"Sultan Mahmud was a great monarch. ... A moment (sa’at) before his birth, Amir Subuktigin saw in a dream that a tree sprang up from the fireplace in the midst of his house, and grew so high that it covered the whole world with its shadow. Waking in alarm from his dream, he began to reflect upon the import of it. At that very moment a messenger came, bringing the tidings that the Almighty had given him a son. Subuktigin greatly rejoiced, and said, I name the child Mahmud. On the same night that he was born, an idol temple in India, in the vicinity of Parshawar, on the banks of the Sind, fell down. Mahmud was a man of great abilities, and is renowned as one of the greatest champions of Islam.... His influence upon Islam soon became widely known, for he converted as many as a thousand idol-temples into mosques, subdued the cities of Hindustan, and vanquished the Rais of that country. He captured , who was the greatest of them, kept him at Yazd (?), in Khurasan, and gave orders so that he was bought for eighty dirams. He led his armies to Nahrwala and Gujarat, carried off the idol (manat) from Somnat, and broke it into four parts. One part he deposited in the Jami Masjid of Ghazni, one he placed at the entrance of the royal palace, the third he sent to Mecca, and the fourth to Medina."