The battles of Tarain

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.