Killing of Shihab al-Din al-Ghuri

قتل شهاب الدين الغوري

c. March 1206 CE · Sha'ban 602 AH

On the first night of Sha'ban in 602, Shihab al-Din Abu al-Muzaffar Muhammad ibn Sam al-Ghuri, ruler of Ghazna and part of Khurasan, was killed at a stopping place called Damik as he returned from Lahore, at the time of the evening prayer. The cause was that a group of Khokhars kept to his army, intent on killing him for the slaughter, capture and enslavement they had suffered at his hands. When his companions had scattered from him and he was left alone in his tent, they killed some of the guards at the door of his pavilion; his followers rose up and left their posts, and the Khokhars seized their moment of heedlessness, entered upon him in the tent and struck him with knives twenty-two times, killing him. They found him on his prayer mat, prostrate. It was also said that the Isma'ilis killed him, for they feared his going out to Khurasan. The commanders gathered at his vizier Mu'ayyad al-Mulk and swore oaths to guard the treasury. They seated Shihab al-Din, sewed up his wounds and placed him in the litter and parasol as he had been in life, so that not even a cupping-glass of blood was shed. The Mamluks rose against Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, because it was said he had brought in the men who killed their lord; he fled and escaped. The army divided: the Ghurids leaned toward Baha' al-Din Sam, lord of Bamiyan and son of Shihab al-Din's sister, and the Turks toward Ghiyath al-Din Mahmud, his elder brother. He was buried in the mausoleum of the madrasa he had founded at Ghazna, on the twenty-second of Sha'ban ¹.