The last of Patan
The Vāghelas were a Chaulukya branch that took power at Patan in 1244 as the senior line failed. Their period is short but well documented, largely because of the Jain literary tradition that flourished under them.
The brothers Vastupāla and Tejapāla, ministers to the Vāghela rulers, were among the great builders of medieval India: the Lūṇa Vasahi temple at Dilwara and the temple complexes at Girnar were built at their expense, and Vastupāla was also a poet and the patron of a circle of writers.
The conquest
Alauddin Khalji sent an army into Gujarat in 1299 which sacked Patan and Somnath; the final conquest followed in 1304, and Karṇa II fled to the Deccan. Gujarat became a province of the Delhi Sultanate and, from 1407, the independent Gujarat Sultanate.
The fall of the Vāghelas is often narrated through the Persian chronicles' account of Karṇa's wife Kamala Devi being taken to Delhi, and through later Rajput and Jain retellings. As with Chittor and Ranthambore, the literary afterlife of these conquests is more elaborate than the contemporary record, and the two should not be read as the same kind of source.
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
- Kramrisch, Stella. The Hindu Temple. Motilal Banarsidass, 1976
- Michell, George. The Hindu Temple: An Introduction to Its Meaning and Forms. University of Chicago Press, 1988
- Richards, John F. The Mughal Empire. Cambridge University Press, 1993
See also
This entry was last revised on 1 August 2026.