Sher Shah Suri

An Afghan soldier of modest origins, Sher Shah Suri drove the Mughal emperor Humayun out of India in 1540 and ruled most of the north for five years before dying in a siege. His reign over northern India was short, but his reforms of coinage, roads, revenue and local government outlasted his dynasty and were taken over by the Mughals, above all by Akbar.

He was born Farid Khan at Sasaram in Bihar; some accounts place his birth in 1472, others in 1486. His family belonged to the Sur clan of Pashtun Afghans. His grandfather had come from the Afghan highlands as a horse dealer, and his father held land grants, jagirs, in Bihar. Unhappy at home because of a hostile stepmother, the boy left to study history and religion at Jaunpur. In 1497 his father put him in charge of the family estates, which he ran for about twenty years, curbing corrupt officials and reorganising the assessment of land revenue, before family quarrels forced him out.

After the Lodi sultans of Delhi were overthrown by Babur in 1526, Farid served the Mughals for a time and watched how their army and court worked. He earned the title Sher Khan, from a Persian word for lion or tiger, after killing a tiger that attacked the ruler of Bihar. Distrustful of the Mughals, he returned to Bihar, where by 1530 he had become regent for the young sultan and the real power in the land. Marriage to a rich widow brought him the fortress of Chunar and its treasure. In 1534 he defeated the sultan of Bengal and the Lohani nobles of Bihar at Surajgarh, and in 1538 he took Gauda, the capital of Bengal.

Humayun marched east to stop him, but while the emperor was stranded in Bengal by the monsoon, Sher Khan cut his communications and seized Bihar and Benares. He surprised the retreating Mughal army at Chausa, on the Karmanasa river, and Humayun barely escaped. A second victory near Kannauj completed the rout, and on 17 May 1540 Sher Khan was crowned as Sher Shah, taking the title Sultan Adil, "the just king". He took Agra and Delhi and pursued Humayun out of the Punjab.

Sher Shah then subdued the Gakhars of the Punjab, building the great fortress of Rohtas, crushed a rebellious governor in Bengal and annexed Malwa in 1542. At Raisen in 1543 he allowed his troops to attack the Rajput garrison of Puran Mal as it left the fort under a promise of safe passage; the Rajputs were massacred, and this is regarded as the worst stain on his reign. Against Maldeo of Marwar he used forged letters to sow distrust, and won the battle of Sammel near Jodhpur. In 1544 he laid siege to the fort of Kalinjar. During the siege, which lasted about seven months, he was badly burned in an explosion of gunpowder or bombs, and he died on 22 May 1545.

His silver rupee, of a standard weight of 178 grains, is the ancestor of the modern rupee, and he also struck gold and copper coins. He rebuilt and extended the Grand Trunk Road between Bengal and the north-west, lined it with rest houses, wells and shade trees, and ran a postal service of mounted relays. He divided his realm into districts and smaller units with paired officials for order and revenue, abolished internal customs duties and recruited soldiers on merit. His son Islam Shah succeeded him, but after Islam Shah's death in 1553 the empire fell into civil war and Humayun recovered Delhi. Sher Shah's tomb stands in an artificial lake at Sasaram.

Our 1530 map shows the young Mughal Empire that Sher Shah overthrew, in the lands of the former Delhi Sultanate; our 1600 map shows the Mughals restored under Akbar.