Siege of Jalor

01The golden hill

Jalor fort stands on Sonagir, the golden hill, above the plain of southern Marwar. Its Songara Chauhan kings were kin of the Chauhans of Ranthambore. Kanhadadeva had watched Alauddin’s generals take Ranthambore in 1301, Chittor in 1303 and his own outpost of Siwana in 1308, where his kinsman Sitaladeva fell. He would not go to Delhi to bow.

02What the Prabandha remembers

The fullest account is the Kanhadade Prabandha, written in old Gujarati-Rajasthani by the poet Padmanabha in 1455 for a descendant of the Jalor house. It tells of years of raids and counter-raids, of a first Delhi army beaten back, and of the final siege under Kamaluddin Gurg. When the stores ran low and a traitor, the poem says, showed the enemy a way in, the women of Jalor went into the jauhar fire. Kanhadadeva died fighting, and Viramadeva, who held the fort a few days more, fell after him.

03After Jalor

With Jalor gone, Alauddin held every great fort of Rajasthan. His grip did not last. Within a few years of his death in 1316 the Rajput houses were back in their hills, and Hammir of the Sisodias recovered Chittor. The Prabandha kept Kanhadadeva’s name alive in the songs of Marwar and Gujarat.