as booty. After the Abbasid army withdrew to fight against movements for autonomy in other parts of their empire, the Buddhist monasteries quickly recovered.

The next period in which the Kabul region came under Islamic rule was also short, between 870 and 879 CE. It was conquered by the Saffarid rulers of an autonomous military state, remembered for its harshness and destruction of local cultures. The conquerors sent many Buddhist “idols” back as war trophies to the Abbasid caliph. When the successors to the Turki Shahis, the Hindu Shahis, retook the region, Buddhism and the monasteries once more recovered their previous splendor.

The Turkic Ghaznavids conquered eastern Afghanistan from the Hindu Shahis in 976 CE, but did not destroy the Buddhist monasteries there. As vassals of the Abbasids, the Ghaznavidstoo were strict followers of Sunni Islam. Although they tolerated Buddhism and Hinduism in eastern Afghanistan, their second ruler, Mahmud of Ghazni, launched a campaign against the Abbasid rivals, the Ismaili state of Multan. Mahmud conquered Multan in 1008 CE, driving the Hindu Shahis from Gandhara and Oddiyana on the way. The Hindu Shahis had allied themselves with Multan. Wherever he conquered, Mahmud looted the wealth from the Hindu temples and Buddhist monasteries, and consolidated his power.

After this victory in Multan, and driven undoubtedly by greed for more land and wealth, Mahmud pressed his invasion further eastward. He conquered the present-day Indian Punjab, known in those days as "Delhi." However, when the Ghaznavid troops pushed northward from Delhi to the foothills of Kashmir, chasing after the remnants of