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Introduction
The theologians of Islam had laid down, in the opening years of this imperialist ideology, that the kãfirs who could not be subdued by force should be subverted by fraud. The prophet of Islam had himself initiated the first lessons in this lore when he practised what came to be known as Siyãsat-i-Madînah in later times, that is, to take the kãfirs one by one and that too when they are least expecting an attack. One of his famous sayings, sanctified as his Sunnah, was that war is perfidy. This hadîs came in handy to Muizzuddin Muhammad bin Sam who is known in Indian history as Muhammad Ghuri.
By the time of Ghori, the Islamic armies of the Arabs and the Turks had struggled successively for nearly 540 years in order to seize the heartland of India, and to convert the whole country into a Dãr-ul-Islam. But they had succeeded only in occupying the frontier areas of Kabul, Zabul, the North-West Frontier Province, Multan, and parts of Punjab and Sindh. This was small consolation compared to the victories of Islam elsewhere, and that, too, in a far shorter span of time.
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