Person · Suri emperor · India
Sher Shah Suri
Also known as Sher Shah Suri, Farid Khan, Sher Shāh Sūrī, Sher Khan
Afghan ruler from Sasaram in Bihar who beat Humayun at Chausa in 1539 and at Kannauj in 1540, drove him out of India for fifteen years, and in five years of rule produced the three works the Mughals subsequently inherited and became famous for: the Grand Trunk Road from Chittagong to the Khyber rebuilt in five years with sarais a day's march apart, the silver rupiya coinage that remained the subcontinent's standard until 1947, and the surveyed-land cash revenue system Todar Mal later ran at Mughal imperial scale. He was killed in 1545 by an exploding rocket at Kalinjar Fort, and his tomb at Sasaram stands on an island in a tank beside the road he built.
- Date
- 1486–1545
- Function
- Authority & administration
- Patron dynasty
- Sur
- Tradition
- Standard reference and biographical literature; contemporary chronicles.
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
Worth knowing
His five years of rule are the clearest case in Indian history of a defeated dynasty inheriting its conqueror's administration entire — Akbar's administration is Sher Shah's method run at scale, and the Mughal state as remembered is substantially his design. The Sasaram tomb, octagonal and finished after his death, is modelled on earlier Lodi tombs and is itself the architectural precedent for Humayun's Tomb at Delhi.
About the place
Placed at Sasaram where his tomb stands on the road he built.
Connections (3)
- Buried atSasaram
Sher Shah Suri's tomb at Sasaram is an octagonal sandstone mausoleum rising a hundred feet on an artificial island in a square tank, designed in his lifetime and finished after his death. The building is the architectural precedent for Humayun's Tomb at Delhi (completed 1572), and Sasaram's placement on the Grand Trunk Road ensured every traveller between Bengal and Delhi passed it — the king, the road and the tomb are one design.
- DefeatedHumayun
Sher Shah Suri drove Humayun out of India for fifteen years, beating him at Chausa in 1539 and at Kannauj in 1540, and in his five years of rule produced the Bengal-to-Indus highway with its sarais, the silver rupiya and the surveyed-land revenue system that the Mughals subsequently inherited. The Sur interregnum is the clearest case in Indian history of a defeated dynasty inheriting its conqueror's administration entire.
- BuiltRohtas Fort
Sher Shah Suri built Rohtas Fort in 1541 on the Jhelum frontier to hold the Punjab against Humayun's return from Persia and against the Gakhar tribes who would help him. Todar Mal, who would later run Akbar's revenue administration, oversaw the construction. The fort's seventy metres of stone wall and 68 bastions along a ridge above the Jhelum made it one of the strongest in the subcontinent, and the Jhelum frontier Sher Shah held through this fort stayed Mughal for the next three centuries.