Somnath Temple: The place of splendor

 

Somnath Temple and also known as Prabhasa-Pattana is located in Veraval city of Suvrashtra, Gujrat near the seashore. Dedicated to Lord Shiva It is one of the most sacred pilgrimage sites for Hindus and it is the first among the twelve Jyotirlinga. The date of construction of the first version of the Somnath temple is unknown, with estimates ranging from the early centuries of the first millennium to around the ninth century CE. Muhamad Ghaznavi attacked India 17 times just to plunder the wealth of India.  He made his 16th attack on the Somnath temple in 1025 just to plunder the gold.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, colonial-era historians and archaeologists actively studied the Somnath temple ruins, which depicted a historic Hindu temple in the process of being converted into an Islamic mosque. Somnath temple was reconstructed in the Māru-Gurjara style of Hindu temple architecture. The modern Somnath temple was built on the orders of India's first Home Minister, Vallabhbhai Patel, and was completed in May 1951, after his death.

Kumarapala (r. 1143–72) rebuilt the Somnath temple in "excellent stone and studded it with jewels," according to an inscription in 1169. He replaced a decaying wooden temple. Alauddin Khalji's army, led by Ulugh Khan, defeated the Vaghela king Karna and sacked the Somnath temple during its 1299 invasion of Gujarat. Legends in the later texts Kanhadade Prabandha (15th century) and Naini RI Khyat (17th century) state that after an attack on the Delhi army near Jalore, the Jalore ruler Kanhadadeva later recovered the Somnath idol and freed the Hindu prisoners. Other sources, however, claim that the idol was taken to Delhi and thrown under the feet of Muslims. Amir Khusrau's Khazainul-Futuh, Ziauddin Barani's Tarikh-i-Firuz Shahi, and Jinaprabha Suri's Vividha-Tirtha-Kalpa are among the contemporary and near-contemporary texts cited. Mahipala I, the Chudasama king of Saurashtra, rebuilt the temple in 1308, and his son Khengara installed the lingam between 1331 and 1351. Amir Khusrow noted Gujarati Muslim pilgrims stopping at that temple to pay their respects before departing for the Hajj pilgrimage as late as the 14th century. Zafar Khan, the last governor of Gujarat under the Delhi Sultanate and later founder of the Gujarat Sultanate, destroyed the temple for the third time in 1395. The Sultan of Gujarat, Mahmud Begada, desecrated it in 1451. By 1665, the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb had ordered the destruction of the temple, one of many. In 1702, he ordered that the temple be demolished if Hindus resumed worship there. 

Many dilapidated temples were resurrected during the Maratha expansion in northern India. Indore's Ahilyabai Holkar erected a temple at Somnath. Maharaji Shinde imported silver gates from Gazni and placed them in Ujjain's Gopal Mandir.