Battles of Panipat and Tarain: Years and Winners

No other district of India has decided the fate of Delhi as often as Panipat, and no other village is remembered for two battles as Tarain is. Both lie in the open, dry plain of Haryana on the old route that runs from the north-west passes down the Yamuna to Delhi, a plain with no river or hill to stop an army. An invader coming from Kabul or Ghazni had to be met here, about eighty kilometres short of the capital, and a ruler who lost here lost Delhi. Haryana papers, SSC, railway and state exams all ask these five battles as year, winner, loser and result, so learn them as a single table and then as stories.

The two battles of Tarain, 1191 and 1192

Tarain, the modern Taraori near Thanesar in Karnal district, saw the fight between Prithviraj Chauhan III of Ajmer and Delhi and Muhammad Ghori. In the first battle of Tarain in 1191 the Rajput army broke the Turkish centre, Ghori was wounded by Govind Rai of Delhi and was carried off the field, and the Chauhans let him go instead of pursuing him. Ghori came back the next year with a larger and better disciplined force. In the second battle of Tarain in 1192 he used mounted archers and a feigned retreat to draw the heavy Rajput cavalry out of order and then destroyed it. Prithviraj was captured and killed, Govind Rai fell in the field, and the road to Delhi was open. The second battle of Tarain is treated as the turning point of medieval Indian history, because Turkish rule in north India dates from it; Ghori completed the work by defeating Jaichand of Kannauj at Chandawar in 1194.

First battle of Panipat, 21 April 1526

Babur, the Timurid ruler of Kabul, met Ibrahim Lodi, the last sultan of the Lodi dynasty, on 21 April 1526. Babur had a much smaller army but two advantages: field guns handled by Ustad Ali Quli and Mustafa Rumi behind a line of carts, and the tulughma, the division of his force into flanking units that wheeled around the enemy. Ibrahim Lodi was killed in the field, the only sultan of Delhi to die in battle, and Babur took Delhi and Agra. The battle founded Mughal rule in India. To mark the victory Babur raised the Kabuli Bagh mosque at Panipat, and the tomb of Ibrahim Lodi still stands in the town.

Second battle of Panipat, 5 November 1556

After Humayun's death the Mughal claim rested on a boy of thirteen, Akbar, and his guardian Bairam Khan. Against them stood Hemu, the general of the Sur house, who had taken Agra and Delhi and had himself crowned with the title Vikramaditya. On 5 November 1556 Hemu had the larger army and a line of war elephants, and was winning until an arrow struck him in the eye; his army broke when he was carried away unconscious, and he was put to death. The battle restored and secured the Mughal empire, which is why examiners pair it with Bairam Khan rather than with Akbar alone.

Third battle of Panipat, 14 January 1761

The last of the three was fought on 14 January 1761 between the Marathas under Sadashivrao Bhau and the Afghan ruler Ahmad Shah Abdali, also called Ahmad Shah Durrani. Abdali had the Rohilla chief Najib-ud-Daula and Shuja-ud-Daula of Awadh with him, while the Marathas, cut off from supplies and without north Indian allies, had to attack. Their artillery under Ibrahim Khan Gardi was good but was overrun once the lines mixed. Vishwasrao, the Peshwa's son, was killed, Sadashivrao Bhau disappeared in the fighting, and a whole generation of Maratha commanders died in a single day. Abdali did not stay to rule, so the battle gave India no new master; it only broke Maratha power at the moment it was closest to taking Delhi and left the field clear for the East India Company. The Kala Amb memorial on the edge of Panipat marks the battlefield.

The five battles at a glance

The battlefields today

Panipat keeps all three battles in its monuments: the Kabuli Bagh mosque of 1527, the tomb of Ibrahim Lodi, the samadhi that marks the death of Hemu, the Kala Amb pillar of the third battle and the Panipat battle museum beside it. Taraori in Karnal district is a small town on the Grand Trunk Road with nothing left of 1191 and 1192 except the name, which examiners still spell in the old form, Tarain. Both towns are standard answers in Haryana state papers for the question about which district a battlefield lies in: Panipat district for the three Panipat battles, Karnal district for Tarain.