# The battles of Tarain
**तराइन के युद्ध**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/tarain-1192/
- Chapter: [Cholas to the Sultanate](https://indianepics.online/chapter/medieval.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1191 CE – 1192 CE
- Where: Taraori, Karnal, Haryana (29.78, 76.94)
- Tags: war, political

## Summary

Prithviraj Chauhan beats Muhammad of Ghur at Tarain in 1191 and loses to him on the same field in 1192, opening the Ganga plain to the Ghurids.

1191 में पृथ्वीराज चौहान ने तराइन में ग़ोर के मुहम्मद को हराया, पर 1192 में उसी मैदान पर हार गए; इससे ग़ोरियों के लिए गंगा का मैदान खुल गया।

## Account

Prithviraj, the Chahamana king of Ajmer, with Govind Rai of Delhi among his allies, defeated a Ghurid army near Tarain, north of Delhi, in 1191. Muhammad of Ghur returned the next year with a larger force built around mounted archers and won. Within two years his commander Qutb al-Din Aibak held Delhi, Ghurid armies had defeated the Gahadavala king of Kannauj, and by about 1204 Bakhtiyar Khalji had reached Bengal.

The aftermath is told in conflicting ways. Minhaj, writing around 1260, says Prithviraj was captured as he fled and put to death. Hasan Nizami, writing half a century earlier, says he was spared, then beheaded when he was caught plotting, and that his son was given Ajmer. Coins carrying both Prithviraj's name and Muhammad's are read by some historians as evidence of a brief vassal phase; others think the Ghurids kept his name on familiar coinage to get their own accepted. The story of a blinded Prithviraj killing his captor at Ghazni comes from the much later Prithviraj Raso and is legend.

## Sources

- Elliot and Dowson, The History of India as Told by Its Own Historians, vol. II (1869) — https://archive.org/details/india.history.resource.629 (Extracts from Minhaj's Tabakat-i Nasiri and Hasan Nizami's Taj al-Ma'athir)
- Talbot, The Last Hindu Emperor: Prithviraj Cauhan and the Indian Past, 1200–2000 (2016)

## Image

Prithviraj Chauhan painting. Orang srang17, CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3APrithviraj_Chauhan_painting.jpg

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