Mountain chiefs from central Afghanistan built an empire from Iran to Bengal
For about 150 years the Ghurids were minor chiefs in the isolated hills of Ghor, paying tribute to bigger powers. Then, in a few decades of the 12th century, two brothers ruling jointly pushed their borders from the Caspian coast to Bengal. Their Indian conquests outlived them by centuries as the Delhi Sultanate.
The Ghurids came from Ghor in what is now central Afghanistan, with their capital at Firuzkuh. Scholars describe them as eastern Iranian Tajiks who spoke their own Persian dialect, so distinct that a Ghaznavid sultan visiting the region needed interpreters. A 19th-century idea linking them to the Pashtuns is generally rejected today. Their family name, Shansabani, derives from a Middle Persian name, Wishnasp, and once they grew powerful, court genealogists invented a lineage reaching back to Zahhak, the tyrant of the Persian epic Shahnameh.
They converted gradually to Sunni Islam after Mahmud of Ghazni conquered Ghor in 1011, and served first the Ghaznavids and then the Seljuks. Relations with Ghazni turned bloody: in 1149 its ruler poisoned a Ghurid leader, setting off a cycle of revenge between the families. Rivalry between the Seljuks and Ghaznavids left a power vacuum, and Ala al-Din Husayn broke free by sacking the Ghaznavid capital, though the Seljuks soon defeated him.
The peak came under his nephews, Ghiyath al-Din Muhammad and Muhammad of Ghor, who shared power. Ghiyath al-Din fought the Khwarazmian shahs in the west, reaching Nishapur, Merv and briefly Gorgan by the Caspian, while Muhammad drove east beyond the Indus, took Lahore from the last Ghaznavids and seized much of the Gangetic Plain. Like the Samanids before them, they lavishly patronised Persian poetry and literature.
The collapse was swift. Ghiyath al-Din died of illness in 1203, the Khwarazmians, helped by the Qara Khitai, crushed the Ghurids at Andkhud in 1204, and Muhammad was assassinated in March 1206. By 1215 Shah Muhammad II had wiped out the dynasty. In India, however, their general Qutb ud-Din Aibak founded the Delhi Sultanate, which carried their conquests forward for centuries.
Source: Ghurid dynasty
