The political condition of Northern India had changed considerably since the days of Sultan Mahmud. Though a part of Bihar was in the possession of the Buddhist Palas, Bengal had passed under the control of the Hindu dynasty of the Senas. Bundelkhand remained under the rule of the Chandellas, but the Pratiharas in Kanauj were displaced by the Gahadavalas. Delhi and Ajmer were under the Chauhans. Jaichand or Jayachchandra, the Gahadavala ruler of Kanauj, who lived mostly at Benares, was considered by the Muslim writers to be the greatest king of India at the time. His beautiful daughter is said to have been carried away by the Chauhan hero, Prithviraj, of whom he is said to have been jealous of, and the story of this romance has formed the theme of many of the bardic songs of the time. This is said to have added to the bitterness of their relations so that Jaichand did not ally himself with Prithviraj when Muhammad of Ghur appeared on the scene. There is no reason, however, to believe that Jaichand invited Muhammad of Ghur to invade India. The invasion of this country was an almost inevitable corollary to Muhammad’s complete victory over the Ghaznavids in the Punjab.
When, in the winter of 1190-1191, Muhammad of Ghur marched beyond the Punjab, Prithviraj, the bold and chivalrous hero of the Rajputs, who were in no way inferior in bravery and courage to the invaders, advanced to oppose him with a large army, including, according to Ferishta, 200,000 horse and 3,000 elephants. Prithviraj had the support of many of his fellow Rujput princes but Jaichand held aloof. The Ghuri invader stood in the middle of his army with two wings on two sides and met the Rajputs at Tarain near Thanesar in A.D. 1191. Fighting with their usual vigour, the Rajputs greatly harassed the Muslim troops, who were soon overpowered, and their leader, being severely wounded, retired to Ghazni. But Muhammad did not become disheartened at this initial failure. He soon raised a strong army with a view to avenging his defeat, and with adequate preparations, invaded India once again in 1192 and met his Rajput adversary on the same field. By superior tactics and generalship, the invading army inflicted a severe defeat on the Rajputs. Prithviraj was captured and put to death, and his brother was also slain. This victory of Muhammad was decisive. It laid the foundation of Muslim dominion in Northern India; and the subsequent attempts of the relatives of Prithviraj to recover their lost power proved to be of no avail. Different parts of Northern India were conquered in the course of a few years by Qutb-ud-din Aibak, the most faithful of Muhammad’s Turkish officers, and Ikhtiyar-ud-din Muhammad.
Qutb-ud-din Aibak was originally a slave of Turkestan. In his childhood he was brought by a merchant to Nishapur, where its Qazi, Fakhr-ud-din ‘Abdul ‘Aziz Kufi, purchased him and provided for his religious and military training along with his sons. After the Qazi’s death, he was sold by the Qazi’s sons to a merchant, who took him to Ghazni, where he was purchased by Muhammad of Ghur. Thus Qutb-ud-din began his career as a slave, and the dynasty founded by him in India is known as the “Slave dynasty.”
Qutb-ud-din was “endowed with all laudable qualities and admirable impressions” though “he possessed no outward comeliness, his qualities gained for him the confidence of Muhammad of Ghur, who soon raised him to the post of Amir-i-Akhur (Lord of the stables). He rendered valuable services to his master during his Indian expeditions, in recognition of which lie was placed in charge of his Indian conquests after the second battle of Tarain in 1192. He was left “untrammelled not only in his administration of the new conquest, but also in his discretion to extend them “.
To strengthen his own position, Qutb-ud-din contracted matrimonial alliances with the powerful rival chiefs; thus while he himself married Taj-ud-din Yildiz’s daughter, his sister was married to Nasir-ud-din Qabacha and his daughter to Iltutmish. Qutb-ud-din justified the confidence which his master had reposed in him. In 1192 be captured Hansi, Meerut, Delhi, Ranthambhor and Koil. In 1194 he helped his master in defeating and slaying Jaichand, raja of Benares and Kanauj, at Chandwar on the Jumna in the Etawah district. In II97 he chastised Bhimdev ll of Gujarat, for his having caused him some trouble, plundered his capital and returned to Delhi by way of Hansi. In 1202 he besieged the fortress of Kalinjar in Bundelkhand, overpowered its defenders and captured vast booty from them. Fifty thousand people, male and female, were made prisoners. He next marched to the city of Mahoba, took possession of it and returned to Delhi by way of Badaun, one of the richest cities of Hindustan, which also was occupied. Meanwhile, Bihar and a part of Western Bengal had been added to the empire of Ghur by Ikhtiyar-ud-din Muhammad, son of Bakhtiyar Khalji, who had driven Lakshmana Sena from Nadia possibly to Eastern Bengal, to a place near Dacca, where the Sena power survived for more than half a century, and had made Lakhnauti, the seat of his government. Thus by the beginning of the thirteenth century, a considerable part of Hindustan, from the Indus in the west to the Ganges in the east, had been conquered by Muslim arms.
On the death of his older brother Ghiyas-ud-din Muhammad in February, 1203, Mu’iz-ud-din Muhmmad became the ruler of Ghazni, Ghur and Delhi in name, which he had been so long in reality. But soon his position was endangered by some disasters. In 1205 he sustained a defeat near Andkhui in Central Asia at the hands of ‘Ala-ud-din Muhammad, the Shah of Khwarazm, which dealt a severe blow at his military prestige in India and stirred up revolts and conspiracies in different parts of his kingdom. He was refused admittance to Ghazni; Multan was seized by a Ghazni officer, and his old enemies, the Khokars, created troubles in the Punjab. But with great zeal and promptitude, Mu’iz-ud-din Muhammad marched to India, suppressed the rebellions everywhere, and inflicted a crushing defeat on the Khokars in November, 1205. His days, however, were numbered. On his way from Lahore to Ghazni, he was stabbed to death at Damyak on the 15th March, 1206, by a band of assassins whose identity has not been precisely determined. Some writers attribute the deed to the Khokars, who had been so recently deprived of their homes, while, according to others, he was killed by some Muslim enthusiasts of the Ismaili sect. A legend of the Rajputs, mentioned also by a Muslim historian, attributes his death to their hero, Prithviraj, who, according to it, had not been slain at the second battle of Tarain but was blinded and remained a captive. The body of the murdered Sultan was taken to Ghazni and buried there.
