Qualla: Palace of Sultan Mas'ud III

Palace of Sultan Mas'ud III: Introduction

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tech. Sgt. James May, Public domain. The marble speaks in two languages. Kufic Arabic runs along one band, Persian poetry along another, and together they proclaim the glory of a dynasty that once ruled from the Hindu Kush to the plains of northern India. The Palace of Sultan Mas'ud III, built around 1112 in the Afghan city of Ghazni, was designed to make exactly this kind of statement. More than nine centuries later, the fragments of that statement are scattered across museums in Brooklyn, San Francisco, Hamburg, and Kabul, and the question of who owns them has become as complicated as the geopolitics of the country where they were carved.

Image: Tech. Sgt. James May | Public domain

Palace of Sultan Mas'ud III: An Empire Written in Stone

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit M, CC BY-SA 3.0. Sultan Mas'ud III ruled the Ghaznavid Empire from 1099 until his death around 1114 or 1115. His father, Ibrahim of Ghazna, had already established a tradition of monumental building in Ghazni, but the younger sultan pushed further. The palace he commissioned was enormous by any s...

Image: M | CC BY-SA 3.0

Palace of Sultan Mas'ud III: Unearthed by Italian Hands

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit M, CC BY-SA 3.0. For centuries, the palace lay buried beneath the Afghan earth, its bricks slowly scavenged by locals for new construction, its marble dado panels cracked by harsh winters and spring rains. Then, in the summer of 1957, an Italian archaeological team arrived under the direction of ...

Image: M | CC BY-SA 3.0

Palace of Sultan Mas'ud III: A Palace Divided

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Circa 1100 artist, CC BY-SA 4.0. How carved marble panels from a palace in Ghazni ended up in museums across the world is a story that traces the tangled routes of wartime looting, antiquities markets, and diplomatic limbo. Germany was the first to act: on October 8, 2021, Hamburg's MK&G museum returned a frieze...

Image: Circa 1100 artist | CC BY-SA 4.0

Palace of Sultan Mas'ud III: What the Ruins Still Say

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit DEMIS Mapserver, पाटलिपुत्र, CC BY-SA 3.0. Ghazni today is a provincial capital shaped by decades of conflict, a city where ancient minarets compete for attention with blast walls and checkpoints. The palace ruins sit within what was once a walled compound separating the royal complex from the rest of the city, its perime...

Image: DEMIS Mapserver, पाटलिपुत्र | CC BY-SA 3.0