BOOK A. H. 421. CHAP. IV. OTHER KINGS OF THE HOUSES OF GHAZNI AND Ghór. Sultán Mohammed. SULTAN MAHMUD left two sons, one of whom, Mohammed, had, by his gentleness and docility, .D. 1030, so ingratiated himself with his father, that he fixed on him for his successor in preference to his more untractable brother, Masáúd. Mohammed was accordingly put in possession, and crowned as soon as Mahmud was dead; but the commanding temper and headlong courage of Masáúd, together with his personal strength and soldier-like habits, made him more popular, and, in fact, more fit to govern, in the times which were approaching. Accordingly a large body of guards deserted from Mohammed immediately after his accession; and by the time Masáúd arrived from his government of Isfahan, the whole army was ready to throw off its allegiance. Mohammed was seized, blinded, and sent into confinement; and Masáúd ascended the throne within five months after his father's death. A. D. 1030, A. H. 421. Sultán Masáúd. The situation of the new monarch required all the energy by which he was distinguished; for IV. the power of the Seljúks had already risen to CHAP. such a height as to threaten his empire with the calamities which they afterwards brought on it. The origin of this family is not distinctly known; and their early history is related in different ways. The most probable account is, that the chief from whom they derived their name held a high station under one of the great Tartar princes; that he incurred the displeasure of his sovereign, and emigrated with his adherents to Jáund, on the left bank of the Jaxartes. His sons were afterwards subject to Sultán Mahmúd; and, by one account, were either induced or compelled by him to move to the south of the Oxus, and settle in Khorásán.* It is, however, more probable that they remained in Transoxiana, under a loose subjection to the Sultan, carrying on wars and incursions on their own account, until the end of his reign, when they began to push their depredations into his immediate territories. They received a check at that time, as has been related, and did not enter Khorásán in force until the reign of Masáúd. Though individuals of the Túrki nation had long before made themselves masters of the governments which they served, as the Mamluk guards at Bagdad, Alptegín at Ghazni, &c. ; yet the Seljúks were the first horde, in modern times, that obtained possessions to the south of the Oxus; and, although the invasions of Chengíz Khán and * Amir bin Kadr Seljúki was left by Mahmúd in the command of a garrison in India in A. d. 1021, a. H. 412. Rise of the Seljuks. . Their wars with Masáúd. A. H. 422. Tamerlane were afterwards on a greater scale, the Seljúk conquest was raised to equal importance from the fact that the representative of one of its branches still fills the throne of Constantinople.* At the time of Masáúd's accession their inroads into Khorásán began again to be troublesome. They did not, however, seem to require the personal exertions of the new king, who was therefore left A. D. 1081, at leisure to reduce the province of Mecrán under his authority; and as within the next three years A. D. 1034, he received the submission of the provinces of Mázanderán and Gurgán, then in the hands of a family of unconverted fire-worshippers, he had, before his power began to decline, attained to the sovereignty of all Persia, except the province of Fárs. A. H. 425. While engaged with Mecrán he received intelligence of a doubtful battle with the Seljúks in Khárism. Mahmúd's favourite general, Altún Tásh, was killed in this battle, and his successor thought it prudent to come to terms very inconsistent with the dignity of the monarchy. Notwithstanding this misfortune, Masáúd thought himself sufficiently at liberty to enter on an Indian expedition, the only result of which was the capture of Sersúti, a place of no importance on the left bank of the Satlaj. The next year was marked by a pestilence, which raged with unexampled violence over the * De Guignes. D'Herbelot. Price. IV. A. H. 425. whole of Persia and the neighbouring countries, CHAP. including India, and which probably occasioned a sort of suspension of military operations; but in A. D. 1034, while Masáúd was engaged in settling Mázanderán, his generals received another defeat from the Seljuks, to whom all his wisest counsellors thought it was now time for their sovereign to give his most serious attention. But Masáúd, perhaps deceived by the submissive language of the Seljúks, who still professed themselves his slaves, thought he had time to settle some disturbances in the opposite extremity of his dominions. He first quelled a rebellion at Láhór, in which the royal army employed against the insurgent (a Mussulman governor) was composed of Hindús, under a chief whose name (Tilok, son of Jei Sein) shows him to have been of their own nation and religion. Next year he himself headed an expedition to India, took Hánsi, and left a garrison in Sónpat, near Delhi. In the mean time the danger from the Seljuks had become too serious to be dissembled. The Sultan marched against them in person. His conduct of the war evinced more activity than skill; and after two years of indecisive operations (during which Toghral Bég once made an incursion to the gates of Ghazni), his affairs were in a worse position than when he first took the field. At length the two parties met on equal terms: a decisive battle was A. n. 1039. fought at Zendecán or Dandunáken, near Merv. Masáúd, being deserted on the field by some of his A. H. 43 BOOK Túrki followers, was totally and irretrievably deV. feated, and was compelled to fly to Merv. He there assembled the wreck of his army, and returned to Ghazni; but, far from being able to collect such a force as might oppose the Seljúks, he found himself without the means of repressing the disorders which were breaking out round the capital. In these circumstances he determined to withdraw to India, and avail himself of the respite thus obtained to endeavour to retrieve his affairs. But discipline was now dissolved, and all respect for the king's authority destroyed; soon after he had crossed the Indus his own guards attempted to plunder his treasure; and the confusion which followed led to a general mutiny of the army, the Deposition deposition of Masáúd, and the restoration of his of Masáúd, brother Mohammed to the throne. The blindness and death of the latter prince rendering him incapable of conducting the government, he transferred the effective administration to his son Ahmed, one of A. D. 1040, whose first acts was to put the deposed king to death. A. H. 432. Masáúd was more than ten years on the throne, and, notwithstanding the turbulent and disastrous character of his reign, he found time to promote the progress of knowledge, and showed himself a worthy successor of Mahmúd in his patronage of learned men and in the erection of magnificent public buildings. |