01The fort on the rock
Ranthambore sits on a flat-topped hill ringed by forest and ravines, and the Chauhans had held it since the fall of Prithviraj’s Delhi. Hammira came to the throne in 1283 and raided widely in Malwa and Mewar. In 1291 Jalaluddin Khalji came up to the fort, looked at its walls, and went back to Delhi saying he would not trade the hair of one Muslim soldier for ten such forts, as Barani reports. Hammira had won without a battle.
02The siege of 1301
After the Gujarat campaign of 1299, Mongol officers in Alauddin Khalji’s army mutinied, and their leader Muhammad Shah took refuge with Hammira. Alauddin demanded him back. Hammira would not give up a man who had come to him for shelter. Ulugh Khan and Nusrat Khan were sent; Nusrat Khan was killed by a stone from the walls, and Alauddin himself came to press the siege. Amir Khusrau, who was in the camp, records the fall of the fort in July 1301. Nayachandra Suri’s Hammira Mahakavya tells how the queen Rangadevi and the women of the fort entered the fire before Hammira went out to his last fight.
