Page:History of India Vol 3.djvu/76

 48 GHAZNI AND GHOR The hasty flight to India was premature. The Sel- juks were busy in subduing Persia, and left Ghazni undisturbed; thither, after a while, Mas'ud's son re- turned with the army, and for more than a century the Ghaznavids, as his descendants are called, dwelt in their mountain city with gradually decaying power. Their names and dates are given in the table at the end of this volume, but their individual reigns are of little importance for the history of India. They are described as men of benevolent character and signal piety; and some of them, such as Ibrahim, devoted themselves to the improvement and good government of their subjects. The fact that Ibrahim and Bahram sat on the throne, the one for over forty, the other for thirty-five years, shows that there was peace and sta- bility, at least in the central government. But peace was purchased at the cost of power. The later kings of Ghazni, learning by a series of defeats that their western neighbours were not to be trifled with, made terms with the Seljuks and allied the two dynasties by politic marriages, thus reducing Ghazni from the proud position of the capital of a kingdom to little more than a dependency of the empire of Malik Shah. The fratricidal struggles, which were a com- mon feature of Ghaznavid successions, even brought these dangerous Turkish neighbours into the mountains, and in 1116 we find the Seljuk Sanjar in temporary possession of Ghazni as the protector of Bahram against his brother Arslan Shah. There was little danger, however, of the enemy set-