ABSTRACT
For nearly thirty years after 1000 ce, Mahmud, the Turco-Afghan sultan of Ghazna (now Ghazni) in eastern Afghanistan, mounted lightning raids on urban settlements of northern and north-western India on seventeen different occasions. The whirlwind rapidity with which his swift horsemen arrived at the gates of palaces, forts and temples and executed their plan of loot and destruction of sacred Hindu, Buddhist or Jain sites and the massacres of those to whom they took a dislike, was a terrifying experience for the sedentary Indian populace of traders, artisans, bureaucrats and priests. In the absence of any form of international law there could be no redress from a higher authority that would conceivably restrain this marauding ruler. The Indians accepted their fate with stoicism but their hearts were filled with fear of the Turk.
