Gujarati

The Gujaratis are the Indo-Aryan people of the Gujarat plain and Saurashtra peninsula, whose ports Cambay and Surat made them western India's great maritime traders. Their language descends from Old Gujarati, the tongue of the Gujjars, written by the twelfth century, standardized by about 1300 and split from Rajasthani in the fifteenth, using the Gujarati script, a cursive Devanagari relative.

In 1337 Gujarat was a Delhi Sultanate province, conquered by Alauddin Khalji in 1297 to 1300 from Patan's Chaulukya kings. As Delhi weakened after Timur, Muzaffar Shah founded an independent sultanate in 1394; Ahmad Shah built Ahmedabad in 1411, Narsinh Mehta shaped Gujarati letters, later rulers built a sea power before the Portuguese took Diu in 1509 and Akbar annexed Gujarat in 1573.

Under Mughal rule Surat became India's busiest port, the Gate of Mecca; after 1705 Marathas installed the Gaekwads at Baroda, and after the Second Anglo-Maratha War of 1802 to 1803 the British ruled Gujarat alongside princely states.