Kashmir Valley · Western Himalaya & Trans-Himalaya
Kashmir keeps its own clock, and it is one of the few Indian regions that can prove it: Kalhana's Rajatarangini, completed around 1150, gives the valley a dated dynastic chronicle where most of India has only king-lists and inscriptions. The valley's medieval period does not begin with Delhi in 1206. It begins in 1339, when Shah Mir took the throne at Srinagar and founded a Sultanate that answered to nobody beyond the rim, and the two centuries that follow are the valley's own — its own sultans, its own Persian, its own imported crafts. Its modern period does not begin in 1857, which passed the valley by almost entirely, but on 16 March 1846, when the Treaty of Amritsar transferred the territory to Gulab Singh of Jammu and the valley became one province of a princely state governed from outside it. Everything political here in the twentieth century — the agitation of 1931, the Praja Sabha, the movements of the 1940s — answers to that transfer rather than to British India, because the valley was never British India.
Periodisation is regional, not national — the medieval period does not begin in the same century here as it does elsewhere in India.
The enclosed basin was productive enough to support a state and defensible enough to keep one, and from the seventh century it did both. The Karkota dynasty founded by Durlabhavardhana around 625 made the valley a power beyond its rim under Lalitaditya Muktapida, whose reign is associated with the sun temple at Martand and the ruined capital at Parihasapura. The Utpala king Avantivarman is remembered less for conquest than for drainage: his minister Suyya is credited in the Rajatarangini with clearing the Jhelum's obstructed course below Wular, moving the Sindh confluence and recovering flooded land, after which recorded grain prices fell sharply. Alongside the dynasties ran two bodies of learning that gave the valley a reputation across Asia — Buddhist scholarship, from which teachers and texts travelled to Tibet and Central Asia, and the non-dual Shaiva philosophy of the Trika, whose fullest exposition is Abhinavagupta's around the year 1000. The Sharada script developed here and remained the valley's writing system for Sanskrit for centuries.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| c. 3rd century BCE | The valley enters the Mauryan orbit; tradition credits Ashoka with founding a city on the site later called Srinagari. |
| c. 1st–2nd century CE | Kushana period; tradition places the Fourth Buddhist Council in Kashmir under Kanishka, and Kashmiri teachers carry Buddhist texts north and east. |
| c. 625 | Durlabhavardhana founds the Karkota dynasty, the first line the Rajatarangini treats as securely dated. |
| c. 724–760 | Reign of Lalitaditya Muktapida; the Martand sun temple and the capital at Parihasapura are attributed to him. |
| 855–883 | Avantivarman of the Utpala line rules from Avantipura; his engineer Suyya regulates the Jhelum and founds Suyyapur, the modern Sopore. |
| 980–1003 | Didda, after ruling as regent for a son and grandsons, holds the throne in her own name and is succeeded by the Lohara line. |
| c. 1148–1150 | Kalhana completes the Rajatarangini, a chronicle of the valley's kings in Sanskrit verse and the source for almost everything above. |
A devastating raid in 1320 broke the Lohara state, and the throne passed first to Rinchana, a prince from Ladakh who adopted Islam and ruled briefly, and then in 1339 to Shah Mir, whose dynasty held the valley for two hundred years. The valley's Islam arrived mainly through Sufi teachers rather than through conquest, and the Rishi order founded by Nund Rishi grew alongside the Shaiva devotional tradition whose best-known voice, Lal Ded, both traditions still quote. The reign of Zain-ul-Abidin, remembered locally as Budshah, is the hinge for the region's economy: he is credited with bringing or settling craftsmen from Persia and Central Asia in shawl weaving, carpet knotting, papier-mache and wood carving, with reversing his predecessor's harsher measures, and with commissioning translations between Sanskrit and Persian. Those imported crafts, not the agriculture, became the valley's export economy and remain its signature. Mughal annexation in 1586 ended independent rule for good; the valley was thereafter a province governed from Delhi, then from Kabul after 1753, then from Lahore after 1819, each transfer arriving as a change of tax collector rather than of culture.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1320 | A raid from the north under a commander the chronicles call Zulju devastates the valley and ends effective Lohara rule. |
| 1320–1323 | Rinchana, a prince from Ladakh, rules the valley and adopts Islam, taking the name Sadruddin. |
| 1339 | Shah Mir accedes as Sultan Shamsuddin, founding the dynasty that rules the valley until 1554. |
| 1370s–1380s | Visits of Mir Sayyid Ali Hamadani and his followers from Hamadan; Sufi teaching and Persianate craft and dress spread together. |
| 1420–1470 | Reign of Zain-ul-Abidin, credited with the settlement of shawl, carpet, papier-mache and wood-carving crafts in the valley. |
| 1554–1586 | The Chak dynasty holds the valley; Yusuf Shah Chak is its last effectively independent ruler. |
| 1586 | Akbar annexes Kashmir; it becomes a Mughal province, passing to Afghan governors in 1753 and to Sikh rule under Ranjit Singh in 1819. |
The Treaty of Amritsar of 16 March 1846 transferred the valley, with the hill country around it, to Gulab Singh of Jammu against a payment, and created a princely state in which Kashmir was a province administered from Jammu. The nineteenth-century economy turned on shawl: the state taxed weavers through a dedicated department, the weavers protested in 1865, and the trade then collapsed from outside when the Paris market that bought most of the cloth disappeared during the Franco-Prussian war of 1870–71. Famine in 1877–79 emptied villages. The land settlement carried out under Walter Lawrence from 1889 recorded cultivators' rights and reduced the harshest labour demands, and by the 1920s a small educated class was producing memoranda instead of petitions. The agitation of 1931 converted that into organised politics for the first time: an inquiry commission followed in 1932, the state's first political parties formed in the same year, and a Praja Sabha with a limited elected element was constituted in 1934. Politics here was therefore aimed at the state's own government rather than at a British administration, which is why it arrived late and why its vocabulary — responsible government, land to the tiller — is that of a subject population inside a princely state.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| 16 March 1846 | The Treaty of Amritsar transfers Kashmir to Gulab Singh of Jammu; Dogra rule over the valley begins. |
| 29 April 1865 | Shawl weavers assemble at Zaldagar in Srinagar against taxation and the dagshawl department; state troops disperse the gathering and a number of weavers die. |
| 1870–71 | The European shawl market collapses during the Franco-Prussian war, ending the valley's principal export trade. |
| 1877–1879 | Famine following successive crop failures kills a large part of the valley's rural population. |
| 1889 onward | The land settlement conducted under Walter Lawrence records cultivator rights and curtails begar, the state's forced-labour demand. |
| 13 July 1931 | A crowd outside Srinagar Central Jail during the trial of Abdul Qadeer is fired on; the deaths turn a grievance movement into organised politics. |
| 1932–1934 | The Glancy Commission reports, the state's first political parties are formed, and a Praja Sabha with a partly elected membership is constituted in 1934. |
Rulers and commanders
The Karkota ruler whose campaigns took Kashmiri arms well beyond the rim, and to whom the Rajatarangini credits the sun temple at Martand and the capital at Parihasapura. The account of his reign is Kalhana's, written four centuries later, and its geography of conquest is not independently confirmed.
Dynasty: Karkota. Seat: Parihasapura
Founded the Utpala line and rebuilt the valley's productive base rather than its frontiers. The temples at Avantipura are his; so is the decision to give his engineer the resources to remake the Jhelum.
Dynasty: Utpala. Seat: Avantipura
Credited in the Rajatarangini with clearing the Jhelum's blocked outflow below Wular, shifting the Sindh confluence and embanking villages, recovering flooded land and bringing grain prices down. The town he founded at the Wular outlet still carries his name in the form Sopore.
Dynasty: Under Avantivarman. Seat: Suyyapur (Sopore)
Ruled first as regent for her son and then for successive grandsons, and from about 980 in her own name until 1003, when the throne passed to her Lohara kin. Kalhana's account of her is hostile and is the only detailed one that survives.
Dynasty: Lohara. Seat: Srinagar
A prince from Ladakh who took power in the disorder after the raid of 1320 and adopted Islam, becoming the valley's first Muslim ruler. His reign was short and his significance is chronological rather than institutional.
Seat: Srinagar
Rose through service at the Lohara court and took the throne in 1339, founding a dynasty that held the valley for over two centuries and made Kashmir an independent Sultanate rather than a province of anyone else's empire.
Dynasty: Shah Mir. Seat: Srinagar
Known locally as Budshah. Credited with settling craftsmen from Persia and Central Asia in the valley, from which the shawl, carpet, papier-mache and khatamband traditions are conventionally dated; with reversing the coercive measures of his predecessor's reign; and with commissioning Persian translations of Sanskrit works and the continuation of the Rajatarangini.
Dynasty: Shah Mir. Seat: Srinagar
The last ruler of an independent Kashmir. He went to Akbar's camp under negotiation in 1586, was detained, and died in exile in Bihar; the valley was annexed and became a Mughal province.
Dynasty: Chak. Seat: Srinagar
The history of Kashmir Valley from ancient through medieval to modern times, and the rulers, commanders and administrators who shaped it. (8)