Mahmud Sentence Examples

With the assistance of neighbouring princes and of many of the influential Dihkans, Mahmud collected a vast amount of materials for the work, and after having searched in vain for a man of sufficient learning and ability to edit them faithfully, and having entrusted various episodes for versification to the numerous poets whom he had gathered round him, he at length made choice of Firdousi.

Being presented to the seven poets who were then engaged on the projected epic, Abu 'I Kasim was admitted to their meetings, and on one occasion improvised a verse, at Mahmud's request, in praise of his favourite Ayaz, with such success that the sultan bestowed upon him the name of Firdousi, saying that he had converted his assemblies into paradise (Firdous).

Avicenna seems to have declined the offers of Mahmud the Ghaznevid, and proceeded westwards to Urjensh in the modern Khiva, where the vizier, regarded as a friend of scholars, gave him a small monthly stipend.

England and France protested energetically and the treaty remained a dead letter, but the question came up again in 1840, after Mahmud's renewed attempt to crush Mehemet Ali had ended in the utter defeat of the Turks by Ibrahim at Nezib (June 24, 1839).

The allied powers (France, England and Russia) decided, however, that Crete should not be included amongst the islands annexed to the newly-formed kingdom of Greece; but recognizing that some change was necessary, they obtained from the sultan Mahmud II.

Mahmud ibn Sabuktagin, the second of the dynasty (998-1030), continued to make himself still more independent of the caliphate than his predecessors, and, though a warrior and a fanatical Moslem, extended a generous patronage to Persian literature and learning, and even developed it at the expense of the Arabic institutions.

When Mahmud succeeded to the throne, and evinced such active interest in the work, Firdousi was naturally attracted to the court of Ghazni.

Mahmud now definitely selected him for the work of compiling and versifying the ancient legends, and bestowed upon him such marks of his favour and munificence as to elicit from the poet an enthusiastic panegyric, which is inserted in the preface of the Shahnama, and forms a curious contrast to the bitter satire which he subsequently prefixed to the book.

As this prince belonged, like Firdousi, to the Shiah sect, while Mahmud and Maimandi were Sunnites, and as he was also politically opposed to the sultan, Hasan Maimandi did not fail to make the most of this incident, and accused the poet of disloyalty to his sovereign and patron, as well as of heresy.

Mahmud ordered Hasan Maimandi to take the poet as much gold as an elephant could carry, but the jealous treasurer persuaded the monarch that it was too generous a reward, and that an elephant's load of silver would be sufficient.

On hearing this message, Mahmud at first reproached Hasan with having caused him to break his word, but the wily treasurer succeeded in turning his master's anger upon Firdousi to such an extent that he threatened that on the morrow he would "cast that Carmathian (heretic) under the feet of his elephants."

Firdousi directed his steps to Mazandaran, and took refuge with Kabus, prince of Jorjan, who at first received him with great favour, and promised him his continued protection and patronage; learning, however, the circumstances under which he had left Ghazni, he feared the resentment of so powerful a sovereign as Mahmud, who he knew already coveted his kingdom, and dismissed the poet with a magnificent present.

But Mahmud had by this time heard of his asylum at the court of the caliph, and wrote a letter menacing his liege lord, and demanding the surrender of the poet.

Firdousi confided to him that he contemplated writing a bitter exposition of his shameful treatment at the hands of the sultan of Ghazni; but Nasir Lek, who was a personal friend of the latter, dissuaded him from his purpose, but himself wrote and remonstrated with Mahmud.

Nasir Lek's message and the urgent representations of Firdousi's friends had the desired effect; and Mahmud not only expressed his intention of offering full reparation to the poet, but put his enemy Maimandi to death.

The legend goes that Mahmud had in the meanwhile despatched the promised hundred thousand pieces of gold to Firdousi, with a robe of honour and ample apologies for the past.

Mahmud refrained for the moment from vindicating his right; but, as soon as, through court intrigues, Mansur II.

The last prince of the house of Saman, Montasir, a bold warrior and a poet of no mean talent, carried on for some years a kind of guerilla warfare against both Mahmud and the Ilek Khan, who had occupied Transoxiana, till he was assassinated in 1005 (395 A.H.).

Kalinjar town, then the capital, was unsuccessfully besieged by Mahmud of Ghazni in A.D.

The reform of the Ottoman government contemplated by the sultan Mahmud II.

The altilik, beshlik and metallik currencies struck, the first and last in the reign of Mahmud II.

In 1381 Murad's son Yilderim Bayezid married Devlet Shah Khatun, hausted by the onslaughts of Ghazan Mahmud Khan, 1288-1326.

This news caused consternation at Constantinople; the inevitable revolt of the Janissaries followed, headed this time by one Patrona Khalil, and the sultan was forced to abdicate in favour of his nephew Mahmud.

In 1754 the Sultan Mahmud died.

But he arrived too late; Selim had already been killed; the unworthy Mustafa was put to death, and Mahmud, the sole survivor of the house of Osman, became sultan.

Sultan Mahmud now devoted himself to breaking the overgrown power of the local governors, which had for many years practically annihilated that of the central authority.

The barbarous reprisals into which Sultan Mahmud allowed himself to be carried away only accentuated the difficulty of the situation.

Meanwhile Mahmud, realizing the impossibility of crushing the Greek revolt unaided, had bent his pride to ask the help of Mehemet Ali, who was to receive as his reward Crete, the Morea and the pashaliks of Syria and Damascus.

As for Mahmud, the news of the disaster reached Constantinople when he was unconscious and dying.

For such an experiment, though hampered by continual insurrections within Policy in and troubles without, Mahmud had done some- Turkey.

Reforms were effected in The reforms introduced by Sultan Mahmud and by the Tanzimat necessitated the remodelling of nearly all the departments of state.

Towards the end of Mahmud II.'s reign ministries had been instituted, and a council of ministers had been established, presided over by the grand vizier.

Regulations prescribing the duties of the local governors and officials of all ranks were drawn up only in 1865 and 1870, but since Mahmud's time their functions were exclusively civil and administrative.

By the Capitulations signed on the 28th of May 1740 on behalf of Sultan Mahmud I.

A conspiracy to bring about a change was hereupon formed by certain prominent statesmen, whose leaders were Midhat Pasha, Mehemed Rushdi Pasha and Mahmud Damad Pasha, the husband of a princess of the blood, sister to Prince Murad.

They refused to treat with the delegates, and despatched 25,000 men under Mahmud Shevket to Constantinople.

Of these the first extends from the early days of the empire to the accession of Suleiman I.,1301-1520(loo-926); the second from that event to the accession of Mahmud I.,1520-1730(926-1143); and the third from that date to the accession of 'Abd-u1-`Aziz,1730-1861(1143-1277).

More intimate relations with western Europe and a pretty general study of the French language and literature, together with the steady progress of the reforming tendency fairly started under Mahmud II., resulted in the birth of the new or modern school, whose objects are truth and simplicity.

The family of Tekke Oglu, domiciled near Perga, though reduced to submission in 1812 by Mahmud II., continued to be a rival power to the Ottoman governor till within the present generation, surviving by many years the fall of the other great Beys of Anatolia.

In 1803 Jezzar of Acre advanced as near as Hamah; but his death occurred in the following year; and after a sanguinary rising in 1805, Aleppo settled down, but was not at peace, even after a local janissary massacre in 1814, till Mahmud II.

His stay was only once interrupted, when, in 1909, he hastened to Salonika, and with Mahmud Shevket under - took a brief and victorious campaign against the reactionaries, who hoped to regain unfettered power under 'Abdul Hamid.

He had studied Arabic, Turkish, Greek, the vernacular languages of India and Sind, and perhaps even Hebrew; he had visited Multan and Lahore, and the splendid Ghaznavide court under Sultan Mahmud, Firdousi's patron.

The reforming efforts of the grand vizier Bairakdar, to whom he had owed his life and his accession, broke on the opposition of the janissaries; and Mahmud had to wait for more favourable times.

But for the intervention of the powers and the battle of Navarino Mahmud's authority would have been restored in Greece.

After two hardly fought campaigns (1828, 1829) Mahmud was at length, on the 14th of September 1829, compelled to sign the peace of Adrianople.

From this moment until his death Mahmud was, to all intents and purposes, the " vassal of Russia," though not without occasional desperate efforts to break his chains.

Mahmud's policy was the converse of that recommended by Machiavelli, viz.

On the 9th of August 1832 Mahmud made, through Stratford Canning, a formal proposal for an alliance with Great Britain, which Palmerston refused to consider for fear of offending France.

Mahmud bitterly contrasted the fair professions of England with the offers of effective help from Russia.

Mahmud was under no illusion as to the position in which the latter placed him towards Russia; but his fear of Mehemet Ali and his desire to be revenged upon him outweighed all other considerations.

When the news of Ibrahim's overwhelming victory at Nessib (June 24, 1839) reached Constantinople, Mahmud lay dying and unconscious.

There is a great deal of valuable material for the history of Mahmud and his policy in the unpublished F.O.

It was sacked by Mahmud of Ghazni in 1017-18; about 150o Sultan Sikandar Lodi utterly destroyed all the Hindu shrines, temples and images; and in 1636 Shah Jahan appointed a governor expressly tQ " stamp out idolatry."

After the invasion of Mahmud of Ghazni the city fell into insignificance till the reign of Akbar; and thenceforward its history merges in that of the Jats of Bharatpur, until it again acquired separate individuality under Suraj Mal in the middle of the 18th century.

A knoll above the town is occupied by the half-ruined fort or palace of former governors, built for Mahmud Pasha by a Persian architect and considered one of the most beautiful buildings in Turkey.

Under his dynasty the country attained its greatest splendour in the early part of the 11th century, when its raja, whose dominions extended from the Jumna to the Nerbudda, marched at the head of 36,000 horse and 45,000 foot, with 640 elephants, to oppose the invasion of Mahmud of Ghazni.

In 1831, Hussein Aga Borberli, called the "Dragon of Bosnia," or Zmaj Bosanski, set forth from Banjaluka on his holy war against the sultan Mahmud II.

Meanwhile Sultan Mahmud, now wide awake to the danger, had been preparing for a systematic effort to suppress the rising.

Sultan Mahmud, despairing of suppressing the insurrection by his own power, had reluctantly summoned to his aid Mehemet Ali, pasha of Egypt, whose well-equipped fleet and disciplined army were now Interven- thrown into the scale against the Greeks.

After a period of Latin occupation, it was captured by the Turks in 1462; it was given by the Sultan Mahmud II.

He soon began to make conquests in the neighbouring countries, 1 The name is strictly Mahmud.

In 994 Mahmud was made governor of Khorasan, with the title of Saif addaula (ud-daula) ("Sword of the State") by thee Samanid Nuh II.

As soon as Ismail had assumed the sovereignty at Balkh, Mahmud, who was at Nishapur, addressed him in friendly terms, proposing a division of the territories held by their father at his death.

Ismail rejected the proposal, and was immediately attacked by Mahmud and defeated.

From this time it is the name of the caliph that is inscribed on Mahmud's coins, together with his own new titles.

Nall is given along with his own former title, Saif addaula Mahmud.

The earliest of those of the new form gives his name Mahmud bin Sabuktagin.

The new honours received from the caliph gave fresh impulse to Mahmud's zeal on behalf of Islam, and he resolved on an annual expedition against the idolaters of India.

The hostile attitude of Khalaf ibn Ahmad, governor of Seistan, called Mahmud to that province for a short time.

He was appeased by Khalaf's speedy submission, together with the gift of a large sum of money, and further, it is said, by his subdued opponent addressing him as sultan, a title new at that time, and by which Mahmud continued to be called,, though he did not formally adopt it, or stamp it on his coins.

Four years later Khalaf, incurring Mahmud's displeasure again, was imprisoned, and his property confiscated.

Mahmud's army first crossed the Indus in Ioor, opposed by Jaipal, raja of Lahore.

Jaipal was defeated, and Mahmud, after his return from this expedition, is said to have taken the distinctive appellation of Ghazi (" Valiant for the Faith"), but he is rarely so-called.

On the next occasion (1005) Mahmud advanced, as far as Bhera on the Jhelum, when his adversary Anang-pal, son and successor of Jaipal, fled to Kashmir.

The following year saw Mahmud at Multan.

After a rapid march back from India, Mahmud repelled the invaders.

The Ilek Khan, having retreated across the Oxus, returned with reinforcements, and took up a position a few miles from Balkh, where he was signally defeated by Mahmud.

Mahmud again entered the Punjab in 1008, this time for the express purpose of chastising Sewah Pal, who, having become a Mussulman, and been left by Mahmud in charge of Multan, had relapsed to Hinduism.

Near the Indus Mahmud was opposed again by Anangpal, supported by powerful rajas from other parts of India.

After a severe fight, Anang-pal's elephants were so terror-struck by the fire-missiles flung amongst them by the invaders that they turned and fled, the whole army retreating in confusion and leaving Mahmud master of the field.

Mahmud, after this victory, pushed on through the Punjab to Nagar-kot (Kangra), and carried off much spoil from the Hindu temples to enrich his treasury at Ghazni.

In Doi I Mahmud, after a short campaign against the Afghans under Mahommed ibn Stir in the hill country of Ghur, marched again into the Punjab.

Hindustan he had to march north into Khwarizm (Khiva) against his brother-in-law Mamun, who had refused to acknowledge Mahmud's supremacy.

The result was as usual, and Mahmud, having committed Khwarizm to a new ruler, one of Mamun's chief officers, returned to his capital.

But Mahmud found he had not yet sufficiently subdued the idolaters nearer his own border, between Kabul and the Indus, and the campaign of 1022 was directed against them, and reached no.

The story is often told of the hollow figure, cleft by Mahmud's.

Mahmud, was well known, made Hindu temples.

After the successes at Somnath, Mahmud remained some months in India before returning to Ghazni.

And, although the annals of Rajputana tell how Sabuktagin was defeated by one raja of Ajmere and Mahmud by his successor, the course of events which followed shows how little these and other reverses affected the invader's progress..

Mahmud's failure at Ajmere, when the brave raja Bisal-deo, obliged him to raise the siege but was himself slain, was when the Moslem army was on its way to Somnath.

Mahmud retained no possessions in India under his own direct rule.

Mahmud died at Ghazni in 1030, the year following his expedition to Persia.

The principal histories of Mahmud's reign are - Kitab-iYamini (Utbi); Tarikh-us-Subuktigin (Baihaki); Tabakat i Nasiri (Minhaj el-Siraj); Rauzat-us-Safa (Mir Khond); Habib-us-Sivar (Khondamir).

In April 1399, some three months after quitting the capital of Mahmud Toghluk, Timur was back in his own capital beyond the Oxus.

He had fallen into disfavour because of his unwillingness to join in the intrigues of the princess Turkan Khatun, who wished to secure the succession to the throne for her infant son Mahmud at the expense of the elder sons of Malik Shah.

After the death of Mahommed, Sinjar became the real head of the family, though Irak acknowledged Mahmud, the son of Mahommed.

This state of things continued even after Mahmud II.

In 1754 Mahmud died of heart-disease when returning from the Friday service at the mosque.

Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni took it in the IIth century from the Afghans who then held it.

This prince was deposed by his half-brother Mahmud, who was in his turn deposed by Shah Shuja, the full brother of Zaman Shah.

Mahmud was reinstated by Fateh Khan, whom he appointed his vizier, and whose nephews, Dost Mahommed Khan and Kohn dil Khan, he placed respectively in the governments of Kabul and Kandahar.

Fateh Khan was barbarously murdered by Kamran (Mahmud's son) near Ghazni in 1818; and in retaliation Mahmud himself was driven from power, and the Barakzai clan secured the sovereignty of Afghanistan.

In all that followed Arabi was put forward as the leader of the discontented Egyptians; he was in reality little more than the mouthpiece and puppet of abler men such as Ali Rubi and Mahmud Sami.

On the ist of February 1881 Arabi and two other Egyptian colonels, summoned before a court-martial for acts of disobedience, were rescued by their soldiers, and the khedive was forced to dismiss his then minister of war in favour of Mahmud Sami.

Sherif fell in February, Mahmud Sami became prime minister, and Arabi (created a pasha) minister of war.

The same sentence was passed on Mahmud Sami and others.

On the 8th of April 1898 a British division, with the Egyptian army, destroyed the Dervish force under the amir Mahmud Ahmed, on the Atbara river.

The 7th Ilkhan, Ghazan Mahmud, took advantage of the disorder in the Mameluke empire to invade Syria in the latter half of 1299, when his forces inflicted a severe defeat on those of the new sultan, and seized several cities, including the capital Damascus, of which, however, they were unable to storm the citadel; in 1300, when a fresh army was collected in Egypt, the Mongols evacuated Damascus and made no attempt to secure their other conquests.

Mehemet Ali was fully conscious that the empire which he had so laboriously built up might at any time have to be defended by force of arms against his master Sultan Mahmud II., whose whole policy had been directed to curbing the power of his too ambitious valis, and who was under tha influence of the personal enemies of the pasha of Egypt, notably of Khosrev, the grand vizier, who had never forgiven his humiliation in Egypt in 1803.

Mahmud also was already planning reforms borrowed from the West, and Mehemet Ali, who had had plenty of opportunity of observing the superiority of European.

Mahmud to hope for revenge, and a renewal of the conflict was only staved off by the anxious efforts of the powers.

Six days later, before Mah the news reached ConstantinoQle, Mahmud died.

The khedive was practically compelled to form a government in which Arabi was minister of war and Mahmud Sami premier, and Arabi took steps to extend his influence throughout his army.

But at the end of February, Mahmud crossed the Nile to Shendi with some 12,000 fighting men, and with Osman Digna advanced along the right bank of the Nile to Ahab, where he struck across the desert to Nakheila, on the Atbara, intending to turn Kitcheners left flank at Berber.

Mahmud and several hundred dervishes were captured, 40 amirs and 3000 Arabs killed, and many more wounded; the rest escaped to Gedaref.

Ali's authority in the great part of the peninsula subject to him now overshadowed that of the sultan; and Mahmud II., whose whole policy had been directed to destroying the overgrown power of the provincial pashas, began to seek a pretext for overthrowing the Lion of Iannina,whose all-devouring ambition seemed to threaten his own throne.

In1016-1025the government of Khwarizm was bestowed by Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni upon Altuntash, one of his most distinguished generals.

Trade does not extend largely between Afghanistan and India by the Tochi route, being locally confined to the valley and the districts at its head, yet this is the shortest and most direct route between Ghazni and the frontier, and in the palmy days of Ghazni raiding was the road by which the great robber Mahmud occasionally descended on to the Indus plains.

Of the city of Ghazni, the vast capital of Mahmud and his race, iio substantial relics survive, except the tomb of Mahmud and two remarkable brick minarets.

There, too, reigned his famous son Mahmud, and a series of descendants, till the middle of the 12th century, rendering the city one of the most splendid in Asia.

The name Afghans is very distinctly mentioned in 'Utbi's History of Sultan Mahmud, written about A.D.

Mahmud, the son of Mir Wais, a man of great courage and energy, carried out a project of his father's, the conquest of Persia itself.

Two years later Mahmud died mad, and a few years saw the end of Ghilzai rule in Persia.

The next Mahommedan invasion of India is associated with the name of Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni.

Mahmud was the eldest son of Sabuktagin, surnamed Nasr-ud-din, in origin a Turkish slave, who had established his rule over the greater part of modern Afghanistan and Khorassan, with Ghazni as his capital.

But his son Mahmud was the first of the great Mussulman conquerors whose names still ring through Asia.

Mahmud succeeded to the throne in 997.

Mahmud won the day by the aid of his Turkish horsemen, and thenceforth the Punjab has been a Mahommedan province, except during the brief period of Sikh supremacy.

The most famous of Mahmud's invasions of India was that undertaken in1025-1026against Gujarat.

It is reported that Mahmud marched through Ajmere to avoid the desert of Sind; that he found the Hindus gathered on the neck of the peninsula of Somnath in defence of their holy city; that the battle lasted for two days; that in the end the Rajput warriors fled to their boats, while the Brahman priests retired into the inmost shrine; that Mahmud, introduced into this shrine, rejected all entreaties by the Brahmans to spare their idol, and all offers of ransom; that he smote the image with his club, and forthwith a fountain of precious stones gushed out.

Until the British invasion of Afghanistan in 1839, the club of Mahmud and the wood gates of Somnath were preserved at the tomb of the great conqueror near Ghazni.

To Mahommedans Mahmud is known, not only as a champion of the faith, but as a munificent patron of literature.

But even the Ghoride conqueror spared the tomb of Mahmud.

Mahmud, the last of the Tughlak dynasty, being defeated in a battle out.

Timur marched back to Samarkand as he had come, by way of Kabul, and Mahmud Tughlak ventured to return to his desolate capital.

Before the year was out Shah Shuja had been driven into exile, and a third brother, Mahmud Shah, was on the throne.

The drama closed with a bombastic proclamation from Lord Ellenborough, who had caused the gates from the tomb of Mahmud of Ghazni to be carried back as a memorial of " Somnath revenged."

The first came to India with Sultan Mahmud Ghaznavi in A.D.

The tarbush is of Greek origin and was adopted by Sultan Mahmud of Turkey in the early part of the 19th century.

About this time an impostor named Mahmud b.

At his death in 387 his son Mahmud conquered the whole of Khorasan and Sijistan, with a great part of India.

The greatest gainer for the moment was Mahmud of Ghazni.

Already during the reign of Mahmud large bodies had passed the Oxus and spread over Khorasan and the adjacent countries.

After conspiracies that caused the dethronement of two brothers, Taman Shah and Mahmud Shah, he became king in 1803.

He was, however, in his turn driven out of Afghanistan in 1809 by Mahmud Shah, and found refuge and a pension in British territory.

The disastrous British expedition of 1807 followed; and while at Constantinople the prestige of the sultan was being undermined by the series of revolutions which in 1808 brought Mahmud to the throne, that of Mehemet Ali was enhanced by the exhibition at Cairo of British prisoners and an avenue of stakes decorated with the heads of British slain.

To Mahmud II., whose whole policy was directed to strengthening the authority of the central power, this fact would have sufficed to make him distrust the pasha and desire his overthrow; and it was sorely against his will that, in 1822, the ill-success of his arms against the insurgent Greeks forced him to summon Mehemet Ali to his aid.

The intervention of the powers, culminating in the shattering of the Egyptian fleet at Navarino (q.v.), robbed him of his reward so far as Greece was concerned; the failure of his arms in face of this intervention gave Sultan Mahmud the excuse he desired for withholding the rest of the stipulated price of his assistance.

Mahmud, on the other hand, was torn between hatred of the pasha and hatred of the Christian powers which had forced him to make concessions to the Greeks.

Mahmud, in desperation, now turned for help to the powers.

Great Britain, prodigal of protestations of goodwill, alone remained; and to her Mahmud turned with a definite offer of an offensive and defensive alliance.

Palmerston, however, did not share Canning's belief in the possible regeneration of Turkey; he held that an isolated intervention of Great Britain would mortally offend not only Russia but France, and that Mehemet Ali, disappointed of his ambitions, would find in France a support that would make him doubly dangerous.1 In the autumn Sultan Mahmud, as a last independent effort, despatched against Ibrahim the army which, under Reshid Pasha, had been engaged in pacifying Albania.

He at once arrested his march; but the pressure of famine in the capital, caused by the cutting off of supplies from Asia and the presence of the large Russian force, compelled Mahmud to yield, and on the 3rd of May a firman ceded Adana to Ibrahim under the pretext of appointing him muhassil, or collector of the revenue.

Sultan Mahmud was to the last degree embittered against the powers which, with lively protestations of friendship, had forced him to humiliate himself before his hated vassal.

To achieve this one end had, indeed, become the overmastering passion of Mahmud's life, to defeat it the object of all Mehemet Ali's policy.

Meanwhile it had needed all the diplomatic armoury of the powers to prevent Mahmud hastening to the assistance of his "oppressed subjects."

In the end Mahmud's passion played into his hands.

In 1845 the town was held for a time by the Kurd chief Khan Mahmud, who eventually surrendered and was exiled.

But the city was most famous for the temple just outside its walls in which stood the great idol or rather columnar emblem of Siva called Somnath (Moon's lord), which was destroyed by Mahmud of Ghazni.

The famous "Gates of Somnath," which were supposed to have been carrie,d off by Mahmud to Ghazni, had probably no connexion with Somnath.

The gates were attached to the building covering Mahmud's tomb at Ghazni until their removal to India, under Lord Ellenborough's orders, on the evacuation of Afghani-' stan in 1842.

Mahmud appears to have been unable to effect the reforms he desired in the mode of educating his children, so that his son received no better education than that given, according to use and wont, to Turkish princes in the harem.

His son and successor Mahmud (qv.) was attacked by a brother, Ismail, and retired from Khorasan (of which he had been governor).

The Samanids then fell under the power of the Tatar Ilkhans, but Mahmud returned, triumphed over both the Samanids and the Tatars, and assumed the independent title of sultan with authority over Khorasan, Transoxiana and parts of north-west India.

Mahmud was a great conqueror, and wherever he went he replaced the existing religion by Mahommedanism.

The brief reigns of Il-Arslan arfd Sultan Shah Mahmud were succeeded by that of Tukush (1172-1199) and Ala ed-din Mahommedi (1199-1220).

Baidus reign was cut short in the same year by Arghuns son Ghazan Mahmud, whose reign (1295-1304) was a period of prosperity in war and administration.

Walads sons Mahmud, Owais and Mahommed, and Uosain, grandson of Sultan Ahmad, successively occupied the throne.

AurHoiuTIEs.The works relating to Persia will be found under articles on the maindynasties (CALIPHATE; SELJIJKS; MONGOLS), and the great rulers (JENGHIz KHAN; MAHMUD OF GHAZNI; TIMUR).

The wali of Arabia escaped into Isfahan, and Mahmud the Afghan gained a complete victory.

Mahmud seized on the Armenian suburb of Julfa, and invested the doomed city; but Tahmasp, son of the shah, had previously escaped into the mountains of Mazandaran.

Mahmud entered Isfahan in triumph, with the captive shah on his left hand, and, seating himself on the throne in the royal palace, he was saluted as sovereign of Persia by the unfortunate klosain.

Mahmud was succeeded by his first cousin, Ashraf, the son of Mir Ahdallah.

From Kazvin Nadir moved to Isfahan, where he organized an expedition against Kandahar, then in the possession of a brother of Mahmud, the conqueror of Shah Jlosain.

Since Fath Au Shahs accession he and his brother Mahmud had been, as it were, under Persian protection.

Now, however, that she marched her army against the place, Firuzu d-Din called in the aid of his brother Mahmud Shah of Kabul, who sent to him the famous vizier, Fath Khan Barakzai.

He was succeeded by his eldest son, Mahmud Khan, then a boy of about fourteen years.

Finally, the khan was deposed, and his son Mir Mahmud Khan succeeded in November 1893.

His elder brother, the chief of the Barakzai, Fatteh Khan, took an important part in raising Mahmud to the sovereignty of Afghanistan in 1800 and in restoring him to the throne in 1809.

After a bloody conflict Mahmud was deprived of all his possessions but Herat, the rest of his dominions being divided among Fatteh Khan's brothers.

And thereupon, worn out by two days' hill fighting and lacking in internal homogeneity, Mahmud Mukhtar's Corps broke up, abandoning Kirk Kilisse and its fortifications, and streamed away in panic. The Bulgarians entered Kirk Kilisse on the 24th and possessed themselves of immense booty, including 55 guns.

Corps (Mahmud Mukhtar) on the right, was on the road between Vaisa and Bunar Hissar, the II.

In 1398, during the reign of Mahmud Tughlak, occurred the Tatar invasion of Timurlane.

At length Mahmud Tughlak regained a fragment of his former kingdom, but on his death in 1412 the family became extinct.

He went to India, where he took service under the Bahmani king of the Deccan, and ultimately became a person of great importance at the court of Mahmud II.

On his death, however, the brief period of comparative prosperity which his architectural works attest was tragically interrupted, and it seemed for a time that Walachia was doomed to Turkish sink into a Turkish pashalic. The Turkish commander, Mahmud Bey, became treacherously possessed of Neagoe's young son and successor, and, sending him a prisoner to Stambul, proceeded to nominate Turkish governors in the towns and villages of Walachia.

The Walachians resisted desperately, elected Radu, a kinsman of Neagoe, voivode, and succeeded with Hungarian help in defeating Mahmud Bey at Grumatz in 1522.

It commands all the passes which here debouch from the north through the Hindu Kush, and from the west through Kandahar; and through it passed successive invasions of India by Alexander the Great, Mahmud of Ghazni, Jenghiz Khan, Baber, Nadir Shah and Ahmad Shah.

In 1023 Mahmud of Ghazni had already invaded Gujarat with a large army, destroyed the national Hindu idol of Somnath, and carried away an immense booty.

Meanwhile southern Kurdistan, led by Sheikh Mahmud, the son of Sheikh Said, continued in a state of rebellion, in which the two most active tribes were the Jaf and the Hamawand.

Sulaimani was occupied in 1910 after heavy bribes had been paid to Sheikh Mahmud; Mahmud Pasha, leader of the Jaf, was induced to go to Mosul and there detained for a year.

He appointed as governor Sheikh Mahmud Barzinja, and instituted a form of government designed to be acceptable to southern Kurdistan.

A few other officers were sent at Sheikh Mahmud's request to assist in organizing the local Government under British protection.

While propaganda and counter-propaganda were busy throughout northern and central Kurdistan, in May 1919 Sheikh Mahmud, who conceived that he had received ill-treatment at British hands in his capacity of governor of southern Kurdistan, effected a coup de main by which he filled Sulaimani town with Persian Kurd freebooters.

It is probable that the invader Baber (who has much to say about Bajour) fought them there in the early years of the 26th century, when on his way to found the Mogul dynasty of India centuries after Buddhism has been crushed in northern India by the destroyer Mahmud.

Until 1820 it was subject to Bokhara, but in that year Mahmud Khan besieged it for four months, took it by storm and left it a heap of ruins.

At the time of the Afghan invasion of Mir Mahmud (1722), Malik Mahommed Kaiani was the resident ruler in Seistan, and by league with the invader or other intrigue he secured for himself that particular principality and a great part of Khorasan also.

The opposition of the Albanians, Christian as well as Moslem, to the reforms introduced by the sultan Mahmud II.

Mohammed bin Khawandshah bin Mahmud, commonly called Mirkhwand or Mirkhawand, more familiar to Europeans under the name of Mirkhond, was born in 1433, the son of a very pious and learned man who, although belonging to an old Bokhara family of Sayyids, or direct descendants of the Prophet, lived and died in Balkh.

Ayaz related what had taken place between Mahmud and Hasan Maimandi, and Firdousi in a rage gave 20 thousand pieces to Ayaz himself, the same amount to the bath-keeper, and paid the rest to a beer seller for a glass of beer (fouka), sending word back to the sultan that it was not to gain money that he had taken so much trouble.

Mahmud, in a violent rage, sent after the poet and promised a large reward for his capture, but he was already in comparative safety.

Nub II., in order to retain at least a nominal sway over those Afghan territories, confirmed him in his high position and even invested Sabuktagin's son Mahmud with the governorship of Khorasan, in reward for the powerful help they had given him in his desperate struggles with a confederation of disaffected nobles of Bokhara under the leadership of Fa'iq and the troops of the Dailamites, a dynasty that had arisen on the shores of the Caspian Sea and wrested already from the hands of the Samanids all their western provinces.

In spite of the weak efforts of the British government to palliate the significance of this " untoward incident," Turkey broke off diplomatic relations with the three powers concerned, and on the 10th of December Mahmud, giving full vent to his rage, issued a hatt-i-sherif denouncing the cruelty and perfidy of the Christian powers, declaring the convention of Akkerman null and void, and summoning the faithful to a holy war.

Here it must suffice to say that the recognition of Mehemet Ali's claims, forced on the sultan by France and Great Britain, was followed in 1833 by the signature of the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi, which seemed to place Turkey wholly in the power of Russia, after which Sultan Mahmud concentrated his energies on creating a force strong enough to crush his rebellious vassal.

Early on the 1st of July he was dead, and his son Abd-ul-Mejid, a lad of eighteen, reigned in his stead (see Mahmud Ii.).

When we reach the reign of Mahmud II., the great transition period of Ottoman history, during which the civilization of the West began to struggle in earnest with that of the East, we find the change which was coming over all things Turkish affecting literature along with the rest, and preparing the way for the appearance of the new school.

After three abortive campaigns Mahmud was compelled, infinitely against his will, to summon to his assistance the already too powerful pasha of Egypt, Mehemet Ali, whom he had already employed to suppress the rebellious Wahhabis in Arabia.

The news of Navarino betrayed Mahmud into one of those paroxysms of rage to which he was liable, and which on critical occasions were apt fatally to cloud his usual good sense.

Mahmud, in spite of - or rather because of - his well-meant efforts at reform, was hated by his Mussulman subjects and stigmatized as an " infidel " and a traitor to Islam.

But he came too late; the ill-fated reforming sultan had been strangled in the seraglio, and Bairakdar's only resource was to wreak his vengeance on Mustafa and to place on the throne Mahmud II., the sole surviving member of the house of Osman.

Retreating to Ghazni, he there yielded, and was imprisoned, and Mahmud obtained undisputed power as sovereign of Khorasan and Ghazni (997) The Ghaznevid dynasty is sometimes reckoned by native historians to commence with Sabuktagin's conquest of Bost and Kosdar (978).

But Sabuktagin, throughout his reign at Ghazni, continued to acknowledge the Samanid suzerainty, as did Mahmud also, until the time, soon after succeeding to his father's dominions, when he received from Qadir, caliph of Bagdad (see Caliphate, C. § 25), a khilat (robe of honour), with a letter recognizing his sovereignty, and conferring on him the titles Yamin-addaula (" Right hand of the State"), and Amin-ulMillat (" Guardian of the Faith").

For many years barbarous wars raged between the brothers, during which Zaman Shah, Shuja-ulMulk and Mahmud successively held the throne.

At first court jealousies and intrigues preventied Firdousi from being noticed by the sultan; but at length one of his friends, Mahek, undertook to present to Mahmud his poetic version of one of the well-known episodes of the legendary history.

Mahmud was thus early impressed with the necessity for dissembling his intention to institute reforms until he should be powerful enough to carry them through.