Battle of Dewair

01Amar Singh’s spear

Mughal posts had been planted through Mewar after Haldighati to choke Pratap’s supply. With money raised by his minister Bhamashah, Pratap gathered an army again and struck at Dewair, a pass on the road to Kumbhalgarh. The Mewar accounts say Prince Amar Singh drove his spear through the commander Sultan Khan and his horse together. The garrison broke, and the men who survived fled towards the next Mughal thana.

02Mewar regained

In the following years the Mughal thanas across Mewar were taken or abandoned. By the time Pratap died at Chavand in 1597, he held nearly all his kingdom except Chittor, Mandalgarh and the eastern districts. Colonel Tod later called Dewair the Marathon of Mewar. The battle is known mainly from Mewar’s own records and bardic tradition; the Persian histories pass over it. Mewar’s own memory of it is clear: this was where the tide turned.

Person · 1540–1597 CE; reigned 1572–1597Maharana PratapPratap Singh refused every Mughal embassy, fought Man Singh’s army at Haldighati on 18 June 1576, and spent the next twenty years winning Mewar back from the hills; by his death at Chavand in 1597 only Chittor and Mandalgarh remained in Mughal hands.Read →