High Middle Ages · South Asia · War

1001

Mahmud of Ghazni's first Indian raid

1001

At Peshawar the Turkic sultan crushed the Hindu Shahi king Jayapala, opening the gates of the Punjab to two decades of lucrative Ghaznavid plunder. The defeated raja, humiliated, built his own pyre and climbed onto it, unwilling to live as a captive of a Muslim lord. Mahmud's campaigns would eventually strip the subcontinent's temple treasuries of gold on a scale not seen before.