Anahilapataka

Who holds it

Name

Bhima II, the king, whose court is here when the city is his; whether the recovery is complete on 1 January 1200 is not pinned

Title

King of Gujarat, in his capital

Since

1178

Born

not pinned

Confidence

medium

The Persian sack story reached via Wikipedia's Aibak and Bhima II articles; the Hindu side by Majumdar as summarised; board notes for the physical city.

Lord in 1200

Bhima II, the king, whose court is here when the city is his; whether the recovery is complete on 1 January 1200 is not pinned

How things stand that morning

A capital in repair. The garrison put in after the sack of 1197 (Muslim officer or Hindu vassals, per the two chroniclers) is gone by 1201 at the latest. The city has been sacked once in memory and has seen the king's authority fail; the Jain houses are the one thing that did not leave.

Wealth

Tolls and customs of the ports of the gulf, the mint, and the loans and gifts of the Jain houses.

Council

No municipal council is known. The city is run through royal ministers and the merchant mahajans; the headman of the Jain community and the mahajan heads are the voices of the city.

Communities

Jain merchant houses and ministers (the court of Kumarapala and Hemachandra is a generation back: see Jain houses of Patan); Nagar and other Brahmins; Muslim traders including Ismaili Bohras (see the religious record); Vaniya guilds.

Militia

No town militia is known; the king's household troops and the great feudatories supply the force.

Walls and castle

A walled city with gates; the sources we reached do not describe the line of the wall. The royal palace and the Sahasralinga tank (Siddharaja Jayasimha's work, board) stand within or beside it. Rani ki Vav, the great stepwell of the eleventh century built by a queen in memory of a Chaulukya king (recalled), lies just outside.

Trade and crafts

Cloth, indigo, grain, the horse trade passing to the capital from the gulf; the royal mint (board; the coin types and output are not shown in the sources we reached); record offices and the Jain bhandaras.

Places of note

• The Jain quarter: Where the merchant houses and the Jain bhandaras (libraries) stand
• The mint: The royal mint (board)

Where the sources disagree

• The campaign board entry anahilapataka-patan says Bhima 'holds it again and is issuing from it' on this morning. Majumdar (as summarised on Wikipedia) has the capital Chaulukya by 1201; the month is not pinned. See Chaulukya Gujarat.
• The campaign board entry rani-ki-vav and sahasralinga-talav are 'secure' in the campaign board; we describe them from memory, not from a source we reached.

Evidence: The Persian sack story reached via Wikipedia's Aibak and Bhima II articles; the Hindu side by Majumdar as summarised; board notes for the physical city.

"The campaign board" is OMNIA's working map. These notes record where its earlier claims were checked against the sources.

Primary sources for Chaulukya Gujarat

Chronicles, registers, sagas and inscriptions written in or near 1200 that cover this entry. Each has its own page with editions, translations and where to read it.

• The Crown of Glorious Deeds, Hasan Nizami (Sadr al-Din Muhammad ibn Hasan Nizami of Nishapur) (begun about 1205 at Delhi, carried on to about 1217). The earliest history written in Muslim India and the only contemporary account of Qutb al-Din Aibak's campaigns. Read online
• The Nasirean Generations (a general history of the Muslim dynasties), Minhaj-i Siraj Juzjani (completed 1260 at Delhi). The fullest narrative of the Ghurid conquest of northern India. Read online
• The Nasirid Generations: a General History of the Muslim Dynasties, Minhaj-i Siraj Juzjani (1259 to 1260, at Delhi). The Ghurid court's own history, by a man born in 1193 whose family served the sultans of Ghur and Ghazna. Read online
• Epigraphia Indica: inscriptions of the Chandelas, Paramaras, Gahadavalas, Chaulukyas, Senas and Eastern Gangas, Various (edited for the Archaeological Survey of India by J. Burgess, E. Hultzsch, F. Kielhorn, Sten Konow, F. W. Thomas and successors) (inscriptions of the 1180s to 1210s; the series ran from 1892). The main record series for the Hindu kingdoms of northern India around 1200. Read online
• Historical Inscriptions of Gujarat, Various (the Chaulukya and Vaghela chanceries), edited by G. V. Acharya (inscriptions of the 10th to 14th centuries; edited 1933 to 1942). The standard corpus of Gujarat's inscriptions. Read online
• A Description of the Foreign Peoples (Records of Foreign Nations), Zhao Rukuo (Zhao Rugua) (1225 at Quanzhou). The best single text for the island world around 1200, written by the superintendent of maritime trade at Quanzhou from merchants' reports a generation after the date. Read online
• The Book of Roger (the Pleasure of Him who Longs to Cross the Horizons), Muhammad al-Idrisi (completed 1154 at Palermo). The nearest Arabic geography in time to 1200 for the Indian Ocean. Read online
• The History of India as Told by its Own Historians: the Muhammadan Period, vol. 2, Various (Ibn al-Athir, Hasan Nizami, Awfi, Juzjani and others), edited by H. M. Elliot and John Dowson (the sources date from the 1190s to the 14th century; the collection was published in 1869). A one-volume anthology of the Arabic and Persian accounts of the Ghurid conquest. Read online

1 more in the sources library for Northern India.