The Foundation of Muslim Rule in India: A History of the Establishment and Progress of the Turkish Sultanate of Delhi, 1206–1290 A.D. c6.1

c6.1

The century and a half that followed Mahmud's accession to the principality of Ghazni witnessed the rise and fall of two great empires. The Seljuqs, who supplanted the Ghaznawides in Central Asia¹, were, during the period under review, in their turn, undergoing a process of rapid decline facilitating the rise of new dynasties. Sanjar was the last of the imperial Seljuqs whose long reign could scarce conceal signs of the approaching end. His early triumphs over Ghazni², Samarqand³, and Ghor⁴, were followed by defeats which shook the empire to its foundation. The most crushing defeat came from the southern Turks, called Qara-Khitai by the Muslim writers, who had established a strong empire on the eastern bank of the Jaxartes and were making powerful inroads into Transoxiana. In 537/1137 they invaded Samarqand and obtained a decisive victory over Sanjar's vassal⁵.