Jaunpur Sultanate

The Jaunpur Sultanate was a late medieval Indian Muslim state centred on the city of Jaunpur in the Ganges-Yamuna Doab. It was founded in 1394 by Malik Sarwar, titled Khwajah-i-Jahan, a eunuch slave and former wazir who had served Sultan Nasiruddin Muhammad Shah of the Delhi Sultanate. As Tughlaq authority collapsed after Timur's invasion, Malik Sarwar took control of the region and ruled from Jaunpur, while nominally acknowledging the Delhi sultans. The state reached its greatest extent under Sultan Ibrahim Shah, whose long reign saw the construction of major mosques and the growth of Jaunpur as a centre of Islamic scholarship. Its territory stretched across much of present-day Uttar Pradesh and Bihar and into southern Nepal. In 1494 Sultan Hussain Shah Sharqi was defeated by Bahlul Lodi, the Afghan ruler of Delhi, at Benares. Hussain fled to Kahalgaon in Bihar, where the Sultan of Bengal gave him a small pargana; he continued to mint coins and hope for restoration until his death in 1505. The Sharqi buildings of Jaunpur remain among the finest examples of regional Indo-Islamic architecture.