164

The Sharqī Sultans of Jawnpur

796–888/1394–1483

East-central northern India

Jawnpur lies on the Gumtī river to the north of Benares, between what were later the provinces of Bihār and Oudh (Awadh), hence in what is now the eastern part of Uttar Pradesh State, and is traditionally said to have been founded in 762/1359 by the Tughluqid Fīrūz Shāh III and named after his cousin and patron Muḥammad b. Tughluq, one of whose names was Jawna (< Yāvana ‘foreigner’) Shāh. In the fifteenth century it became the centre of a powerful Muslim state, situated between the Sultanates of Delhi and Bengal, and the Sultans of Jawnpur played a significant role in developing the Islamic culture of the region; Jawnpur, indeed, became known as ‘the Shīrāz of the East’.

The dynasty was founded by one Malik Sarwar, the eunuch slave minister of the last Tughluqid Maḥmūd Shāh II, who conquered Oudh on behalf of his master in 796/1394 and then remained there as virtual ruler, persuading the sultan to grant him the title of Malik al-Sharq ‘King of the East’, whence the name of the dynasty. Helped by the chaos which followed Tīmūr’s invasion of India, his adopted son Mubārak Shāh behaved as a fully independent ruler, minting his own coins and having the bidding prayers in the khuṭba or Friday sermon made in his own name alone. His brother Ibrāhīm was the greatest of the Sharqīs, and during his reign of nearly forty years the dynasty reached a peak of affluence and power. A particularly fine school of Indo-Muslim architecture developed in Jawnpur, and, being himself a man of culture, Ibrāhīm encouraged scholars and literary men at his court. His successors were drawn into warfare with the Lōdī Sultans of Delhi and raided Gwalior (Gwāliyār), but were most successful in attacking Orissa (Uŕīsā). According to Muslim chronicles, Jawnpur had at this time one of the largest armies in India. The last Sharqī sultan, Ḥusayn Shāh, reached the gates of Delhi on one occasion, but Bahlūl and Sikandar Lōdī were in the end too much for him. Sikandar defeated Ḥusayn, who fled to Bengal and lived out his life in a small district granted to him by the Bengal Sultan ‘Alā’ al-Dīn Ḥusayn Shāh (see above, no. 161, 7). Jawnpur thus passed under the control of the Lōdl Sultan, who deliberately destroyed the city’s fine buildings left by the Sharqīs. Ḥusayn Shāh’s descendants had irredentist hopes of regaining the kingdom, hopes which the Mughals were not disposed to satisfy, although Bābur and Humāyūn did permit them to style themselves sultans.

Lane-Poole, 309; Zambaur, 292.

EI¹ ‘Djawnpur’ (J. Burton-Page), ‘Hind. IV. History’ (idem), ‘Sharkīs’ (K. A. Nizami).

H. M. Whittell, ‘The coinage of the Sharqī Kings of Jaunpū’, JASB, new series, 18 (1922), Numismatic Suppl., pp. N.10-N.35.

M. M. Saeed, The Sharqi Sultanate of Jaunpur: A Political and Cultural History, Karachi 1972, with Appx A on coinage at pp. 293–301 and a genealogical table as Appx C at pp. 306–7.

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

M. Habib and K. A. Nizami (eds), A Comprehensive History of India. V. The Delhi Sultanat (A.D. 1206–1506), ch. 8.