ABSTRACT
The rise and fall of the Seljūq empire more or less brought an end to the political interactions between the Muslim states centred on the Mediterranean and those oriented towards Central Asia and India. The Ghaznavids only kept independent from the Seljūqs in India; their possessions on the western side of the Hindukush fell to the Ghūrids, natives of the Afghan mountains, who in 1150 razed the ‘western capital’ of Ghaznln (Ghazna) to the ground. Attacks by the Ghuzz and a last flare-up of Seljūq power under Sanjar only postponed the complete take-over of Afghanistan by this Sunnite dynasty. The Ghūrids came from the region round Herat; by 1178 they were strong enough to attack India and occupy Peshawar; in 1182 they reached the coast of Sindh and in 1186 they took Lahore, the eastern capital of the Ghaznavids. In 1192 the defeat of the Hindu prince Pritthvī opened the way to Delhi, and it was taken in the following year by Aibak, the Turkish slave of the Ghūrid Mu‘izz ad-Dīn. Ghūrid rule soon spread in the south as far as Gujarat, in the east as far as Bengal. The autonomy of these ‘slave rulers’ a few years later begins a new epoch in the history of Muslim India; though it falls chronologically into our period its historical implications lie outside it.
