Kanauj

Kanauj stands on the Ganges in the fertile Doab, the city of Harsha and of the Pratihara and Gahadavala kings, and by 1337 an old imperial capital living on its reputation. Its fields and gardens supplied the flowers for the attar for which the town became famous, distilled in copper vessels.

In 1392 Rajput chiefs of the region rose in open rebellion against Delhi. Two years later the sultan made Khwaja Jahan, titled Malik-us-Sharq, "Lord of the East", governor of Hindustan from Kanauj to Bihar, the beginnings of the Sharqi state of Jaunpur. On 17 May 1540 Sher Shah Suri defeated the Mughal emperor Humayun nearby, razed the old city and raised a brick fort and a new town named Sher Sur. Humayun returned in 1555, and Akbar later made Kanauj the headquarters of a district of thirty mahals.