The real stirring of history lay in the extreme east and west, in the rise of the Turks and of the Normans, both gradually converging upon western Asia and at the close of this period are both approaching Syria, bringing even greater disasters to their co-religionists than to those whom they regarded as their foes. During the period under present consideration both were already in this arena in small numbers, employed as mercenaries by all the three Near Eastern powers, Turkish soldiers of fortune serving under the Khalifs of Baghdad and under the Fatimids of Egypt, Northmen serving in the employ of the Emperors of Byzantium, but neither Turks nor Northmen had as yet moved in in sufficiently large numbers to become independent factors in politics. The first assertion of the Turks appears in the career of Mahmud of Ghazna. Turkish soldiers had been employed by the Samanide of Khurasan, and one of these, Alptekin, was made governor of Khurasan, but at a disputed succession in the house of Samani he unfortunately took the side of the candidate who proved unsuccessful and so had to flee the country. With a body of followers he established himself in the mountain fortress of Ghazna (in A.H. 350 = A.D. 961), and there he and his son Sebektakin held their own, nominally as vassals of the Samanids, really as an independent brigand state. The third ruler of Ghazna, Mahmud, declared himself independent in 390 (= 999), and received investiture directly from the Khalif of Baghdad, assuming the title of Sultan, a title which he was the first to introduce into the community of Islam. Mahmud of Ghazna is one of the brilliant figures of history, but one whose importance can easily be over-estimated. In a series of twelve expeditions to India he won both fame and booty, but was not in any real sense a conqueror of India. In A.H. 407 (= A.D. 1016) he extended his power northwards to the shores of the Caspian Sea, and here before long he was brought into contact with other kinsmen of his own, Turks living across the Oxus, and it was the advance of these Turks led by the Saljuq tribe which, in his son’s days, cut off the Sultanate of Ghazna from Persia and the West and compelled the Ghazni dynasty to turn its attention eastwards. This led to the foundation of a Muslim state in India which, under the successive rule of Turks, Afghans, and Mongols, had a continuous existence to the time of the Indian Mutiny in the 19th cent. Although Mahmud and his followers were Turks he gave the civil administration mainly into the hands of Persian officials, and thus Persian became the court language of Muslim India, though Arabic was sometimes employed in important charters,—both foreign languages to rulers and subjects; and thus, when the native Hindi began to be used as a literary medium it appeared as a language which, though thoroughly Hindi in structure and grammar, had a vocabulary full of Persian and Arabic words, and in this form is known as Urdu or Hindustani. Thus