Ghurid Sultanate Shansabānī
← 1148–1215 →   →
This map is showing the Ghurid Empire without their south-eastern territories of north-western India.
Capital	Herat, Ghor, Ghazni, Lahore
Language(s)	Persian (court poetry)[1]
Religion	Sunni Islam
Government	Sultanate
Sultan
- 1148–1157	Ala-ud-din Jahan-Suz
- 1157–1202	Ghiyasuddin Ghori
- 1202–1206	Muhammad of Ghor
- 1206–1210	Qutbuddin Aibak
History
- Established	1148
- Disestablished	1215

The Ghurids or Ghorids (Persian: سلسله غوریان‎; self-designation: Shansabānī) were a medieval Muslim dynasty of Iranian origin that ruled during the 12th and 13th centuries in Khorasan.^[2] At its zenith, their empire, centred at Ghōr (now a province in Afghanistan), stretched over an area that included the whole of modern Afghanistan, the eastern parts of Iran, Pakistan and the northern section of the India, as far as Delhi. The Ghurids were succeeded in Persia by the Khwārazm-Shāh dynasty and in North India by the Mamluk dynasty of the Delhi Sultanate.

Origins[link]

In the 19th century, some European scholars, such as Mountstuart Elphinstone, favoured the idea that the Ghurid dynasty was Pashtun,^[3][4][5] but this is generally rejected by modern scholarship, and, as explained by Morgenstierne in the Encyclopaedia of Islam, is for "various reasons very improbable".^[6] Instead, the consensus in modern scholarship (incl. Morgenstierne, Bosworth, Dupree, Gibb, Ghirshman, Longworth Dames and others) holds that the dynasty was most likely of Tajik origin.^[7][8][9] Bosworth further points out that the actual name of the Ghurid family, Āl-e Šansab (Persianized: Šansabānī), is the Arabic pronunciation of the originally Middle Persian name Wišnasp, perhaps hinting at a (Sassanian) Persian origin.^[10]

Language[link]

The language of the Ghurids is subject to some controversy. What is known with certainty is that it was considerably different from the New Persian literary language of the Ghaznavid court. Nevertheless, like the Samanids and Ghaznavids, the Ghurids were great patrons of New Persian literature, poetry, and culture, and promoted these in their courts as their own. There is nothing to confirm the recent surmise (as claimed in the Paṭa Khazāna) that the Ghurids were Pashto-speaking,^[11] and there is no evidence that the inhabitants of Ghor were originally Pashto-speaking.^[7]

History[link]

Before the mid-12th century, the Ghurids had been bound to the Ghaznavids and Seljuks for about 150 years. Beginning in the mid-12th century, Ghor expressed its independence from the Ghaznavid Empire. In 1149 the Ghaznavid ruler Bahram Shāh poisoned a local Ghūrid leader, Quṭb ud-Dīn, who had taken refuge in the city of Ghazna after a family quarrel. In revenge, the Ghūrid chief ʿAlāʾ-ud-Dīn Ḥusayn sacked and burned the city of Ghazna and put the city into fire for seven days and seven nights. It earned him the title of Jahānsūz, meaning "the world burner".^[12] The Ghaznavids retook the city with Seljuk help, but lost it to Oghuz Turk freebooters.^[12] In 1152, Ala ad-Din Jahan-Suz Husain refused to pay tribute to the Seljuks and instead marched an army from Firuzkuh but was defeat at Nab by Sultan Ahmed Sanjar.^[13]

In 1173, Shahabuddin Muhammad Ghori reconquered the city of Ghazna and assisted his brother Ghiyasuddin—to whom he was a loyal subordinate—in his contest with Khwarezmid Empire for the lordship of Khorāsān. Shahabuddin Ghori captured Multan and Uch in 1175 and annexed the Ghaznavid principality of Lahore in 1186. After the death of his brother Ghiyas-ud-Din in 1202, he became the successor of his empire and ruled until his assassination in 1206 near Jhelum by Khokhar tribesmen (in modern-day Pakistan).^[14] A confused struggle then ensued among the remaining Ghūrid leaders, and the Khwarezmids were able to take over the Ghūrids' empire in about 1215. Though the Ghūrids' empire was short-lived, Shahabuddin Ghori's conquests strengthened the foundations of Muslim rule in India. On his death, the importance of Ghazna and Ghur dissipated and they were replaced by Delhi as the centre of Islamic influence during the rule of his successor Sultans in India.^[15]

Ghurid Dynasty[link]

• Blue shaded rows signifies Ghurid vassalage under the Ghaznavids.
• Yellow shaded rows signifies Ghurid vassalage under the Seljuks.

Ghor Branch[link]

• Green shaded row signifies Ghurid vassalage under the Khwārazm-Shāh dynasty.

Bamiyan Branch[link]

• Green shaded row signifies Ghurid vassalage under the Khwārazm-Shāh dynasty.

Cultural influences[link]

The Ghurids were great patrons of Persian culture and literature and lay the basis for a Persianized state in India.^[17][18] They also transferred the Khorasanian architecture of their native lands to India, of which several great examples have been preserved to this date (see gallery). However, most of the literature produced during the Ghurid era has been lost.

Out of the Ghurid state grew the Delhi Sultanate which established the Persian language as the lingua franca of the region – a status it retained until the fall of the Mughal Empire in the 19th century.

History of Afghanistan

See also: Timeline

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History of Iran

See also: Kings of Persia · Timeline of Iran

Antiquity Prehistory Proto-Elamite period 3200–2800 Elamite dynasty 2800–550 Kassites 16th–12th cent. Mannaeans 10th–7th cent. Median Empire 728–550 Achaemenid Empire 550–330 Seleucid Empire 330–150 Parthian Empire 248 BCE–226 CE Sassanid Empire 226–651 Middle Ages Islamic conquest 637–651 Umayyad Caliphate 661–750 Abbasid Caliphate 750–1258 Tahirid dynasty 821–873 Alavid dynasty 864–928 Sajid dynasty 889/890–929 Saffarid dynasty 861–1003 Samanid dynasty 875–999 Ziyarid dynasty 928–1043 Buyid dynasty 934–1062 Sallarid 942–979 Ma'munids 995-1017 Ghaznavid Empire 963–1187 Ghori dynasty 1149–1212 Seljuq dynasty 1037–1194 Khwarezmid dynasty 1077–1231 Ilkhanate 1256–1353 Muzaffarid dynasty 1314–1393 Chupanid dynasty 1337–1357 Sarbadars 1337–1376 Jalayerid dynasty 1339–1432 Timurid dynasty 1370–1506 Qara Qoyunlu 1407–1468 Aq Qoyunlu 1378–1508 Modern history Safavid dynasty 1501–1722/36 Hotaki dynasty 1722–1729 Afsharid dynasty 1736–1750 Zand dynasty 1750–1794 Qajar dynasty 1781–1925 Pahlavi dynasty 1925–1979 Interim Government 1979–1980 Islamic Republic since 1980 view talk edit

See also[link]

• Minaret of Jam
• Mandesh

Notes[link]

External links[link]

• Encyclopaedia Britannica (Online Edition) – Ghurid Sultanate
• Encyclopaedia Britannica (Online Edition) – Muizz-ud-Din-Muhammad a.k.a. Mohammad of Ghor
• Columbia Encyclopedia (Sixth Edition) – Muhammad of Ghor
• The Ghurid Rulers
• The Ghurids
• The Ghurids´ Firuzkuh, the summer capital of the Sultans