Conquest of Sind · Part 2

city of Somnath ( ) on the seashore in Gujarat. Many scholars argue that these plundering raids were more of political and economic character than of religious chauvinism. Desecration of temples, vandalising the images of deities were all part of asserting one’s authority in medieval India. Mahmud’s raids and his deeds fit this pattern, though their memories went into the creation of communal divide. This apart, the plundering raids of Mahmud were meant to replenish the treasury to maintain his huge army. The Turks relied on a permanent, professional army. It was built around an elite corps of mounted archers who were all slaves, bought, trained, equipped, and paid in cash from the war booty taken alike from Hindu kingdoms in India and Muslim kingdoms in Iran. Persian sources contain exaggerated claims about the wealth seized from these raids. For instance, it is claimed that Mahmud’s plunder of the Iranian city of Ray, in , brought him , dinars worth of jewels, , dinars in coins, and over , dinars worth of gold and silver vessels. Similarly, Mahmud’s raid on Somnath ( ) is believed to have brought in twenty million dinars worth of spoils. Romila Thapar points out that those who had suffered from these predatory invasions seemed to maintain a curious silence about them, as Hindu and Jain sources available on Somnath expedition do not corroborate the Mahmud of Ghazni In the meantime, the Arab empire in Central Asia had collapsed with several of its provinces declaring themselves independent. One of the major kingdoms that emerged out of the broken Arab empire was the Samanid kingdom which also splintered, leading to several independent states. In Alaptigin, a Turkic slave who had served Samanids as their governor in Khurasan, seized the city of Ghazni in eastern Afghanistan and established an independent kingdom. Alaptigin died soon after. After the failure of three of his successors, the nobles enthroned Sabuktigin. Sabuktigin initiated the process of southward expansion into the Indian sub-continent. He defeated the Shahi ruler of Afghanistan, Jayapal, and conferred the governorship of the province on Mahmud, his eldest son. When