The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought

Ghurids (1009–1215)

The chiefs (maliks) of Ghur, an obscure mountainous region in central Afghanistan, came to prominence after 1150, when the armies of ‘Ala’ al-Din Husayn (r. ca. 1149–61), chief of the dominant Shansabanid clan, sacked and burned Ghazni, the capital of the Ghaznavid sultanate. Formerly subject to both the Seljuqs and Ghaznavids, over the following decades the Ghurids rapidly expanded the territories under their control. The apogee of their dominion was reached during the reign of the brothers Ghiyath al-Din (r. 1163–1203) and Mu‘izz al-Din (r. 1173–1206), the former overseeing the westward expansion of the sultanate from Firuzkuh in west-central Afghanistan and the latter expanding its dominion eastward from Ghazni. A third line, based in Bamiyan, was celebrated for its patronage of Persian literati. This unusual arrangement reflects clan-based structures within which rights of succession were horizontal rather than strictly vertical, fostering a system of appanages consolidated by intermarriage and affinal ties.

By the end of the 12th century, the Ghurids and their agents ruled over an area extending from Khurasan and eastern Iran in the west to the Ganges in the east. The changing fortunes of the sultanate are reflected in the construction of an elaborate genealogy linking the Shansabanids both to the heroic past of pre-Islamic Iran and to the early caliphs. Shifts in the names (laqabs) of the sultans and their adoption of increasingly bombastic titles, including those formerly held by the Seljuq and Ghaznavid sultans, also reflect the transition from a rural emirate to a transregional sultanate.

The dynamic self-fashioning of the Ghurids extended to their pietistic affiliations and patronage. During their rise, the Ghurids patronized the Karramis, a Sunni pietistic sect whose founder, Muhammad b. Karram (d. 869), helped convert the recalcitrant Ghur from paganism to Islam. A spectacular four-volume leather-bound Qur’an produced for sultan Ghiyath al-Din in 1189, the sole manuscript that can be associated with Ghurid patronage, may have been commissioned as a bequest to a Karrami madrasa. In addition, it seems likely that the complex epigraphic program of the most spectacular example of Ghurid architectural patronage, the roughly 220-foot-high brick minaret at Jam in central Afghanistan, was chosen to rebut contemporary criticisms that the Karramis were anthropomorphists. Dated 1174 to 1175 according to recent research, the minaret is generally believed to mark the site of Firuzkuh, sultan Ghiyath al-Din’s summer capital.

In 1199, at the zenith of their political power, the Ghurid sultans broke with the Karramis, aligning themselves with the more transregional Hanafi and Shafi‘i law schools of Islam instead. The realignment can be correlated with increased cultural and diplomatic contacts with the Baghdad caliphate, especially during the lengthy reign of the Abbasid caliph Nasir (r. 1180–1225). This “international turn” was also reflected in the introduction of new coin types in the Ghazni mint in 1200, which linked the Ghurids more directly with their Sunni contemporaries in the wider Islamic world.

Architecture was equally instrumental to these developments, and the last decade of the 12th century saw a major architectural program undertaken in the name of the Ghurid elite (male and female) in both Afghanistan and India. In 1201, for example, the Friday Mosque of Herat was rebuilt, some of the funds deriving from Ghiyath al-Din’s share of the golden booty taken from Ajmir, the capital of the Chawhan rulers of Rajasthan. The Indian victories were useful for bolstering the orthodox credentials of the Ghurid sultans in the wider Islamic world. Yet, despite the rhetoric of idolatry and orthodoxy by which they were framed, in several cases, scions of defeated Rajput dynasties were reinstated as tributary subjects of the Ghurids, a practice that conforms (perhaps serendipitously) to the normative ideals of Indic kingship. In addition, the administrative iqṭā‘, a type of land or revenue assignment that carried with it military or financial obligations to the state, was introduced to India, with administration devolving to the sultan’s mamluks or manumitted Turkic soldiery. The last decade of the 12th century thus saw sultan Mu‘izz al-Din ruling over an eclectic combination of subordinate Turks and vassal Hindu princelings, resulting in what the historian Khaliq Ahmad Nizami memorably called “a type of polity, half-Ghurid, half-Indian.”

After Ghiyath al-Din’s death in 1203, Mu‘izz al-Din assumed the role of paramount sovereign; his demise three years later effectively marked the end of Ghurid sovereignty. In its aftermath, the neighboring Khwarazmshahs of Central Asia incorporated the western Ghurid territories into their domains, while in the east, the Turkish slave generals on whom the Ghurids had relied during their Indian campaigns vied for power, creating the conditions for the emergence of an independent sultanate based in Delhi.