01City of tanks
The Chandela kings dammed the valleys round Mahoba into great lakes, as they did across Bundelkhand. Rahila, around 900, built the Rahila Sagar and the granite sun temple on its bank, now roofless. Kirtivarman, in the later 11th century, built the Kirat Sagar, and Madanavarman in the 12th century the Madan Sagar, with island shrines in it. Khajuraho was their temple city and Kalinjar their great fort, but Mahoba, which their inscriptions call Mahotsavanagara, the city of the great festival, was a seat of the court.
02Alha, Udal and 1182
In 1182 Prithviraj III Chauhan of Ajmer invaded the Chandela kingdom of Paramardi; his inscriptions at Madanpur record that he laid waste Jejakabhukti. The Alha Khand, the ballad cycle credited to the bard Jagnik, tells the war through two brothers, Alha and Udal, champions of Mahoba, and is sung in the villages in the month of Sawan. The Kajali fair at Kirat Sagar each Sawan recalls their fight. Twenty years later, in 1202–03, Qutb-ud-din Aibak took Kalinjar after Paramardi’s death, and Mahoba with it, as Hasan Nizami records.
The life of this place
- c. 900Rahila builds the Rahila Sagar and its sun temple.
- 1182Prithviraj Chauhan sacks Mahoba (Madanpur inscriptions).
- 1202–03Qutb-ud-din Aibak takes Kalinjar and Mahoba.
