Person · Chahamana king · India
Prithvīrāja Chauhān
Also known as Prithviraj Chauhan, Prithviraja III, Rai Pithora
The Chahamana ruler of Ajmer and Delhi who defeated Muhammad of Ghor at Tarain in 1191 and was defeated and killed by him there the following year. The battle transferred the Delhi–Ajmer axis to the Ghurids and their Turkish slave commanders, and the Delhi Sultanate follows directly from it.
- Date
- 1166–1192
- Function
- Authority & administration
- Confidence
- Not assessed
- Location
- 26.450, 74.640
Worth knowing
Almost everything popularly known about him comes from Chand Bardai's Prithviraj Raso, a Braj epic compiled centuries later and unreliable as history, and from the Persian chronicles of the other side. The contemporary Sanskrit evidence is thin: inscriptions, and Jayanaka's Prithviraja Vijaya, which breaks off before the defeat.
About the place
Placed at Ajmer, the Chahamana capital he inherited; he also held Delhi, and was defeated and killed near Tarain in Haryana.
Connections (1)
- CampaignTarain
Prithviraja III beat Muhammad of Ghor at Tarain in 1191 and let him go; Ghor returned in 1192 with mounted archers and a feigned retreat and destroyed the Chahamana army. Prithviraj was captured and killed. Ajmer and Delhi passed to the Ghurids and then to Qutbuddin Aibak, and the Delhi Sultanate follows directly from the second of those two battles.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Prithviraj Chauhan”. Jayanaka, Pŕthvīrājavijaya; Minhaj-i Siraj, Ṭabaqāt-i Nāṣirī; Dasharatha Sharma, Early Chauhān Dynasties (1959).
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