Patan is a city in Gujarat state of western India. It is the administrative seat of the District of the same name.

History

Known in the Middle Ages as Anhilwara, Patan served as the capital of the Hindu kingdom of Gujarat, which was ruled by the Solanki dynasty of Rajputs. Historian Tertius Chandler estimates that Anhilwara was the tenth-largest city in the world in the year 1000, with a population of approximately 100,000.

Muhammad of Ghor attacked the city in the 1180's, but was rebuffed by the Solankis; Muhammed's general (and later Sultan of Delhi) Qutb-ud-din Aybak sacked the city between 1200 and 1210, and it was destroyed by the sultans in 1298. After the collapse of the Delhi Sultanate at the end of the 14th century Gujarat became an independent Sultanate, and Sultan Ahmed Shah moved the capital to Ahmedabad.

The modern town of Patan later sprung up near the ruins of Anhilwara, and contains many Jain temples. Patan was part of the Maratha state of Baroda from the mid-eighteenth century until India's independence in 1947, when Baroda became part of Bombay state, which in 1960 was separated into Gujarat and Maharashtra.

References

Chandler, Tertius. 1987. Four Thousand Years of Urban Growth: An Historical Census. St. David's University Press.