Ashaval

Ashaval was an early settlement on the east bank of the Sabarmati, associated with a Bhil chief named Asha; tradition says the Chaulukya king Karna defeated him and founded Karnavati nearby. It is the older name of the place where Ahmedabad grew, and fourteenth- and fifteenth-century writings still speak of Ashaval rather than Karnavati.

On 26 February 1411 Sultan Ahmad Shah I, who had moved his court from Anhilwada, laid the foundation of Ahmedabad here and built the Bhadra Fort, whose eight gates enclosed the royal palaces and mosques. His Jama Masjid, the largest of his mosques, was finished in 1424. In 1487 Mahmud Begada, the sultanate's greatest ruler, encircled the city with an outer wall about ten kilometres round, with twelve gates and 189 bastions. After Akbar annexed Gujarat in 1573 the city became a leading Mughal textile market whose cloth reached Europe. In 1758 the Mughals handed it over to the Marathas.