A short and contested rule
The Chaks were a Kashmiri family, originally from the Dard country, who had held high office under the Shah Mirs and took the throne in 1561. They were Shia, and their reign coincided with sectarian conflict in the valley between Shia and Sunni that the sources record in some detail.
Their independence was precarious from the start: Akbar had absorbed the Punjab, and Kashmir was an obvious next acquisition.
Annexation
Yusuf Shah Chak was persuaded to negotiate at the Mughal court in 1586 and was detained; his son Yaqub resisted for a further two years before the valley was subdued. Kashmir became a Mughal province, and the Mughal emperors thereafter treated it as a summer retreat — Jahangir's attachment to it is famous, and the Shalimar and Nishat gardens date from this period.
Kashmir did not regain independent rule. It passed from the Mughals to the Afghans in 1753, to the Sikhs in 1819, and in 1846 was sold by the British to Gulab Singh of Jammu under the Treaty of Amritsar, creating the state of Jammu and Kashmir whose status has been contested since 1947.
Further reading
- Jackson, Peter. The Delhi Sultanate: A Political and Military History. Cambridge University Press, 1999
- Richards, John F. The Mughal Empire. Cambridge University Press, 1993
- Asher, Catherine B. India Before Europe. Cambridge University Press, 2006
- Gordon, Stewart. The Marathas 1600-1818. Cambridge University Press, 1993
- Stein, Burton. Vijayanagara. Cambridge University Press, 1989
See also
This entry was last revised on 1 August 2026.