The first ruler to have the title “Sultan” was Mahmoud of Ghazni, who followed his Mamluk father to power in 998. Their kingdom was in Afghanistan, so they were perched right on the threshold of India. At this point, Islam’s main period of expansion and conquest was over. India was the last frontier that was still open. Islam was established only in the area of Sind, around modern Karachi.
Mahmoud began a series of military expeditions south, attacking first a small Ismaili state at Multan in the territory of modern Pakistan. At the Battle of Peshawar in 1001, he defeated a Hindu Raj. A few years later, the defeated Raj’s son got neighboring rulers to band together in a powerful confederacy to push back against Mahmoud’s incursions. His elephant failed him at a crucial moment in a battle at Lahore, and the Indian confederacy was defeated.
Every year, he launched another invasion and each time got farther into India. He started with crossing the Hindu Kush in Kashmir and began picking off northern kingdoms. He appointed governors for each city he conquered, and often they were not Muslim. He drafted men from each city into his army. But he also destroyed Hindu and Jain temples and monuments.
By 1025, Mahmoud had conquered Hindu, Buddhist and Jain kingdoms all over northern India, as far east as Uttar Pradesh. He moved south into Gujarat, on India’s western coast. As he conquered, he destroyed. Gujarat had a famous and ancient temple to Shiva, called the Somnath Temple. Mahmoud sacked it and destroyed the image to Shiva.
The amount of wealth that Mahmoud al-Ghazni brought back was unimaginable. Using this treasure, the Ghaznavid family continued to be a powerhouse in the region until 1186. When they struck out at other eastern Muslim lands, they were the first Muslim army to use elephants.