Ghaznavid Empire
former country
The Ghaznavid Empire (Persian: غزنویان, romanized: Ġaznaviyān) was a culturally Persianate, Sunni Muslim state of Turkic Karluk origin. Flourishing from 977 to 1186, the empire spread from the Oxus to the Indus Valley at its greatest extent. The dynasty was founded by Sabuktigin upon his succession to the rule of Ghazna after the death of his father-in-law, Alp Tigin, who was an ex-general of the Samanid Empire from Balkh.
Sabuktigin's son, Mahmud of Ghazni, expanded the Ghaznavid Empire to the Amu Darya, the Indus River and the Indian Ocean in the east and to Rey and Hamadan in the west. Under the reign of Mas'ud I, the Ghaznavid dynasty began losing control over its western territories to the Seljuk Empire after the Battle of Dandanaqan in 1040, resulting in a restriction of its holdings to modern-day Afghanistan, Pakistan and Northern India.
In 1151, Sultan Bahram Shah lost Ghazni to the Ghurid sultan Ala al-Din Husayn. The Ghaznavids retook Ghazni but lost the city to the Ghuzz Turks who in turn lost it to Muhammad of Ghor. In response, the Ghaznavids fled to Lahore, their regional capital. In 1186, Lahore was conquered by the Ghurid sultan, Muhammad of Ghor, and its Ghaznavid ruler, Khusrau Malik, was imprisoned and later executed.
Rise to power
Two military families arose from the Turkic slave-guards of the Samanid Empire, the Simjurids and Ghaznavids, who ultimately proved disastrous to the Samanids.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Ghaznavid Empire” as former country. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q249578. Authority coordinates are 33.549, 68.423. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1186, 1040 and 1151.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ghaznavid Empire” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.