Siege of Gagron

SideKhichi Chauhans of GagronAchaldas Khichi

1423vs

VictorSultanate of MalwaHoshang Shah

The Malwa Sultan besieged the water fort of the Khichi Chauhans; its lord died at the gate, the women chose the fire, and a bard wrote the story within a generation.

Date: 1423 CEWhere: Gagron fort, at the meeting of the Ahu and Kali Sindh, Jhalawar, RajasthanType: Siege

Result

The fort fell; Achaldas died fighting, and the women of the fort performed jauhar.

01The water fort

Gagron rises straight out of rock where the Ahu river joins the Kali Sindh, with water on three sides and a moat on the fourth. It belonged to the Khichi branch of the Chauhans. Hoshang Shah, the Sultan of Malwa who built the walls of Mandu, came against it in 1423 with a large army and siege engines. Achaldas Khichi had no hope of relief. When the walls could no longer be held, the women of the fort performed jauhar, and Achaldas and his men opened the gates and died fighting.

02The Vachanika

The siege is the subject of one of the oldest works of Rajasthani literature, the Achaldas Khichi ri Vachanika of the charan poet Shivdas Gadan, written in the fifteenth century in mixed verse and prose. It tells the siege and the last stand in a high, ringing style. The Khichis were back in Gagron by the 1440s, and it was besieged again and taken by Mahmud Khalji of Malwa in 1444. Gagron is one of the six hill forts of Rajasthan inscribed together as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2013.

Why it matters

Gagron is one of the best documented Rajput last stands of the Sultanate age, recorded in a near-contemporary Rajasthani work.