The years around 1200 ce mark a significant turning point in the history of warfare in India, due to the decisive campaigns waged in northern India by the Ghurids of Afghanistan and the concomitant introduction of new forms of military culture from the eastern Islamic world. While limited parts of India’s periphery had been under Islamic rule long before this time, it was only under the Ghurids that Islamic control was established in the core region along the Ganga and Yamuna rivers (the “Ganga-Yamuna Doab”). A series of decisive battles was carried out here between 1192 and 1206, under the direction of Quṭb al-Dīn Aybeg, a Turkish slave commander (ghulām) in the service of the Ghurid sultan Mu‘izz al-Dīn Muḥammad bin Sām. Even after Mu‘izz al-Dīn’s death in 1206, Aybeg remained in India controlling the newly acquired Ghurid territories from his base in Lahore in the Punjab.