Mahmud departed Ghazni on October 18, 1025, his army riding with two camels per soldier and an additional 20,000 to 30,000 camels carrying supplies. After resting at Multan in late November, the force pushed through the desert, seizing the fort of Ludrava near Jaisalmer before crossing into Gujarat. By December's end, Mahmud had reached Anhilwara -- modern Patan -- the Chalukya capital. Its ruler, Raja Bhima I, did not stand and fight. He withdrew to the island fortress of Kanthkot in Kutch, leaving his capital open. Mahmud stationed his army at Patan to resupply, then turned south. At Mundhera, approximately 20,000 local warriors rallied under their chiefs to block the advance. They were defeated and scattered. The road to Somnath lay open.

Mahmud reached the Somnath fort on the southern coast of the Kathiawar Peninsula in early January 1026. On Friday, January 7, the Ghaznavid forces launched their assault with a storm of arrows that drove the garrison from the battlements. By afternoon, attackers had scaled the walls and announced their success with the Islamic call to prayer. But the defenders -- Brahmins, temple devotees, and soldiers of the garrison -- retreated to the temple itself, prayed before the linga, and counterattacked with a ferocity that drove the Ghaznavids from their captured positions by nightfall. The fighting seesawed for three days. On the third day, Mahmud's forces recaptured the fortifications and pushed the defenders to the shrine's gates, where close combat decided the outcome. The historian Ibn al-Athir recorded 50,000 casualties among the defenders -- a figure likely inflated by medieval chroniclers, but one that conveys the scale of the slaughter. Many who tried to escape by boat were killed or drowned.

Inside the temple, Mahmud shattered the Shiva Linga and oversaw the looting of what sources describe as 20,000,000 dinars in treasure -- an almost incomprehensible sum, though medieval chroniclers had reason to exaggerate both the wealth and their patron's glory. The fragments of the linga were carried back to Ghazni, where they were laid as steps at the gate of the city's Jami Mosque, to be trodden underfoot by worshippers. The temple itself was razed to the ground. The campaign earned Mahmud the title by which many still know him: "The Idol Breaker." For the Hindu communities of Gujarat, the destruction represented something beyond military defeat. The Somnath Temple was not merely wealthy -- it was a statement of civilizational confidence, sustained by thousands of villages, tended by hundreds of devoted servants. Its obliteration was meant to be total.

The return march proved nearly as dangerous as the conquest. A wave of indignation swept through the Hindu chieftains of the region. Raja Paramdeva of Abu organized a coalition that blocked the Ghaznavid army's overland passage, forcing Mahmud to divert through the Aravalli hills and across the Rann of Kutch. He chose the watery route through Kutch and Sindh to avoid further confrontation. Along the way, he captured and plundered the abandoned fortress of Kanthkot, then pressed on to Mansura, where the Qarmatian ruler Khafif fled into a date-palm forest rather than face the Ghaznavid army. Jat warriors harassed the column throughout its retreat. Mahmud reached Ghazni on April 2, 1026 -- nearly six months after setting out. The Caliph al-Qadir responded with titles and honors for Mahmud and his sons. The Somnath Temple would be rebuilt, destroyed again, rebuilt again, and rebuilt once more. It stands today in Veraval, Gujarat, its persistence as deliberate as its original destruction.