Jalor

Jalor stands beneath a steep hill fort in southwestern Rajasthan. The stronghold was the seat of the Songara branch of the Chauhan rulers, who controlled a tract between the desert and the routes towards Gujarat. Its walls and gateways follow the rugged slopes, sheltering temples and other buildings above the town.

In 1311 the Delhi sultan Alauddin Khalji sent an army against Jalor. The fort fell and its ruler Kanhadadeva and his son Viramadeva were killed. Their resistance later became the subject of the Kanhadade Prabandha, a poem composed in the fifteenth century that preserved the story in a literary form. Jalor subsequently passed among the powers of Rajasthan and the Delhi Sultanate, while its fortress continued to dominate the surrounding plain.