"Mahmoud can certainly claim a very high place among the heroes of Islamism, and the pompous praise which his grandiose atrocities have received from Mohammedan historians should not be surprising. (…) Mahmoud was certainly, as Ferishta describes him, “a great man”, if not “an excellent prince; " and perhaps this remark does not lack accuracy, that "he did many bad things, with a view to a laudable principle (...) But all these precious qualities were tarnished by his execrable fanaticism and his insatiable greed. However, it is not his fanaticism, but rather his cruelty, that deserves to be hated. His hatred for idolatry was very close to being a virtue (...) but it was the devotion of the Muslim overtaken by the wild and phlegmatic nature of the Tatar; it was a devotion without religion, a zeal without piety and without humanity."
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L'Univers. , Inde / M. Dubois de Jancigny,& M. Xavier Raymond, Paris 1845 (p.277)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mahmud_of_Ghazni
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Mahmud of Ghazni
Mahmud of Ghazni (محمود غزنوی; November 971 – 30 April 1030), also known as Mahmūd-i Zābulī (محمود زابلی), was the most prominent ruler of the Ghaznavid Empire. He conquered the eastern portions of the Persian empire including, modern Afghanistan, and the northwestern Indian subcontinent (modern Pakistan) from 997 to his death in 1030. Mahmud turned the former provincial city of Ghazna into the wealthy capital of an extensive empire that covered most of today's Afghanistan, eastern Iran, and Pak
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