_History._--The city is not mentioned by any narrator of Alexander's expedition, nor by any ancient author so as to admit of positive recognition. But it is very possibly the _Gazaca_ which Ptolemy places among the _Paropamisadae_, and this may not be inconsistent with Sir H. Rawlinson's identification of it with _Gazos_, an Indian city spoken of by two obscure Greek poets as an impregnable place of war. The name is probably connected with the Persian and Sanskrit _ganj_ and _ganja_, a treasury (whence the Greek and Latin _Gaza_). We seem to have positive evidence of the existence of the city before the Mahommedan times (644) in the travels of the Chinese pilgrim, Hsuan Tsang, who speaks of _Ho-si-na_ (i.e. probably _Ghazni_) as one of the capitals of _Tsaukuta_ or Arachosia, a place of great strength. In early Mahommedan times the country adjoining Ghazni was called _Zabul_. When the Mahommedans first invaded that region Ghazni was a wealthy entrepot of the Indian trade. Of the extent of this trade some idea is given by Ibn Haukal, who states that at Kabul, then a mart of the same trade, there was sold yearly indigo to the value of two million dinars (£1,000,000). The enterprise of Islam underwent several ebbs and flows over this region. The provinces on the Helmund and about Ghazni were invaded as early as the caliphate of Moaiya (662-680). The arms of Yaqub b. Laith swept over Kabul and Arachosia (Al-Rukhaj) about 871, and the people of the latter country were forcibly converted. Though the Hindu dynasty of Kabul held a part of the valley of Kabul river till the time of Mahmud, it is probably to the period just mentioned that we must refer the permanent Mahommedan occupation of Ghazni. Indeed, the building of the fort and city is ascribed by a Mahommedan historian to Amr b. Laith, the brother and successor of Ya`kub (d. 901), though the facts already stated discredit this. In the latter part of the 9th century the family of the Samanid, sprung from Samarkand, reigned in splendour at Bokhara. Alptagin, originally a Turkish slave, and high in the service of the dynasty, about the middle of the 10th century, losing the favour of the court, wrested Ghazni from its chief (who is styled Abu Bakr Lawik, wali of Ghazni), and established himself there. His government was recognized from Bokhara, and held till his death. In 977 another Turk slave, Sabuktagin, who had married the daughter of his master Alptagin, obtained rule in Ghazni. He made himself lord of nearly all the present territory of Afghanistan and of the Punjab. In 997 Mahmud, son of Sabuktagin, succeeded to the government, and with his name Ghazni and the Ghaznevid dynasty have become perpetually associated. Issuing forth year after year from that capital, Mahmud (q.v.) carried fully seventeen expeditions of devastation through northern India and Gujarat, as well as others to the north and west. From the borders of Kurdistan to