62 GHAZNI AND GHOR landers of Ghor marched to avenge his murder, and their rude vigour so overmastered the troops of Ghazni, enfeebled by a century of inglorious ease, that Bahrain and his army were driven pell-mell into India (1148). It is true he returned with fresh forces in the winter, when snow cut off the usurpers from their headquarters in Ghor, but the vengeance he took upon the intruders and the execution of their leader only heated the fury of the chief of Firoz-kuh. Two brothers of the princely race of Sur had now successively been slain by the King of Ghazni: a third brother avenged them. In 1155 Ala-ad-din Husain, reprobated for all time by the title of " World-burner " (Jahan-soz), burst into Ghazni on an errand of slaugh- ter and destruction, slew the men without mercy, en- slaved the women and children, and carried fire and sword throughout the land. Of all the noble buildings with which the kings had enriched their stately capital hardly a stone was left to tell of its grandeur. The very graves of the hated dynasty were dug up and the royal bones scattered to the dogs, yet even Afghan vengeance spared the tomb of Mahmud, the idol of Moslem soldiers. That tomb and two lofty minarets, at a little distance from the modern town, alone stand to show that Ghazni was. On one of the minarets one may still read the resonant titles of the Idol-breaker, and on the marble tombstone an inscription entreats " God's mercy for the great Amir Mahmud." India was now to witness something very like a repetition of his swift irresistible raids. For more than
