The first serious Moslim incursions were those of Mahmud of Ghazni, who between 997 and 1030 made many raids in which he sacked Kanauj, Muttra, Somnath and many other places but without acquiring them as permanent possessions.  Only the Panjab became a Moslim province.  In 1150 the rulers of Ghor, a vassal principality near Herat, revolted against Ghazni and occupied its territory, whence the chieftain commonly called Muhammad of Ghor descended on India and subdued Hindustan as well as the Panjab (1175-1206).  One of his slaves named Kutb-ud-Din Ibak became his general and viceroy and, when Muhammad died, founded at Delhi the dynasty known as Slave Sultans.  They were succeeded by the Khilji Sultans (1290-1318) the most celebrated of whom was the capable but ferocious Ala-ud-Din and these again by the Tughlak dynasty.  Muhammad Adil, the second of this line, attempted to move the capital from Delhi to Daulatabad in the Deccan.  In 1398 northern India was convulsed by the invasion of Timur who only remained a few months but sacked Delhi with terrible carnage.  Many years of confusion followed, and a dynasty known as the Saiyids ruled in greatly diminished territories.  But in 1451 arose the Lodi or Afghan dynasty which held the Panjab, Hindustan and Bundelkhand until the advent of the Mughals.  These five royal houses do not represent successive invasions from the west.  Their founders, though of diverse origin, were all leaders engaged in the troubled politics of northern India, and they all reigned at Delhi, round which a tradition of Empire thus grew up.  But the succession was disputed in almost every case; out of thirty-four kings twelve came to a violent end and not one deserved to be called Emperor of India.  They were confronted by a double array of rivals, firstly Hindu states which were at no period all reduced to subjection, and, secondly, independent Mohammedan states, for the governors in the more distant provinces threw off their allegiance and proclaimed themselves sovereigns.  Thus Bengal from the time of its first conquest by Muhammad Bakhtyar had only a nominal connection with Delhi and declared itself independent in 1338.  When Timur upset the Tughlak dynasty, the states of Jaunpur, Gujarat, Malwa and Khandesh became separate kingdoms and remained so until the time of Akbar.  In the south one of Muhammad Adil’s generals founded the Bahmani dynasty which for about a century (1374-1482) ruled the Deccan from sea to sea.  It then split up into five sultanates with capitals at Bidar, Bijapur, Golkonda, Ahmadnagar and Elichpur.

In the twelfth century, the Hindu states were not quite the same as those noticed for the previous period.  Kanauj and Gujarat were the most important.  The Palas and Senas ruled in Bengal, the Tomaras at Delhi, the Chohans in Ajmer and subsequently in Delhi too.  The Mohammedans conquered all these states at the end of the twelfth century.  Their advance was naturally less rapid towards the south.  In the