First battle of Tarain

 If we look back, thousands of wars have been fought on the soil of India; monumental wars, legendary wars, but in my view, the two most important battles which were fought and impacted very deeply on the history of India, as well as the future of India, were the battles of tarain. In this blog and one upcoming blog, I will try to do an in-depth analysis of these two battles. 

Let's have a look at the map where both the battles of Tarain have been fought in 1191 and 1192. 

 

Source: Wikipedia

• In the above map of India of 1191-92, you can see that India was divided into several kingdoms and was disturbed internally with each other and was fighting internally for valor and power. External powers such as ghurids took advantage of this weakness. 
• On that map, we can see the ghurid empire led by Mohammad Ghori was spread all over the parts of present-day Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Now his new target was India and he knew the importance of north India. 
• He didn’t know that it was not going to be so easy for him as in front of him there was a big challenge whose name was “Maharaj Prithviraj Chauhan”. The Chauhan empire was led by him. If the ghurid empire wanted control over north India then they needed to overthrow the Chauhan empire.  

                                                       Image of Prithaviraj Chauha                                                                                                                         Source: Wikipedia 

• So the initial step for the battle was taken by Mohammad ghori as he provoked Prithviraj chauhan by capturing some of the prominent territories of Chauhan empire. Ghori annexed a very strategically important fort of Bathinda which ignited the battle. Now chauhans decided to directly confront the ghurids. Thus the war took place at Taraori in haryana.
• If we talk about the strength of Mohammad Ghori's army ,he had 20,000 to 25,000 soldiers in which the most number of soldiers were cavalry archers, who were his main strength of him. whereas Chauhan's had approx  50000 soldiers in which there were elephants, cavalry, infantry and they were very much disciplined .
•  Mohammad ghori believed that his cavalry archer strategy to vanquish the chauhan’s was sufficient to overthrow the opposition but it is beneficial only when the army strength of opposition is not disciplined and they are scattered all over.
• Thus they attacked with this strategy which killed only a few soldiers of prithavi raj chauhan. Now chauhan ordered a direct assault and attack on the ghori empire which shook them completely as chauhan’s army was well disciplined and experienced. 
• After it Ghori came to the forefront in his army so that he could keep the morale high of the rest of his soldiers. Govind rai who was the brother of prithviraj chauhan directly attacked mohammad ghori with a spear which could have finally killed him there only but a turkish soldier came on the spot and dragged ghori from the battleground and took him away to save him. 
• So the first battle of tarain came out to be a very traumatic disaster for mohammad ghori which humiliated him the most.  Now Ghori went back to heal his wound and prepared himself for the next battle which I'll be sharing in my next blog. Till then keep reading my blogs.