Siege of Kalinjar (1202)

01The hill of Neelkanth

Kalinjar sits on a flat-topped hill in the Vindhyas, ringed by cliffs, with the Neelkanth temple of Mahadev cut into its western face. It was the strongest place of the Chandelas, the kings who built Khajuraho. Paramardi, the Parmal of the Alha-Udal ballads, had already lost Mahoba to Prithviraj Chauhan in 1182. Twenty years later he faced a harder enemy.

02The siege as Hasan Nizami tells it

Hasan Nizami, the court chronicler of the Taj-ul-Maasir, writes that Paramardi was shut in the fort, agreed to submit and pay tribute, and died before he could hand it over. His minister Aja Deva refused the terms and fought on. The Ghurids held the approaches. In the end the water tanks on the hill ran dry in the summer heat and the garrison came down. The chronicler records that the temples of Kalinjar were turned into mosques. Bundelkhand tradition remembers Paramardi’s end differently, and the two accounts cannot be fully reconciled.

Dynasty · c. 831–1315 CEChandelas of JejakabhuktiFeudatories of the Pratiharas who became masters of Bundelkhand in the tenth century. They built the temples of Khajuraho and held Kalinjar against Mahmud of Ghazni.Read →

03Taken back

The Delhi garrison did not keep Kalinjar long. Paramardi’s son Trailokyavarman recovered the fort, and Chandela inscriptions show the family ruling from it through the thirteenth century. It fell for good only in 1545, to Sher Shah, who died beneath its walls. The Neelkanth shrine on the hillside is still visited by pilgrims, above all at Shivaratri.