The sources
The battles are known mainly from Persian histories written in the Delhi sultanate, above all Minhaj al-Siraj's Tabaqat-i Nasiri of the 1250s and Hasan Nizami's Taj al-Ma'athir, a florid chronicle of the early conquests. A Sanskrit poem composed at Prithviraja's own court, the Prithviraja Vijaya of the Kashmiri poet Jayanaka, celebrates the king and his ancestors, but it survives incomplete and breaks off before the war with the Ghurids. Later Rajput bardic works, above all the Prithviraj Raso, tell the story at length but are of little value for the events themselves.
The first battle
By 1190 Mu'izz al-Din of Ghur held the Punjab and was pressing on the Chahamana kingdom, which ruled from Ajmer over much of Rajasthan and, through vassals, Delhi. In 1191 he captured the fort of Tabarhindah, often identified with Bathinda. Prithviraja III marched against him, and the armies met at Tarain, near Thanesar. The Rajput army was victorious; Mu'izz al-Din was wounded in single combat, by the Persian account with Govindaraja, the ruler of Delhi, and was carried from the field. Prithviraja besieged and retook Tabarhindah but did not pursue the Ghurid army.
The second battle
Mu'izz al-Din returned the following year with a larger army, estimated by the Persian sources at many tens of thousands of cavalry; the figures in the sources for both sides are not reliable. Prithviraja assembled a large army with allied chiefs. The Persian accounts say that the Ghurid commander divided his horsemen into divisions that harassed the Rajput army from the flanks and rear with mounted archery and made feigned retreats, wearing it down through the day, before a final charge broke it. Govindaraja was killed. Prithviraja fled and was captured.
What happened to him then is disputed. The Persian historians say he was taken prisoner and later executed. Coins struck at Ajmer with Prithviraja's name on one side and Mu'izz al-Din's on the other suggest he may have been briefly restored as a vassal before being killed for rebellion. The Prithviraj Raso, an epic attributed to his court poet Chand Bardai but composed in its present form much later, tells that he was blinded and taken to Ghazni, where he killed the sultan with an arrow guided by the poet's verse. This story has no support in the historical record, but it is widely known.
Consequences
After the battle, Ajmer was taken, and Prithviraja's son was installed as a tributary ruler before being displaced to Ranthambore. Qutb al-Din Aibak, Mu'izz al-Din's commander, took Delhi in 1193 and made it the centre of Ghurid rule in India. The Gahadavala kingdom of Kannauj fell in 1194. Within a decade the Ghurid commanders controlled most of the north Indian plain, and after Mu'izz al-Din's death in 1206 Aibak's successors founded the Delhi sultanate.
Memory
The battle became one of the most charged events in Indian historical memory. Prithviraja was celebrated in the Raso and later in nationalist writing as the last Hindu emperor of Delhi, a phrase that historians regard as an anachronism, since he was one of several regional rulers. His story, including the legend of his elopement with Samyogita, daughter of Jayachandra of Kannauj, has been retold in drama, film and popular history.
Further reading
- Jackson, Peter. The Delhi Sultanate: A Political and Military History. Cambridge University Press, 1999
- Talbot, Cynthia. Precolonial India in Practice. Oxford University Press, 2001
- Wink, Andre. Al-Hind: The Making of the Indo-Islamic World. Brill, 1990
See also
- Chāhamānas of Śākambharī — The Chāhamānas of Śākambharī were the leading Rajput dynasty of eastern Rajasthan, and their defeat at Tarain in 1192 opened northern India to the Ghurid conquest.
- Ghurid Empire — The Ghurids were a dynasty from the mountains of Ghur in central Afghanistan who built an empire in the twelfth century and, under Mu'izz al-Din Muhammad, conquered northern India between 1175 and 1206, opening the way for the Delhi sultanate.
- Delhi Sultanate — The Delhi Sultanate (1206–1526 CE) was a series of five Turkic and Afghan Muslim dynasties that ruled large parts of the Indian subcontinent from Delhi, beginning with the Mamluk dynasty founded by Qutb-ud-din Aibak.
- Delhi — Delhi is the capital of India and one of the longest continuously inhabited urban regions in the subcontinent, having served as the seat of power for successive dynasties across more than a millennium.
- Tomaras of Delhi — The Tomaras ruled the Delhi region before the Chauhans, and are credited with founding the settlement at Lal Kot from which the city grew.
This entry was last revised on 12 November 2026.