Mahmud of Ghazni

Mahmud of Ghazni (971 to 1030) was the Ghaznavid sultan who made the Punjab part of an empire ruled from Afghanistan. Wikipedia says he was born at Ghazni on 2 October 971, the son of Sabuktigin, defeated his brother Ismail in 998 and ruled for about three decades. It counts seventeen invasions of the subcontinent between 1000 and 1027. He lived about four and a half centuries before Guru Nanak.

Key moments for the Punjab

• 28 November 1001: defeats Raja Jayapala of the Hindu Shahis at Peshawar. Jayapala is taken prisoner, released, and later takes his own life. His son Anandapala keeps up the resistance.
• 1006: marches on Multan, whose ruler Fateh Daud had allied with Anandapala. Anandapala is beaten near the Indus and Multan submits. Revolts there in 1008 and 1010 are put down, and Multan is finally secured in 1010.
• 31 December 1008: defeats a coalition of Indian rulers at the Battle of Chach.
• 1012: plunders the holy city of Thanesar.
• 1021: besieges Lahore, forces Hindu Shahi ruler Bhimapala to flee and annexes the Punjab, which Wikipedia says then ran up to the Sutlej. Its accounts date the fall of Lahore to 1021 or 1022.
• 1025 to 1026: sacks the Somnath temple in Gujarat.
• 30 April 1030: dies at Ghazni.

How the record stands. Much of what is known comes from chroniclers writing in the Ghaznavid tradition, such as al-Utbi and Firishta. Wikipedia reports that he plundered rich temple towns to build up Ghazni, that he followed a policy of destroying temples to deter counter-attack, and gives the Indian historian K. S. Lal's estimate of two million people killed or enslaved. It does not settle the argument among historians about the scale and the motives, and the figure is an estimate. Majid Sheikh, writing in Dawn in 2014, tells the Lahore story from the other side of the border, recording that Mahmud took Lahore easily in 1021 after Bhimapala resisted his appointed governor Ayaz, and that the last Hindu ruler of Lahore withdrew to Ajmer.

Remembered for: bringing Multan, Lahore and the Punjab under Ghaznavid rule, four and a half centuries before Guru Nanak.