Muhammad of Ghor: from the hills of Ghor to Delhi

In the second half of the 12th century, a family emerged from Ghor, a mountainous region of present-day central Afghanistan. It first took Ghazni and then turned towards northern India. The member of this family who left the deepest mark on the political history of the subcontinent was Muizzuddin Muhammad bin Sam, commonly called Shahabuddin Muhammad Ghori (Muhammad of Ghor). He ruled from Ghazni from 1173 to 1206, and his slave generals went on to found the Delhi Sultanate.

Early life

The year of Muhammad Ghori’s birth is not known for certain. Different sources place it between 1144 and 1149. His father, Baha al-Din Sam, belonged to the ruling family of Ghor. His uncle, Ala al-Din Husain, set Ghazni on fire in revenge against the Ghaznavids and was known as “Jahan Soz” (world burner) for it.

Muhammad and his elder brother, Ghiyasuddin Muhammad, spent their early years in hardship. After the death of their cousin Saifuddin Muhammad in 1163, Ghiyasuddin sat on the throne of Ghor. According to the 13th-century historian Minhaj Siraj Juzjani, Muhammad left in anger for a time and went to Sistan, but his brother called him back and gave him the lands of Garmsir. His early title was Shahabuddin. He later took the title Muizzuddin.

The throne of Ghazni and the rule of two brothers

At that time Ghazni was held by the Ghuzz Turks, who had taken it from the Ghaznavids. According to Juzjani, Ghiyasuddin conquered Ghazni in 569 AH (1173), placed his younger brother on its throne and returned to Ghor. The two brothers then ruled together. The elder, Ghiyasuddin, fought the Khwarazm rulers to the west from his capital, Firozkoh. Muhammad made Ghazni his base and kept advancing eastwards.

Towards Sindh and Punjab

Juzjani gives the order of these campaigns year by year. In 571 AH (1175) Muhammad Ghori conquered Multan and then took Uch as well. In 574 AH (1178) he attacked Nahrwala (Anhilwara), the capital of Gujarat, by way of Uch and Multan. He was defeated by the large army and elephants of its young ruler (Bhim Dev in Juzjani; Mularaja II according to modern historians) and had to retreat. According to the World History Encyclopedia, after this failure he gave up the desert route and focused on building a strong base in Punjab.

In 575 AH (1179) he conquered Peshawar. In the following years he advanced on Lahore, where Khusrau Malik, the last ruler of the Ghaznavid dynasty, was in power. In 580 AH (1184) he had the fort of Sialkot built. Around 1186 Khusrau Malik finally surrendered and Lahore passed to the Ghurids. The Ghaznavid dynasty thus came to an end.

The two battles of Tarain

After Punjab, Muhammad Ghori took the fort of Tabarhinda, written as Sirhind in Juzjani’s text, and left Qazi Ziauddin Tulki there with 1,200 horsemen. Prithviraj Chauhan, the Chauhan ruler of Ajmer and Delhi, opposed him. In 1191 the two armies met on the field of Tarain, near Thanesar. According to Juzjani, the Sultan charged with his lance at the elephant of Govind Rai of Delhi and wounded him, but himself received a severe wound in the arm. He was about to fall from his horse when a young Khalji recognised him, mounted behind him and carried him from the field. The Ghurid army was defeated, and the fort of Sirhind was lost after a siege of 13 months.

The following year, 1192, Muhammad Ghori returned with a fresh army. Juzjani, citing an eyewitness, wrote that it included 120,000 armoured horsemen. This time he divided his light cavalry into four units of 10,000 each, which harassed the enemy with arrows from all sides. According to the World History Encyclopedia, the Ghurid army attacked suddenly while the Rajput force was not fully ready. According to Juzjani, Prithviraj was captured near Sarsuti and put to death, while Govind Rai was killed on the battlefield. After this victory, the areas of Ajmer, Hansi and Sarsuti came under Ghurid control.

Muhammad Ghori appointed his slave general Qutbuddin Aibak to the fort of Kuhram. In the same year Aibak took Meerut and then Delhi. According to Juzjani, in 590 AH (1193 or 1194) the Sultan defeated Jai Chand, the ruler of Kannauj, near Chandawar. In later years his generals reached Gwalior and Badaun, while Muhammad Bakhtiyar Khalji went as far as Bengal.

Conflict with Khwarazm and the final days

The situation in the west was different. Ghiyasuddin died in Herat in 1203, and Muhammad Ghori became the sole Sultan of the whole Ghurid realm. Meanwhile the war with the Khwarazmian rulers intensified. In 1204 he suffered a heavy defeat at Andkhud at the hands of the Khwarazmians and their allies, the Qara Khitai army. According to the World History Encyclopedia, this defeat also fuelled rebellions in India.

According to Juzjani, the Khokhars of the Koh-i-Jud rebelled, and the Sultan came to Punjab in winter to put down the revolt. The rebellion was crushed harshly. On his return he camped beside a stream at Dhamiak. His court historian Hasan Nizami wrote in the Taj-ul Ma’asir that during the evening prayer some attackers reached his tent and inflicted several deep wounds from which he did not survive. The event took place in 602 AH, that is March 1206. It is usually dated to 15 March 1206. Juzjani holds the Khokhar rebels responsible for the killing, although other early accounts give a different identity for the attackers. His body was taken to Ghazni.

Legacy

Muhammad Ghori had no son. He had trained several of his Turkish slaves like princes. Juzjani mentions four of them in particular who later became rulers: Tajuddin Yildiz, Nasiruddin Qabacha, Shamsuddin Iltutmish and Qutbuddin Aibak. After his death Yildiz became ruler of Ghazni, Qabacha established his rule in Multan and Sindh, and Aibak established in Lahore and Delhi the government that later became known as the Delhi Sultanate. According to the World History Encyclopedia, historians regard the second battle of Tarain as an important turning point in the history of the subcontinent.

Muhammad Ghori’s life was full of both conquests and defeats. The political structure that emerged in northern India after him was founded in his time.