Prithviraj Chauhan
Prithviraj Chauhan was the Rajput king who beat Muhammad of Ghor and then lost to him. Born around 1166 into the Chahamana dynasty, he succeeded his father as ruler of Ajmer as a boy, with his mother as regent, and later took Delhi, holding territory across what is now Rajasthan, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh. He campaigned against neighbouring Hindu kingdoms, notably the Chandelas and the Chaulukyas of Gujarat, and his conflict with Jayachandra of Kannauj is central to the later tradition. Muhammad of Ghor advanced from Afghanistan through the Punjab. At the first battle of Tarain in 1191, Prithviraj's forces broke the Ghurid centre; Muhammad was wounded by a Rajput lance and carried from the field by a soldier. Prithviraj did not pursue him into Afghanistan or take Lahore, and spent the following year on local quarrels. Muhammad returned in 1192 with a larger and better-organised force. At the second battle of Tarain he used mounted archers to harass the Rajput army through a long day, feigned a retreat, and then committed his heavy cavalry against an exhausted and disordered enemy. Prithviraj was captured and killed. Northern India lay open, and Muhammad's slave general Qutb al-Din Aibak founded the Delhi Sultanate. The Prithviraj Raso, an epic composed centuries later and attributed to his court poet Chand Bardai, gives him an elopement with Jayachandra's daughter Samyukta and has him, blinded in captivity, kill Muhammad with an arrow shot guided by sound. It is not history, and it is how he is remembered.
- Lived: 1166 CE – 1192 CE
- Nationality: Indian
- Roles: monarch, military_leader
