Mahmud of Ghazni

Mahmud of Ghazni (reigned 998–1030) was the most prominent ruler of the Ghaznavid dynasty, which he built into an empire stretching from Iran across Afghanistan into the Punjab. He led some seventeen military campaigns into northern India between roughly 1000 and 1027, plundering wealthy cities and temple towns; his raid on the Somnath temple in 1025–1026 became especially renowned and earned him a reputation as an iconoclast. The immense wealth he seized funded the transformation of his capital, Ghazni, into a center of Islamic learning and Persian culture, and he patronized scholars such as al-Biruni and the poet Firdawsi. He died in 1030.