Towards the latter part of the 9th century the power of the Khalifs of Bagdad was sinking into that state of rapid decline which is the fate of all Eastern dynasties. During the reign of Al Motamed, A.D. 870-891, Egypt became independent, and the northern province of Bokhara threw off the yoke under the governor appointed by the Khalif, Nasr ben Ahmed, a descendant of Saman, a robber chief, who declared and maintained his independence, and so formed the Samanian dynasty. After the dynasty had existed about a century, Sabuktagin, a Tûrkish slave belonging to a general of one of the last of the Samanian kings, rendered himself also independent of his master, and established himself in Ghazni, of which he was governor, founding the well-known dynasty of Ghaznavides. His successor, Mahmúd, A.D. 977-1030, is one of the best-known kings in Indian history owing to his brilliant campaigns in India, and more especially that in which he destroyed the celebrated temple of Somnath.
On his return from an earlier campaign, in which he had sacked the town of Muttra, we learn from Ferishta that the king ordered a magnificent mosque to be built of marble and granite, afterwards known by the name of the Celestial Bride. Near it he founded a university. When the nobility of Ghazni perceived the taste of their king in architecture, they also endeavoured to vie with one another in the magnificence of their palaces, as well as in the public buildings which were raised for the embellishment of the city. “Thus,” continues the historian, “the capital was in a short time ornamented with mosques, porches, fountains, aqueducts, reservoirs, and cisterns, beyond any city in the East.”[484]
275. Minar at Ghazni. (From a Drawing by G. T. Vigne, Esq.)
The plain of Ghazni still shows the remains of this splendour; and, in the dearth of information regarding Persian art of that age, an account of it would be one of the most interesting and valuable pieces of information we could receive. These ruins, however, have not been as yet either examined or described;[485] and even the tomb of the Great Mahmúd is unknown to us except by name,[486] notwithstanding the celebrity it acquired from the removal of its gates to India at the termination of our disastrous campaigns in that country.
The gates are of Deodar pine,[487] and the carved ornaments on them are so similar to those found at Cairo, on the mosque of Ebn Touloun and other buildings of that age, as not only to prove that they are of the same date, but also to show how similar were the modes of decoration at these two extremities of the Moslem empire at the time of their execution.
