Medieval and Modern History of Haryana for Exams

Between the second battle of Tarain in 1192 and the revolt of 1857, Haryana was never a kingdom of its own. It was the approach to Delhi, so whoever held Delhi held this plain, and its towns were founded as garrisons, revenue headquarters and halting places on the road north. That is exactly how the exam asks the chapter: who founded which town, who invaded in which year, which faith and which family held which tract, and how the region finally came to be governed from Lahore. Learn it as a chain of masters, from the Sultans to the Mughals, then the Sikhs, Jats and Marathas, and last the East India Company.

Under the Delhi Sultanate

After 1192 the region passed to Qutbuddin Aibak and his successors, and Hansi and Hisar became the forward forts that guarded Delhi from the north-west. The best remembered builder here is Firoz Shah Tughlaq, who founded Hisar-e-Firoza, the present Hisar, in 1354, raised its fort, palace and the Gujari Mahal, and founded Fatehabad, named after his son Fateh Khan. He also brought canals from the Yamuna to Hisar, the line the British later rebuilt as the Western Yamuna Canal, and that is why he is remembered in Haryana as a canal builder rather than a conqueror. The region's worst year of the period was 1398, when Timur came down the Yamuna route and sacked Tohana, Fatehabad, Sirsa, Kaithal and Hisar on his way to Delhi.

The Mughal centuries

Under the Mughals the tract was divided between the sarkars of Delhi, Hisar-Firoza and Narnaul in the subah of Delhi, and its revenue paid for the court's own establishment. Faridabad was founded in 1607 by Shaikh Farid, the treasurer of Jahangir, to guard the road to Agra. Narnaul in the south became a town of tombs and gardens: Sher Shah Suri built the tomb of his grandfather Ibrahim Khan there, and Shah Quli Khan, a noble who had fought at Panipat in 1556, built the Jal Mahal in a tank. At Thanesar stands the tomb of Abd-ur-Rahim, better known as Sheikh Chilli, the teacher of Dara Shikoh. Along the Grand Trunk Road the Mughals raised sarais and the kos minars, the round brick milestones still standing between Delhi and Karnal. The region's sharpest revolt of the period was the Satnami uprising of 1672 near Narnaul, a rising of peasants and artisans that Aurangzeb had to send his own troops to put down.

Sikhs, Jats and Marathas

As Mughal authority weakened, three powers divided the plain. The Sikh connection is older than the conflict: Guru Gobind Singh stayed at Lakhnaur in Ambala and at Kapal Mochan in Yamunanagar, and after his death Banda Singh Bahadur swept the region in 1709 and 1710, took Samana and Sadhaura, and made Lohgarh in the Sivalik hills of present Yamunanagar district his capital, where he struck coins in the Gurus' name. The Jats of Bharatpur pushed north under Suraj Mal, holding Ballabhgarh, Farrukhnagar and the country around Delhi; Farrukhnagar, with its Sheesh Mahal and salt trade, was founded by its first Nawab, Faujdar Khan, and named after the emperor Farrukhsiyar. The Marathas controlled Delhi and its districts from 1757, lost the hold at Panipat in 1761 and recovered it under Mahadji Scindia. In the 1790s the Irish adventurer George Thomas carved out a principality of his own with Hansi as his capital, casting his own guns and coins, until the Marathas drove him out in 1801 and 1802.

Company rule and the transfer to Punjab

The Marathas lost Delhi to the British in 1803, and the Treaty of Surji-Anjangaon of that year brought the whole tract under the East India Company as part of the Delhi Territory. The Company governed it through the Resident at Delhi and left a ring of chiefs in place: the Nawabs of Jhajjar, Farrukhnagar, Bahadurgarh, Dujana, Pataudi and Loharu, the Jat chief of Ballabhgarh and the Sikh chief of Kalsia. Almost all of them joined or sheltered the revolt of 1857, which is a chapter of its own; the Company's answer was to hang or exile the leading chiefs and confiscate their estates. In 1858, as part of that settlement, the Haryana districts were taken out of the North-Western Provinces and attached to the province of Punjab, to be governed from Lahore. That transfer decided the next hundred years of the region's history, because Haryana remained a part of Punjab until the state was formed on 1 November 1966.

Towns and monuments to remember