right. The greatest of the Ghaznavids was Muhmad who ruled between 998 and 1030. He expelled the Hindus from Gandhara, made no fewer than 17 raids into India,[20]
He encouraged mass conversions to Islam, in India as well as in Afghanistan[20]
Attack on 'Kafiristan':
Another crusade against idolatry was at length resolved on; and Mahmud led the seventh one against Nardain, the then boundary of India, or the eastern part of the Hindu Kush; separating as Firishta says, the countries of Hindustan and Turkistan and remarkable for its excellent fruit. The country into which the army of Ghazni marched appears to have been the same as that now called Kafirstan, where the inhabitants were and still are, idolaters and are named the Siah-Posh, or black-vested by the Muslims of later times. In Nardain there was a temple, which the army of Ghazni destroyed; and brought from thence a stone covered with certain inscriptions, which were according to the Hindus, of great antiquity.[21]
Massacres of Ismailis: In 965 CE, Multan was conquered by Halam b. Shayban, an Ismaili da’i. Soon after, Multan was attacked by the Ghaznavids, destabilizing the Ismaili state. Mahmud invaded Multan in 1005 CE, conducting a series of campaigns during which the Ismailis of Multan were massacred.[22]
Destruction of the Somnath temple:
Mahmud conquered and destroyed thousands of Hindu temples during his raids including the famous Somnath Temple, which he destroyed in 1025 AD,[19] killing over 50,000 people who tried to defend it. The defenders included the 90-year-old clan leader Ghogha Rana. Mahmud had the gilded lingam broken into pieces and had them made into steps for his mosque and palace.[24][25]
The following extract is from “Wonders of Things Created, and marvels of Things Existing” by Zakariya al-Qazwini, a 13th-century Arab geographer. It contains the description of Somnath temple and its destruction:[19]
Somnath: celebrated city of India, situated on the shore of the sea, and washed by its waves. Among the wonders of that place was the temple in which was placed the idol called Somnath. This idol was in the middle of the temple without anything to support it from below, or to suspend it from above. It was held in the highest honor among the Hindus, and whoever beheld it floating in the air was struck with amazement, whether he was a Musulman or an infidel. The Hindus used to go on pilgrimage to it whenever there was an eclipse of the moon, and would then assemble there to the number of more than a hundred thousand.
When the Sultan Yaminu-d Daula Mahmud Bin Subuktigin (Mahmud of Ghazni) went to wage religious war against India, he made great efforts to capture and destroy Somnath, in the hope that the Hindus would then become Muhammadans. As a result thousands of Hindus were forcibly converted to Islam. He arrived there in the middle of Zi-l k’ada, 416 A.H. (December, 1025 A.D.). “The king looked upon the idol with wonder, and gave orders for the seizing of the spoil, and dinars."[19]
Regional attitudes towards Mahmud's memory:
In Afghanistan and Pakistan Mahmud is celebrated as a hero and a great patron of the arts, architecture, literature, and Persian revivalism as well as a vanguard of Islam and a paragon of virtue and piety who established the standard of Islam in India. The military of Pakistan has named its short-range ballistic missile in the honour of Mahmud of Ghazni, the Ghaznavi Missile.[26] In addition to this, the Pakistan Military Academy, where cadets are trained for becoming Officers of the Pakistan Army also gives tribute the Mahmud of Ghazni by naming one of its twelve companies; Ghaznavi Company.
In modern Pakistan he is hailed as a conquering hero who established the standard of Islam upon heathen land, while in India he is a raiding iconoclastic invader, bent upon the loot and plunder of a peaceful Hindu population. In India, Mahmud is therefore seen as a ruthless invader who plundered the temples of India and caused long lasting damage. His attacks on Mathura, Gandhara and Somnath are seen as decisive events in the history of North India and a sign of its subjugation to Islamic invasions. The fact that Mahmud never tried consolidating his conquests choosing instead to target a different region and different temples on each of his invasions is seen as evidence that he was interested in loot.[27]
Iranians remember him as an Orthodox Sunni who was responsible for the revival of the Persian culture by commissioning and appointing Persians to high offices in his administration as ministers, viziers and generals. In addition Iranians remember him for the promotion and preference of Persian language instead of Turkish and patronage of great nationalist poets and scholars such as Ferdowsi, Al-Biruni and Ferishta as well as his Lion and Sun flag which was once a flag symbol in the Imperial state of Iran.
You can rad the whole artice about Mahmud Ghaznawi here: Mahmud of Ghazni - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I think we can easily say that Mahmud Ghazanwi is a very controversial person in world history. Celebratd and respected by most Afghans and Pakistanis because of the spread of Islam but hated and cursed by Hindu Indians because he made their lives to hell.
