Sur Empire

The Sur Empire was the short-lived empire of the Afghan Sur dynasty in northern India, holding for sixteen or eighteen years, between 1538 or 1540 and 1556, with Sasaram in today's Bihar as its capital, and founded by Sher Shah Suri. The Surs held almost all the old Mughal lands along the Indo-Gangetic plain, from eastern Balochistan west of the Indus to Rakhine in today's Myanmar in the east, with eastern India as the seat of their power: eight of the sixteen silver mints Sher Shah founded lay between Chunar and Fathabad. Sher Shah's relentless war on the Bengal Sultanate drew in Humayun, who marched in July 1537 and besieged Chunar for six months; Sher Shah invaded Bengal again, took Gauda in April 1538 and Rohtasgarh the month before, holding his first coronation on the victory and moving the Gaur loot to Rohtasgarh. He offered Humayun ten million dinars and Bihar for Bengal, but Humayun, pressed by the wounded Ghiyasuddin Mahmud Shah to fight on, refused, marched on Bengal and lost his empire to the Afghan.