Khusrau Malik
sultan of the Ghaznavid Empire
Abu'l-Muzaffar Khusrau Malik ibn Khusrau-Shah (Persian: ابوالمظفر خسروملک بن خسروشاه), better known simply as Khusrau Malik (خسرو ملک; also spelled Khosrow), was the last Sultan of the Ghaznavid Empire, ruling from 1160 to 1186. He was the son and successor of Khusrau Shah (r. 1157–1160).
Reign
In 1161/2, a group of Oghuz Turks seized the Ghaznavid capital of Ghazni, forcing Khusrau Malik to retreat to Lahore, which became his new capital. From there he made incursions into northern India, expanding his rule as far as southern Kashmir. He also created an alliance with the Indian Khokhar tribe. In 1170, Khusrau (or one of his commanders) invaded the southern part of the Ganges.
In 1178 the Ghurid ruler Mu'izz al-Din Muhammad invaded the southern part of Ghaznavid Punjab and reached as far as Gujarat. In 1179/80 he seized Peshawar, and by 1181/2 swept around Lahore, but Khusrau Malik managed to keep him from the city by paying him so he retreated from Lahore instead of laying siege to the city. However, Lahore was finally captured by the Ghurids in 1186, while Khusrau-Malik and his sons Malikshah and Bahram-Shah were taken to Ghur and imprisoned, marking the end of the Ghaznavid Empire.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Khusrau Malik” is sultan of the Ghaznavid Empire. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Khusrau, Malik and sultan, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “sultan of the Ghaznavid Empire” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q140973. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1160, 1186, 1157 and 1161.
Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Khusrau Malik”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Khusrau Malik primary sources, Khusrau Malik archive and Khusrau research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Khusrau Malik”?
- Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
- Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Khusrau Malik” 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.