Bakhtiyar Khalji sacks Nalanda

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A roving Afghan warlord named Muhammad Bakhtiyar Khalji, in the employ of the Ghurids, descended on the great Buddhist monastic university of Nalanda with a few hundred horsemen, killed the monks, and burned a library so large it was said to have smoked for weeks. Indian Buddhism never recovered. The destruction of Nalanda, which had operated continuously for over seven centuries, effectively ended organized Buddhist scholarship in the Indian subcontinent.