and of the Cholas at Tanjore being the most important.

The year 1001 A.D. saw the first inroad into India of the Muhammadans
from over the north-west border, under their great leader Mahmud of
Ghazni. He invaded first the plains of the Panjab, then Multan, and
afterwards other places. Year after year he pressed forward and again
retired. In 1021 he was at Kalinga; in 1023 in Kathiawar; but in no
case did he make good his foothold on the country. His expeditions
were raids and nothing more. Other invasions, however, followed in
quick succession, and after the lapse of two centuries the Muhammadans
were firmly and permanently established at Delhi. War followed war,
and from that period Northern India knew no rest. At the end of the
thirteenth century the Muhammadans began to press southwards into
the Dakhan. In 1293 Ala-ud-din Khilji, nephew of the king of Delhi,
captured Devagiri. Four years later Gujarat was attacked. In 1303
the reduction of Warangal was attempted. In 1306 there was a fresh
expedition to Devagiri. In 1309 Malik Kafur, the celebrated general,
with an immense force swept into the Dakhan and captured Warangal. The
old capital of the Hoysala Ballalas at Dvarasamudra was taken in
1310, and Malik Kafur went to the Malabar coast where he erected a
mosque, and afterwards returned to his master with enormous booty.[6]
Fresh fighting took place in 1312. Six years later Mubarak of Delhi
marched to Devagiri and inhumanly flayed alive its unfortunate prince,
Haripala Deva, setting up his head at the gate of his own city. In
1323 Warangal fell.

Thus the period at which our history opens, about the year 1330, found
the whole of Northern India down to the Vindhya mountains firmly
under Moslem rule, while the followers of that faith had overrun
the Dakhan and were threatening the south with the same fate. South