CHAPTER III THE MEN OF THE MOUNTAIN GHAZNI AND GHOR 1030-1206 A.D. GIBBON sums up the history of Asiatic dynasties as " one unceasing round of valour, greatness, discord, degeneracy, and decay." We have seen the valour and the greatness of Mahmud: the rest was soon to follow. The kingdom he founded endured indeed for a century and a half after his death, but it dimin- ished with every decade. It was not so much the result, however, of the discord and degeneracy of his succes- sors, though discord began at once in the rivalry between his sons, and degeneracy was shown in the luxury and effeminacy of the court. It was rather the inevitable consequence of the increasing pressure of the western Turks, the Ghuzz and other Turkman clans who were pouring into the pastures of Khorasan. What the ad- venturers of Ghazni had done, others of the same bold and capable race might also achieve, and the pastoral Seljuks, who now flocked from the Oxus lands south- ward into Persia, were led by chiefs who proved them- selves Mahmud 's equals in generalship and his superiors in power of organization. Their history, which carried 36
