Second Battle of Tarain (1192): Prithviraj Chauhan's Defeat

The Second Battle of Tarain was fought in 1192 near Thanesar in present-day Haryana, India, between the Ghurid ruler Mu’izz al-Din Muhammad of Ghor and the Chahamana (Chauhan) king Prithviraj III, ruler of Ajmer and Delhi. Only a year after his defeat on the same field, Muhammad returned and crushed Prithviraj’s army. The battle opened the plains of northern India to Ghurid conquest and led directly to the foundation of the Delhi Sultanate.

Background: the Ghurids and the Chahamanas

The Ghurids were a dynasty from Ghor, a mountainous region of central Afghanistan best remembered today for the Minaret of Jam. In the second half of the twelfth century two brothers ruled jointly: Ghiyath al-Din Muhammad, based in Ghor, and his younger brother Mu’izz al-Din Muhammad, who held Ghazni from 1173 and led the family’s campaigns towards India.

Mu’izz al-Din followed the path of the earlier Ghaznavid sultans, most famously Mahmud of Ghazni. He took Multan in 1175, but in 1178 his army was badly defeated by the Chaulukya kingdom of Gujarat near Mount Abu. He then turned to the Punjab, and in 1186 he captured Lahore from the last Ghaznavid ruler, Khusrau Malik. This brought the Ghurid frontier up against the Rajput kingdoms of the north Indian plains.

The strongest of these was the Chahamana kingdom of Sapadalaksha, centred on Ajmer in Rajasthan, which also controlled Delhi through a subordinate ruler. Its king, Prithviraj III, had come to the throne as a boy around 1177–1178. By the late 1180s he had fought the Chandelas of Bundelkhand and other neighbours, and he was the dominant military power between the Punjab and the Ganges.

The First Battle of Tarain (1191)

In late 1190 or 1191 Muhammad of Ghor seized the fortress of Tabarhindah, usually identified with Bathinda in the Punjab. Prithviraj marched north with a large army, supported by his vassal Govindaraja (Gobind Rai), ruler of Delhi. The two sides met at Tarain in 1191.

The Chahamana army won a clear victory. According to the Persian chronicler Minhaj-i Siraj, writing about sixty years later, Muhammad fought Govindaraja in person and was seriously wounded. A young soldier carried the sultan from the field, and the Ghurid army withdrew to Ghazni. Prithviraj then besieged the Ghurid garrison at Tabarhindah, which held out for many months before surrendering.

Prithviraj did not pursue the beaten Ghurid army beyond his frontier. Later historians have often treated this as a strategic mistake, although it is unclear whether a pursuit into the Punjab and beyond was realistic.

The Second Battle (1192)

Muhammad spent the following months rebuilding his army. Medieval chroniclers say he punished officers who had fled in 1191 and gathered a much larger force of Turkic, Afghan and Tajik cavalry. In 1192 he advanced again through Lahore towards Tarain. The exact month is not recorded with certainty.

Prithviraj again assembled a very large army, with contingents from allied and subordinate Rajput rulers. Later Persian historians give enormous figures, such as 120,000 horsemen for the Ghurids and several hundred thousand men and thousands of elephants for Prithviraj. Modern historians regard these numbers as greatly exaggerated, and the true sizes of the armies are unknown, though both were large.

The Ghurid tactics are described in broad terms by Minhaj-i Siraj and later writers. Muhammad divided his cavalry into several mobile units of mounted archers. These units attacked the flanks and rear of the Rajput army, then withdrew when charged, drawing the defenders out of formation. After hours of this harassment, which some accounts say began at dawn, Muhammad launched his reserve, a force of heavily armoured horsemen often given as 12,000, against the tired Rajput lines.

The Rajput army broke. Govindaraja of Delhi was killed in the fighting. Prithviraj left the field, but he was captured near the Sarasvati river, probably around Sirsa. The defeat was complete, and many leading Rajput nobles died.

Why the Ghurids won

Historians usually explain the result by differences in military organisation rather than courage. The Ghurid army was built around professional cavalry, many of them Turkic slave soldiers (mamluks or ghulams) trained from youth as horse archers. They were well mounted, used to steppe-style tactics and loyal to their master, who paid and promoted them.

The Rajput armies, by contrast, were assembled from the retinues of many allied and subordinate chiefs. They included large numbers of infantry, war elephants and heavily armed cavalry who excelled in close combat but were harder to coordinate and manoeuvre as a single body. In 1191 a direct clash had favoured the Rajputs; in 1192 Muhammad avoided giving them that kind of battle until the decisive moment.

Leadership and preparation also mattered. Muhammad had studied the defeat of the year before and chose his tactics accordingly, while the Chahamana coalition seems to have expected a repeat of its earlier success. Access to a steady supply of horses from Central Asia, which India lacked in quantity, gave the Ghurids and their successors a lasting advantage in cavalry warfare.

Key people

Mu’izz al-Din Muhammad of Ghor (died 1206), known in South Asia as Muhammad Ghori or Shihab al-Din Ghori, was the eastern half of the Ghurid joint monarchy. He became sole ruler after his brother’s death in 1203.

Prithviraj III (c. 1166–1192), known in popular tradition as Prithviraj Chauhan, was king of the Chahamanas of Ajmer. He is celebrated in later Rajput literature as the last great Hindu king of Delhi.

Govindaraja, a member of the Tomara family who governed Delhi under Prithviraj, was credited with wounding Muhammad in 1191 and died in 1192.

Qutb al-Din Aibak, a Turkic slave commander of Muhammad, was left in charge of the new Indian conquests after the battle and later founded the Delhi Sultanate.

The fate of Prithviraj

The sources do not agree on exactly how Prithviraj died. Minhaj-i Siraj states that he was captured and sent to his death. Another near-contemporary Persian writer, Hasan Nizami, says that he was taken to Ajmer and executed after being accused of plotting against the Ghurids.

Coins have been found that bear Prithviraj’s name on one side and that of Muhammad bin Sam (Muhammad of Ghor) on the other. Some historians interpret these as evidence that he was briefly kept on as a tributary ruler before his execution. What is certain is that he did not survive long after 1192 and that his son Govindaraja IV was installed at Ajmer as a Ghurid vassal.

Consequences

The victory at Tarain broke the most powerful military coalition in northern India. Ajmer was taken soon after the battle. Delhi was occupied by Qutb al-Din Aibak in 1192 or 1193, and he made it his headquarters. In 1194 Muhammad defeated Jayachandra, the Gahadavala king of Kannauj and Varanasi, at the Battle of Chandawar.

Over the next decade Ghurid commanders captured Gwalior, Kalinjar, Badaun and other strongholds, while Bakhtiyar Khalji led raids into Bihar and Bengal. When Muhammad was assassinated in 1206, his Indian territories passed to his slave commanders. Aibak’s accession at Lahore that year marks the founding of the Delhi Sultanate, which lasted until the First Battle of Panipat in 1526.

Myths and facts

Myth: Prithviraj was blinded, taken to Ghazni and killed Muhammad with an arrow. This famous story comes from the Prithviraj Raso, an epic poem attributed to the bard Chand Bardai but composed and expanded over later centuries. Muhammad of Ghor was in fact killed in 1206 on the Jhelum river, and Prithviraj died soon after 1192.

Myth: Prithviraj forgave Muhammad sixteen or more times. Later legends claim many earlier battles in which Prithviraj spared the sultan. There is no evidence for them; the contemporary sources describe two battles at Tarain.

Myth: Jayachandra of Kannauj invited the Ghurids out of revenge. The romance of Prithviraj and Jayachandra’s daughter Samyogita is also a story from the Raso tradition. Its historical basis is doubtful, and there is no reliable evidence that Jayachandra helped the invaders.

Timeline

• 1175: Muhammad of Ghor captures Multan.
• 1178: The Ghurid army is defeated by the Chaulukyas of Gujarat near Mount Abu.
• 1186: Muhammad takes Lahore, ending Ghaznavid rule in the Punjab.
• 1191: First Battle of Tarain; Prithviraj III defeats the Ghurids and Muhammad is wounded.
• 1192: Second Battle of Tarain; Prithviraj is defeated, captured and later executed.
• 1192–1193: Qutb al-Din Aibak occupies Delhi.
• 1194: Muhammad defeats Jayachandra of Kannauj at Chandawar.
• 1206, March: Muhammad of Ghor is assassinated near the Jhelum; Aibak takes power at Lahore.

Legacy

Tarain is often described as one of the turning points of Indian history. It did not immediately create a new state, but it made Ghurid power in the Ganges plain possible and led to more than three centuries of rule from Delhi by sultans of Turkic and Afghan origin.

In modern India Prithviraj Chauhan has become a popular hero, the subject of folk songs, novels, television series and films. The historical record is thinner than the legend: most of what is known comes from Persian chronicles written by the victors, Sanskrit works such as the Prithviraja Vijaya composed during his reign, and inscriptions and coins.

Why it matters

The Second Battle of Tarain decided who would control the heart of northern India. It ended the power of the Chahamanas, gave the Ghurids a base at Delhi and set in motion the creation of the Delhi Sultanate, which shaped the politics, architecture and culture of South Asia for centuries.