ANOTHER “MBS”?
Muhammad Ibn Suri (c. 940–1010 AD) was an ancestor of Sultan Shahabuddin Ghori (or Ghuri) — who managed quite comfortably to juggle a superficial Islamic identity with his core faith mixture of Zoroastrianism and Hinduism. That was typical in his time: in lower Eastern Iran/lower Khorasan [now Afghanistan] after the Islamic conquest of Imperial Persia in 651, the Rajput-Gujjar Kabulshahis and Hindushahis had ruled for 350 years…so local Iranian princes and chiefs such as the Suri Parthians (later called Ghoris) tended to dilute their old Zoroastrian practices with a Hindu tinge, to please the Hindu rulers (who were also proto-Afghans, as Al-Beruni notes).
Before Islam eventually arrived there in full force with Sultan Mahmud Ghaznavi, such local princes had initially tended to do the same with Islamic observances and practices as well.
