Indian History Quiz: Arab and Turkish Invasions: Muhammad bin Qasim to Muhammad Ghori

He was the young Arab commander sent into Sindh in 712 CE, who captured Debal, crossed the Indus and defeated and killed Dahir at the battle of Raor, and then took Brahmanabad, Alor and Multan.

He was the Brahman ruler of Sindh who refused to compensate the Arabs for the ships plundered by the pirates of Debal, and he fell fighting Muhammad bin Qasim at Raor in 712 CE, after which Sindh passed under Umayyad rule.

The Chach Nama, a Persian translation of an older Arabic account, narrates the rule of the Chach family of Sindh, the attack on the Arab ships at Debal and the campaign of Muhammad bin Qasim, and remains the main source for 712 CE.

The raid on the Somnath temple on the coast of Saurashtra was the richest of all the expeditions of Mahmud of Ghazni and the one for which he is most remembered in Indian history.

The Central Asian scholar Abu Rayhan Alberuni came to India with Mahmud of Ghazni, learnt Sanskrit, and wrote Tahqiq i Hind, known as Kitab ul Hind, which describes Indian religion, society, astronomy and mathematics and is the most valuable account of eleventh century India.

In the first battle of Tarain in 1191 the Rajput army of Prithviraj Chauhan III of Ajmer and Delhi broke the Ghurid centre, Ghori himself was wounded and carried away by a follower, and he withdrew to Ghazni.

One year after his defeat, Muhammad Ghori came back to Tarain, drew the Rajput cavalry out with a feigned retreat, surrounded it with mounted archers and destroyed it; Prithviraj Chauhan was captured and the road to Delhi lay open.

After the second battle of Tarain, Muhammad Ghori turned east and defeated Jaichand, the Gahadavala ruler of Kanauj and Banaras, at Chandawar on the Yamuna in 1194, a victory that gave the Turks the upper Ganga valley.

The Hindu Shahi ruler Jaipal met Mahmud of Ghazni near Waihind, close to Peshawar, in 1001 CE, was defeated and taken prisoner, and the humiliation is said to have led him to end his own life, after which his son Anandpal continued the struggle.

Ghori returned to Ghazni after Tarain and Chandawar and left his trusted slave officer Qutbuddin Aibak in charge of the Indian territories; on the death of Ghori in 1206 Aibak made himself the ruler at Lahore and founded the dynasty that became the Delhi Sultanate.

Muizzuddin Muhammad bin Sam, called Muhammad Ghori, came from Ghur in central Afghanistan, and the Ghurids displaced the house of Ghazni before turning on northern India.