India was the first to get a taste of what was to follow. Turkic invaders from Central Asia pushed out the Hindu Shahi rulers of Kabul and then began to make raids into India. Led by Mahmud of Ghazni, the Turks made as many as seventeen raids between AD 1000 and 1025 and destroyed and pillaged many of the prosperous cities and temple towns of north-western India. Perhaps the most infamous of these was an attack on the revered temple of Somnath in Gujarat. Fifty thousand of its defenders were put to the sword and some twenty million dirhams worth of gold, silver and gems were carried away.
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