The 'Marriage' of 'Hindu' and 'Turak': Medieval Rajput Histories of Jalor

Abstract

This essay reads two medieval Rajput accounts of the conquest of Jalor by the Sultan of Delhi, Alauddin Khalji—Padmanabha's Kanhadde Pra bandh, composed circa 1455 and the account in Muhata Nainsi's Khyat, composed circa 1660—to uncover the changing memory of the fall of Jalor in medieval Rajput courts. Both accounts reveal the pressures of their patronage contexts, as they shape interpretations of the loss of Jalor to the Sultan. Such compulsions are articulated in modified visions of Kanhadde's kingship, legitimacy and the gendered relations between Rajputs and Turks. The essay concludes with an attempt to locate the audiencesfor such local histories between the fifteenth and twentieth cen turies, and to trace the changing significance of the event for them between then and now.