At the peak of their florescence, the Ghurid dynasty controlled a swathe of territory from Nishapur in eastern Iran to the Bay of Bengal in India. They had the good fortune to rise to prominence as the Ghaznavid dynasty crumbled, and the misfortune to be squeezed between the Khorezm-shah and the nascent Mongols.

Ghurid history has been extensively researched by C.E. Bosworth, and more recently by our colleague Barry Flood in NYU; Barry is particularly interested in Ghurid and Islamic expansion into India. What follows is a summary of their work.

Mahmud of Ghazna is credited with introducing Islam to Ghur ca. 1009. The Ghaznavid empire peaked ca. 1030, but Sultan Mas^cud was disastrously defeated by the Seljuks in 1040. The Seljuks raided Ghur in 1107/8, after which the Ghurids sent annual tribute of armour and watchdogs to Sultan Sanjar in Merv, whilst simultaneously seeking to manipulate the weakness of their Ghaznavid neighbours.

Qasr Zarafshan - J. Lonsdale 1959

The Minaret is dedicated to Sultan Ghiyath al-Din, who acceded to the Ghurid throne in 1163 and ruled jointly with his brother Mu^cizz al-Din. Scholars generally agree that the archaeological site of Jam is ancient Firuzkuh, but still debate precisely when the Minaret was built (ca. 1173/4 seems most likely).

The ruling brothers greatly expanding the Ghurid empire, despite suffering a number of significant reverses, particularly in 1191 at Tara’in in India, when Mu^cizz al-Din was utterly defeated and seriously wounded. He returned the next year, however, with 120,000 cavalry and captured Delhi in 1193. In 1199, the Ghurids exceeded the height of the Minaret of Jam, building the 72.5 m high Qutb Minar in Delhi.

Ghiyath al-Din died in 1202, after taking Nishapur and Merv; the Ghurids were then driven out of Khorezm and Mu^cizz ad-Din was assassinated by an Isma^cili in India in 1206. This event, and the subsequent collapse of the Ghurid empire, highlights the tensions within Islam during this period. According to Flood, Ghiyath al-Din’s titles emphasized his role as the promoter of orthodoxy and scourge of heretics. The Ghurid elite were closely associated with the anti-Isma^cili Karramiya sect, but they seem to have changed their allegiances in 1199 to the more mainstream Shafi^ci sect.

Bosworth sees this dramatic shift in official Ghurid piety as a reflection of the fact that they were now players on the ‘world stage’ and were seeking to distance themselves from their backwoods origins. Needless to say, the move was not popular in Ghur, and resulted in rioting in Firuzkuh, as well as in other cities such as Herat and Nishapur.

By the early 1200s the Ghurids were a spent force – one ruler was assassinated ca. 1210 and his successor taken prisoner to Khorezm. Ghazna fell in 1215/6 and Mongol armies under Chingiz Khan’s son Ögödei besieged and took Firuzkuh in ca. 1221/2. Despite their ignominious end, the Ghurids and Minaret of Jam remain a potent political symbol, as this election poster from 2005 demonstrates.