In the year A.D. 1000 the first attack of Mahmud of Ghazni was delivered. He captured many frontier towns and appointed to them his own governors, rt… - K. S. Lal

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In the year A.D. 1000 the first attack of Mahmud of Ghazni was delivered. He captured many frontier towns and appointed to them his own governors, rt is also reasonable to assume that in these places some people would have been converted to Islam. In his attack on Waihind (Peshawar) in 1001-3, Mahmud is reported to have captured Jayapal and fifteen of his principal chiefs and relations some of whom, like Suhhpal, were made Musalmans. At Bhera all the inhabitants, except those who embraced Islam, were put to the sword. Since the whole town is reported to have been converted the number of converts may have been quite large. At Multan too conversions took place in large numbers, for writing about the campaign against Nawasa Shah (converted Sukhpal), Utbi says that this and the previous victory fat Multan) were 'witnesses to his exalted state of prosclytism’! In his campaign in the Kashmir Valley (1015) Mahmud 'converted many infidels to Muhammadanism, and having spread Islam in that country, returned to Ghazni’. In the latter campaigns, in Mathura, Baran and Kanauj, again, many conversions took place. While describing ‘the conquest of Kanauj’, Utbi sums up the situation thus : "The Sultan levelled to the ground every fort..., and the inhabitants of them cither accepted Islam, or took up arms against him.” In short, those "ho submitted were also converted to Islam* In Bn ran (Bn lands!: a hr) alone 10,000 persons were converted including the Raja, During his fourteenth invasion in A.D, 1023, Kirat. Nur, Lohkot and Lahore were attacked. Hie chief of Kirat accepted Islam, and many people followed his example. According to Nizamuddin Ahmad. 'Islam upread in this part of the country by the consent of the people and the influence of force’. Conversion of Hindus to Islam was one of the objects of Mahmud. A1 Qazwini writes that when Mahmud went “to wage religious war against India, he made great efforts to capture and destroy Sotnnat, in the hope that the Hindus would then become Muhammadans", 2 Sultan Mahmud was well-versed in the Quran and was considered its eminent interpreter. 3 He ardently desired to play the role of a true Muslim monarch and convert non-Muslims to his faith. Tarikh-i-Yamim , Rausai-us-Safa and Totikh-UFerfshtah, besides many other works, speak of construction of mosques and schools and appointment of preachers and teachers by Mahmud and his successor MasudA Wherever Mahmud went, he insisted on the people to convert to Islam. (102-3)