Person · Sisodia ruler of Mewar · India
Mahārāṇa Pratāp
Also known as Maharana Pratap, Pratap Singh I, Rana Pratap
The Sisodia ruler of Mewar who refused the marriage alliance and personal submission that other Rajput houses accepted from Akbar, fought the Mughal army at Haldighati in 1576, and then spent two decades recovering his territory by hill warfare from the Aravallis rather than by pitched battle.
- Date
- 1540–1597
- Function
- Military & resistance
- Confidence
- Not assessed
- Location
- 24.916, 73.689
Worth knowing
The Mughal force at Haldighati was commanded by Man Singh of Amber, a Rajput — which is the part later retellings usually drop. Pratap recovered Kumbhalgarh and most of Mewar by 1597 but never retook Chittorgarh, and he died at Chavand without having submitted.
About the place
Placed at Haldighati, the pass where he fought Akbar's army in June 1576. He ruled from Gogunda, Kumbhalgarh and finally Chavand, Chittorgarh having already been lost.
Connections (4)
- Life routeKumbhalgarh
Pratap was born at Kumbhalgarh, lost it to Shahbaz Khan in 1578 after Haldighati, and recovered it in 1597 in the last year of his life. The fort is the whole Mewar method in one object: a thirty-six-kilometre wall around hills that an imperial army can take but cannot afford to hold, in a kingdom that had given up its plains capital rather than negotiate.
- OpposedAkbar
Maharana Pratap refused the matrimonial-and-political submission Akbar accepted from most other Rajput houses in the 1570s. Akbar sent four embassies — Jalal Khan, Man Singh of Amber, Bhagwant Das, Todar Mal — asking Pratap to attend court and accept a Mughal rank in return for keeping Mewar; Pratap refused each. The 1576 Haldighati battle, Akbar's attempts to isolate Mewar economically, and Pratap's twenty years of hill-fort recovery were the consequence. The two never met.
- OpposedRaja Man Singh I
Man Singh of Amber commanded Akbar's army at Haldighati on 18 June 1576 against Maharana Pratap — a Rajput Kachhwaha ruler leading Mughal cavalry against a Rajput Sisodia king, which is the part later retellings usually drop. The battle lasted an afternoon with heavy losses on both sides; Pratap withdrew wounded on his famous horse Chetak into the Aravalli hills, where he spent the next two decades recovering Mewar fort by fort. Man Singh and Pratap never fought again, though Man Singh governed Bengal, Bihar, Kabul and the Deccan over the next thirty years.
- Ruled fromUdaipur
Maharana Pratap's Mewar extended across the Aravallis from Gogunda to Chavand through his reign, with Chittorgarh already lost to Akbar in 1568 and Udaipur still Rawal Udai Singh II's recently-founded Pichola Lake capital. Pratap ruled from Gogunda, Kumbhalgarh and finally Chavand in the eastern Aravallis — never from Udaipur itself, which was his father's foundation. His successors from Amar Singh I onward returned the Sisodia court to Udaipur permanently.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Maharana Pratap”. Abu'l-Fazl, Akbarnāma; James Tod, Annals and Antiquities of Rajast'han (1829–32), used with caution as bardic compilation.
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