The Ghaznavids: Their Empire in Afghanistan and Eastern Iran 994–1040

This book deals with the origins and early history of the dynasty of Turkish slave origin which in the first half of the eleventh century AD, became a mighty power controlling lands from western Persia to the Panjab and from what is now the northern Uzbekistan Republic to the shores of the Indian Ocean in Baluchistan and Sind. The book is based on the original Persian and Arabic sources for the period, and describes the process by which, from a Turkish steppe background, Sultan Mahmud of Ghazna and his son Mas'ud assembled by force of arms the most powerful empire known in the Islamic world since the disintegration of the Baghdad caliphate. Much of the Sultans' energy was devoted to the exploitation of India, with its rich temple treasures and reserves of slave manpower, and Mahmud in particular achieved a great contemporary reputation as a hammer of pagans and heretics, before the attacks of a new wave of Turkish invaders from Central Asia, the Ozhuz, overran the western provinces of their empire by 1040.