As part of my interest in the Hindu Sahi dynasty, I made a day trip with my cousins from Peshawar to Nandana. The Hindu Shahis were a prominent dynasty of the north-western subcontinent — present-day Afghanistan and Pakistan — from the 7th to the early 11th centuries CE, known for their resilience and strategic governance. Their eventual fall, with the conquest of their lands by Mahmud of Ghazni, marked a profound shift in the region’s political and cultural landscape.
1I set out from Peshawar with my cousins Samir and Fahd to look for the ancient capital of the Shahis. We began at dawn — an ambitious plan: Nandana, Khewra, the Katas Raj temple and Kallar Kahar, and back that night for a wedding outside Peshawar.
2It was a beautiful hour of the day; we watched the sun come up at Chhach after crossing the Indus.
3We parked next to a coal mine, which we stopped to inspect.
4From the car we could see the fort in the distance and decided to hike to it. We were not well prepared — the terrain is tricky, cut with impassable ravines, the vegetation full of thorns.
5After a hard climb, during which I managed to fall into a thorn bush, we finally reached the fort, having lost our way more than once.
6From the fort we had a clear view to the horizon. It was this horizon, and this fort, that Al-Beruni used to measure the circumference of the earth.
It was also in the valley below that Mahmud of Ghazni’s army camped before its battle with the Hindu Shahis at Nandana. The battle took place in the spring of 1014 CE, Mahmud’s tenth invasion.
The Shahi king, Trilochanapala, had left the army under his son Bhimapala. Bhimapala was strongly entrenched between two hills, at whose junction the fort stood; the mouth of the pass was closed by a line of elephants. He fought cleverly, using the ground to his advantage and keeping up occasional skirmishes to wear the enemy down, without ever showing any intention of coming out into the open field.
Mahmud was frustrated — he could not use his swift cavalry, and the longer he waited, the more reinforcements reached the defenders, with further troops promised from Kashmir. He sent his warriors, among them the martial Daylamites and Afghan spearmen, to provoke the Shahi army, and after several days managed to lure a detachment into the plain and rout it.
Bhimapala’s numbers grew by the day, until at last confidence — in his superior strength, and with the rashness of youth — overcame caution, and he left his entrenched position to fight the Ghaznavids in the open. With the hills guarding his rear and elephants on both wings, he opened the attack. The battle raged all day. At one point Bhimapala ordered his elephants to charge, but the Ghaznavids met them with showers of arrows aimed at their trunks and eyes, turning them back. Mahmud then made a final furious assault that the Shahis could not withstand. Their army broke and fled to the fort; Bhimapala left a garrison and escaped towards Kashmir to join his father. Neither would see their capital again.
Within the fort the remaining army was demoralised, their commander fled. Mahmud besieged it, and when ordinary means failed, set his sappers to mine the walls while Turkish archers poured arrows on the defenders. Seeing the situation hopeless, the garrison surrendered.
7Hiking back down, we discovered there had been an easier path all along, from the village of Bhaganwala on the horizon. We reached the car with great difficulty, rehydrated, and drove on to the Khewra Salt Mines — among the oldest and largest in the world. Salt extraction here may reach back before 320 BCE; local legend credits the discovery to Alexander the Great’s horse, which licked salt from the rocks during his campaign.
8After the salt mines we called it a day — though nearby stood the Katas Raj temple, also built by the Shahis.