Gujarat Sultanate

The Gujarat Sultanate was an independent Muslim kingdom in western India, centred on the modern state of Gujarat, that lasted from the 1390s until its annexation by the Mughals in 1573. Its founder, Zafar Khan, was a governor of the Delhi Sultanate who broke away as Delhi's power collapsed. Wealthy from the trade of its Arabian Sea ports, the sultanate fought the Portuguese at sea and left a celebrated legacy of mosques and stepwells, above all in its capital, Ahmedabad.

The ruling family, called the Muzaffarids, were of local origin. The court historian Sikandar, writing in the sixteenth century, traced them to the Tank group of the Khatri caste, and other traditions gave them Rajput ancestry. Zafar Khan was appointed governor of Gujarat in 1391 and defeated his predecessor near Anhilwada Patan in 1392. As the Tughlaq state in Delhi crumbled after Timur sacked the city, Zafar Khan acted as an independent ruler; the sultanate's start is usually dated to 1394, though he only formally took the royal title of Muzaffar Shah, and struck coins in his own name, in 1407.

Muzaffar Shah's grandson Ahmad Shah I, who came to the throne in 1411, faced a revolt by his uncles and repeated wars with the Malwa Sultanate and Khandesh. He took Thana and Mahim from the Bahmani Sultanate. Early in his reign he built a new capital, Ahmedabad, on the Sabarmati River, where the Jami Masjid was completed in 1423. His successors campaigned against the Rajput chiefs of Idar, Dungarpur and Champaner.

The sultanate's high point came under Mahmud Shah I, known as Mahmud Begada, who reigned from 1458 until his death in 1511. His nickname is usually explained as "conqueror of two forts", for his capture of Junagadh and Champaner, where the court moved in 1484. He expanded the kingdom in every direction and built a fleet off Diu. In 1509, however, the Portuguese prevailed in the Battle of Diu, and their hold on the Gujarat coast grew in the decades that followed.

Under Muzaffar Shah II, Rana Sanga of Mewar invaded and plundered Gujarat. Bahadur Shah, who seized the throne in 1527, extended the sultanate to its greatest size, conquering Malwa in 1531. But the Mughal emperor Humayun overran Gujarat in the mid-1530s, and while Bahadur recovered his kingdom, Bassein, Daman and Bombay passed to the Portuguese, and Bahadur was killed by them on board a ship during negotiations in 1537. Later sultans were dominated by their nobles, who divided the land between themselves.

Lands under direct royal rule were divided into districts called sarkars, while many Rajput and other chiefs kept their territories in return for tribute, often gathered by armed expeditions. Ahmad Shah I paired each district governor with an accountant of different status to check abuses. The sultans were early adopters of gunpowder artillery. Their architecture blended Islamic forms with the carving traditions of local stone-carvers trained on Hindu temples, producing slender minarets and pierced stone screens that anticipated features of Mughal building. Ahmedabad and the ruined capital at Champaner preserve many of these works.

In 1573 Akbar annexed Gujarat to the Mughal Empire and took the last sultan, Muzaffar Shah III, to Agra. Muzaffar escaped in 1583 and briefly regained his throne, but a Mughal army defeated him in January 1584. He sought refuge in Kathiawar, where local rulers fought for him at Bhuchar Mori in 1591, and he died by suicide after being handed over to the Mughals.

Our 1400 map shows the newly independent sultanate in western India, with the Malwa Sultanate to the east and the remains of the Delhi Sultanate to the north.