A Turkic slave-soldier dynasty that ruled from Ghazni in Afghanistan from about 977 to 1186 CE, founded by Sebuktigin and dominated by his son Mahmud of Ghazni. It became famous in two opposite ways: as the raiders who first carried sustained Muslim campaigns deep into northern India, and as one of the most brilliant patrons of Persian high culture. Mahmud's campaigns into the Indian plains, above all the sack of the temple of Somnath, planted Muslim rule in the Punjab and are remembered today in sharply contested ways.
Around 1025, Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni led his army across the deserts of western India to the rich and holy temple of Somnath, on the Gujarat coast, and broke it open. The same ruler, in the same years, paid scholars and poets to make his court at Ghazni a jewel of Persian learning. He is the patron tied by tradition to Ferdowsi's Book of Kings, the supreme monument of Persian verse. So the Ghaznavids carried two faces at once. They were the first to carry sustained Muslim campaigns deep into the northern Indian plains, raiding and ruling, and they were among the most dazzling sponsors of the high culture of Persia. That pairing of plunder and refinement is the puzzle at the center of this empire, and historians still argue over what drove the man who held both.