Free The Age of Wrath: A History of the Delhi Sultanate by Abraham Eraly Page B

chroniclers claim. There are no references at all in Indian texts to Mahmud’s raids.
    MAHMUD’S FIRST INCURSION into India, probably in 1000 CE , seems to have been just a border raid, perhaps to test the field. His first major campaign was against his immediate eastern neighbour, the king Jayapala of Punjab, with whom Sabuktigin had earlier clashed. In September 1001 Mahmud, heading a 15,000-strong cavalry force, swooped down from the mountains and swept towards Peshawar. There he was confronted by Jayapala with an army of 12,000 cavalry, 30,000 infantry and 300 elephants. In the ensuing battle, which lasted just a few hours, Mahmud overwhelmed Jayapala by the sheer ferocity of his cavalry charge. Some 15,000 Indian soldiers were killed in the battle, and the raja, along with some princes, were captured by Mahmud. The raja and the princes were later released by Mahmud on payment of substantial ransoms. And on their release they were, according to Al-Utbi, sped on their way with contemptuous ‘smacks on their buttocks’ by the Turks.
    Returning to his kingdom, Jayapala, out of the humiliation of the repeated defeats he had suffered at the hands of the Ghaznavids, committed ritual suicide by mounting a funeral pyre. He was then succeeded by his son Anandapala, and under him also the conflict between the two kingdoms continued. Mahmud, we are told by Al-Utbi, ‘stretched upon him (Anandapala) the hand of slaughter, imprisonment, pillage, depopulation, and fire, and hunted him from ambush to ambush, over hill and dale, over soft and hard ground of his territory, and his followers either became a feast to rapacious wild beasts of the passes and plains, or fled away in distraction.’
    The conflict between the Ghaznavids and the Hindu Shahis went on intermittently for another two decades—altogether for some four decades, from the time of Sabuktigin—till around 1020, when Punjab was annexed by Mahmud. ‘The Hindu Shahi dynasty is now extinct, and of the whole housethere is no longer the slightest remnant in existence,’ reports Al-Biruni. ‘We must say that, in all their grandeur, they never slackened in their ardent desire for doing that which is good and right, that they were men of noble sentiment and noble bearing.’
    Beyond Punjab, the campaigns of Mahmud took him deep into the Indo-Gangetic Plain, as far as Kanauj on the Ganga. On the way to Kanauj, Mahmud raided Mathura, an ancient sacred city of Hindus and the reputed birthplace of Krishna, a divine incarnation. The city had many splendid temples, and Mahmud, we are told by Al-Utbi, was awed by their grandeur, particularly by the main temple there. ‘If anyone should wish to construct a building equal to this, he would not be able to do it without expending a hundred thousand red dinars, and it would occupy two hundred years, even though the most experienced and able workmen were employed,’ he is reported to have remarked. But this admiration did not prevent Mahmud from ordering the demolition of the temple. ‘All the temples [in Mathura] should be burnt with naphtha and fire, and levelled to the ground,’ he ordered. The city was pillaged for twenty days by the Turks, till they glutted themselves with plunder.
    THE MOST CELEBRATED campaign of Mahmud was against the temple city of Somnath on the seashore in Gujarat, and it was also his last important Indian campaign. Mahmud set out from Ghazni on this campaign in October 1024, leading a huge army of 30,000 cavalry, and accompanied by a multitude of volunteers who joined him on the way, drawn by the lure of booty. He reached Multan in November and headed for Gujarat through the desert of Rajasthan, characteristically making meticulous preparations for the journey through the desert, loading several hundreds of camels with water and provisions, and requiring each soldier to carry with him fodder, water and food sufficient for several days.
    Mahmud reached Somnath in January 1025. In medieval chronicles there