The richest province
Zafar Khan, governor of Gujarat, declared independence in 1407 as the Delhi Sultanate disintegrated. His grandson Ahmad Shah I founded Ahmedabad on the Sabarmati in 1411, and the sultanate became the wealthiest state in India — Gujarat's ports handled the trade of the western Indian Ocean, its weavers supplied cloth to Africa, Arabia and Southeast Asia, and its merchant communities, Hindu, Jain and Muslim, were the richest in the subcontinent.
Mahmud Begada, ruling from 1458 to 1511, took Junagadh and Champaner, built the fortified city at Champaner-Pavagadh, and fought a naval war against the Portuguese in alliance with the Mamluks of Egypt — the battle of Chaul in 1508 was an Indian-Egyptian victory, reversed at Diu the following year.
Architecture
Gujarat's sultanate buildings are the clearest instance anywhere in India of a shared craft tradition serving a new patron. The masons who had cut the Jain and Hindu temples of Chaulukya Gujarat now built mosques, and they brought their pillars, brackets, ceilings and above all their pierced stone screens with them.
The jali screens of the Sidi Sayyid mosque in Ahmedabad, carved as a tree with intertwined branches, are the most famous single work of the tradition and are the emblem of the city. The Jama Masjid at Ahmedabad, the Champaner mosques and the stepwells at Adalaj and Dada Harir belong to the same milieu.
The sultanate fell to Akbar in 1573, and Gujarat became the Mughal empire's most valuable province and the base from which the Mughals engaged with maritime Asia.
Further reading
- Asher, Catherine B. India Before Europe. Cambridge University Press, 2006
- Blurton, T. Richard. Hindu Art. Harvard University Press, 1993
- Davis, Richard H. Lives of Indian Images. Princeton University Press, 1997
- Elgood, Heather. Hinduism and the Religious Arts. Cassell, 1999
- Jackson, Peter. The Delhi Sultanate: A Political and Military History. Cambridge University Press, 1999
See also
This entry was last revised on 1 August 2026.