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The Ghaznavid dynasty ( Ġaznaviyān) was a Persianate Muslim dynasty of Turkic peoples mamluk origin. It ruled the Ghaznavid Empire or the Empire of Ghazni from 977 to 1186, which at its greatest extent, extended from the Oxus to the Indus Valley. The dynasty was founded by Sabuktigin upon his succession to the rule of Ghazni Province after the death of his father-in-law, Alp Tigin, who was an ex-general of the Samanid Empire from Balkh.
Sabuktigin's son, Mahmud of Ghazni, expanded the Ghaznavid Empire to the Amu Darya, the Indus River and the Indian Ocean in the east and to Rey and Hamadan in the west. Under the reign of Mas'ud I, the Ghaznavid dynasty began losing control over its western territories to the Seljuk Empire after the Battle of Dandanaqan in 1040, resulting in a restriction of its holdings to modern-day Afghanistan, Pakistan and Northern India.
In 1151, Sultan Bahram Shah lost Ghazni to the Ghurid dynasty sultan Ala al-Din Husayn. The Ghaznavids retook Ghazni, but lost the city to the Ghuzz Turks who in turn lost it to Muhammad of Ghor. In response, the Ghaznavids fled to Lahore, their regional capital. In 1186, Lahore was conquered by the Ghurid sultan, Muhammad of Ghor, with its Ghaznavid ruler, Khusrau Malik, imprisoned and later executed.
A court party instigated by men of the scribal class – civilian ministers rather than Turkic generals – rejected the candidacy of Alp Tigin for the Samanid throne. Mansur I was installed instead, and Alp Tigin prudently retired to south of the Hindu Kush, where he captured Ghazna and became the ruler of the city as a Samanid authority. The Simjurids enjoyed control of Khorasan south of the Amu Darya but were hard-pressed by a third great Iranian dynasty, the Buyid dynasty, and were unable to survive the collapse of the Samanids and the subsequent rise of the Ghaznavids.
The struggles of the Turkic slave generals for mastery of the throne with the help of shifting allegiance from the court's ministerial leaders both demonstrated and accelerated the Samanid decline. Samanid weakness attracted into Transoxiana the Karluks, a Turkic people who had recently converted to Islam. They occupied Bukhara in 992, establishing in Transoxania the Kara-Khanid Khanate.
Alp Tigin's died in 963, and after two ghulam governors and three years, his slave Sabuktigin became the governor of Ghazna.
Once established as governor of Ghazna, Sabuktigin was asked to intervene in Khurasan, at the insistence of the Samanid emir, and after a victorious campaign received the governorships of Balkh, Tukharistan, Bamiyan, Ghur and Gharchistan. Sabuktigin inherited a governorship in turmoil. In Zabulistan, the typical military fief system( mustaghall) were being changed into permanent ownership( tamlik) which resulted in the Turkic soldiery unwilling to take up arms. Sabuktigin reformed the system making them all a mustaghall-type fief. In 976, he ended the conflict between two Turkic ghulams at Bust and restored the original ruler. Later that same year, Sabuktigin campaigned against Qusdar, catching the ruler(possibly Mu'tazz b. Ahmad) off guard and obtaining an annual tribute from him.
After the death of Sabuktigin, his son by Alptigin's daughter, Ismail, was given Ghazna. Another son, Abu'l-Muzaffar Nasr, was given the governorship of Bust, while in Khorasan, the eldest son Mahmud, was given command of the army. Sabuktigin's intent was to ensure governorships for his family, despite the decaying influence of the Samanid Empire, and did not consider his dynasty as independent. Ismail, upon gaining his inheritance, quickly traveled to Bust and did homage to Emir Abu'l-Harith Mansur b. Nuh. Mahmud, who had been left out of any significant inheritance, proposed a division of power, to which Ismail refused. Mahmud marched on Ghazna and subsequently Ismail was defeated and captured in 998 at the Battle of Ghazni.
By all accounts, the rule of Mahmud was the golden age and height of the Ghaznavid Empire. Mahmud carried out seventeen expeditions through northern India to establish his control and set up tributary states, and his raids also resulted in the looting of a great deal of plunder. He established his authority from the borders of Ray to Samarkand, from the Caspian Sea to the Yamuna.
During Mahmud's reign (997–1030), the Ghaznavids settled 4,000 Turkmen people families near Farana in Khorasan. By 1027, due to the Turkmen raiding neighbouring settlements, the governor of Tus, Abu l'Alarith Arslan Jadhib, led military strikes against them. The Turkmen were defeated and scattered to neighbouring lands. Still, as late as 1033, Ghaznavid governor Tash Farrash executed fifty Turkmen chiefs for raids into Khorasan.
In 1018, he laid waste the city of Mathura, which was "ruthlessly sacked, ravaged, desecrated and destroyed". According to Firishta, writing an "History of Hindustan" in the 16th-17th century, the city of Mathura was the richest in India. When it was attacked by Mahmud of Ghazni, "all the idols" were burnt and destroyed during a period of twenty days, gold and silver was smelted for booty, and the city was burnt down. In 1018 Mahmud also captured Kanauj, the capital of the Pratiharas, and then confronted the Chandelas, from whom he obtained the payment of tribute. In 1026, he raided and plundered the Somnath temple, taking away a booty of 20 million dinars.
The wealth brought back from Mahmud's expeditions to Ghazni was enormous, and contemporary historians ( e.g., Abolfazl Beyhaghi, Ferdowsi) give glowing descriptions of the magnificence of the capital and of the conqueror's munificent support of literature. Mahmud died in April 1030 and had chosen his son, Mohammed, as his successor.
The Indian soldiers, whom Romila Thapar presumed to be Hindu, were one of the components of the army with their commander called sipahsalar-i-Hinduwan and lived in their own quarter of Ghazna practicing their own religion. Indian soldiers under their commander Suvendhray remained loyal to Mahmud. They were also used against a Turkic rebel, with the command given to a Hindu named Tilak according to Baihaki.Romila Thapar (2005). Somanatha: The Many Voices of a History. Verso. p. 40. ISBN 9781844670208.
Like the other dynasties that rose out of the remains of the Abbasid Caliphate, the Ghaznavid administrative traditions and military practice came from the Abbasids. The , at least in the earliest campaign, were still substantial in Ghaznavid military incursions, especially in dashing raids deep into hostile territory. There is a record of '6000 Arab horse' being sent against king Anandapala in 1008, and evidence of this Arabian cavalry persists until 1118 under the Ghaznavid governor in Lahore.
Due to their access to the Indus-Ganges plains, the Ghaznavids, during the 11th and 12th centuries, developed the first Muslim army to use war elephants in battle. The elephants were protected by armour plating on their fronts. The use of these elephants was a foreign weapon in other regions that the Ghaznavids fought in, particularly in Central Asia.
According to Clifford Edmund Bosworth:
Persian literary culture enjoyed a renaissance under the Ghaznavids during the 11th century. The Ghaznavid court was so renowned for its support of Persian literature that the poet Farrukhi Sistani traveled from his home province to work for them. The poet Unsuri's short collection of poetry was dedicated to Sultan Mahmud and his brothers Nasr and Yaqub. Another poet of the Ghaznavid court, Manuchehri, wrote numerous poems about the merits of drinking wine.
Sultan Mahmud, modelling the Samanid Bukhara as a cultural center, made Ghazni into a center of learning, inviting Ferdowsi and al-Biruni. He even attempted to persuade Avicenna, but was refused. Mahmud preferred that his fame and glory be publicized in Persian and hundreds of poets assembled at his court. He brought whole libraries from Rayy and Isfahan to Ghazni and even demanded that the Khwarizmshah court send its men of learning to Ghazni. Due to his invasion of Rayy and Isfahan, Persian literary production was inaugurated in Azerbaijan and Persian Iraq.
The Ghaznavids continued to develop historical writing in Persian that had been initiated by their predecessors, the Samanid Empire. The historian Abu'l-Fadl Bayhaqi's Tarikh-e Beyhaqi, written in the latter half of the 11th century, is an example.
Although the Ghaznavids were Turkic and their military leaders were generally of the same stock, as a result of the original involvement of Sebuktigin and Mahmud of Ghazni in Samanid affairs and in the Samanid cultural environment, the dynasty became thoroughly Persianized, so that in practice one cannot consider their rule over Iran one of foreign domination. They also copied their administrative system from the Samanids. In terms of cultural championship and the support of Persian poets, they were more Persian than their ethnically-Iranian rivals, the Buyid dynasty, whose support of Arabic letters in preference to Persian is well known.
The 16th century Persian historian, Firishta, records Sabuktigin's genealogy as descended from the Sasanian Empire: "Subooktu-geen, the son of Jookan, the son of Kuzil-Hukum, the son of Kuzil-Arslan, the son of Ferooz, the son of Yazdegerd III, king of Persia." However, modern historians believe this was an attempt to connect himself with the history of old Persia.
Historian Bosworth explains: "In fact with the adoption of Persian administrative and cultural ways the Ghaznavids threw off their original Turkish steppe background and became largely integrated with the Perso-Islamic tradition." As a result, Ghazni developed into a great centre of Arabic learning.
With Sultan Mahmud's invasions of North India, Persian culture was established at Lahore, which later produced the famous poet, Masud Sa'd Salman. Lahore, under Ghaznavid rule in the 11th century, attracted Persian scholars from Khorasan, India and Central Asia and became a major Persian cultural centre. One of the most significant early works on Sufism, the Kashf al-mahjub, was written in Lahore by Abu al-Hasan Hujwiri al-Ghaznawi. It was also during Mahmud's reign that Ghaznavid coinage began to have bilingual legends consisting of Arabic and Devanagari script. The entire range of Persianate institutions and customs that would come to characterize the political economy of most of India would be implemented by the later Ghaznavids.
The Persian culture established by the Ghaznavids in Ghazna and Eastern Afghanistan survived the Ghurid invasion in the 12th century and endured until the invasion of the Mongols.
In addition to the wealth accumulated through raiding Indian cities, and exacting tribute from Indian , the Ghaznavids also benefited from their position as an intermediary along the trade routes between China and the Mediterranean. The Ghaznavid rulers are generally credited with spreading Islam into the Indian subcontinent.
They were, however, unable to hold power for long and by 1040 the Seljuk Empire had taken over their Persian Empire domains and a century later the Ghurid dynasty took over their remaining sub-continental lands.
The Ghaznavid conquests facilitated the beginning of the Turko-Afghan period into India, which would be further conducted by the Ghurid dynasty until the Turko-Afghans successfully established themselves in the Delhi Sultanate.
| 1 | Nasir-ud-din
Defender of the Faith | Sabuktigin | 977–997 | ||
| 2 | No title | Ismail | 997–998 | son of Sabuktigin | |
| 3 | Yamin ad-Dawlah Abu Qasim Right-hand man of the State | Mahmud | 998–1030 | first son of Sabuktigin | |
| 4 | Jalal ad-Dawlah Dignity of the State | Muhammad | 1030 1st reign | second son of Mahmud | |
| 5 | Shihab ad-Dawlah Star of the State | Masud I | 1030–1041 | first son of Mahmud | Was overthrown, imprisoned and executed, following the battle of Dandanaqan |
| — | Jalal ad-Dawlah Dignity of the State | Muhammad | 1041 2nd reign | second son of Mahmud | Raised to the throne following the removal of Masud I. |
| 6 | Shihab ad-Dawlah Star of the State | Mawdud | 1041–1048 | son of Masud I | Defeated Muhammad at the battle of Nangrahar and gained the throne. |
| 7 | ? | Masud II | 1048 | son of Mawdud | |
| 8 | Baha ad-Dawlah Splendor of the State | Ali | 1048–1049 | son of Masud I | |
| 9 | Izz ad-Dawlah Glory of the State | Abd al-Rashid | 1049–1052 | fifth son of Mahmud | |
| 10 | Qiwam ad-Dawlah Support of the State | Toghrul | 1052–1053 | Turkish mamluk general | Usurped the Ghaznavid throne after massacring Abd al-Rashid and eleven other Ghaznavid princes. |
| 11 | Jamal ad-Dawlah Beauty of the state | Farrukh-Zad | 1053–1059 | son of Masud I | |
| 12 | Zahir ad-Dawlah Help of the State | Ibrahim | 1059–1099 | son of Masud I | |
| 13 | Ala ad-Dawlah Blessing of the State | Mas'ūd III | 1099–1115 | son of Ibrahim | |
| 14 | Kamal ad-Dawlah Perfection of the State | Shir-Zad | 1115–1116 | son of Masud III | Murdered by his younger brother Arslan ibn Mas'ud. |
| 15 | Sultan ad-Dawlah Sultan of the state | Arslan-Shah | 1116–1117 | son of Masud III | Took the throne from his older brother Shirzad, but faced a rebellion from his other brother Bahram Shah, who was supported by the sultan of the Great Seljuq Empire, Ahmad Sanjar. |
| 16 | Yamin ad-Dawlah Right-hand man of the state | Bahram Shah | 1117–1157 | son of Masud III | Under Bahram-Shah, the Ghaznavid empire became a Tributary state of the Great Seljuq Empire. Bahram was assisted by Ahmad Sanjar, sultan of the Great Seljuq empire, in securing his throne. |
| 17 | Muizz ad-Dawlah Honor of the State | Khusrau Shah | 1157–1160 | son of Bahram-Shah | |
| 18 | Taj ad-Dawlah Crown of the state | Khusrau Malik | 1160–1186 | son of Khusrau-Shah | |
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