After Tarain
When the Ghurids took Ajmer in 1192, Pṛthvīrāja's son Govindarāja was installed there as a tributary and then moved to Ranthambore, the great hill fort in eastern Rajasthan, where his descendants ruled for a century. The line asserted independence whenever Delhi was weak and submitted when it was not, which was the ordinary condition of the Rajasthan fortresses in the thirteenth century.
Hammīra
Hammīradeva, who succeeded in 1283, is the dynasty's last and best-remembered king. He gave refuge to Mongol defectors from Alauddin Khalji's service, refused to surrender them, and was besieged at Ranthambore. The fort fell in 1301; Hammīra was killed and, according to the accounts, the women of the fort performed jauhar.
The episode entered Rajput and Jain literary tradition — the Sanskrit Hammīra Mahākāvya of Nayacandra Sūri celebrates him at length — as an exemplar of a promise kept at the cost of a kingdom. Amir Khusrau's Persian account, written from the other side, describes the same siege.
Ranthambore was thereafter a Sultanate and then a Mughal fortress, and the surviving temples and palaces within it belong to several periods.
Further reading
- Asher, Catherine B. India Before Europe. Cambridge University Press, 2006
- Jackson, Peter. The Delhi Sultanate: A Political and Military History. Cambridge University Press, 1999
- Richards, John F. The Mughal Empire. Cambridge University Press, 1993
- Basham, A. L. The Wonder That Was India. Sidgwick & Jackson, 1954
- Kulke, Hermann. A History of India. Routledge, 2004
See also
This entry was last revised on 1 August 2026.