163

The Sultans of Gujarāt

806–980/1403–1573

Western India

The mediaeval province of Gujarāt on the western coastland of India comprised both a mainland section lying to the east of the Rann of Cutch (Kachchh) and also the peninsula of Kathiawar. Because of its commercial and maritime connections with the other shores of the Indian Ocean, Gujarāt was a particularly rich province; but although Maḥmūd of Ghazna had marched through it en route for Somnath (see above, no. 158), permanent Muslim conquest was quite long delayed. Only in 697/1298 did the troops of ‘Alā’ al-Dīn Muḥammad Khalji defeat the main local Hindu dynasty, the Vāghelās of Anahilwāra. During the fourteenth century, Gujarāt was ruled by governors appointed by the Delhi Sultans, until in 793/1391 the Tughluqid Muḥammad III sent out Ẓafar Khān. As the Tughluqids fell into palpable decline, Ẓafar Khān became in effect independent, and his son and he claimed the insignia of royalty and the title of Shāh. The new sultanate was consolidated by the founder’s grandson Aḥmad I, much of whose reign was occupied by warfare against the Hindu Rājās of Gujarāt and Rājputānā and against his fellow-Muslim sovereigns of Mālwa, Khāndesh and the Deccan. It was he who built for himself the new capital of Aḥmadābād, which replaced that of Anahilwāra. The fifty-five years of Maḥmūd Begŕā’s reign (862–917/1458–1511) were the greatest in the history of the Gujarāt Sultanate. Campaigns against the Hindu princes led, among other things, to the capture of the fortress of Chāmpānēr, now renamed Maḥmūdābād and made the sultan’s capital; indeed, during his reign the Sultanate attained its greatest extent before the subsequent annexation of Mālwa (see below, no. 165)

A new factor in the politics of western and southern India appeared before the end of Maḥmūd’s reign, namely the Portuguese. After Vasco da Gama appeared at Calicut (Kalikat) in 1498, the Portuguese began to divert much of the Indian Ocean commerce into their own hands, thus bypassing the traders of Egypt and Gujarāt. Hence in 914/1508 Maḥmūd allied with the Mamlūk Sultan Qānṣūḥ al-Ghawrī (see above, no. 31, 2), but despite the initial Muslim naval victory near Bombay over Dom Lourenço de Almeida, the Portuguese captured Goa from the neighbouring ‘Ādil Shāhīs of Bījapur (see below, no. 170) and Maḥmūd was compelled to make peace. The last great sultan of Gujarāt was Maḥmūd’s grandson Bahādur Shāh, who assumed the offensive against the Hindus and also conquered Mālwa, only to lose it and part of his own dominions to the Mughal Humāyūn. The menace from the Portuguese revived, and despite the grant to them of Diu (Dīw) they treacherously killed Bahādur Shāh in 943/1537. The unity of Gujarāt now crumbled; dynastic quarrels broke out, and the kingdom began to split up among various nobles. In despair, the Mughals were called in so that Akbar took over Gujarāt in 980/1572–3 and made it into a province of his empire, although the last sultan of Gujarāt, Muẓaffar III, made several attempts at a revanche up to his death in 1001/1593.

Justi, 476; Lane-Poole, 312–14; Zambaur, 296.

EI² ‘Gudijārāt’ (J. Burton-Page), ‘Hind. IV. History’ (idem).

G. P. Taylor, ‘The coins of the Gujarāt saltanat’, JBBRAS, 21 (1903), 278–338, with a genealogical table at p. 308.

M. S. Commissariat, History of Gujarat. Including a Survey of its Chief Architectural Monuments and Inscriptions. I. From A.D. 1297–8 to A.D. 1573, Bombay etc. 1938, with a chronological table and chronological list of rulers at pp. 564–5.

R. C. Majumdar et al. (eds), The History and Culture of the Indian People. VI. The Delhi Sultanate, ch. 10 A.

M. Habib and K. A. Nizami (eds), A Comprehensive History of India. V. The Delhi Sultanat (A.D. 1206–1506), ch. 11.