Place · hill fort · Pakistan
Rohtas Fort
The 1541 CE fort built by Sher Shah Suri at Rohtas in Jhelum district, Punjab, Pakistan, during his 1540-1545 Afghan reconquest of North India from Humayun — a 70-hectare pentagonal fortress on a limestone cliff controlling the Grand Trunk Road between Lahore and Kabul. The 4-kilometre perimeter wall with 12 gates and 68 bastions was built to subjugate the Gakhar tribes of the Potohar plateau who had supported Humayun. The fort's Sohail Gate, Shah Chandwali Gate, and the Haveli Man Singh (inside the fort, built by the Mughal general Raja Man Singh during the Mughal reconquest) are the chief surviving structures. The fort was never conquered by force; it was abandoned by Humayun's Mughal successors in 1555 after Sher Shah's dynasty collapsed. UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1997.
- Function
- Military & resistance
- Tradition
- Sur-period fortification history
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 32.964, 73.578
Connections (2)
- Imperial administration ofLahore Fort & Shalimar
Rohtas was built by Sher Shah in 1541 to hold the Punjab against Humayun returning through the passes and against the Gakhar tribes who would help him. The fort and Lahore are one Punjab security system: a fortress in the north-west, a garrison capital in the south-east, and a road between them. When the Mughals took Lahore under Akbar in 1566 they inherited Rohtas as well, and both stayed on the same imperial account book for a century and a half.
- BuiltSher Shah Suri
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.
On these journeys
- The Grand Trunk Road — Kabul to Chittagong
- Overland corridors
- The north-west — Gandhara, the Indus and the Hindu Kush
Sources
Wikipedia, “Rohtas Fort”. Jean Deloche, Transport and Communications in India Prior to Steam Locomotion.
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