The Later Ghaznavids: Splendour and Decay (The Dynasty in Afghanistan and Northern India 1040–1186)

This book is a sequel to Prof. Bosworth's classic study of the origins and early history of the Ghaznavid empire, The Ghaznavids, their empire in Afghanistan and eastern Iran 994-1040. It carries on the story of this originally Turkish dynasty, based on Ghazna in eastern Afghanistan, after its sultans had lost the western Iranian provinces of their empire to the incoming Turkish steppe nomads of the Oghuz tribe, whose leaders then formed the Great Seljuq state in the Middle East. The Ghaznavids survived, however, as a still-powerful empire, comprising eastern Afghanistan, the Panjab, Baluchistan and Sind, for almost a century and a half. Their court in Ghazna and then, at a later date, in Lahore, was a great centre for the beginnings and the development of what was to be the Indo-Muslim culture and literature, for it was from the Panjab at this time that the gradual process of the Islamisation of much of northwestern India began.