The life of this sovereign—poets have said of him:
Exalted is Allah as He wills, and may He increase my faith.
Is it Farīdūn beneath the crown, or Alexander returned?
Has the cycle come back to us with another Solomon?
The sun of Maḥmūd has eclipsed the Sāmānid stars,
while the house of Bahrām has become servants to Ibn Khāqān.
From the heart of India to the plain of Jurjān,
from distant Sind to the farthest Khurāsān,
one day the Shah’s envoys arrive, the next day those of the Khan.
Maḥmūd was born in 361 AH.
He died in Ghazna in Jumādā al-Ūlā, 421 AH.
After him his son Muḥammad held the throne for a time, but his brother Masʿūd seized him, consolidated power, and fought the Seljuqs on several occasions until he was killed in 433 AH; thereafter Masʿūd’s son (1) assumed rule.
Sultan Maḥmūd’s campaigns were famous and many, and his unprecedented conquests were tremendous.
I read, in the handwriting of the vizier Jamāl al-Dīn ibn ʿAlī al-Qifṭī in his biography, that his scribe, the vizier Ibn al-Mimandī, wrote:
“An envoy of the king came to us borne on a litter that looked like a bier, a frame with four legs carried by four men.
The sultan held envoys in great esteem, mindful of the honour their masters accorded them.”