Sher Shah Suri: The Afghan Ruler Who Drove Out Humayun

Sher Shah Suri was an Afghan soldier and administrator who rose from modest beginnings in Bihar to defeat the Mughal emperor Humayun and rule northern India from 1540 to 1545. His victory at Kannauj in May 1540 drove the Mughals out of India for fifteen years. In just five years of rule he reorganised taxation, currency and roads so effectively that the Mughals later adopted many of his methods.

Background: Afghans and Mughals

In 1526 the Timurid prince Babur defeated Sultan Ibrahim Lodi at the First Battle of Panipat and founded the Mughal Empire. The Afghan nobles who had served the Lodi sultans were pushed east, into Bihar and Bengal, but they were not destroyed. After Babur died in 1530, his son Humayun inherited a young state and quarrelsome brothers.

Sher Shah was born Farid Khan, probably in the 1480s, although sources give dates ranging from about 1472 to 1486. His father held a small estate (jagir) at Sasaram in Bihar. Farid learned Persian and administration while managing that estate, and according to tradition he earned the title Sher Khan (“tiger lord”) after killing a tiger while serving the Afghan ruler of Bihar.

Rise to power

During the 1530s Sher Khan built up his position in Bihar, serving as guardian for the young Lohani ruler and gaining control of the government. He strengthened his army, won over Afghan chiefs and seized the fortress of Chunar on the Ganges. In 1537-38 he invaded Bengal and took its capital, Gaur.

Humayun marched east to stop him and occupied Gaur, but he lingered there while Sher Khan cut his communications. As the Mughal army returned up the Ganges, Sher Khan attacked it at Chausa on 26 June 1539. The surprise attack routed the Mughals, and Humayun barely escaped by crossing the river. Sher Khan then proclaimed himself king as Sher Shah.

Kannauj, May 1540, and later campaigns

Humayun gathered a new army, but his brothers gave little help. On 17 May 1540 the two armies met near Kannauj on the Ganges, a battle also called Bilgram. The Mughal force was larger, but it was poorly placed and disordered, and Sher Shah’s Afghans broke it.

Humayun fled first to Agra and Lahore and then westward through Sindh. In 1544 he reached Safavid Persia, where Shah Tahmasp I gave him refuge. Sher Shah took control of Delhi, Agra and the Punjab, and in 1541 he began the massive Rohtas Fort near Jhelum to guard the north-west against a Mughal return.

Sher Shah spent most of his reign at war. He took Malwa in 1542 and the fortress of Raisen in 1543. In early 1544 he fought Maldeo Rathore of Marwar at Sammel (Giri-Sumel), a hard-won victory after which, according to a well-known tradition, he remarked that he had almost lost the empire of Hindustan for a handful of millet, a reference to the poor land of Marwar.

In 1545 he besieged Kalinjar, a strong fortress in Bundelkhand. During the siege, gunpowder exploded near him and he was badly burned. He died on 22 May 1545, shortly after news came that the fort had fallen.

Administration and reforms

Sher Shah’s reputation rests above all on his government. Building on earlier Delhi Sultanate and Lodi practice, he organised his territory into districts (sarkars) and smaller units (parganas) with officials responsible for revenue, justice and order. He was known for punishing local officials who failed to suppress robbery on their roads.

Land revenue was assessed by measuring cultivated land and estimating its yield, generally taking about a third of the produce as the state’s share. Peasants received a written deed (patta) recording their obligations and signed an acceptance (qabuliyat). These methods were later refined by Akbar’s minister Raja Todar Mal.

His currency reform was equally lasting. He issued a silver rupiya of about 178 grains, a copper coin called the dam and gold coins, all of fairly standard weight and fineness. The Mughals kept the rupiya, and the modern rupee is named after it.

Roads and buildings

Sher Shah repaired and extended a great road from Sonargaon in Bengal through Agra, Delhi and Lahore towards the north-west. He also built roads linking Agra with Jodhpur and Chittor, and Lahore with Multan. Shade trees, wells and roadside inns (sarais) lined these routes, and the sarais doubled as posting stations for news carriers. Contemporary sources credit him with around 1,700 sarais, a figure that may be rounded.

This highway is the ancestor of what the British later called the Grand Trunk Road. Sher Shah did not invent the route, which followed ancient trade paths, but he made it a maintained imperial road.

His buildings include the Qila-i-Kuhna Mosque within the Purana Qila in Delhi and the Rohtas Fort, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Pakistan. His tomb at Sasaram, a tall octagonal domed building set in an artificial lake, was completed in 1545 and is one of the finest examples of Afghan architecture in India.

Key people

Humayun (1508-1556), the second Mughal emperor, was a cultured but often indecisive ruler whose quarrels with his brothers Kamran, Askari and Hindal weakened him against Sher Shah. His fifteen years in exile ended with his return to Delhi in 1555.

Islam Shah Suri, born Jalal Khan, was Sher Shah’s younger son. He succeeded in 1545, continued his father’s administrative policies and fought rebellious Afghan nobles until his death in 1554.

Maldeo Rathore of Marwar was the most powerful Rajput ruler of his day. His defeat at Sammel extended Sher Shah’s reach into Rajasthan, though Maldeo recovered his lands after Sher Shah’s death.

Abbas Khan Sarwani, writing in the reign of Akbar, compiled the Tarikh-i Sher Shahi, the main narrative source for Sher Shah’s life. Historians use it with care, since it was written decades later and is admiring of its subject.

Myths and facts

Myth: Sher Shah built the Grand Trunk Road from scratch. The route between Bengal and the north-west is ancient and was used by earlier empires. Sher Shah’s achievement was to rebuild, extend and maintain it on an imperial scale.

Myth: Sher Shah invented the rupee. Coins called rupiya existed before him, but he gave the silver rupiya a standard weight and made it the core of the currency system.

Consequences: the end of the Sur Empire

Sher Shah’s son Islam Shah (r. 1545-54) kept the empire together, but after his death rival Sur princes fought one another. Humayun, aided by Persian troops, recaptured Kabul and then defeated the Afghans at Sirhind in 1555, re-entering Delhi that July.

He died in January 1556. The last serious challenge to Mughal rule came from Hemu, the general of the Sur ruler Adil Shah, who was defeated at the Second Battle of Panipat in November 1556.

Timeline

• c. 1472-1486: Birth of Farid Khan, later Sher Shah.
• 1526: Babur defeats Ibrahim Lodi at Panipat and founds the Mughal Empire.
• 1538: Sher Khan captures Gaur, capital of Bengal.
• 1539, 26 June: Sher Khan defeats Humayun at Chausa and takes the title Sher Shah.
• 1540, 17 May: Sher Shah defeats Humayun at Kannauj; Humayun flees.
• 1541: Construction of Rohtas Fort begins.
• 1544: Battle of Sammel against Maldeo Rathore of Marwar.
• 1545, 22 May: Sher Shah dies of wounds at the siege of Kalinjar.
• 1555: Humayun defeats the Sur forces and retakes Delhi.

Why it matters

Sher Shah reigned for barely five years, yet he shaped how northern India was governed for centuries. His revenue system, his rupiya and his roads passed to the Mughals under Akbar, making the Afghan who defeated Humayun one of the founders of the Mughal state in practice.