{"book":"adl0957","page":261,"text":"208\nThe old town of Ghazni is built upon an isolated ridge,\na natural mound, partly rock and partly earth. It is surrounded\nby a high ditch-wall, having a circuit of about a mile and a\nhalf. The form of the town is a sort of irregular square, the\nwell being built so as to suit the outline of the mound on which\nit rests. The foundation of the wall is a little above the surround-\ning country, and as it winds round the hill, it presents a very\nformidable appearance. The mound which it encircles resembles\na fortress of which the citadel is the apex.\nUnfortunately, the bitter feud between the Ghazavides and\nthe princes of Ghore during the of middle the 12th century A. D.\nhad tragic effects upon beautiful Ghazni, the capital of Sultan\nMahmoud (998—1030). Ala-ud-din of Ghore entered the city\ntriumphantly in 1148 and gave it up to massacre and destruction.\nNothing was spared except the tombs of Sultan Mahmoud,\nMasoud and Ibrahim. The city was set on fire and most of the\nsplendid buildings were razed to the ground. Since then Ghazni\nhas not been able to attain its former glory.\nThe present town of Ghazni is in no way attractive, with\nscarcely a shadow of its past grandeur. It is small and congested\nwith narrow lanes, not worthy of its great name. But Ghazni is\nstill famous for its shrines and other archæological remains.\nThe most notable of these shrines are those of Sultan Subaktagin\n(977-997), Sultan Mahmoud-i-Ghaznavi (998-1030), Masoud\n(1030-1040), Bahram Shah (1117-1153), Hakim Senai, the well-\nknown Sofi-poet, Ali-Lala, Bahlol-i-Dana, and Sayyed Hassan.\nRecently, a few miles to the east of Ghani, at a place called\nDehak, the tomb of Mohammad Ghori was discovered.\nTwo pillars, tapering to the sky between Ghazni and the\nRowza (Sultan Mahmoud's tomb), are all that are left of its past\ngrandeur and glory.","chars":1829,"image":"https://storage.googleapis.com/adl-page-images/adl0957/00261.jpg","first_page":1,"last_page":377,"title":"new guide to Afghanistan","permalink":"https://afghanpress.org/book/adl0957/261","canvas":"https://afghanpress.org/iiif/adl0957/canvas/261","source":"https://afghanistandl.nyu.edu/books/adl0957/","source_pdf":"https://afghanistandl.nyu.edu/pdf/adl0957_download.pdf","rights":{"image":{"statement":"Public domain. NYU states: \"All works presented on this website are, unless otherwise indicated, in the public domain. The images available on this website may be freely reproduced, distributed and transmitted by anyone for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial.\"","uri":"http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/","holder":"New York University Libraries","source":"https://afghanistandl.nyu.edu/about.html","delivery":"Images are served from a copy mirrored by this project, not from NYU's servers, under the reproduction terms above.","endorsement":"This is an independent project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or reviewed by New York University."},"text":{"statement":"Machine-generated transcription, dedicated to the public domain under CC0 1.0. No warranty of accuracy: see the provenance block on every page.","uri":"https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/","holder":"Steps Ventures"}},"provenance":{"text_produced_by":"gemini-3.1-pro-preview","thinking_level":"low","read_completed":"2026-08-09","per_page_confidence":null,"per_page_confidence_note":"Not recorded during the corpus run. No calibrated per-page score exists, and none is estimated here.","human_reviewed":false,"accuracy_context":"Roughly two thirds of characters agree with a modern printed edition of the same text. Much of the disagreement is editorial, not misreading. Treat the transcription as a finding aid and read the page image before quoting.","primary_source":"The page image. The text is an index into it."}}