The Cambridge History of India, Vol. III: Turks and Afghans v3.c20.84

v3.c20.84

‘Abd-ur-Rashīd was a scholar with a taste for theology, but was as little fitted as ‘Alī to hold the reins of government in troubled times. He appointed to the government of the Punjab Nūshtigīn, an able and active officer who recovered the fortress of Kāngra and restored order, but in Tughril ‘the Ingrate,’ another servant, who had been a slave of Mahmūd, he was less fortunate. Tughril was sent to Sīstān and reduced that province to obedience, but it was his own authority and not his master’s that he established. His successes, which appear to have included some victories over the Saljūqs¹, who now ruled Khurāsān, enabled him to raise and maintain a large army, with which he marched to Ghaznī, defeated and put to death ‘Abd-ur-Rashīd and nine other members of the royal house, and ascended the throne. His treachery was generally abhorred, and he was assassinated, after a reign of forty days, by the royal guards. Nūshtigīn, who had left India on hearing of Tughril’s usurpation, arrived at Ghaznī a few days after his death and took counsel with the nobles regarding the filling of the vacant throne. There still survived, imprisoned in a fortress, Farrukhzād and Ibrāhīm, two sons of Mas‘ūd I, and the nobles elected the latter, but, on discovering that he was in feeble health, transferred their suffrages to his brother. Almost immediately after Farrukhzād’s enthronement the kingdom was invaded by Chaghar Beg Dāūd who, after being defeated by Nūshtigīn, summoned to his assistance his more famous son Alp Arsalān, against whom Farrukhzād took the field in person. Alp Arsalān gained an indecisive victory and retired with his prisoners, leaving in Farrukhzād’s hands those taken from Chaghar Beg Dāūd by Nūshtigīn. An exchange formed the basis of a treaty of peace, and on Farrukhzād’s death in March, 1059, his brother Ibrāhīm, who succeeded him, renewed the treaty and arranged a marriage between his son Mas‘ūd and the daughter of Malik Shāh, Alp Arsalān’s son. The treaty was faithfully observed by the Saljūqs during Ibrāhīm’s long reign, and the security of his northern and western frontiers enabled him to devote his attention to India. In 1079 he crossed the southern border of the Punjab and captured the town of Ajūdhan, now known as Pāk Pattan. In the course of the same campaign he is said to have taken a town named Rūpāl, which was perhaps the place of that name in Mahī Kāntha, as he appears to have advanced towards the western coast and to have come upon a settlement of Pārsīs which may be identified with Nāvsārī in Gujarāt. This is the only supposition by which it is possible to explain a Muslim historian’s obviously inaccurate statement that he reached a town populated exclusively by Khurāsānīs who had been deported to India by Afrāsiyāb.