Ikhtiyār al-Dīn Muḥammad Bakhtiyār Khaljī,[2] also known as Bakhtiyar Khalji,[3][4] was a Turko-Afghan[5][6] military general of the Ghurid ruler Muhammad of Ghor,[7] who led the Muslim conquests of the eastern Indian regions of Bengal and parts of Bihar and established himself as their ruler.

Khalji's invasions of the Indian subcontinent between A.D. 1197 and 1206 led to mass flight and massacres of monks, and caused damage to the traditional Buddhist institutions of higher learning in Northern India.

Bakhtiyar Khalji was born and raised in Garmsir, Helmand, in present-day southern Afghanistan.

[21] After being settled in south-eastern Afghanistan for over 200 years, it led to the creation of the Pashtun Ghilji tribe, with Bakhtiyar seen as a Turko-Afghan.

His uncle Muhammad bin Mahmud had fought in the Second Battle of Tarain against Prithviraja III.

He approached the commander of Benaras, Husamudin Aghul Bek, who was impressed with his gallantry and bestowed on him the iqtas of Bhagwat and Bhilui (present-day Mirzapur district).

[33][12] Minhaj-i-Siraj Juzjani's Tabaqat-i Nasiri documents Bakhtiyar Khalji's sack of a Buddhist monastery,[12] which the author equates in his description with a city he calls "Bihar", from the soldiers' use of the word vihara.

[34] According to the early 17th-century Buddhist scholar Taranatha, the invaders massacred many monks at Odantapuri, and destroyed Vikramashila.

[34] Historians Satish Chandra, Mohammad Habib and others have directly or indirectly implicated Bakhtiyar in the destruction of the Mahaviharas in their writings, but others like D.N.

[44] Muhammad Bakhtiyar's rule was related by Minhaj al-Siraj, as he visited Bengal about 40 years later:[45] After Muhammad Bakhtiyar possessed himself of that territory he left the city of Nudiah in desolation, and the place which is (now) Lakhnauti he made the seat of government.

He brought the different parts of the territory under his sway, and instituted therein, in every part, the reading of the khutbah, and the coining of money; and, through his praiseworthy endeavours, and those of his Amirs, masjids [mosques], colleges, and monasteries (for Dervishes), were founded in those parts.Bakhtiyar Khalji left the town of Devkot in 1206 to attack Tibet, leaving Ali Mardan Khalji in Ghoraghat Upazila to guard the eastern frontier from his headquarters at Barisal.