Person · Gurjara-Pratihara king · India
Mihira Bhoja
The Gurjara-Pratihara ruler under whom the dynasty reached its widest extent in the later ninth century, holding Kannauj and the Gangetic doab against the Palas to the east and the Rashtrakutas to the south — the three-cornered contest that Arab geographers writing from Sindh describe as the central fact of Indian politics.
- Date
- 836–885
- Function
- Authority & administration
- Patron dynasty
- Chandela
- Confidence
- Not assessed
- Location
- 26.221, 78.169
Worth knowing
Al-Masudi calls his kingdom al-Juzr and says its ruler was the enemy of the Muslims and kept four armies pointing at the four quarters. The Pratiharas held the north-west against Arab expansion from Sindh for two centuries, which is the largest thing they did and is barely taught.
About the place
Placed at Gwalior, where the Teli ka Mandir in the fort is attributed to his reign. His capital was Kannauj, of which almost nothing survives.
Connections (2)
- CampaignBarbarikon / Banbhore
The Gurjara-Pratiharas' largest achievement was defensive and is almost never stated: they held the line against Arab expansion out of Sindh for two centuries after the conquest of 712, which is why the Ganges plain was not an Umayyad or Abbasid province. Al-Masudi and al-Baladhuri both describe the kingdom of al-Juzr as the principal enemy of the Muslims in India, with four armies facing the four quarters — and the Indus delta ports are where that frontier ran.
- CampaignDharmapāla of Bengal
The Pratiharas, the Palas and the Rashtrakutas fought over Kannauj for a century and a half — the tripartite struggle, in which each took the city at least once and none could hold it. Dharmapala installed his own candidate on its throne; Mihira Bhoja eventually held it for a generation. The contest exhausted all three and is the immediate reason the north had no single power when the Ghurids arrived three centuries later.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Mihira Bhoja”. Epigraphia Indica for the Chandela and Pratihara inscriptions; Devangana Desai, The Religious Imagery of Khajuraho (1996).
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