Sultan Mahmud was not only first in patronage of the arts; he also prided himself on the number of Hindu temples he sacked and how thoroughly he sacked them and what quantities of loot he snatched away from infidel fingers. He hauled his plunder home to ornament his capital and pay the nine-hundred-plus literati living at his court. His invasions of India and his slaughter of Hindus made him, he felt, a hero of Islam.
