Cultural Destruction — Muhammad Ghori

Nalanda: The World's Oldest University — Burned

To understand the cultural catastrophe of Muhammad Ghori's campaigns, one must begin with Nalanda University — the greatest centre of learning the ancient world had ever produced.

🏛️ What Was Nalanda?

Founded circa 5th century CE — approximately 1,700 years ago
At its peak, hosted 10,000 students and 2,000 teachers from across Asia
Nine-storey library complex housing an estimated 9 million manuscripts
Covered subjects including mathematics, astronomy, medicine, logic, philosophy, Sanskrit, Pali, and multiple sciences
Students came from Korea, Japan, China, Tibet, Indonesia, Persia, and beyond
Had been functioning continuously for approximately 700 years before its destruction

In 1193 CE, Bakhtiyar Khilji — Muhammad Ghori's general who led the Bihar campaign — attacked and burned Nalanda. The primary account comes from Minhaj-i-Siraj Juzjani in the Tabaqat-i-Nasiri (c. 1260 CE):

Most of the inhabitants of the place were Brahmins with shaved heads. They were put to the sword. A great number of books were found there; and, when the Muhammadans saw them, they called for some person to explain their contents, but the whole of the inhabitants had been killed. The smoke of burning books darkened the air for three months. — Tabaqat-i-Nasiri, Minhaj-i-Siraj Juzjani (c. 1260 CE)
As quoted by Will Durant, The Story of Civilization (1935)

The scholars who had shaved heads (Buddhist monks) were mistaken for "Brahmin priests" by Khilji's soldiers. They were executed wholesale. The monks who survived fled to Nepal and Tibet — and this is how Tibetan Buddhism preserved much of the Nalanda tradition. Tibetan Buddhist texts today contain knowledge that was lost in India because of this single act of destruction.

What Was Lost — Forever

Mathematical texts: Works likely predating or contemporaneous with Islamic mathematical learning
Astronomical treatises: Centuries of astronomical observation and theory
Medical codices: The Ayurvedic corpus, likely including texts lost to modern Ayurvedic practitioners
Logical philosophy: Nyaya-Vaisheshika philosophical works of extraordinary sophistication
Buddhist philosophy: Original Pali and Sanskrit texts that survive only in Tibetan or Chinese translations
Linguistic works: Sanskrit grammar and poetry traditions of enormous depth

Three Universities Destroyed in One Campaign

Nalanda was not the only target. Bakhtiyar Khilji's Bihar campaign of 1193–1203 CE systematically dismantled India's entire network of Buddhist learning:

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Vikramashila University (est. c. 783 CE)

Destroyed: c. 1203 CE

Founded by the Pala king Dharmapala, Vikramashila was India's second-greatest Buddhist university — the pre-eminent centre for Tantric Buddhist scholarship. It housed over 100 teachers at its peak. Khilji's forces killed the monks, looted the library, and destroyed the monastery complex. Ruins at Antichak village in Bihar have been excavated by the Archaeological Survey of India, confirming destruction by fire consistent with historical accounts.

Wikipedia: Vikramashila →

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Odantapuri University (est. c. 8th century CE)

Destroyed: c. 1197 CE

Another major Pala-era university near modern Bihar Sharif. It was one of the inspirations for the establishment of Nalanda, and had long been a centre of Buddhist learning. Destroyed during Khilji's campaigns; its ruins have been identified at Hilsa in modern Bihar.

Wikipedia: Odantapuri →

⚠️ The End of Buddhism in India — By the Numbers

Before Ghori's campaigns, India had three world-class universities, tens of thousands of Buddhist monks and scholars, and a living tradition of Buddhist (and Hindu) philosophy going back nearly 1,700 years. Within 50 years of Khilji's campaigns, Buddhism had essentially vanished from the Indian subcontinent. There is no parallel for this level of cultural destruction in any other civilization's history — the deliberate, army-led destruction of an entire intellectual and spiritual tradition at its source.

Art and Architecture Erased

Beyond the destruction of knowledge, Ghori's campaigns erased an extraordinary tradition of Hindu and Buddhist artistic achievement.

The Quwwat-ul-Islam — Built on 27 Demolished Temples

The Quwwat-ul-Islam mosque in Delhi — the first mosque in India — was explicitly built using material from 27 demolished Hindu and Jain temples. This includes not just structural material but carved columns, friezes, and decorative elements.

Visiting the Qutb Minar complex in Delhi today, you can see columns that still bear:

Bell-and-chain motifs — traditional Hindu temple adornment
Faces of Hindu deities in the column capitals
Sanskrit inscriptions on several structural elements
Garland carvings and lotus designs from the original Hindu and Jain aesthetic

The new builders did not remove or destroy these carvings — they simply repurposed the columns upside-down or sideways, incorporating sacred Hindu imagery into a mosque. This was not an artistic dialogue; it was a statement of dominance.

Sanskrit Learning — An Existential Threat

Sanskrit, the language of India's intellectual tradition — its mathematics, philosophy, law, literature, astronomy, and medicine — was systematically marginalized under the new Persian-Arabic administrative order. Sanskrit learning centres (the gurukul system and formal educational institutions like the Sanskrit college at Ajmer) were either destroyed or lost their patronage and gradually declined.

The long-term impact: India's intellectual output in mathematics, astronomy, and philosophy — which had been world-leading — declined dramatically over the subsequent centuries. The chain of transmission of knowledge from teacher to student, which is how pre-print knowledge survived, was deliberately broken.