Sher Shah Suri, the Afghan Conqueror of the Mughal Throne

Sher Shah Suri: Early Life and Rise to Power

Farid Khan: Birth at Sasaram, Jagir and the Title Sher Khan

Sher Shah Suri was born Farid at Sasaram in Bihar, an Afghan of the Sur clan; accounts give his birth year as 1472 or 1486. His grandfather had come to India from Roh in Afghanistan in the reign of Bahlul Lodi, and his father, Hasan Khan Sur, was a small jagirdar under the Lodis. Quarrels at home sent the young Farid to Jaunpur, where he studied history and religion.

Farid learnt government on his father's estates. From 1497 he managed the family jagir for about 20 years, assessing the land revenue and fixing the commissions of the collectors. That experience shaped his later reforms. The title Sher Khan was given to him by his patron, the Afghan ruler of Bihar, for killing a tiger (sher).

• Lohani service: After the Mughal victory of 1526, Bahar Khan Lohani made himself Sultan of Bihar as Sultan Muhammad, and Sher Khan served him.
• A season with the Mughals: In 1527 and 1528 he served Babur and watched the Mughal army and administration at Agra before returning to Bihar.
• Regent of Bihar: When Sultan Muhammad died in 1528, Sher Khan became deputy to the regent, Dudu Bibi; after her death in 1530 he was regent for the boy Jalal Khan and the real ruler of Bihar.
• Chunar: In 1530 his marriage to Lad Malika, widow of the governor of Chunar, brought him the fort and its treasury.

Sher Khan in Bihar and Bengal: Chunar, Surajgarh and Gaur

Sher Khan built his power in the east while Humayun was busy with Gujarat and Malwa. Though he still professed loyalty to the Mughals, he planned to drive them out of India, and the Afghans from far and near rallied to him. His army came to include 1,200 elephants. The steps of his rise ran as follows.

1. 1532: Humayun besieged Chunar and lifted the siege when Sher Khan offered his loyalty and a son as hostage.
2. 1534: At Surajgarh he defeated the Lohani chiefs of Bihar and the army of the Bengal Sultan.
3. 1535 to 1537: While Humayun was away in Gujarat, he became master of Bihar; soon after, he defeated the king of Bengal and made him pay an indemnity of 13 lakh dinars, or gold coins.
4. 1537 to 1538: Humayun took six months to capture Chunar; meanwhile Sher Khan seized Rohtasgarh by a trick, lodged his family there, and took Gaur, the capital of Bengal. In 1538 he also struck coins in his own name as Sher Shah.
5. 1538: He offered to give up Bihar and pay 10 lakh dinars a year if he could keep Bengal. Humayun refused, because Bengal was rich in manufactures and foreign trade.

Sher Shah and Humayun: Battles of Chausa and Kannauj

Battle of Chausa (1539): How Sher Khan Defeated Humayun

Humayun marched into Bengal and reached Gaur without opposition, but stayed there three or four months. Sher Khan had left Bengal for south Bihar. He let the Mughals advance and then cut their communications, taking Bihar, Varanasi and the country towards Kannauj, while Humayun's younger brother Hindal tried to take the crown at Agra.

The Battle of Chausa was fought in 1539 near Buxar, as Humayun marched back towards Agra. Misled by an offer of peace, he crossed to the eastern bank of the Karmnasa river, where the Afghan horsemen were waiting. About 7,000 Mughal soldiers and many nobles were killed, and Humayun escaped only by swimming the river with the help of a water-carrier. Immense booty fell to Sher Khan.

After Chausa the Mughals needed complete unity to survive. Yet Kamran, who had 10,000 battle-hardened men at Agra, would not lend them to Humayun, and Humayun would not give Kamran the command.

Battle of Kannauj (1540) and the Founding of the Sur Empire

The Battle of Kannauj, also called the battle of Bilgram, was fought on 17 May 1540. Humayun's hastily raised army was no match for the Afghans, though his younger brothers Askari and Hindal fought bravely. The battle decided the contest. Sher Shah took Agra and Delhi and became ruler of Hindustan with the title Sultan Adil, the just king, and Humayun became a prince without a kingdom.

Humayun wandered in Sindh for two and a half years, took shelter at the court of the Iranian king, and with his help recovered Qandahar and Kabul in 1545.

Conquests of Sher Shah: Punjab, Malwa, Raisen and Marwar

Sher Shah ruled the mightiest empire in north India since Muhammad bin Tughlaq. It stretched from Bengal to the Indus, excluding Kashmir, and in the west took in Malwa and almost all of Rajasthan.

• Punjab, 1540 to 1542: He chased the Mughals out of the Punjab, subdued the Gakhars and built Rohtas Fort near Jhelum, its building supervised by Raja Todar Mal.
• Bengal, 1541: After his governor Khizr Khan rebelled, he divided Bengal into 47 smaller divisions, each under a shiqdar.
• Malwa, 1542: Gwalior submitted on his approach, and Malwa was annexed.
• Raisen, 1543: Puran Mal left the fort under a binding oath of safe conduct and was then attacked and killed with his followers, the darkest act of the reign.
• Marwar and Mewar, 1544: At Samel, between Ajmer and Jodhpur, letters dropped near Maldeo's camp made him doubt his commanders, and he withdrew; Sher Shah then took Ajmer and Jodhpur. The Rana of Mewar sent him the keys of Chittor, and he set up outposts as far as Mount Abu.

The Rajasthan campaigns took about 10 months. Maldeo, who had built a large state in western and northern Rajasthan, was forced to retreat to the fort of Siwana; after Sher Shah's death he recovered Jodhpur in 1545.

Sher Shah Suri's Administration: Centre, Sarkar and Village

Shiqdars and Munsifs: Officers of the Sarkar and Pargana

Sher Shah kept the divisions of government that had existed since the Sultanate and gave them new officers. A pargana was a group of villages. It was under a shiqdar, who kept law and order, and an amil or munsif, who collected the land revenue; its accounts were kept in Persian and in Hindavi, the local language.

Above the pargana stood the sarkar, or shiq, under a shiqdar-i-shiqdaran or faujdar and a munsif-i-munsifan. Several sarkars were sometimes grouped into provinces, but little is known about them. In the villages, the headman and the panchayat of elders handled local needs.

At the centre Sher Shah kept the machinery of the Sultanate but did not leave much authority to his ministers. He worked from early morning to late at night and toured the country to see the condition of the people. That excessive centralisation was also a weakness, which showed once a ruler of his ability was gone.

Land Revenue System of Sher Shah: Measurement, Ray and Patta

The land revenue was Sher Shah's most lasting reform. Having run his father's jagir and then Bihar, he knew the system at every level. He ended assessment by guesswork, or by dividing the crop in the field or on the threshing floor, and insisted on measuring the sown land. The procedure worked in five steps.

1. Measure: The sown land of each village was measured.
2. Grade: Land was classed as good, middling or bad, and the average produce of the three was worked out for each crop.
3. Fix the share: The state took one-third of that average produce, set out crop by crop in a schedule of rates called the ray.
4. Record: The area sown, the crop and the amount due were written on a paper called the patta, given to each peasant.
5. Collect: The peasant could pay in cash or in kind, though the state preferred cash, converted at local market prices.

No one could charge the peasant anything extra, and even the fees of the measuring party were fixed. A cess of two and a half seers per bigha was levied to guard against famine. Sher Shah used to say that if the cultivators were oppressed they would abandon their villages and the country would be ruined; with land plentiful, the threat of desertion limited what rulers could take.

Army, Police and Justice under Sher Shah

Sher Shah built a strong army under his own control. He did away with tribal levies raised by chiefs, recruited soldiers directly after checking their character, and set up cantonments across the empire with a garrison in each. His personal army is put at 1,50,000 cavalry, 25,000 infantry armed with matchlocks or bows, 5,000 elephants and a park of artillery.

Law and order was enforced harshly. Zamindars who refused revenue or defied orders were dealt with sternly; Abbas Khan Sarwani, Sher Shah's historian, wrote that none dared rebel or molest travellers. Village headmen (muqaddams) and zamindars were made responsible for any loss a merchant suffered on the roads, and had to produce the goods or the thieves or suffer the thieves' punishment. The same rule applied to murders on the roads.

The law was barbarous, since it made the innocent answer for the guilty, but it seems to have worked. Sarwani wrote that an old woman could carry a basket of gold ornaments on her head and no thief would come near her. "Justice is the most excellent of religious rites," Sher Shah used to say. Qazis sat at different places, and village panchayats and zamindars still heard civil and criminal cases locally.

Coins, Roads and Trade under Sher Shah

Coinage of Sher Shah: The Silver Rupiya, Gold Mohur and Copper Dam

Sher Shah struck fine coins of gold, silver and copper of a uniform standard in place of the debased coins of mixed metal used before him. The word rupiya had once meant any silver coin; under Sher Shah it became the name of a silver coin of a fixed standard weight. His silver rupiya was so well made that it remained a standard coin for centuries.

The silver rupiya weighed 178 grains and the gold mohur 169 grains, and the copper dam completed the set of three metals.

The Grand Trunk Road, Sarais and Dak Chowki

Sher Shah restored and realigned the great highway of north India, the Grand Trunk Road, from the Indus in the west to Sonargaon in Bengal. He built a second road from Agra to Jodhpur and Chittor, linking up with the road to the ports of Gujarat, and a third from Lahore to Multan, the staging point for caravans to West and Central Asia.

Along these roads he built a sarai, a fortified inn, every two kos, about eight kilometres. Travellers could spend the night there and keep their goods safe. Each sarai had separate lodgings for Hindus and Muslims, Brahmanas to give Hindu travellers bed and food, grain for the horses, and watchmen under a custodian, the shahna.

Some 1,700 sarais were built in all, and villages were settled around them. Many grew into market towns (qasbas), where peasants came to sell their produce, and the sarais served as posts of the news service, the dak-chowki, which kept Sher Shah informed across his empire. His roads and sarais have been called the arteries of the empire.

Customs Reform and the Safety of Merchants

Sher Shah freed trade from tolls on the way. Across the whole empire goods paid customs duty at only two points. Goods from Bengal or from outside paid at Sikrigali, on the border of Bengal and Bihar, and goods from West and Central Asia paid at the Indus. No one could levy customs on roads, ferries or in towns, and a second duty was paid only when the goods were sold.

His governors and amils were told to treat merchants and travellers well and never to harm them. If a merchant died on the way, his goods were not to be seized as if they had no owner. Together with the new currency and an attempt to fix standard weights and measures across the empire, these rules helped trade and handicrafts to grow.

Sher Shah Suri's Death and the Fall of the Sur Empire

The Siege of Kalinjar and Sher Shah's Death (1545)

Sher Shah Suri died at the siege of Kalinjar, a strong fort that was the key to Bundelkhand, in his last campaign after he overran Rajasthan. The siege began in 1544 and lasted about seven months against stiff Rajput resistance. During it Sher Shah was badly burnt in an explosion. Accounts of the accident differ. One says a gun burst; another says a bomb thrown at the fort fell back on a store of bombs.

He was carried to his tent, where he lay for two days and ordered his men to storm the fort. He heard that it had fallen and died on 22 May 1545.

He had ruled for only five years, and in that time he established a sound system of administration. His body was taken to the tomb he had built for himself at Sasaram, which was completed three months after his death.

Islam Shah, Hemu and the End of the Sur Empire (1545 to 1556)

The nobles chose Sher Shah's second son, Jalal Khan, over his elder brother Adil Khan, and he ruled as Islam Shah. He was a capable ruler and general, but rebellions by his brothers and feuds among the Afghan tribes took up most of his energy. He codified the laws, tried to curb the privileges of the nobles and to pay the soldiers in cash, though most of these rules lapsed after him. He died in November 1554, though some histories end his reign in 1553.

His death led to civil war. His young son, Firuz, was killed by Sher Shah's nephew, who took the throne as Muhammad Adil Shah Sur, and rival Sur claimants held Lahore, Bayana and Bengal. Humayun seized his chance. In two hard-fought battles in 1555 he defeated the Afghans and recovered Delhi and Agra.

Hemu, a skilled commander and the chief minister of Muhammad Adil Shah Sur, made one last attempt. After Humayun's death early in 1556 he took Delhi on 7 October 1556 and took the title Vikramaditya. A month later he was defeated and killed at the Second Battle of Panipat by Akbar's army, which ended the Sur challenge.

Sher Shah Suri's Tomb, Culture and Legacy

The Tomb at Sasaram and the Purana Qila

The tomb of Sher Shah Suri at Sasaram, which he built for himself in his lifetime, is regarded as a masterpiece. It stands on a square plinth in the middle of an artificial lake, reached by a causeway, and is locally called the pani roza. The tomb is an octagon of three storeys in red sandstone, about 37 metres (122 feet) high, with chhatris at the corners and a great dome about 24 metres (80 feet) across; when completed it was the largest mausoleum in India.

Its plan grew out of the octagonal tombs of the Sayyid and Lodi Sultans at Delhi, and the tomb of Sher Shah's father, Hasan Khan Sur, served as its prototype. The tomb is seen as the culmination of the earlier style and a starting point for the style that developed under the Mughals.

Sher Shah also built a new city on the Yamuna near Delhi. Its only surviving part is the Purana Qila, the Old Fort, which completed the walls of Humayun's Dinpanah, with the fine Qila-i-Kuhna mosque inside it. The octagonal Sher Mandal in the fort later served as Humayun's library; Humayun died after a fall from it in 1556. Rohtas Fort in Pakistan, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is also his.

Religious Policy, Literature and the Afghan State

Sher Shah was not a bigot in religion, as his social and economic policy shows. Neither he nor Islam Shah depended on the ulama, though they respected them. Yet religious slogans were used at times to justify political acts, as in the killing of Puran Mal at Raisen. Sher Shah began no new liberal policy. Jizya continued to be collected from Hindus, and his nobility was drawn almost entirely from the Afghans. The Sur state therefore remained an Afghan institution, based on race and tribe; a basic change came only with Akbar.

Sher Shah patronised learned men, and some fine works in Hindi were completed in his reign, among them the Padmavat of Malik Muhammad Jaisi. The fullest account of his reign is the Tarikh-i-Sher Shahi of Abbas Khan Sarwani, written on Akbar's orders.

Legacy of Sher Shah: Forerunner of Akbar's Administration

Historians judge Sher Shah one of the ablest administrators of medieval India. In five years he restored law and order, put the land revenue on measurement, gave north India a uniform coinage and covered it with roads and sarais. Akbar's government built directly on these foundations, through men such as Todar Mal and through the rupee, the sarais and the revenue survey.

Sources

• NCERT: Exploring Society, India and Beyond (Class VIII, Part I), Reshaping India's Political Map
• NCERT: India, People and Economy (Class XII), Transport and Communication
• NCERT: Themes in Indian History, Part II (Class XII), Peasants, Zamindars and the State
• NCERT: An Introduction to Indian Art (Class XI), Indo-Islamic Architecture
• UNESCO World Heritage Centre: Rohtas Fort
• Bihar Tourism (Govt of Bihar): Sher Shah Suri Tomb, Sasaram
• Reserve Bank of India: Mughal coinage
• Wikipedia: Sher Shah Suri
• Wikipedia: Sur Empire
• Wikipedia: Battle of Chausa
• Wikipedia: Battle of Kannauj
• Wikipedia: Battle of Sammel
• Wikipedia: Rohtas Fort
• Wikipedia: Rupee
• Wikipedia: Grand Trunk Road
• Wikipedia: Zabt
• Wikipedia: Kalinjar Fort
• Wikipedia: Islam Shah Suri
• Wikipedia: Hemu
• Wikipedia: Tomb of Sher Shah Suri
• Wikipedia: Purana Qila
• Wikipedia: Sher Mandal
• Wikipedia: Gol Gumbaz
• UPSC: Civil Services Examination question papers