Shekhawati

The Shekhawati are the people of semi-arid north-eastern Rajasthan around Jhunjhunu, a country the epics counted within the ancient Matsya kingdom and whose speech is a Rajasthani dialect. Early medieval rulers were first Gaur and then Chauhan Rajputs, until the Chauhan lord Karamchand accepted Islam under Firuz Shah Tughluq as Kaimkhan, and his Kaimkhani descendants took the local towns.

In the fifteenth century the Kachwaha chieftain Rao Shekha built an independent state around Amarsar and gave the region its name, the garden of Shekha; his Shekhawat kinsmen took the Kaimkhani towns in 1445 and parcelled the country into thirty-three thikanas. Under Akbar, Raja Raisal and his sons rose high in Mughal service with confirmed estates.

Between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries Marwari merchants and Shekhawat lords covered the towns with painted havelis, temples and stepwells, turning Shekhawati into one of the richest fresco landscapes of India, while its chiefs remained the leading thakurs of the Jaipur raj.