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The Shiva temple of Somnath was one of his last targets. Somnath in Gujarat (Saurashtra) had a fortified temple with its most sacred and celebrated lingam. The people, however, were pacifists and defenseless. In 1025, Mahmud with only cavalry and camels crossed the Thar Desert and surprised the residents of Somnath. When the soldiers scaled the walls with ladders all they found inside were defenseless worshippers. Fifty thousand devotees praying to the lingam and weeping passionately with hands clasped around their necks were massacred in cold blood. The marauders looted twenty million dirhams-worth of gold and silver. Mahmud himself took great pleasure in destroying the stone lingam, after stripping it off its gold ornaments. Bits of the lingam were sent back to Ghazni and incorporated into the steps of its new mosque to be trampled and perpetually defiled by the faithful.