Sher Shah Suri

• 1. Introduction

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  Sher Shah Suri earned his name by killing a tiger with his bare hands. A tiger had leapt suddenly upon the governor of Bihar, Behar Khan Lohani, and the young Farid Khan stepped forward and slew it. From that moment, he was called Sher Khan, meaning lion or tiger, and the name fit him in ways no one could have predicted. Within two decades, he would drive the Mughal Empire out of India, crown himself Sultan of Hindustan, and reshape the subcontinent so thoroughly that the coins he minted and the road he rebuilt are still part of daily life for hundreds of millions of people today.

  His story raises several questions worth sitting with. How does a man born into a household where his stepmother made him flee as a boy end up commanding an army of 150,000 cavalrymen? What drove him to build, reform, and reorganize at such speed during a reign that lasted only five years? And why did the very foundations he laid benefit his rivals, the Mughals, more than his own dynasty? Those are the threads this documentary will follow.

• 2. From Sasaram to Agra

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  Sasaram, in present-day Bihar, was where Farid Khan was born, though even the year is disputed: some accounts say 1472, others say 1486. His grandfather, Ibrahim Khan Sur, had migrated from the region of Roh in present-day Afghanistan, arriving as a horse trader before becoming a landlord in the Narnaul area. By the time Farid was a child, the family held jagirs, meaning land grants, at Khwaspur, Sasaram, and Hajipur. His father, Hasan Khan Sur, had multiple wives and more than eight sons. Sher Shah's only full brother was Nizam Khan; the rest were half-brothers.

  One of his stepmothers treated him harshly, and his father, too submissive to intervene, could not protect him. So Farid sought refuge with Jamal Khan, the family's patron, where he studied history and religion at Jaunpur for several years. It was Jamal Khan who first gave Hasan Khan the news that his son had the qualities of a future ruler. Impressed, Hasan invited Farid to manage his domains in 1497, and the young man accepted.

  For the next twenty-one years, Farid administered those jagirs, focusing especially on assessing land revenues fairly and establishing clear commissions for tax collectors. His reforms brought prosperity. But his stepbrothers and stepmother worked against him, and by 1518 the intrigues had grown too intense to survive. He resigned and briefly turned to banditry before making his way to Agra, then under the Lodi dynasty, where he gained the support of Daulat Khan Lodi. He remained in Agra until his father's death allowed him to reclaim the family jagirs in 1520-21. By 1528, after distinguishing himself in a Mughal campaign against Afghans in Bihar, his estates were restored and a new chapter was about to begin.

• 3. Reading Babur's Empire

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  At Agra, Sher Shah had a famous dinner with Mughal Emperor Babur. He was served a dish he did not recognize and had never eaten. Rather than ask what it was, he drew his dagger, cut it into smaller pieces, and ate it with a spoon. Babur watched this and told his minister, Mir Khalifa: "Keep an eye on Sher Khan, he is a clever man and the marks of royalty are visible on his forehead. I have seen many Afghan nobles, greater men than he, but they never made an impression on me, but as soon as I saw this man, it entered into my mind that he ought to be arrested for I find in him the qualities of greatness and the marks of mightiness."

  Babur's instinct was correct, but he did not act on it in time. Sher Shah, sensing that Babur suspected him, left Agra and returned to his jagirs in 1528 before anything could happen. The months he spent at Agra were not wasted; he studied Mughal military organization closely and absorbed how Babur ran his campaigns. When Sultan Mohammad of Bihar died in October 1528 and his queen Dudu Bibi took the regency, Sher Shah was appointed her deputy governor. By early 1530, after Dudu Bibi's death, he became regent for the young Jalal Khan, effectively the de facto ruler of Bihar. He had watched the Mughal system from the inside. He would spend the next decade using what he had learned to dismantle it.

• 4. Defeating Humayun

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  Mughal Emperor Humayun marched on Chunar in September 1532 and besieged it for over four months. He got nowhere. Sher Shah offered a deal: loyalty in exchange for keeping the fortress, sending his third son Qutb Khan as hostage. Humayun accepted and lifted the siege in December 1532, distracted by Bahadur Shah of Gujarat to the west. It was a pivotal miscalculation. The next time the two met in direct combat, the result would be catastrophic for the Mughals.

  In March 1534, Sher Shah launched a surprise attack at Surajgarh against the combined forces of the Lohani chiefs and Mahmud Shah of Bengal, winning decisively. By 1536-37, he had invaded Bengal, out-flanked Portuguese-fortified passes by marching through Jharkhand, and forced Mahmud Shah to pay over 13,000,000 gold coins and cede territory. A second Bengal campaign followed when Mahmud Shah failed to send annual tribute. Sher Shah seized the strategic fort of Rohtasgarh through stratagem in March 1538 and then Gauda in April 1538.

  Humayun's army, 200,000 strong according to the sources, crossed the Karmanasa River in a vulnerable formation. Sher Shah attacked at the Battle of Chausa. The Mughals were completely routed, suffering over 7,000 casualties including many prominent nobles. Humayun barely escaped with his life. The two armies met again at Kannauj. Many of Humayun's nobles hid their insignia to avoid identification, and several simply fled the field. The Mughal army was defeated again, and on the 17th of May 1540, Sher Shah was crowned ruler of Hindustan for the second time, taking the epithet Sultan Adil, meaning Just King.

• 5. The Builder and Reformer

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  Five years is not long enough to transform a subcontinent. Sher Shah managed it anyway. His most lasting contribution to daily commerce was the rupee. While the term rupya had previously described any silver coin of varying weight, Sher Shah standardized it: a silver coin of 178 grains. Gold coins called the Mohur weighed 169 grains; copper coins were called Paisa. Numismatists Goron and Goenka established from coins dated AH 945, which corresponds to 1538 AD, that Sher Shah had already assumed royal titles and struck coins in his own name before the Battle of Chausa. Today the rupee serves as national currency in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Mauritius, the Seychelles, and Indonesia.

  He rebuilt the Grand Trunk Road, extending it from Chittagong in Bengal to Kabul in Afghanistan. Caravanserais and mosques were built along its entire length, trees were planted on both sides to provide shade, and wells were dug along the western section. Mail traveled by relays of horse riders. He abolished taxes at provincial borders, leaving only two levies: one on goods entering the country and one when goods were sold at market, removing customs duties between provinces entirely.

  His administrative structure divided the empire into Iqtas governed by military commanders, each subdivided into Sarkars with two chief officers handling civil and revenue matters, then further into Parganas with their own treasurers and clerks, and finally villages governed by Panchayat assemblies of elders. Soldiers were paid fixed, regular salaries. Haibat Khan in Punjab commanded over 30,000 men; Khawas Khan in Rajasthan commanded over 20,000. Sher Shah also revived the city of Patna, which had been in decline since the 7th century CE, renaming it from its historical identity as Pataliputra. His mausoleum at Sasaram, completed on the 16th of August 1545, stands in the middle of an artificial lake; British archaeologist Cunningham rated it above the Taj Mahal.

• 6. Marwar, Raisen, and the Darkest Hour

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  In early 1543, Sher Shah led a force of 80,000 cavalry against Maldeo Rathore, the Rajput king of Marwar, whose kingdom had resisted Afghan control and who had earlier failed to deliver promised aid against the Mughals. Maldeo advanced with an army of 50,000 to meet him and halted at the village of Sammel near Jodhpur. Neither side could easily attack the other. Sher Shah's large army faced supply difficulties. His solution was psychological: he had forged letters dropped near Maldeo's camp, falsely claiming that some of the Rajput commanders planned to defect to the Afghans. The letters caused exactly the distrust Sher Shah intended. Maldeo abandoned his own generals and retreated to Jodhpur.

  Maldeo's generals, Jaita and Kumpa, refused to flee. With a contingent of 12,000 men, they fought the Battle of Sammel. Sher Shah won. Khawas Khan Marwat then occupied the territory of Marwar from Ajmer to Mount Abu in 1544, with Bikaner also submitting to Afghan rule. Sher Shah is reported to have said, after the battle, that he almost lost Hindustan for a handful of millet, acknowledging how close the supply difficulties had brought him to defeat.

  The siege of Raisen in 1543 carries a different weight entirely. Puran Mal had surrendered under a promise of safe conduct. He withdrew from the fort with 4,000 Rajputs and their families. Sher Shah then allowed Afghan forces to attack them while they were still departing. The Rajputs killed their women and children before turning to fight, and the Afghans massacred the survivors. Historians regard this as the single darkest act of Sher Shah's reign, and it sits uneasily alongside his reputation for social justice.

• 7. Death at Kalinjar

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  Kalinjar Fort had defied conquest for seven months when the end came. Sher Shah had been besieging it since 1544, facing continuous Rajput resistance. The details of what happened next differ between sources. One account says a cannon burst and he was mortally wounded by the explosion. Another describes him ordering his men to hurl bombs into the fort from a rampart, at which point one bomb fell back and ignited a cache of others, causing a large explosion that left Sher Shah half-burned. He was carried to his tent and lay there for two days.

  In his critical condition, he reportedly continued to direct the assault. When word came that the fort had finally fallen, he said, "Thanks to Almighty god." He died on the 22nd of May 1545, at an age the sources place at either 73 or 59, depending on which birthdate is accepted.

  His succession immediately fractured. His eldest son Adil Khan was the designated heir, but the nobility favored Jalal Khan, who was seen as more experienced. Jalal Khan was crowned, taking the regnal name Islam Shah Suri. He ruled until 1553. After his death, his minor son Firuz Shah Suri was assassinated by Muhammad Adil Shah, a nephew of Sher Shah through his full brother Nizam Khan. The Sur Empire dissolved into civil war, and Humayun returned from exile to retake Delhi, capitalizing on the very instability Sher Shah's short reign had failed to resolve. Decades later, the emperor Akbar commissioned the Tarikh-i-Sher Shahi from historian Abbas Sarwani to document what Sher Shah had built, a testament to how thoroughly a former rival's legacy had outlasted the dynasty that replaced him.