At the time that Buddhism was being crushed out of India by the Brahmanic reaction, a new faith was being born in Arabia, destined to supply a youthful fanaticism which should sweep the country from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin, and from the western to the eastern sea. Mahomet, the founder of Islam, died at Medina in A.D. 632, while the Chinese pilgrim Hsüan Tsang was still on his travels. The first Mahommedan invasion of India is placed in 664, only thirty-two years after the death of the prophet. The Punjab is said to have been ravaged on this occasion with no permanent results. The first Mahommedan conquest was the outlying province of Sind. In 711, or seventy-nine years after the death of Mahomet, an Arab army under Mahommed b. Kasim invaded and conquered the Hindus of Sind in the name of Walid I., caliph of Damascus, of the Omayyad line. In the same year Roderic, the last of the Goths, fell before the victorious Saracens in Spain. But in India the bravery of the Rajputs and the devotion of the Brahmans seem to have afforded a stronger national bulwark than existed in western Europe. In 750 the Hindus rose in rebellion and drove out the Mussulman tyrant, and the land had rest for one hundred and fifty years.
The next Mahommedan invasion of India is associated with the name of Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni. Mahmud was the eldest son of Sabuktagin, surnamed Nasr-ud-din, in origin a Turkish slave, who had established his rule over the greater part of modern Afghanistan and Khorassan, with Ghazni as his capital. In 977 Sabuktagin is said to have defeated Jaipal, the Hindu raja of Lahore, and to have rendered the Punjab tributary. But his son Mahmud was the first of the great Mussulman conquerors whose names still ring through Asia. Mahmud succeeded to the throne in 997. During his reign of thirty-three years he extended the limits of his father's kingdom from Persia on the east to the Ganges on the west; and it is related that he led his armies into the plains of India no fewer than seventeen times. In 1001 he defeated Raja Jaipal a second time, and took him prisoner. But Anandpal, son of Jaipal, raised again the standard of national independence, and gathered an army of Rajput allies from the farthest corners of Hindustan. The decisive battle was fought in the valley of Peshawar. Mahmud won the day by the aid of his Turkish horsemen, and thenceforth the Punjab has been a Mahommedan province, except during the brief period of Sikh supremacy. The most famous of Mahmud's invasions of India was that undertaken in 1025-1026 against Gujarat. The goal of this expedition was the temple dedicated to Siva at Somnath, around which so many legends have gathered. It is reported that Mahmud marched through Ajmere to avoid the desert of Sind; that he found the Hindus gathered on the neck of the peninsula of Somnath in defence of their holy city; that the battle lasted for two days; that in the end the Rajput warriors fled to their boats, while the Brahman priests retired into the inmost shrine; that Mahmud, introduced into this shrine, rejected all entreaties by the Brahmans to spare their idol, and all offers of ransom; that he smote the image with his club, and forthwith a fountain of precious stones gushed out. Until the British invasion of Afghanistan in 1839, the club of Mahmud and the wood gates of Somnath were preserved at the tomb of the great conqueror near Ghazni. The club has now disappeared, and the gates brought back to India by Lord Ellenborough are recognized to be a clumsy forgery. To Mahommedans Mahmud is known, not only as a champion of the faith, but as a munificent patron of literature. The dynasty that he founded was not long-lived. Fourteen of his descendants occupied his throne within little more than a century, but none of them achieved greatness. A blood-feud arose between them and a line of Afghan princes who had established themselves among the mountains of Ghor. In 1155 Bahram, the last of the Ghaznivide Turks, was overthrown by Ala-ud-din of Ghor, and the wealthy and populous city of Ghazni was razed to the ground. But even the Ghoride conqueror spared the tomb of Mahmud.