entered to rescue some Turkish soldiers and craftsmen who had been
“enslaved” and to retrieve payments for elephants and equipment, which
had been promised by Raja Jaipal. It is also apparent that, in India, his armies
plundered and razed temples and decimated Buddhist institutions. His
motives appear to have been for profit, personal glory, and filling the coffers
of his capital.^3 Yet sources in Persia and Central Asia, by the thirteenth
century, were rhetorically praising him as a “great sultan” whose conquests
were consistent with the earlier caliphs and were done in the name of jiha ̄d.
Originally,jiha ̄dhad connoted the act of carrying out the will of Alla ̄h and
preparing oneself and the world for submission to Alla ̄h. However, under
the caliphs jiha ̄dbecame an excuse for “just war” against those who resisted
conquest and it was eventually included in the legal codes as such.^4 Hence,
for some Persian rhetoricians, Ghaznı ̄ was engaged in jiha ̄dfor the conquest
of infidels in the name of Alla ̄h. On the other hand, even al-Bı ̄ru ̄nı ̄, the
Muslim astronomer who had been brought into India by Ghaznı ̄ and wrote
descriptions of the Indian religious and scientific landscape, spoke of the
sultan as having engaged in insensitive excess, of having “utterly ruined the
prosperity of the country,” and breeding an “inveterate aversion towards all
Muslims.”^5 At the least, Ghaznı ̄’s (or subsequent rhetoricians’) use of Islam
to justify his raids was a classic case of “civil religion,” the use of religious
rhetoric in support of political action.
While Mahmu ̄d of Ghaznı ̄ had no long-term plans to establish hegemony
in India, another Afghan raider did. A century later Muhammed of Ghor,
perhaps less controversial than Mahmu ̄d, nonetheless began to combine
military engagements with alliances to extend his political control south-
ward. Because a political and religious vacuum existed, especially in the
border regions of the north, a result, in part, of centuries of infighting and
regional skirmishes, Ghor was able to establish hegemony in Northwest
India. His successor appointed as regents in Delhi members of his court
who had been taken as “slaves” and trained for administration. These “slave
kings” were to establish the first of four Delhi sultanates.^6 While this sultanate
lasted only from 1206–90, it was powerful enough to fend off the brunt
of Mongol expansion in the thirteenth century. Though the Mongols came
to the fringes of Northern India, they marched rather into the Middle East
burning cities and turning mosques into horse stables. Baghdad was sacked
as blood literally flowed in the streets. One of the results of the Mongol thrust
westward was the migration of Muslims from the Middle East to a “safe
haven,” namely, to a place with a sultanate where they could feel safe. The
Islamic era had become a fixture in much of North India.
126 The Coming of Islam