Ghaznavid Empire

The Ghaznavid Empire was a Persianate Sunni Muslim sultanate of Turkic mamluk (slave-soldier) origin that ruled large parts of Central Asia, Khorasan, eastern Iran, and northwestern India between 977 and 1186.

It was founded by Sebuktigin (Sabuktigin), a Turkic ghulam who had served the Iranian Samanid dynasty under his patron and father-in-law Alp Tigin; on consolidating control of Ghazna (modern Ghazni, Afghanistan) in 977, Sebuktigin established an autonomous dynasty that soon eclipsed its Samanid overlords. The empire reached its zenith under Sebuktigin's son Mahmud of Ghazni (r. 998-1030), who launched some seventeen campaigns into the Indian subcontinent, extended Ghaznavid power from the Caspian region and Transoxiana to the Indus Valley and beyond, and made Ghazna a brilliant centre of Persian learning and Islamic culture, patronising figures such as the poet Ferdowsi and the polymath al-Biruni. Ghaznavid expansion into India helped inaugurate the lasting establishment of Islam in the subcontinent. After Mahmud's death the dynasty declined: defeat by the Seljuk Turks at the Battle of Dandanaqan in 1040 stripped away its western Iranian and Khorasanian provinces, confining the state increasingly to Afghanistan and the Punjab, with Lahore eventually serving as capital. The empire was finally extinguished in 1186 when the rival Ghurids captured Lahore.