History of India Page 1 of 15

HISTORY

Subject : History
(For under graduate student)

Paper No. : Paper - II

History of India

Topic No. & Title : Topic - 2

Arab, Ghaznavid And Ghorid
Invasions of India

Lecture No. & Title : Lecture - 1

Arab, Ghaznavid And Ghorid
Invasions of India

The Arab Invasions of Sind, The Ghaznavide and

Ghoride Encounters

The Indian subcontinent, extending from the Himalayas (N)

to Kanyakumari (S) and the arid tracts and mountains (W)
to the mighty Brahmaputra and beyond (E) has been cradle
of a rich cultural tradition, whose roots go deep into history-
-a history which has been witness to great political
achievements, cultural efflorescence and social change; the
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rise and fall of dynasties and Empires, battles and uprisings,

against "outsiders" and indigenous foes alike.

Despite the natural defenses of her geo-physical frontiers,

the Indian subcontinent was not insular in any way, having
being in 'contact' with the world outside through pursuits,
peaceful and warlike. These included trade, diplomatic
missions and war, involving the Aryans, Sakas, Hunas,
Kushans among others.

From the 8th century an entirely new world was opened up to

the people of Hindustan-the world of Islam, and one of the
earliest representatives were the Arabs, to be followed by
the Turks from Ghazni and Ghor.

The main protagonists in these three sets of

encounters were:-
Arabs-The first recorded expedition of the Arabs against the
Indian coastal areas took place during the Khilafat of Omar
(c 636-37 A.D.).Around 710 A.D. a punitive expedition
against the pirates of Debal in Sind had resulted in failure.
This provided the incentive behind Mohammad bin
Qasim's invasion of Sind in 712 A.D. Our primary source
material is the Chachnama, a 13th century Persian
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translation of a set of contemporary Arabic narratives,

detailing the invasions dating between 710 and 714 A.D.

The main resistance from the Indian side came from Dahir
who belonged to the Hindushahi dynasty. Mohammad bin
Qasim was victorious and Debal, Nairun, Brahmanabad,
Multan were occupied and settled. Those who had converted
to Islam were exempted from payment of tribute and
capitation tax and were not enslaved. Life and property was
spared and protected, religious freedom guaranteed and
Brahmins in particular were treated with due respect and
honour and entrusted with administrative office. There were
a few instances of temple demolition at Debal, Nairun and
Alor. The Arabs who settled in Sind established their own
dynasties in Multan. Chieftans of Saiyyid families extended
control over the upper and lower Indus regions. But these
settlements were too few and much too dispersed to make
any permanent impact in the area.

However, the Chachnama mentions that the Arab

conquerors made a conscious attempt to accommodate and
adjust to the social stratification which they encountered in
Sind. This was aided by the hierarchical structures pre-
existing in Arab society. The Chachnama does not record
any forcible conversions to Islam. Rather it mentions the
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attempts to accept the Brahmans and thakuras as

subordinate ruling class. Following the establishment of
authority at Brahmanabad, the Brahman officials took it
upon themselves to assure their people about Arab rule in
Sind. The ruins of the city of Mansura, built by the Arabs,
the coinage issued by them, seem to indicate that the initial
hostility to and rejection of each other had been overcome.

Ghaznavides- Tradition maintains that Mahmud of Ghazni

led as many as 17 expeditions against north Indian towns
between 1000 and 1026 A.D. Our main sources are Tarikh-
i-Yamini by Al Utbi and Firdausi’s Shahnama. Mahmud
had ascended the throne at Ghazni in 998 A.D. and ruled till
1030 A.D. At the time of his accession Kabul and Jalalabad
had been annexed to Ghazni. Mahmud resumed the
offensive against the Hindushahis whose sway extended
from Peshawar to Punjab. Jayapal was defeated in 1001 A.D.
His son Anandapal was defeated in 1015 A.D. Mahmud
raided Indian towns alternately with battles in central Asia.
Some of the major victories of Mahmud were against
Thaneswar(1014), Kanauj(1018-19), Gwalior and
Kalinjar(1021-22).Mahmud made no attempt to annex
these states.
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Between 1020 and 1025 AD, affairs in Central Asia kept

Mahmud distracted. Then the famous sack of the temple
town of Somnath took place in 1025 A.D .Contemporary
accounts testify to the famed wealth of the temple at
Somnath, which was a major pilgrim centre and a rich port
town as well.Not only was the town sacked, but the temple
was attacked and the idol desecrated. Mahmud ordered that
parts of the broken icon should be taken back to Ghazni. The
final encounter of Mahmud was against the Jats of the Salt
Ranges in 1026 A.D.

Mahmud of Ghazni has often been dismissed as a mere

plunderer and a rabid iconoclast .It is true that Mahmud did
not leave behind any permanent or positive mark on Indian
soil. But the Ghaznavide invasions of the Punjab and Multan
had exposed the vulnerability of the northern plains to
attacks from across the Hindukush mountains from the
northwest yet again.

Ghorides- The campaigns of Mohammad of Ghor took

place between 1178 and 1191-92 A.D. Our main sources are
Minhaj us Siraj Juzjani – Tabaqat-i-Nasiri, Hasan
Nizami’s Taj-ul Maathir, Ferishta’s Tarikh-I Ferishta .
The two major battles fought between Prithviraj Chauhan
and the armies of Shihabuddin Md. Ghori were the first and
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second battles of Tarain, in 1191 and 1192 respectively.

Contemporary accounts mention that the Ghoride army
included 120,000 armoured cavalry while Prithviraj Chauhan
fielded between 200,000 and 300,000 horses, 3000
elephants as well as an infantry corps. Despite being
outnumbered, the Ghoride army emerged victorious in 1192.
Md. Ghori was stabbed to death on his return journey from
Lahore to Ghazni. He had left behind his trusted generals to
supervise the task of consolidating and transforming military
conquest into political dominion. Qutubuddin Aibak was
appointed governor of Delhi, Tajuddin Yaldoz was governor
of Kirman, Nasiruddin Qubacha was governor of Multan and
Uch and Ikhtiyaruddin Mohammad, son of Bakhtiyar Khilji
was in Bengal. The political map of North India was in the
process of undergoing a major transformation.

Reasons for success:

Historians have tried to analyse the military success of the

Arabs and the Turks by highlighting different factors. In
terms of economic resources, political importance and social
prestige and martial spirit and valour, the Rajputs and the
Ghorides were fairly balanced. The historian K.A. Nizami
suggests that caste distinctions weakened the military
organization of the Indian armies which consisted largely of
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Kshatriyas are the main fighting force. The cohesiveness of

North Indian society was disturbed by the caste system
which divided the people as opposed to the liberating
message of Islam and its proclamation of equality and
brotherhood. Militarily the invading armies included elite
soldiers who were trained in new techniques of warfare. The
deployment of the mounted archers gave these armies an
advantage. Their horses were saddled and stirruped and
were provided with iron horse shoes. Unity of command,
superior tactics, helped the Ghorides defeat the army of
Prithviraj Chauhan, the ruler of Delhi and Ajmer. Hasan
Nizami mentions the use of the crossbow by the Ghoride
infantry and cavalry. The Indian cavalry was deficient in
equipment and weaponry and plagued by the problem of
disruption of supplies. Both the Ghaznavides and the
Ghorides had better access to war horses. These light armed
horses were very mobile and easily maneuverable. The
Ghoride forces at Tarain were largely made up of heavy
cavalry manned by the bandagan or Turkish slave soldiers.
They could resort to full bodied cavalry charges with the
effect of stunning and shocking a relatively immobile
opponent- either foot soldiers or elephant corps. This static
target could then be effectively dealt with by the light
archers.
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Impact of the Invasions:

Mahmud of Ghazni and Md. of Ghor typified the warlords

who had been carving out principalities for themselves within
the Islamic world since the 9th century. The Universal
Caliphate of the Abbasids had steadily disintegrated-
retaining only a titular headship of the orthodox Sunni
community. Some of its provinces had been lost to the
Shias. The Fatimid Imams who represented the Ismailis from
Egypt and Syria, virtually setup a counter-Caliphate between
the 10th and 12th century. They had deployed networks of
control and propaganda even as far east as Sind. In the
majority of the Caliphal territories real power had passed
into the hands of semi independent hereditary governors like
Mahmud of Ghazni and Md. Ghori. These governors had
initially held the title of Amir or commander and having gone
through the formality of obtaining a letter of manumission (
manshur ), a robe ( khilat ), and title ( laqab ) from the
Caliphs, were permitted to insert their names in the khutba
and sikka.

This had been the legacy inherited by the Ghaznavides and

Ghorides. As opposed to the frenzied extension of the so
called „sword of Islam‟ and the iconoclastic raids of the
Ghaznavide armies, the Ghoride encounter of the late 12th ,
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early 13th century was a more definitive move towards the

establishment of an Indian Sultanate. Consideration of
material gains by way of loot and plunder to sustain
administrative expenditure and cover the cost of military
campaigns had played an important role in both the
encounters. By the beginning of the 13th century however
the greater motivation was to look for alternative territorial
spaces to conquer and settle. It was still necessary to appear
as the standard bearer of orthodox Islam in order to gain
legitimacy but there was equally an eagerness to entrench
and embrace an alien culture system. Evidence of bi- lingual
coinage of Md.Ghori , representation of living forms
(anathema to Islam) on such coins eg. Figures of a seated
Lakshmi, Shiva‟s Bull, a horseman, was indicative of the
more long term concerns of the Ghorides.

Professor Md. Habib considers the Ghoride invasions in

particular as being responsible for “a turnover of public
opinion…long overdue”. He had analysed the impact in terms
of both an urban and a rural revolution- “a revolution of
Indian city-labour led by Ghorian Turks”. The kingdoms over
which such generals as Aibak, Qabacha and Yaldoz had been
given the authority to rule on behalf of the Ghorides, had to
be made politically stable. For this reason it was necessary
to realize and accept the co-existence not only of two
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religions but also of two distinctive socio-political systems.

During the course of the late 13th and early 14th centuries it
became clear that the ruling community could not be
confined to „the faithful‟. At the very outset the Turks
represented a heterogeneous community of Ghaznavides,
Ghorides, Khorasanis, Tajik and Khalaj. To these were added
elements of the indigenous elite groups. It was also clear
that the initial stage of state building would require the
cooperation of local elements- skilled artisans, construction
workers, Multani merchants and Sahs or money
lenders/brokers, an indigenous clerical staff to take care of
the details of administration and in the military sphere, men
who would fight for the Turks. The urban revolution that Md.
Habib had spoken of implied a growth of urbanization. The
population of newly established urban centres- towns,
garrisons, marketcentres- would naturally be drawn from the
peripheral rural areas. As such the social and perhaps the
caste profile of those who took service under the Turks,
within these urban locales would undergo a transformation.
This would in course of time affect the socio-economic
structure of the rural hinterland as well. Perhaps „revolution‟
is anachronistic as a descriptive and analytical category to
denote the changes that took place in the wake of the
Ghaznavide-Ghoride invasions. But it is equally true that the
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polity and economy of North India from the 13th century

onwards marked a qualitative break with the past.

Rethinking the Encounters;

The three major events or sets of military encounters

mentioned above were preceded and / accompanied by
„movements or migrations of non-military people‟. These
included traders, travellers, scholars, mendicants and Sufis.
These communities of people were migrants or temporary
settlers who set up residence outside the fortified areas and
around the ports. They were to be found mainly in contact
with the peripheral population, indigenous and non-elite in
social status. These were the so-called „small men‟ of Al
Hind. The sea borne extension of Islam, whose impact was
largely commercial had not remained confined to the Arabian
Sea littoral.

The advent of Islam in Arabia, in nature of early Islamic

contacts with the sub-continent along the western coastline
and the making of an Islamic coastal frontier had culminated
in the Arab conquest of Sind in 712 A.D. Sind had been a
conduit of both maritime and overland trade to and from the
East. It was an unsettled frontier both politically and
commercially. Along this interface of frontier and settled
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societies there had been a regular movement of people and

merchandise. There was both piracy and brigandage along
this frontier implying a fluidity of movement between trading
and raiding. The commercial frontier of Islam operated along
an organizational mode of long distance trade, mobile wealth
and raiding capacity. On the Indian side of this frontier, it
encountered a more sedentary organization of settled
agriculture, fixed landed assets and a growth of small and
middle sized market centres and urban areas. A dynamic
interaction between a nomadic mercantile society and a
settled agricultural community gradually took place. This
would lead to a fusion of cultures and traditions.

The political frontiers of Islam between the 8th and early 11th
century had remained more or less stationary, without really
extending beyond Sind. But between the 11th and 13th
century there was a noticeable increase in the volume of
India trade. Further trade relations were extended between
India and the Middle East, Eurasia and even China.

The successful military penetration of 11th and 12th centuries

led to the subsequent establishment and consolidation of
political dominion by formerly nomadic tribes. The Islamicate
world had been transformed and despotic traditions were
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being evolved constantly with institutional guarantees to

ensure stability and permanence of rule.

Under the first four Caliphs, an ideal of an egalitarian tribal

order had prevailed. On the one hand there were the Arab
Muslims and the elite Syrians. On the other hand there were
non Arab Muslims/Iranian (mawwali). In reality hierarchical
traditions informed the evolving social order which was fluid,
unstable and sometimes volatile. As far the Arabs were
concerned, there were the more or less sedentary umma of
the oases, ordered, commercial minded, religiously orthodox
and initially pacific. They were posited against the Bedouins
or the Arab pastoral nomads of the desert, who were
aggressive, impious and disorderly. In this situation the
exercise of authority by nobly born tribal elites was, in
course of time, inevitable and perhaps desirable too.
Domination was expected to be grounded in the principle of
justice or adal. This justice implied preservation of the
existing social order i.e. rigidity was reinforced and
hierarchies consolidated.

In this exercise to disaggregate the „Muslim‟ invaders, we

see that both the Ghaznavide and the Ghoride armies
included equally disparate groups. The Ghaznavides had
included Turks (Qarlugh tribals), Afghans, Tajiks from
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Khorasan (eastern Iran) and nomadic or semi- nomadic

Arabs. The Ghoride armies were composed of Turkish slave
soldiers (ghulaman/bandagan), Tajiks, Khalaj (probably not
ethnic Turks but a Turkicised group), fleeing immigrants
from Afghanistan and Transoxiana, and ambitious fortune
hunters of heterogeneous ethnicity.

The Ghoride ruling group, Shansabanids, were lowly pastoral

chieftains of a poorly developed isolated region of
Afghanistan. Some of them were agriculturists, others
reared horses and cattle. There were no urban settlements.
Political centres were dispersed in the hill forts. Local
initiative lay with the military commanders of these
outposts. From here they organized raids on caravans. Tribal
traditions of honouring male relatives of ruling Shansabanids
with honorific titles and local administrative autonomy and
authority were continued. These were all indicators of a late
„Islamisation‟ in terms of urbanity and culture.

It is clear from the above that the concept of a „Muslim‟

invasion of North India, or that of the rise of „Muslim‟ rule in
India needs to be reviewed. Similarly, it would be
unhistorical to think in terms of an undifferentiated category
of Hindus. Those who had participated in the defense of their
hearth and home against the invading armies came from
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different social groups, were linguistically and culturally

distinctive from each other, and formed their own local
political alignments. Although they were hierarchically
structured along caste, it was conventional among
imperialist and nationalist historians to pit the „Hindu‟
chieftains and their military retainers en bloc opposite the
„Muslim‟ invaders. This homogenization of a Muslim
conquering army and that of an eternal united Hindu
community distorts historical perspective. Unfortunately, the
writing of sectarian histories of the encounters between the
Islamicate world and Al Hind has encouraged this tendency.

Equally important is the need to historicize the relationship

between conflict and co-existence without treating the two
issues as mutually exclusive. By looking at different
narratives of the „conquest‟, including the unofficial,
unsponsored variants and voices of the „small men‟-local
ballads, mystic literature, folklore, it is still possible to
reconstruct a history of the Arab and Turkish invasions
without favour or prejudice in which difference is recognized,
conflict is acknowledged and the effort to create a composite
culture is accepted as a necessary process of this history.