Rohilkhand & Katehar · Upper Indus–Gangetic Plain
This region's periods are layered rather than sequential, because each layer arrived without erasing the one under it. The ancient period belongs to Panchala and to the great mound at Ahichhatra, which was a city for well over a thousand years. The medieval period begins early, in the thirteenth century, and it begins at Badaun rather than Bareilly: Badaun was a Sultanate provincial capital while Delhi was still insecure, and Iltutmish governed there before taking the throne in 1211. The modern period begins in 1721, when Pashtun settlers who had been arriving in the Katehr countryside for a century turned their chiefships into a state — and it is unusually short, because that state lasted fifty-three years and ended in 1774 with a defeat rather than a conquest. Everything after 1774 is Awadh, then Company administration, plus one surviving princely remnant at Rampur. The name Rohilkhand is thus about a hundred years younger than the polity people assume it names, and the older name, Katehr, never went away.
Periodisation is regional, not national — the medieval period does not begin in the same century here as it does elsewhere in India.
Ahichhatra, near Ramnagar in what is now Bareilly district, was the capital of Northern Panchala and one of the largest fortified city sites of the early historic plain — a mound of nearly two hundred hectares with a rampart circuit still visible from the road. Its occupation runs from Painted Grey Ware levels through Mauryan, Kushana and Gupta layers, and it produced Panchala coinage struck with the names of local rulers, one of the earliest bodies of inscribed Indian coinage. It also produced the terracotta river goddesses from its Shiva temple, among the finest Gupta-period clay sculpture anywhere. The city is a Jain tirtha as well; the association with Parshvanatha is devotional tradition rather than excavated record.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| c. 800–600 BCE | Painted Grey Ware settlement at Ahichhatra. |
| c. 6th century BCE | Ahichhatra is the capital of Northern Panchala, one of the sixteen mahajanapadas. |
| 2nd–1st century BCE | Panchala coinage is struck at Ahichhatra carrying the names of local rulers. |
| 4th–6th century CE | Gupta period; the terracotta panels of the Ahichhatra Shiva temple are made. |
| 7th century CE | The Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang records the city and its monasteries on his journey through the plain. |
| 1940s | The Archaeological Survey excavates Ahichhatra, establishing the long occupation sequence on which the region's early chronology rests. |
Under the Delhi Sultanate the plain between the Ganga and the hills was called Katehr, and it was administered from Badaun long before Bareilly existed. Iltutmish governed Badaun before becoming Sultan in 1211, and the congregational mosque built there in 1223 is among the earliest of its scale in India. The countryside itself stayed with the Katehriya Rajput chiefs, who were campaigned against repeatedly through the thirteenth century without being displaced, and the region's pattern — a strong administrative town, a countryside that answers to somebody else — was set then. Sambhal was a provincial centre under the Lodis. From the seventeenth century Pashtun soldiers and traders began settling in the Katehr countryside in numbers, at first as military labour recruited by the empire, and by the end of the century they held land and revenue rights in their own name.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| c. 1210 | Shams-ud-din Iltutmish governs Badaun; he takes the Delhi throne in 1211. |
| 1223 | The Jama Masjid at Badaun is built, among the earliest congregational mosques of its size in the plain. |
| 13th century | Repeated Sultanate campaigns into Katehr; the Katehriya Rajput chiefs continue to hold the countryside between them. |
| c. 1500 | Sambhal is a provincial centre under the Lodis and Sikandar Lodi resides there for several years. |
| c. 1537 | By local tradition Bareilly is founded by Bans Dev and Barel Dev, sons of Jagat Singh Katehriya, and takes its name from them. |
| 17th century | Pashtun soldiers and traders settle across the Katehr countryside in growing numbers and begin to hold revenue rights. |
In 1721 Ali Mohammed Khan was acknowledged as chief of the Rohilla settlers and made Aonla his capital; by the 1740s the state ran from the Ganga to the terai. After his death in 1749 Hafiz Rahmat Khan governed as guardian for his sons and then in his own right. The state's end came out of a contract: in 1772 the Rohillas obtained Awadh's help against a Maratha incursion, the payment was disputed, and in 1774 an Awadh army with a Company brigade defeated them at Miranpur Katra, where Rahmat Khan was killed. Rohilkhand was annexed to Awadh, and only a small territory was left to Faizullah Khan, who founded Rampur in October 1774. Awadh ceded the whole region to the Company in 1801. That sequence explains the region's culture: a defeated aristocracy with money and no state, and one small court at Rampur that spent the next century and a half buying manuscripts and hiring musicians instead of raising troops.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1721 | Ali Mohammed Khan is acknowledged as chief of the Rohilla settlers; Aonla becomes his capital. |
| 1749 | Ali Mohammed Khan dies; Hafiz Rahmat Khan governs as guardian for his sons and then in his own right. |
| 23 April 1774 | Hafiz Rahmat Khan is killed at Miranpur Katra; Rohilkhand is annexed to Awadh. |
| 7 October 1774 | Faizullah Khan is granted the Rampur territory by treaty; the Rampur state and the library that became the Raza Library date from this year. |
| 1801 | Awadh cedes Rohilkhand to the East India Company; the districts become part of the Ceded Provinces. |
| 31 May 1857 | The Bareilly regiments rise; Khan Bahadur Khan forms an administration that governs Rohilkhand for eleven months. |
| 5–7 May 1858 | A force under Colin Campbell defeats the Bareilly army and retakes the city. |
Rulers and commanders
Governed Badaun as a provincial charge before taking the Delhi throne in 1211. Badaun was the region's administrative capital for two centuries before Bareilly existed, and its Jama Masjid of 1223 belongs to his reign.
Dynasty: Mamluk of Delhi. Seat: Badaun
Named in local tradition as the chief whose sons founded Bareilly in about 1537. The Katehriya chiefs held the countryside through the Sultanate period, and Katehr is still the name the older parts of the region answer to.
Dynasty: Katehriya Rajputs. Seat: Katehr
Assembled the Rohilla chiefships into a state and made Aonla its capital. Accounts of his origins differ and are disputed; what is not disputed is that the polity dates from his acknowledgement as chief in 1721.
Dynasty: Rohilla. Seat: Aonla
Governed as guardian for Ali Mohammed Khan's sons and then in his own right for a quarter century, the period in which Rohilkhand's towns, gardens and revenue system took their lasting shape. Killed at Miranpur Katra on 23 April 1774.
Dynasty: Rohilla. Seat: Bareilly
Founded Najibabad in the Bijnor country and rose to be the effective regent at Delhi in the 1760s. He commanded a contingent at the third battle of Panipat in 1761 — the point at which a Rohilkhand chief briefly became a factor in the politics of the whole subcontinent.
Dynasty: Rohilla. Seat: Najibabad
Left with a small territory after the war of 1774, he founded the Rampur state and began the manuscript collection that became the Raza Library — the beginning of the state's practice of buying books and patronising musicians in place of military ambition.
Dynasty: Rohilla. Seat: Rampur
Greatly expanded the Rampur library by purchase across West and South Asia, and built the Jama Masjid at Rampur. The Rampur khayal and instrumental lineages were sustained by this court's stipends.
Dynasty: Rohilla. Seat: Rampur
Chosen to lead after the Bareilly regiments rose on 31 May 1857. He acknowledged the Delhi court's authority and ran a working administration with revenue officers, civil courts and a post across Rohilkhand for eleven months.
Dynasty: Rohilla, grandson of Hafiz Rahmat Khan. Seat: Bareilly
The history of Rohilkhand & Katehar from ancient through medieval to modern times, and the rulers, commanders and administrators who shaped it. (8)