The Cambridge History of India, Vol. III: Turks and Afghans v3.c30.8.2

v3.c30.8.2

Her genius was of the mimetic rather than the creative order, but she possessed a magic gift for absorbing the artistic creations of other countries and refining them to her own standard of perfection. Situated as she was in the heart of the Middle East, she became the crucible in which the arts of Turkistān and China on the one side, of Mesopotamia, Syria and the Byzantine Empire on the other, were fused together and transmuted into new forms and from which they issued afresh with the indelible stamp of Persian beauty set upon them². And the channel by which this stream of art flowed southward into India was Ghaznī. Ghaznī, however, was more than a mere medium for the dissemination of Islamic art. All the culture and magnificence which in the ninth and tenth centuries had belonged to the Sāmānid dynasty of North-Eastern Persia, had passed, as if by the natural right of inheritance, to the Ghaznavids, and under Mahmūd the Great and his immediate successors, Ghaznī became famous among all the cities of the Caliphate for the splendour of its architecture³. Most of its buildings, unfortunately, perished during the ruthless burning of the city by ‘Alā-ud-dīn Husain Jahānsūz, the Ghūrid, and others fell victims to the ravages of time or of later vandals. To-day, the only monuments of note that are known to survive are the tomb of Mahmūd the Great and two minars or Towers of Victory, the one erected by Mahmūd himself and the other by one of his successors, Mas‘ūd.