FTo the Lakshmi coins of Muhammad Ghori, a Chandela king of Khajuraho in Rome wearing the garb of Mahmud of Ghazni, the reality of medieval Turks – on the borders of both the Persian and Indian worlds – is far more complex than any modern political binary that gives us Will believe. After all, perhaps the most widespread view of Indian history is that it was constantly subject to brutal invasions from West and Central Asia, which were valiantly resisted by “Hindu” kings until “Muslim” invaders eventually conquered the Delhi Sultanate. Did not succeed in breaking and installing. 12. Inth century. From VD Savarkar and RC Majumdar to recent Bollywood movies and TV news anchors, this statement from history has been received as gospel and is today considered a justification for discrimination against Indian Muslims.
Of course, just because something about the medieval world is repeated endlessly doesn’t automatically make it true. Even if we accept this simple Hindu king-Muslim invader binary as a means of explaining our past, “Hindu” kings could and did Conquests and raids outside the subcontinent and along the coast of India the Muslims arrived there peacefully and were a major reason for its trade dominance in the Indian Ocean. But so far, this column has not really touched on the question of invasions from Central Asia. Exploring this strange medieval world shows us how pointless it is to project modern political prejudices onto a cosmopolitan past.
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Mahmud of the Indian soldiers of Ghazni
Mahmud of Ghazni was the son of a Sabuktigin, an Ottoman slave-soldier working for the Persian princely states of this diverse, violent region. After driving the city of Ghazni away from the “Hindu” Shahi (actually, a group from present-day Pakistan we’ll see again in a future column), the father-son duo sought to form their own kingdom. The borders of the dying Abbasid Caliphate.
Expansion in all directions was Mahmud’s primary policy: as much as is remembered for his “jihad” against the “Hindu” Shahis, he was also responsible for destroying the Safarid Emirate of Iran. He was the first ruler to declare himself a sovereign sultan – a sovereign independent of the Caliph. As others began to follow his lead, this would, over time, lead to the complete marginalization of the Caliphate. They also conquered and destroyed the Ismaili city of Multan in 1005–1006, as well as several other Muslim cities in present-day Afghanistan, which were easily declared heretical to justify their “religious” war. .
It is certainly possible (and likely) that Mahmud’s expansionism did not differ from his religious beliefs. But religion isn’t the only lens we should be looking at medieval rulers – to do so would be to follow in the footsteps of the ham-fisted British divide and rule strategy, In fact, Mahmud lived at the crossroads of Eurasia at a time when Turko-Persian identity was strengthening, and he used the cultures and peoples from this land to advance his interests. For example, he had a special love for Asian elephants and used them An “Indian” would, like the king, parade around them in Ghazni and deploy them with drums and trumpet to intimidate Central Asian rivals such as the Kara Khanids, as shown in this article’s feature image.
Historian S Jabir Raza writes Hindus under Ghaznavi that the second largest ethnic/cultural group in Mahmud’s army were South Asians, including warriors from present-day Punjab and Haryana, officers from Kashmir and mercenaries from distant Carnatic—the latter being supported by the Persian polymath al-Biruni. who witnessed Mahmud’s activities and worked closely with Brahmin scholars. (Carnatic mercenaries are also known to have served Sri Lankan kings around this time, suggesting that military labor markets in the subcontinent were expanding in geographic scope.) South Asian infantry, cavalry and Elephants are recorded fighting for Mahmud in several battles. They served in the guard of his palace and lived in a dedicated quarter in Ghazni, reporting to the South Asian commanders and high-ranking officers in Mahmud’s court. They can be just as brutal as anyone who works for the Ghaznavi army: in Sistan in 1003, they dismissed A mosque and a church, and massacred both Muslims and Christians.
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Between violent kings and peaceful ones
In 1024, Mahmud of Ghazni led an expedition into Bundelkhand, apparently to punish the Chandela dynasty of Khajuraho for attacking his vassal, the king of Kanauj. The two armies entered a standoff at Kalinjar Fort: Chandela could not defeat Mahmud, but he also did not succeed in taking the fort. And so, according to several medieval historians such as Ibn al-Athir, Ibn Zafir, and Sibt ibn al-Jawazi, the two sides negotiated. In exchange for a heavy tribute, the Chandela king Vidyadhar was provided with one of Mahmud’s robes and belts – a symbol of the sharing of royal material and an acknowledgment that Mahmud was his overlord. It reminds us of a dynamic from elsewhere in India: the coronation of defeated kings by the victors on the agreement of a tribute.
Historian Finbar Barry Flood argues translation objects that the gifting of clothes was clearly Mahmud’s attempt to translate Elite cultural practices to create new, heterogeneous political networks. The underlying violence of raids and conquests persisted SameBut the ruling class of the region was becoming more diverse. Similar efforts in cultural translation can be seen in Mahmud’s use of South Asian vassals and officials to administer his territories in the Punjab and his 1027–28. coin with legend’Avyaktmeka Muhammad Avatar Nripati Mahamud (the invisible one is, [Prophet] Muhammad is the incarnation, Mahmud the king)’.
So where does this leave us as far as “Islamic invasions” of India are concerned? The ‘Hindu vs Muslim’ binary is as simple as the ‘bad winning Turk vs good contemporary Sufi’ binary that has been confined to our politics. There is no need to fit these tedious mental gymnastics to those who lived a thousand years ago and who were responding to their now-vanished political circumstances. A violent monarch is as capable of acts of cultural adjustment as a ‘peaceful one’, and neither is a model to follow in a modern democratic nation-state.
At the end of the day, the arrival of Ottoman chieftains and soldiers in northwestern India was a multicultural and multi-ethnic process, involving the flow of people and ideas in both directions between the two cultural regions. These areas were more distinct and large-scale exchanges than in earlier centuries, but they were not fundamentally unique in character. The conversation was more about aristocratic housing and acts of friction than a major change in the material lives of most of our ancestors. The stories we make up about medieval kings say a lot more about us than they do about them.
Aniruddha Kanisetti is a public historian. He is the author of Lords of the Deccan, A New History of Medieval South India, and hosts the Echoes of India and War podcast. He tweeted @AKanisetti. Thoughts are personal.
This article is a part of ‘medieval thinking‘ series which takes a deep dive into the medieval culture, politics and history of India.
(Edited by Neera Mazumdar)