Jawhar

Jawhar was the capital of a small hill state in the country now forming Maharashtra's Palghar district. Its ruling tradition associated recognition by the Delhi sultan with 1343, a date important enough to serve as the beginning of a local era in public documents. Accounts differ over the founder's name and the sequence of events before this recognition, but agree that the Mukne dynasty made Jawhar its seat.

The official census town survey preserves a fuller dynastic tradition, describing struggles with the Delhi sultanate and the Bahmani rulers. These stories present the hill state as maintaining its position through warfare, recognition and relations with stronger neighbors. By the early nineteenth century it was dealing with British authority in western India; the survey records a coronation associated with Governor Elphinstone in 1826. Jawhar's history joins the continuity of a local ruling house with repeated adjustments to the larger powers surrounding its hill territory.