Person · Maharana of Mewar
Rana Sanga
Also known as Sangram Singh I, Saṅgrām Siṃh, Maharana Sangram Singh, Rana Sangram Singh, Sangram Singh of Mewar
Sangram Singh, Sisodia Maharana of Mewar from 1509 to 1528, ruled from Chittorgarh and by 1521 reached from Mandu to the edge of Agra after defeating the sultans of Malwa, Gujarat and Delhi. Babur's memoir ranks him with Krishnadevaraya as the greatest 'infidel' kings of Hindustan. He beat a Mughal force at Bayana in February 1527 but lost to Babur's guns at Khanwa that March, and he died the next year at Kalpi.
- Date
- 1482–1528
- Function
- Military & resistance
- Patron dynasty
- Sisodia
- Confidence
- Mixed / layered
Worth knowing
By tradition he bore some eighty wounds, having lost an eye in a fight with his brothers, an arm at Khatoli and the use of a leg. After Khanwa he swore not to return to Chittor until he had beaten Babur, and stopped wearing a turban.
His death is dated 30 January or 20 May 1528 and said to follow poisoning by nobles opposed to another war; the counts of eighteen victories and eighty wounds come from tradition, and Babur's claim that Sanga invited him into India is not widely accepted.
Connections (5)
- OpposedIbrahim Lodi
Rana Sanga's advance into north-eastern Rajasthan brought Ibrahim against Mewar in 1517. At Khatoli, on the border of Hadoti, the Lodi army fled and a Lodi prince was taken prisoner, though Sanga lost an arm and was lamed by an arrow. Ibrahim came again in 1518 and 1519 and was beaten at Dholpur, losing his lands in present Rajasthan as Sanga's reach extended towards Agra. After Ibrahim fell at Panipat, his younger brother Mahmud Lodi brought Afghan horsemen to fight beside Sanga at Khanwa.
- CampaignKhanwa
After Panipat, Sanga gathered Rajput clans into an army reported at a hundred thousand and advanced towards Agra; in February 1527 he beat Babur's advance force under Abdul Aziz at Bayana. On 16 March 1527 at Khanwa, about 60 km west of Agra, Babur's cannon and matchlocks carried the day, and the defection of Silhadi weakened Sanga's side. Struck by an arrow, Sanga was carried off unconscious by Prithviraj Kachwaha of Amber and Maldev Rathore. Babur raised a tower of enemy skulls after the victory.
- Ruled fromChittorgarh
Sanga was born at Chittor in 1482, the third son of Rana Raimal, lost an eye in the succession struggle with his brothers Prithviraj and Jagmal, and took the Mewar throne in 1509. From his capital at Chittorgarh he ruled lands reaching into present Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Haryana, and drew the warring Rajput clans together through diplomacy and marriage. After Khanwa he vowed not to return to Chittor until he had defeated Babur and taken Delhi; he died at Kalpi in 1528 and was succeeded by his son Ratan Singh II.
- CampaignGagron Fort
Sanga took up the cause of Medini Rai, a rebel minister of the Malwa sultan Mahmud, and met the combined armies of the Gujarat and Malwa sultanates at Gagron in 1519. The Rajput victory there, with other engagements in 1518 and 1519, gave Sanga eastern and northern Malwa and Chanderi; Medini Rai made Chanderi his capital, and Sanga had him lift the jizya from the region's Hindus. Wikipedia describes this as the first Rajput rule in Malwa since the Paramaras fell in 1305.
- AnalogueKrishnadevaraya
The pairing is Babur's. In the Baburnama he named Rana Sanga, together with Krishnadevaraya of Vijayanagara in the south, as the greatest 'infidel' kings of Hindustan, adding that Sanga had grown so great by audacity and the sword that his kingdom included much of northern India. The two were exact contemporaries, both coming to the throne in 1509. Babur also accused Sanga of inviting him into India, a claim historians have not widely accepted.
Sources
Wikipedia, "Rana Sanga"; "Battle of Khanwa". G. N. Sharma, Mewar & the Mughal Emperors (1954); Satish Chandra, Medieval India: From Sultanat to the Mughals, Part II (2005).
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