Capture of Badaun

01The Rashtrakutas of Badaun

An inscription found at Badaun, of the late twelfth century, gives the genealogy of a Rashtrakuta family that ruled Vodamayuta, as the town was then called, ending with a king named Lakhanapala. They were feudatories of the Gahadavalas of Kanyakubja. After the fall of Jayachandra at Chandawar in 1194, their position was hopeless. The Persian chroniclers note the capture of Badaun among Aibak’s conquests of 1197–98 without describing a siege in detail.

02A Sultanate city

Badaun became the seat of one of the great iqtas. Iltutmish governed it before he became sultan, and built its great mosque. The historian Abd al-Qadir Badauni, who wrote under Akbar, took his name from the town. The local Rajput clans of Katehr, the country around it, rose again and again in the following century, and Balban and Firuz Tughluq both led punitive campaigns there.