Khambat

Khambhat, which Europeans called Cambay, sits on the tidal flats at the head of the Gulf of Khambhat, where the tide can rise thirty feet. It was one of Gujarat's great seaports, shipping cotton cloth, chintz, silk, indigo and leather, and its craftsmen cut agate and carnelian beads. A Jain centre with old temples and palm-leaf manuscripts, it was also a town of foreign merchants.

The Jami Mosque, dated 1325 and credited to the local merchant Umar bin Ahmad al-Kazaruni, opened Gujarat's Islamic architecture. In the early 1340s the traveller Ibn Battuta thought Cambay among the most beautiful cities for its houses and mosques, built by foreign merchants who vied with each other. In the early sixteenth century the Portuguese writer Duarte Barbosa described tall tiled houses and stone mansions, and ships sailing for Mogadishu with cloth and spices, to return with gold, wax and ivory. The silting gulf slowly drew trade to Surat. In 1742 the Mughal governor Mumin Khan took power in the town and founded the line of the Nawabs of Cambay.