Raj gond

The Raj Gonds were the Gond chiefly houses of central India who adopted Rajput-style kingship and built kingdoms in the forested Gondwana highlands. Muslim chronicles first notice Gond rajas in the fourteenth century. From the 1400s four principal states emerged, including Garha-Mandla, whose king Jadurai displaced the Kalachuri rulers.

Garha-Mandla peaked under Sangram Shah, who held fifty-two hill forts, and later under Rani Durgavati, a Chandela princess who defeated an invasion by Baz Bahadur of Malwa. In 1564 the Mughal emperor Akbar sent Asaf Khan against Garha; Durgavati died fighting at Narrai, and the kingdom became a Mughal feudatory before recovering partial independence under Hridayshah.

At Deogarh-Nagpur, ruler Bakht Buland Shah converted to Islam and founded Nagpur in 1702. Maratha expansion ended Gond independence: Garha-Mandla was made tributary in 1742 and annexed in 1781, and the last Gond kingdoms fell to the Nagpur Bhonsles.