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The Ghūrids

Early fifth century to 612/early eleventh century to 1215 Ghūr, Khurasan and north-western India

1. The main line in Ghūr and then also in Ghazna

2. The line in Bāmiyān, Tukhāristān and Badakhshān

The remote, mountainous region of what is now Afghanistan, called Ghūr, was almost wholly terra incognita to the early Islamic geographers, known only as a source of slaves and as the home of a race of bellicose mountaineers who remained pagan until well into the eleventh century. At this time, the Ghaznawids (see above, no. 158) led raids into Ghūr and made the local chiefs of the Shansabānī family their vassals; but in the early twelfth century, the fortunes of the Ghaznawids waned and Seljuq influence now spread through Ghūr, so that ‘Izz al-Dīn Husayn, the first fully historical figure of the family, paid tribute to Sultan Sanjar (see above, no. 91, 1). Attempts by Sultan Bahrām Shāh to reassert Ghaznawid influence led to the Ghūrids’ sack of Ghazna in 545/1150 and the eventual acquisition by them of all the Ghaznawid possessions on the Afghan plateau. In the west, Ghūrid expansionist policies were at first checked by Sanjar, but the collapse of Seljuq power in Khurasan allowed the Sultans to establish an empire, centred on Firūzkūh in Ghūr, stretching almost from the Caspian Sea to northern India, where the Ghaznawid traditions of jihād against the infidels were inherited and kept up.

The joint architects of this achievement were the two brothers Ghiyāth al-Dīn Muḥammad and Mu‘izz al-Dīn Aḥmamad, the former campaigning mainly in the west and the latter in India. Bāmiyān and the lands along the upper Oxus were ruled by another branch of the Ghūrid family. Ghiyāth al-Dīn contested possession of Khurasan with the Khwārazm Shāhs and the latter’s suzerains, the Qara Khitay (see above, no. 89, 4); at one point he invaded Khwārazm itself, and by his death held all Khurasan as far west as Bisṭām.

Yet it seems that the Ghūrids’ resources of manpower were inadequate for holding this empire together, whereas their Khwārazmian adversaries could draw freely on the Inner Asian steppes for troops. After Mu‘izz al-Dīn Aḥammad’s death in 602/1206, the dynasty was rent by internal squabbles. A group of their Turkish soldiers made themselves independent in Ghazna under Tāj al-Dīn Yïldïz, and could not be dislodged by the sultans in Firūzkūh and Bāmiyān. The Khwārazm Shāh Jalāl al-Dīn was therefore able to step in and incorporate the Ghūrid lands into his own empire. But this Khwārazmian domination was only of brief duration, for the whole eastern Islamic world was shortly afterwards overwhelmed by Chingiz Khān’s Mongols (see above, no. 131). Moreover, the Turkish generals of Mu‘izz al-Dīn Muḥammad continued to uphold Ghūrid policies and traditions in northern India, where Quṭb al-Dīn Aybak was installed as ruler in Lahore (Lāhawur) by one of the last Ghūrids (see below, no. 160, 1).

The coinage of the Ghūrids is particularly interesting, in that Mu‘izz al-Dīn Muḥammad minted coins for his Indian lands with the Islamic shahāda and its proclamation of tawhīd, the indivisible unity of God, on one side, and on the other side Sanskrit inscriptions and the likeness of the Hindu goddess Lakśmi.

Justi, 455–6; Lane-Poole, 291–4; Zambaur, 280–1, 284; Album, 39–40.

EI² ‘Ghūrids’ (C. E. Bosworth); EIr ‘Ghurids’ (C. E. Bosworth).

G. Wiet, in André Maricq and Gaston Wiet, Le minaret de Djam. La découverte de la capital des sultans ghorides (XII^e-XIII^e siècles), Méms DAFA, 16, Paris 1959, 31–54.

C. E. Bosworth, The eastern fringes of the Iranian world: the end of the Ghaznavids and the upsurge of the Ghūrids’, in The Cambridge History of Iran, IV, 157–66.