c. 1015–1016 CE; first siege month not established | Loharin and the Pir Panjal approaches
The mountain fortress blocked Mahmud’s advance towards the Kashmir Valley.
The fortress that barred the approach
Mahmud of Ghazni’s attempt to enter Kashmir was stopped at the mountain fortress known as Lohkot or Loharakotta. The first siege is conventionally dated to 1015, with the campaign continuing into the following winter. It took place during Sangramaraja’s reign, after the defeat of the Kashmiri force sent to assist Trilochanapala.
The outcome was a failed advance towards the Valley. The army’s success against the Shahis did not give it unrestricted access through Kashmir’s mountain approaches. A defended fortress, difficult terrain and winter conditions all mattered to the failure described in the historical accounts.
The chronology requires care because different studies organize the evidence differently. Stein treated references dated 1015 and 1021 as versions of one expedition. Muhammad Nazim’s later study distinguished a first siege in 1015–1016 from a second in 1021–1022. The two reconstructions should not be silently combined.
The first siege and withdrawal
Nazim dates the first expedition to AH 406. He describes an advance through Jhelum and the Tohi valley, a month-long siege interrupted by snow, and a retreat through flooded ground with losses. After wintering in Punjab, Mahmud returned to Ghazni in March 1016. No dependable casualty total is supplied.
Nazim suggests retaliation for Sangramaraja’s aid to Trilochanapala. This remains an interpretation, not a surviving declaration of purpose. The campaign’s year is usable for chronological organization, but the material examined here does not establish an exact Gregorian month or day for the opening of the first siege.
Stein’s synthesis of the accounts also emphasizes the fort’s height and strength, the onset of snow and the arrival of reinforcements from Kashmir. These features explain why reducing the episode to weather alone is inadequate. The fortress was defended, and the attacking army had failed to take it before conditions forced a retreat.
A second expedition and an older disagreement
Nazim separately dates another departure to September–October 1021. He describes a further unsuccessful month at Lohkot, followed by winter in Punjab and a return to Ghazni in March–April 1022. Those departure and return windows are not exact dates for the siege itself.
His distinction draws on Gardizi and corrects an earlier compilation. The 1928 Persian edition has now been checked at pages 72–73 and 79: it records the attempts separately under AH 406 and AH 412. This supports the distinction between campaigns, while Nazim’s narrower Gregorian departure and return windows remain his reconstruction.
Stein, writing in 1900, had approached the difficulty differently. His note on Lohara cited a 1015 date in Firishta and a 1021 date in the Tabaqat-i-Akbari. He preferred the later date partly because he associated Al-Biruni’s personal knowledge of the place with Mahmud’s expedition after 1017. That reasoning belongs to Stein’s reconstruction; it does not make the earlier campaign disappear from later scholarship.
Lohara, Loharin and the route to Kashmir
Lohara was the ancestral stronghold associated with the dynasty that ruled Kashmir from the early eleventh century. Stein connected it with the Loharin or Loran valley in the Poonch region, south of the Pir Panjal. He explicitly rejected an older identification with Lahore, which could not fit the chronicle’s descriptions of a nearby mountain fortress.
He investigated the locality during a journey in August 1892. His account describes streams descending from the southern slopes between Tatakuti and the Tosamaidan pass, joining the river system of the Poonch Tohi. The route through Loharin led towards Tosamaidan and the Kashmir Valley.
The geographical argument rested on several kinds of evidence: the names, routes and travel times in the chronicle; Al-Biruni’s descriptions; and Stein’s own examination of the terrain. It was not based simply on two places having similar names. Nor does the identification of the valley establish the exact boundaries of the medieval territory controlled from the fortress.
The stronghold’s political importance preceded the siege. Didda’s marriage into the Kashmiri royal family and the later succession of Sangramaraja connected the ruling houses of Lohara and Kashmir. Its position as a route, refuge and dynastic centre helps explain why it mattered beyond this single encounter.
What Al-Biruni recorded
Al-Biruni’s geographical account names the fortresses Rajagiri and Lahur around a prominent snow-covered peak and describes them as exceptionally strong places he had seen. Elsewhere he records his own latitude observation for Lauhur and gives its distance from Kashmir’s capital as fifty-six miles, with the route divided between rough country and plain.
Those observations are valuable evidence for a fortress known to an eleventh-century scholar. They are not a dated diary of the siege. The passages examined here do not specify which expedition brought him there or describe the daily fighting.
Stein identified the snowy peak with Tatakuti and the fortress west of it with Lohara. He also discussed a difference between the latitude in Al-Biruni’s India and that given in the Canon Masudicus. The figures helped his geographical argument, but neither value should be used as a modern surveyed coordinate for the ruins.
Keeping the observation separate from its later interpretation matters. Al-Biruni’s testimony supports the importance and strength of the place, while the association of his visit with a particular campaign requires additional chronological reasoning.
The proposed site and the surviving evidence
Stein found local traditions of an old fortress on a ridge above Gegvand, near the centre of Loharin. He described a narrow plateau with steep sides, a small hillock and traces of rough walls and stone heaps. Villagers also associated two nearby spurs with smaller defensive works.
The ridge had long been used as a burial ground. Stein suggested that some stones on graves might have come from the earlier structure, but he did not present that possibility as an excavated sequence. He acknowledged that the traditions and scant remains alone did not establish a certain conclusion.
He nevertheless considered the ridge the most likely location because it overlooked the route up the valley. This remains a historical identification based on the evidence he recorded. His late nineteenth-century description should not be presented as a current condition survey or proof that every visible stone belonged to Mahmud’s time.
Kalhana’s narrative does not describe this siege, although Lohara appears frequently elsewhere in his work. Stein drew attention to that omission. It is a reminder that even a detailed chronicle can leave out a major external event; silence alone does not refute other surviving evidence.
The sources examined establish a failed attempt to force the approach to Kashmir, but leave the garrison’s size, individual defenders, daily losses and civilian experience largely undocumented. Further work should compare the underlying campaign accounts and archaeological evidence. Unsupported casualty figures, imagined speeches and claims about modern populations have no place in filling those gaps.
Evidence and dating
The article distinguishes the first campaign from the second expedition reconstructed for 1021–1022, compares the dating arguments and examines the identification of the fortress.
Read this topic in the encyclopedia. Reviewed 1 October 2026.