Second Battle of Tarain
A year after losing on the same field, Muhammad of Ghor beat Prithviraj with mounted archers, opening north India to the Delhi Sultanate.
In 1191 Muhammad of Ghor, the sultan of the Ghurid dynasty of Afghanistan, who had already taken Lahore from the last Ghaznavids, advanced towards Delhi. At Tarain, near Thanesar, Prithviraj Chauhan, king of Ajmer and Delhi, met him with a great Rajput army and defeated him; Muhammad was wounded and barely escaped.
He returned in 1192 with a larger army of mounted archers. On the same field he used feigned retreats to draw the Rajput host apart, attacking its flanks with archers until it was exhausted, then broke it with heavy cavalry. Prithviraj was captured and killed.
The second battle of Tarain opened the Gangetic plain to the Ghurids. Muhammad's slave general Qutb-ud-din Aibak founded the Delhi Sultanate, which ruled north India and the Punjab for more than three centuries.
Same era
Invaders at the gates, 1400 BCE – 1221
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